Removing racial and gender bias from employment practices

The exposure of racist behaviour in cricket has highlighted that many organisations may possess formal policies aimed at eliminating different sorts of discrimination, but in practice, individuals can still be subjected to prejudice in damaging ways. Outside of sport, stark examples of bias such as those highlighted by Azeem Rafiq may be becoming rarer, but the question of rules versus employees’ real experience remains a live one. And the issues are probably most pertinent when it comes to recruiting staff and guiding their subsequent careers.

As such, a new report, ‘No more tick boxes: a review of the evidence on how to make recruitment and career progression fairer’, is likely to be welcomed by managers and staff alike. Written for NHS England, it is nevertheless applicable to many other organisations, in both the public and private sectors. The report takes the interested reader on a guided walk through the research on prejudice in employment practices, and methods for reducing the impact of bias on employees, whether they are black or from other ethnic minorities, disabled, or women, the last of which groups is an often significant presence in most UK workforces. Due to a relative paucity of data for other protected characteristics in the NHS, there is less coverage in the report of sexual orientation, age and religion, although some of the recommendations could drive fairer employment practices for these staff groups as well.

The author, Roger Kline, designed the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) for the NHS and was joint National Director of the WRES team between 2015 and 2017. He was also the joint Inclusion Adviser to the NHS Aspiring Directors programme and is currently a Research Fellow at Middlesex University.

One of the report’s main strengths is that it identifies the different issues that need to be tackled and seeks to establish what could be done that might have a reasonable chance of both addressing the problem and making a difference. In this it has a close affinity with the approach of Iris Bohnet, author of the influential ‘What Works: Gender Equality by Design’. And indeed, the report cites additional research by Bohnet, among many other academics at various points, in order to show what methods do and do not work. Usefully, the appendix includes full references to all the research cited, in most cases with accessible links to the relevant article.

The report is structured by the main issues that arise when it comes to bias in both recruitment and as a barrier to progression for women and other staff with protected characteristics. It starts with the context – a lack of progress in these areas despite increased representation of women and minorities in the workplace. It examines why an approach based on equality, diversity and inclusion is vital for effective interventions, and it looks at how bias arises, how key actors in organisations should understand it and how they might mitigate it.

In this, the main focus is on removing bias from processes and systems rather than from people. Here, the author emphasises the importance of both accountability and transparency. The former is one of the best ways to ensure authentically equal outcomes, as long as managers and responsible staff at every level are held accountable for individual decisions such as appointments or appraisals. The report also highlights what the author calls ‘data-driven accountability’, by which he means using data and analytics to study patterns of decision-making across an organisation. Elements like gender pay gap and ethnicity pay gap reporting are key aspects of this.

Important sections include those on talent management and positive action, and the subsequent associated sections on appraisals, advertising roles, shortlisting, selection and interviews, which HR practitioners and managers might find the most interesting/useful.

Kline produces evidence to show how genuinely diverse teams can be more effective than those that conform to the biases of those conducting recruitment. He also looks in detail at what happens after recruitment, to progression – or the lack of it – for staff with protected characteristics. One of his most powerful examples is taken from his own research, showing the mismatch between equal opportunities policy and practice when it comes to progression for – in this case – an employee from a BME background.

One minor criticism is that there could have been more such examples, taken from real-life experience or reports of it. But that relative lack is perhaps understandable in a report that aims – and succeeds – in bringing together a wide range of accredited research to bear on the problems identified, and what is likely to remedy them. Related to this is the fact that the language is sometimes a little academic, and the signposting could be clearer as well. But these are mostly smaller issues that do not detract over-much from an important and timely report that can guide practice in organisations as they look to deal with how issues of bias arise and how this can prevent them from obtaining enhanced contribution from staff at all levels.