Discrimination by Design

Nowadays, organisations cater to all different kinds of consumers and consist of employees with many different characteristics. Yet, the top levels in the majority of organisational hierarchies are still filled by people with a smaller pool of characteristics, mainly straight, white, cisgender, non-disabled men.

But why does this matter?

When you have a homogenous group making decisions or designing products for a very heterogeneous world, there are gaps in their decision-making where a sub-set of people are not adequately considered. This design bias is what leads to automatic soap pumps not triggering for darker skin tones, automatic photography software telling Asians to ‘open their eyes’ to have pictures taken for government ID, and voice-activated hardware not working for women or people with accented speech. I personally love Caroline Criado Perez’s book, Invisible Women, that highlights the many, many design flaws in our world as a result of patriarchy.

These deficiencies in technology can all be traced back to homogenous groups not adequately planning for, and trialling on, groups that are different to their own. But whilst it can be quite obvious to see when technology doesn’t work for people of certain characteristics, it can be more difficult to see when policy does not work.

The effects of design bias on organisational policy

That homogenous group of straight, white men at the top of many organisational structures (and this can be historical even if in today’s world there is now more diversity at the top) are often the ones creating the workplace policies and creating the culture (‘the way things are done here’) that organisations operate with every single day. So what happens when people different to them fall through the gaps of their decision-making?

Indirect discriminative treatment at work is often the result. This can manifest in many different ways:

·        Working mothers being disregarded in matters regarding work hours

·        Important religious holidays being ignored

·        Unsuitable food provided for religious or health-related dietary requirements

·        Offices not being wheelchair accessible

I could go on and on providing countless examples.

These discriminative policies can result in a range of consequences, from upset employees to actual bodily harm if employers aren’t careful, leading to higher turnover and potential lawsuits.

What can we do about this?

On paper, the simplest way to prevent this is to break that homogenous group and bring more people with different characteristics into these high hierarchical-level groups, but that will take time.

We suggest tackling these issues at another root cause for more immediate change. Namely, by working with the individuals who have the power to make the change. At Avenir, our workshops challenge leaders’ belief system to recognise these design biases and promote even the most homogeneous of groups to think outside of their own experiences.

By developing leaders’ ability to take this outwards perspective-taking, it is far more likely that individuals with a multitude of different characteristics will be considered in future decision-making. This is beneficial for leaders who create organisational policy and those who create technology to avoid the scenarios stated above, as well as for many more groups.

Here at Avenir we offer two foundational workshops – ‘Interacting Positively with Difference’ and ‘Privilege, Bias or Merit?’. Both are designed as building blocks to creating an inclusive organisation, developing participants’ self-awareness and the critical understanding of why the way things we have always done them need to be broken down and looked at piece by piece for design bias.