Unconscious Bias

Course Code: UNCONBIA

Duration: 1 Day

Course Aims:

This one-day course will help raise awareness of how our decision making and work relationships can be inadvertently affected by our hidden biases. It provides a practical insight into such biases and offers strategies and practical tools for identifying and dealing with them. As a result, we make sounder decisions and work more effectively with others.

Course Pre-requisites:

The programme is particularly relevant if you are a line manager with responsibility for such areas as managing performance, motivating others and recruitment/selection. However, it also has relevance in any function, at any level, that involves dealing with people!

Course Objectives:

On completion of this course delegates will be able to:
▪ Define unconscious bias and why it informs so much of how we operate
▪ Identify and recognise how unconscious bias occurs in the workplace
▪ Develop a greater awareness of such biases in ourselves and what lies behind them
▪ Recognise our own personal “triggers”
▪ Develop the ability to raise our own self-awareness, thus preventing such triggers from taking over
▪ Strategies to overcome unconscious bias and make better informed decisions
▪ Improve workplace relationships through better understanding of ourselves and others
▪ Opportunity to work with practical examples through case studies and skill practice

Course Content:
• Introduction and Objectives
• Defining unconscious bias – the “hidden saboteur”
• How it differs from conscious, judgmental prejudice
• How unconscious bias affects our decision-making process
• Its role in how workplace relationships develop
• Impact of unconscious bias on recruitment, performance reviews and decisions we make
• The three primary, natural sources of unconscious bias and how to identify them in ourselves
• The underlying neuroscience
• Witness consciousness – developing the ability to bring UB into our conscious experience and adapting behaviour accordingly
• Moving from reaction to response
• The interpersonal skills involved
• The role and value of inviting feedback
• Ensuring more effective and fair decision making
• Case studies and skills practice based on real, workplace examples
• Review of course and action planning