Bias Never Sleeps
Recently, I attended a virtual round table conference with HR leaders from my industry. On that call, one senior leader made a surprisingly broad statement in the context of remarks about attracting applicants for a specific job within that person’s company.
This person causally attributed the difficulty in finding candidates to the desire to stay unemployed in order to receive benefits under the CARES Act. But, earlier this year in July, doubts about this link had been widely reported in outlets like Breitbart and CBS news (see below), so I was surprised to hear it appear over 5 months later in a professional setting. Why?
As HR practitioners, we are often called upon to mediate situations within organizations where varying perceptions of fact compete, or can incorrectly hold sway, frequently with inefficient consequences. These situations vary in complexity, but especially when they involve bias, we have a professional responsibility to confront such thinking and behavior. And, beyond the organizational and social dimensions of our professional roles in HR, serious operational questions arise about the usefulness of biased thinking and decision-making. For example,
1) Is the recruiting strategy for this role failing to take into account other economic elements for the difficulty in attracting applicants? For starters, what is the unemployment rate generally in this role? If the unemployment rate is low, (and in this case, readily available market data actually show that it is), wouldn’t that trend be a more likely cause of the difficulty in attracting candidates?
2) What is the relative attractiveness of the industry sector for the company vs. competitors? Are other companies paying higher wages? Do they offer better schedules or working conditions? If your company is less attractive from any of these views, wouldn’t these be more likely reasons for low applicant rates?
3) In either the case of #1 or #2, actions to remedy the perceived problem, in this case applicant shortages, may not only miss solving the talent attraction problem, it may miss developing solutions for talent retention, which represent a far more interesting challenge for HR than being tactically anchored to the traditional “churn and burn” entry/exit employment cycle, particularly when labor scarcity in a particular role, nationally, or regionally, already represents a narrower path to success.
4) If HR talent is not able to find or identify basic data to support the debunking of bias effectively, or is unwilling for some reason to do so, this may represent a different issue within an organization that needs to be addressed. It is critical that HR talent have sufficient business and thought literacy to effectively and appropriately influence and address strategic, cultural, and operational issues, and thereby increase the chances of achieving its mission and enjoying the prosperity of its success.
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