What is a Bias Interrupter?
Despite decades of bias training and organizational change initiatives, women hold only 15% of high-level positions in most industries, a figure that has scarcely budged since the 1990’s. Joan Williams, Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings, recently wrote a Harvard Business review article introducing a new evidence based model to jump-start the advancement of women and people of color, called Metrics-Driven Bias Interrupters. This project will help companies fix systems of subtle biases and offers a unique opportunity to help lead a paradigm shifting approach to diversity.
Bias Interrupters Working Group
The Center for WorkLife Law is excited to launch the Bias Interrupters Working Group. The working groups is a project bringing leading researchers together with a select group of corporate members (by invitation only) to develop innovative models for addressing work-place bias by integrating bias-correcting mechanisms into basic business systems.
The working group will examine how biases play out in day-to-day business operations, pinpoint key triggers for race and gender disparities, and find ways to adjust business practices at key trigger points to eliminate the bias. Researchers will lead pilot “Bias Interrupter” programs in the Corporate Partner organizations and use findings from pilot studies to develop a model strategy.
This Working Group Will:
- Integrate research on racial and gender bias;
- Identify best practice baseline Bias Interrupters;
- Develop Interrupters designed to address common problems in specific industries; and
- Develop Interrupters designed specifically for each Corporate Interrupter, to be piloted in it’s organization, with results written up by researchers
Working Group Participants
Five distinct groups will participate in the Working Group:
- Behavioral economists;
- Experimental social psychologists who study workplace gender and racial bias;
- Organizational change scholars;
- An editor of the Harvard Business Review; and
- Select Corporate Members (invitation only)