Here’s What Google Teaches Employees In Its Course On Unconscious Bias
Like almost every other tech company, Google has a diversity problem: 70% of its employees are guys, 61% are white, and only 21% of people in leadership roles are women.
With those unflattering statistics staring them in the face, Google has tried to figure out why the numbers are so skewed toward white dudes.
One conclusion: Unconscious bias, the sometimes useful tendency to make snap judgments (that subway car is empty for a reason), guides us into unexamined bigotry (she’s a woman, not a leader).
Google made as much understandable to its employees with the below video.
Google HR boss Laszlo Bock was tipped to the possibility of unconscious bias at the company when he read a New York Times story about a Yale University study, which concluded that “science professors at American universities widely regard female undergraduates as less competent than male students with the same accomplishments and skills.”
If this could happen to male and female science professors, Google realized it could happen at Google.
“This is a pretty genteel environment, and you don’t usually see outright manifestations of bias,” Bock said. “Occasionally you’ll have some idiot do something stupid and hurtful, and I like to fire those people.”
It wouldn’t just be nice to have greater diversity. It would be good for business, Bock argued, since research shows diverse teams make better decisions.
So Google’s HR department is spearheading a major pro-diversity initiative, and half of Google’s 49,000 employees have already taken the centerpiece workshop.
via Google Course On Unconscious Bias – Business Insider.
Google Course On Unconscious Bias
