Today, Facebook is making available online its employee bias training.
In a one-hour video, company leaders delve into topics that devil tech companies and many others — how to identify and address bias, in oneself and part of a group dynamic. The company said it is making the training available publicly because it had received requests for it from other firms.
Facebook isn t the only company doing bias training. Google made available a video of one of its training sessions last year and has rolled out bias busting workshops, as USA Today reported.
The social media giant hasn t seen its workplace demographics change much in the past year, as Queenie Wong reported. To improve those demographics, it has revamped its training to become more focused on concrete steps its employees can do to tackle specific issues, such as stereotypes and performance bias and competency/likability tradeoff bias.
I spoke to Maxine Williams, Facebook s global director of diversity, who told me that the training has become more focused on specific biases and more specific about concrete steps employees can take:
We believe unless you call it out, you can t start to deal with it. Dealing with race head on is sensitive. We wanted to break through this and talk about hard things. That people are afraid of black men. That people think Hispanics are too emotional. We wanted to call out uncomfortable things because they cause the most damage… We wanted to give people practical ways to break in.
The video training is only part of what Facebook is doing, she said. The companywide effort includes workshops based on real-life scenarios, follow-up employee surveys and affinity groups, such as Black@, Latin@, Pride@, which all employees can join.
The training also includes tips on counteracting bias and calling out others who may be acting on bias. They include interrupting the interrupters so that everyone can have their say, giving credit to those who deserve it and rotating the responsibility for office housework such as taking meeting notes.
If one has their biased called out, it is recommended they thank the caller-outer and apologize. Don t make perfect the outcome, make progress the outcome, said Mike Rognlien, a Facebook learning and development leader.
Above: Maxine Williams, Facebook s global director of diversity (courtesy Facebook).