Summary
Across the industry, design teams are focused on growing and supporting a diverse workforce. But current efforts are often unsuccessful —?and despite an increase in time, effort and money behind organization’s DE&I efforts, most teams remain unchanged (and very white). To truly address bias and support diversity efforts, teams need to stop focusing on feelings and instead create hiring and performance review systems that prevent individuals from acting on their bias. As a Design Enablement and Operations practice, we have worked with designers and their teams to build practices that standardize hiring criteria and reduce the impact of individuals’ bias and racism. In this workshop, we will work together to: Define tangible core competencies that define each job and the criteria hiring and performance are measured on Create a Portfolio Review “Cheat Sheet” that allows a team to review a candidate with an anti-bias approach Review examples of performance review and correct instances of bias
Key Insights
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Objective criteria in hiring help reveal bias in candidate evaluation.
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Effective DEI strategies require clear, actionable objectives rather than abstract discussions.
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Engaging employees through structured frameworks leads to better performance reviews.
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Performance reviews can perpetuate bias but can be improved with evidence-based assessments.
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Direct audits of feedback can help eliminate bias in performance evaluations.
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Focused criteria must be established before starting any DEI initiative to minimize bias.
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Creating a community space for sharing resources enhances collective learning.
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Team engagement was crucial for implementing successful hiring and evaluation processes.
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Workshops can yield positive results by promoting accountability and structured discussions about bias.
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Implementing checklists can help focus conversations on objective measures rather than subjective opinions.
Notable Quotes
"These free form discussions were impacted by individual bias."
"We asked participants to judge others, not themselves."
"The performance review conversations should be constructive with evidence-backed feedback."
"We really took objective criteria at evidence to heart."
"Checklists moved the needle for us."
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