On March 5th, the Interuniversity Network on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion organized a stakeholder event on “evidence-based practices to reduce bias at work”.
We started with poster presentations by Chenhao Zhou, Onur Şahin, Sarah Grootjans, and Johanna S. W. Kruger who, respectively, shared their ongoing research on the impact of lgbt+ identity disclosure on social perception and cooperation intentions (Zhou), the impact of explicit coordination on gendered domestic division in expecting couples (Sahin), the influence of work messages on the care gap (Grootjans), and young, female doctors’ lack of fit with the profession's agentic stereotype (Kruger).
Then, in a plenary talk, Lieselotte Blommaert and Marcel Coenders shared the findings from their work on the effects of anonymized hiring procedures and support among managers, job applicants and the general public. Their findings showed that anonymous application procedures, particularly when combined with the use of standardized forms, significantly reduce ethnic discrimination in the screening process. Alarmingly, however, many managers still believe discrimination is not a problem, in stark contrast with results from a field experiment showing clear evidence of bias in hiring. You can read more here.
Dr. Huyen T. T. Nguyen, furthermore, shared first findings from a vignette experiment on differences in beliefs and self-presentation strategies across genders and ethnicities n the US and UK labor market. Findings revealed that job seekers somewhat distrust AI-based recruitment tools and would rather be assessed by human recruiters, who they perceive as more nuanced in their assessment and better able to see the person behind the CV.
We rounded off the event with a discussion on how to solve the tension between, on the one hand, the positive impact of standardization and formalized hiring procedures and, on the other hand, employees' needs to feel authentic at the workplace and valued for who they are.
Thank you to all participants for a very interesting discussion!
We are grateful to Future of Work Hub, Universiteit Utrecht, European Research Council (ERC), Workplace Pride, InclusieNL for supporting the event, and look forward to the next activities!
