The greatest hurdle to workplace diversity

One of the biggest hurdles to achieving a diverse and inclusive workplace is unconscious bias.

According to Anka Wittenberg, senior VP and chief D&I officer at SAP, acknowledging that all of us have unconscious biases is crucial to drive the agenda forward.

To make a case for it, the D&I advocate shared her personal experience with HRD.

“I was flying from Frankfurt to New York the other day and I was listening to the pilot welcoming everybody – the pilot was a woman,” she said.

“It was the biggest airplane in the world, the A380. I thought, ‘great, finally a woman flying the biggest airplanes!’

“Then when we were flying over Greenland, it was very turbulent. I was thinking to myself, ‘wow, I hope she has it under control’.

“If it was a male pilot flying the plane, I would not have thought about it. I got so upset at myself because I’m talking about unconscious bias all the time and I still had it.”

Applied to HR processes, unconscious bias can affect diversity numbers right from the very beginning of the recruitment process – in job postings.

“We may be using gender-bias language in job postings,” she said.

“For example, if we state that we are looking for someone who is assertive and political-savvy, many times the job becomes unattractive to females and not a lot will apply for the position.”

She believes that technology can help make us aware of unconscious biases. For instance, software programs can identify biased language in job ads and prompt us to make the necessary changes prior to posting.

“Digital transformation is going to help us to move diversity and inclusion in the right direction,” she said.
 

Banking on experiences