When making any decision, from deciding what to have for dinner to buying a house, many biases can come into play. The workplace is no different, with unconscious bias affecting decisions on a daily basis. For example, the intern may have a great idea that gets shut down because “she hasn’t even graduated yet”, while the almost-retired customer relations manager may raise an important concern that isn’t taken seriously because “he doesn’t understand the system”.
In this webinar, Karla Gahan and Dean Hughes explored the biases that play a role in the workplace and how the risk of those biases clouding judgment can be mitigated.
The webinar covers:
- Key biases that influence all people across organisations including senior leadership
- The benefits of being aware of unconscious bias in the workplace
- How to mitigate the effect of bias in day-to-day workplace environments
- Answering any questions from attendees
Key takeaways
In this interactive webinar, Karla began by presenting two photos of individuals and used interactive polls to show just how quickly our biases come into play. Here are some of the key takeaways from the webinar:
- Stereotyping individuals can result in missing out on recruiting talented staff and we risk retaining the right people
- Up to 90% of our thought processes happen automatically as subconscious reactions
- By paying attention to the biases that come into play as part of our role, we can help to implement measures or nudges that can change behaviours and improve culture.
About the experts
Risk and business continuity expert Karla Gahan is an associate member of the Business Continuity Institute (AMBCI), a certified member of the Institute of Risk Management (CMIRM), and member of Airmic. Karla regularly presents at workshops and conferences on the topic of unconscious bias in the workplace.
Global Head of Risk and Advisory Dean Hughes has worked closely with over 50 Chief Risk Officers, risk management teams and Boards at organisations across the globe, designing and implementing ERM frameworks; introducing software to digitise risk processes; and driving a risk aware culture through training and workshops.
Risk management workshops
As part of VinciWorks’ risk management product line, our team offers a range of in-house risk management workshops. Some of the topics cover risk identification, Enterprise Risk Management frameworks, conducting risk assessments and more.
