Challenging Bias in the Workplace
#BreakTheBias was the campaign theme for International Women’s Day in March 2022. To support the campaign, Parallel is choosing to confront issues of gender bias in the tech industry during the hiring process by talking to our friends, colleagues, clients and peers – shining a spotlight on the unconscious bias women face in the industry, and particularly to start addressing its role in perpetuating gender inequity the workplace.
This International Women’s Day, Parallel Consulting has chosen to discuss how we can break the bias in the hiring process, challenging employers to uproot long-standing unconscious bias encountered by women who apply for technical roles and discuss best practices for reducing gender bias.
We hope to start an overdue conversation about how to foster more inclusive recruitment processes and best practices, influencing employers and educating managers in how to create healthier workplaces for everyone.
We know that conversations about unconscious bias – whether related to issues of self-confidence or algorithms propagating the biases of their programmers in hiring technologies – can be uncomfortable and seem difficult to tackle. That’s why we are challenging ourselves to start normalising those conversations, because only once business leaders and managers are informed about the way unconscious bias pervades into their hiring process and culture can they put in effective processes to systematically break the bias.
Only once a workplace culture is created that enables women to feel supported and safe to discuss how they are impacted by gender bias can everyone truly feel empowered to perform to their full potential.
We want to start an overdue conversation and we look forward to raising awareness of the unconscious bias brought towards hiring women in technology and the challenges it poses, influencing employers, educating managers, and making a small contribution to creating a healthier, and more inclusive, workplace for everyone.
For IWD 2022, we hosted a ”Challenging Bias in the Workplace” workshop, as well as sat down to interview our clients, candidates and our very own consultants about how they challenge bias in the workplace on a daily basis in their job.
