Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER April 18, 2016 12 EXECUTIVE SERIES/NEWS LIVE AND ON-DEMAND LIVE WEBINAR TIMING: 12:00 – 1:00 P.M. ET REGISTER ONLINE: www.CPDCentre.ca/hrreporter The Canadian HR Reporter Webinar Series has been recognized as an industry standard and includes partnerships with leading organizations such as HRPA, HRIA, HRANB and CHRC. INTELLIGENT LEARNING SOLUTIONS AND DEVELOPMENT RESOURCES it was really obvious what racial group the applicant was from. "We sent out the normal resu- més that were transparent about race, and then half of them we whitened, which means we took out the racial information," said Kang. "We either changed the name or changed the experi- ence so that it was less obvious or harder to tell which racial group the applicant was from." Researchers sent half of the resumés out to pro-diversity em- ployers — that specifically men- tion diversity — while the other half were submitted for job ads that didn't say anything about diversity. "What we found was there is a large gap between the whitened resumés and unwhitened resu- més. So the resumés on which we had whitened the experience, we had taken out the racial informa- tion, were two to two-and-a-half times more likely to get a callback than the resumés that we didn't whiten," she said. "Unfortunately, this is the same between employers who said they were pro-diversity and employers who didn't. Across the board, it seemed that our minority resu- més were being discriminated against — even by those employ- ers who simply said that they wouldn't discriminate." Mounting evidence e University of Toronto study isn't the first to draw similar conclusions when it comes to re- cruitment and hiring bias against minority candidates, said Ritu Bhasin, founder and principal of Bhasin Consulting in Toronto. "We know that this happens, that because of conscious and unconscious biases, people who have harder-to-pronounce names or, for that matter, appear to be either born abroad or have eth- nic or cultural backgrounds from outside of Canada and outside of the dominant culture often ex- perience challenges with secur- ing interviews. And then, should they make it to the interviewing process, then actually (experi- ence challenges with) securing positions." None of the findings were too surprising — they merely sup- port anecdotal evidence seen by Michael Bach, founder and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Diver- sity and Inclusion in Toronto, over his career. "We've been seeing this going on over the years, particularly with people who have more tra- ditional southeast Asian names, they change them… a lot of em- ployers look at that (and make as- sumptions)," he said. "It is truly unfortunate that in 2016 in Canada, we are still seeing employers looking at resumés and bluntly saying things like 'Well, they don't have any Canadian ex- perience.' Which is code. It is just subtle racism." And it's not just related to race and ethnicity — it also happens in regard to sexual orientation, he said. "I met with one woman who was part of a group called Out on Bay Street, and she was very in- volved. She identifies as a lesbian and she was told by her professor to take it off her resumé because it made it 'too pink,' he said. " "So resumé whitening doesn't just have to be about race, it can be about many things. Disability is another one I can see where if you are active in a disability stu- dent group, you might take that off because it sends a message that you're not like everybody else." Addressing the issue e next step is to look at what or- ganizations can do to address this challenge, said Bhasin. "ere are a number of things," she said. "For example, there are organizations like Xerox… that are planning on redacting names on applications so you can't see the name of the candidate when you receive the application and then, because of that, your un- conscious biases are less likely to kick in." Even employers that are vocally pro-diversity need to continually examine potential, unconscious biases in recruitment and hiring, said Bhasin. "A lot of organizations in Can- ada have a stated commitment to being inclusive and hiring more diverse candidates and doing a better job of supporting the ad- vancement of diverse people. But the practical reality is a stated commitment is not enough. You actually have to change your be- haviour to change your practices to make that happen," she said. "e key piece in looking at ap- plications that employers must do is ensure that they provide the professionals who review applica- tions with inclusion training, so they're aware of their biases and blind spots before they review applications." And then, as part of an appli- cation review, they need to use that criteria as well as assessment forms, said Bhasin. "at way, as much as possible, people are relying on evaluation criteria as opposed to their gut or their instincts in making those decisions." People have learned to value diversity, said Kang — but they're not necessarily walking the talk yet. "at message has (sunk in), people are buying it, they want to have a more diverse workplace. And that's why these diversity statements are in place. But I think what's happened is that by putting that blanket statement out there, people are thinking, 'Now