Trends

IF you are having trouble finding and developing the right staff it may be that unconscious bias is stopping you from achieving your best.

In Australia’s multicultural, multilayered community, it is all too easy to label people you ‘don’t’ want to employ. You set out to fi nd the perfect new staff member to employ and promote based on your own perceptions.

And this can be extremely detrimental to achieving your optimal business performance.

Could be, you are making a big mistake because the best applicant for the job may be passed over by this personal bias.

A new report claims business leaders should base recruitment and promotion decisions on objective assessment data, not their own superfi cial perceptions.

The report from Questionmark, the online assessment provider, argues that leaders should test the skills of workers so that they can make objective decisions on recruitment and promotion.

Titled “Overcoming bias and building diverse business success”, it shows how more diverse workforces deliver better business performance. But despite the clear business imperative, leaders are struggling to master diversity and inclusion.

The report said there were three main barriers were preventing employers from nurturing a more diverse workforce: 1. Active discrimination – almost 30% of ethnic minority and 39% of LGBT+ respondents claim they have heard derogatory comments or jokes about people like them from co-workers, according to McKinsey research. 2. Unconscious bias – without realizing it, employers could be basing their decisions on who to recruit or promote on factors other than who is best for the job. 3. Lack of visible inclusion – diversity begets diversity. If workers do not see people like them in senior leadership positions they may not push for their own progression.

Measuring and testing the skills of workers using online assessments can help employers make more objective and inclusive people decisions.

Assessments draw attention to people’s skills and knowledge irrespective of their background. Data from assessments indicates which candidates are best for the role and which workers are ripe for promotion.

This objective information can challenge bias and lead to the workforce becoming more diverse.

CEO of Questionmark Lars Pedersen said: “Assessments help employers make more inclusive people decisions. They can detect attitudes across the existing workforce that need challenging. They reveal whether diversity training is eff ective.”

The “Questionmark Anti-discrimination for People Managers” test provides a ready-made assessment to measure knowledge of discrimination law and help managers make fair and balanced decisions.

Questionmark was founded in 1988 and has customers worldwide including Australia. Its software is used to deliver at least 25 million assessments per year.

It provides the secure enterprise-grade assessment platform and professional services to leading organizations around the world, delivered with care and unequalled expertise.

Its full-service online assessment tool and professional services help customers to improve their performance and meet their compliance requirements. Questionmark enables organizations to unlock their potential by delivering assessments which are valid, reliable, fair and defensible.

And Questionmark off ers secure powerful integration with other LMS, LRS and proctoring services making it easy to bring everything together in one place.

Questionmark's cloud-based assessment management platform off ers rapid deployment, scalability for high-volume test delivery, 24/7 support and the peaceof-mind of a secure, audited Australian-based data centre.