Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER April 20, 2015 2 NEWS Recent stories posted on www.hrreporter.com. Check the website daily for quick news hits from across Canada and around the world. WEB O N T H E ACROSS CANADA Alberta court strikes down labour laws that take away right to strike Government has until April 1, 2016, to rewrite offending sections of the code, act Doctor chastises employer in sick note Letter, allegedly from Alberta doctor, asks employers to reconsider policies Toronto police investigating confrontation with TTC officers caught on video Reason for provocation 'remains unknown' Temporary foreign workers in low-skilled jobs must start leaving Canada Deadline will likely force many workers underground: MP B.C. puts 3-month freeze on applications from prospective labour immigrants Pause will allow province to speed up processing times: Labour minister AROUND THE WORLD McDonald's to raise worker pay at company-owned stores But majority of U.S. locations franchised U.S. private sector adds 189,000 jobs in March: ADP But manufacturing sees first decrease since January 2014 Silicon Valley gender bias case will inspire women despite jury verdict: Experts Ellen Pao lost lawsuit but it became a flashpoint in ongoing discussion Succession planning: Building the next generation of leaders Todd Humber, associate publisher and managing editor of Canadian HR Reporter, recently moderated a special roundtable on succession planning. hrreporter.com FEATURED VIDEO Policing implicit bias Specialized training for police forces in Toronto, Vancouver goes beyond explicit bias, has implications for broader workforce BY LIZ BERNIER ANTI-BIAS TR AINING is certainly nothing new, but the stakes are quite different when you compare the average office environment to a metropolitan police force. And that training is particularly important in a profession where a negative or tragic incident can receive massive media attention — the 2013 police shooting of To- ronto teenager Sammy Yatim and the more recent shooting of Mi- chael Brown in Ferguson, Miss., being two such examples. "Bias in policing is something that gets thrown around a lot in the public realm," said Barry Kross, deputy chief of the Metro Vancouver Transit Police. "Police agencies I think in gen- eral… either north or south of the border get painted with a similar brush and you do hear the odd group that will talk about systemic bias and systemic racism within certain police departments. And I've always been a little bit offend- ed by that. "Whenever anything happens in policing, regardless of where we are, we all do tend to feel that we're painted with the same brush. And that's probably the same in any vocation, but more so in policing because it's so public-facing." at's why Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP), a United States- based organization, has devel- oped training curricula uniquely tailored to training police around bias. "e concept of implicit bias is seeping into many professions, and the training (is) in many pro- fessions. And what we do... is bring the science of implicit bias to the police profession," said Lo- rie Fridell, CEO of FIP in Tampa, Fla. "We are educating them on implicit biases, talking about how implicit biases might manifest in policing, what it might look like, and then we give them skills for reducing and managing their im- plicit biases." Explicit vs. implicit bias It's critical to make the distinc- tion between implicit and explicit bias, said Fridell. e focus has traditionally been more on ex- plicit bias, but that's beginning to change. "A person with explicit bias links people to stereotypes as- sociated with their group — it might be a racial group, might be a gender group, sexual orientation. at linkage or stereotyping is based on animus or hostility. e person with explicit biases knows it and 'owns' it, such that he or she will tell you about it and explain why they don't like this group," she said. A person with implicit bias still links people to stereotypes, which may still impact his perceptions and behaviour towards people in a certain group. "But what's different is that implicit biases can occur outside of conscious awareness — even in a person who has no animus or hostility towards the group and, in fact, may at the conscious level reject biases, stereotypes and discriminatory behaviour," said Fridell. "is means even well-in- tentioned individuals, even well- intentioned law enforcement, can have implicit biases that impact on their perceptions and impact on their behaviours." Training program In presenting training, FIP has five separate curricula for differ- ent levels within police forces, she said. "One is appropriate either for the recruit in the academy or the patrol officer on the street, a sec- ond one is for first-line supervi- sors," she said. e third is for mid-managers, the fourth is for command staff and community leaders, and the fifth is a Train-the-Trainer Pro- gram, "so that we leave the agen- cy with the capacity to train their own personnel," said Fridell. In Canada, FIP has done train- ing with the Toronto Police Ser- vice and the Metro Vancouver Transit Police, which sponsored the Train-the-Trainer Program, said Kross. e trained members of the force will be rolling out the training internally to the rest of the 234 staff members this fall, beginning with front-line officers. It's important to Kross that his staff will be able to receive the training from their peers, he said. "With a topic that can be this sensitive, you don't want to have somebody from the outside tell- ing you that you have potentially a problem on the inside," he said. "We all have a bias and I think if we could get everyone to under- stand that — both in the policing world and in the public realm… we all have this implicit bias be- cause we are the sum of our ex- periences to that point in our life." e training around implicit bias is applicable in many ways, to many different workplaces, said Fridell. "(But) the difference might be in the specific biases that would cause the greatest risk. So, for instance, in the policing training, there's a lot of biases that could impact police… stereotypes asso- ciated with who commits crime would be most relevant to police, versus accountants," she said. "We also look at stereotypes in policing regarding who might they believe? Would they believe a rich person over a low-income person? So two points come out of that: One, we don't just look at race and ethnicity, we look at so- cioeconomic status, sexual orien- tation, gender, because when you think about gender stereotypes and crime and violence stereo- types, officers might be under- vigilant with certain populations such as women or such as well- to-do people or professionally dressed people." Overcoming discomfort It can be challenging and uncom- fortable to examine our own bi- ases, said Kross — but the more we understand about the nature of implicit bias, the easier it becomes to open up that dialogue. "ere's a significant level of discomfort, because the relation- ship between the terms 'racism' and 'bias' is often misunderstood SPECIALIZED > pg. 12 "We all have a bias... both in the policing world and the public realm. We all have this implicit bias because we are the sum of our experiences to that point in our life."

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