we've taken care of this problem,'" she said. "We need to think about the task that HR managers, hiring managers are going through when they're making selections… it's a hard job. People are getting such a large volume of resumés, they're going through hundreds, maybe thousands of resumés for one job and they're supposed to do it very quickly. So there's a lot of pressure there." "We know that when we're asked to do those hard informa- tion processing tasks very quickly, it's easy for us as humans to kind of fall back on cognitive biases — on shortcuts. ings like stereo- typing, things like prejudice. Even something like 'I can pronounce this name, so that looks good to me,' versus 'I can't even pronounce this and I don't have time for this right now.'" Similar response from pro-diversity employers WHITENING < pg. 1 Can Rogers' leaders turn 'oil tanker' around? After the death of its founder, Rogers lost focus, lost its position as the market lead- er, and some customers had a mixed view of Rogers service. While not on the brink, it was clear this very large company re- quired a turnaround. ere is a saying: "Leaders get the culture they deserve." It was no secret there was skepticism in some quarters that it was possible to af- fect change at Rogers. Culture is something that can grow, change and adapt — but this doesn't happen overnight and not by leaders telling people to change. e new leaders at Rog- ers decided a focus on coaching would be their approach to creat- ing cultural changes. Reframing coaching support and time as investment: ere is another saying: "e soft stuff is the hard stuff." e difficulty of the challenge was no surprise for the leadership as they developed a three-year plan to reinvigorate the people and culture at Rogers to regain its market leader position. Coaching became a process, a way of working. It was something to be embedded into operations. After working with the director level in the company, they started the work of coaching change. Starting someplace: e call centre leader saw coaching's po- tential to make a difference as the centres offered an opportunity to influence customer opinion. To set agents up for success, they needed to instill an appreciation of the impact of language, listening and framing ese were performance areas most easily acquired through ex- perience or on-the-job training. Coaching would be a key compo- nent because the changes involved impacting customer relationships. At the same time as focusing on the "soft stuff," there were clear areas they also hoped to impact: customer satisfaction, revenue through profitable relationships, operating costs, and employee engagement. Along with incremental on-the- job exposure to coaching concepts and high involvement of team managers, a behaviour framework was developed as a foundation. It involved: connecting and empathy with the customer, understanding needs and providing value-based solutions, being authentic, inspir- ing confidence and setting up a relationship that could grow with Rogers. Clarifying what coaching is: HR worked with the call centres from the very beginning. It be- came clear "coaching" as a term was being used to characterize many conversations. So they helped team leaders distinguish their different conversations: coaching with an open agenda, coaching with a set agenda, coach- ing followup, teaching, directive conversations and performance management. Coaching would require know- ing the people in the team, lever- aging agent self-discovery, pro- viding positive reinforcement, and driving accountably and ownership. Measuring the impact of the investment: Since introducing the focus on coaching, there have been dramatic improvements: a customer satisfaction increase of 500 per cent, customer esca- lation decrease of 59 per cent, Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) complaints decrease of 52 per cent, and revenue increase in double digits. What is more exciting is it has been possible to directly link per- formance increases in call centres specifically to coaching efforts. During one of a periodic "blitz days" where individual call cen- tres compete on performance, one centre decided to incorpo- rate specific coaching time into operations that day and it showed a clear increase in performance. When the next blitz day came, other call centres did the same and they too saw an increase in per- formance, even though they were investing time during the day in coaching. It looks like the investment in coaching is paying off at Rogers. It is demonstrating simple ways to illustrate payback on investment in the soft stuff, which has always been a challenge. True, it is early days and Rogers is a large, complex company on a change journey. But here is wish- ing it success. Karen Gorsline is SCNetwork's lead commentator on strategic capability and leads HR Initiatives, a consult- ing practice focused on facilitation and tailored HR initiatives. Toronto- based, she has taught HR planning, held senior roles in strategy and poli- cy, managed a large decentralized HR function and directed a small busi- ness. She can be reached at gorslin@ pathcom.com. Karen Gorsline Strategic Capability It has been possible to directly link performance increases to coaching efforts.

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