At Sound, there was an absence of unconscious bias awareness training and a lack of common language needed to address it as an organization. While this is a foundational concept for D&I efforts, it had to happen before progressing further on our journey to be a more inclusive culture.  We set out to: 

1. Define the concept of unconscious bias
2. Depict the different types of unconscious biases
3. Demonstrate how biases can influence workplace decisions and interactions
4. Explain how to recognize personal biases and make more informed decisions

Sound’s approach to our D&I program leverages the collective collaboration of internal leaders and those passionate about seeing change but lacks internal expertise.  In absence of that expertise, we engaged with a third party expert that offered a scalable, off-the-shelf but proven solution for Sound in the areas of unconscious bias training.

After reviewing multiple proposals from third party firms, the council recommended retaining the NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI), a global organization that brings a concrete, brain-based approach to diversity and inclusion.  This approach resonated with our business leaders (who are largely scientists at the core). NLI’s philosophy is to work with the architecture of the brain, not against it, where you can mitigate bias at scale by removing it from the process not the people.

Sound embarked on a distributed learning solution leveraging the expertise of a third party consultant, the Neuroleadership Institute, where over 1500 clinical, business and nursing colleagues engaged with the SEEDS model content to accept, label and mitigate unconscious bias. The material was delivered by way of diversity champions within business units through micro-learning workshops.

After the module, an impact survey was conducted with 348 people manager respondents:

• 68% reported a positive behavior change by calling out bias when it occurred at least once during the survey week
• 55% referred specifically to SEEDs
• 88% actively did something to mitigate the bias

After the module, an impact survey was conducted with individual contributors with 78 respondents:

• 35% reported a positive behavior change by calling out bias when it occurred at least once during the survey week
• 49% referred specifically to SEEDs
• 53% actively did something to mitigate the bias

Other outcomes/data:

• The leadership team codified IF/THEN statements that were socialized in organization wide communications.
• Participants reported applying DECIDE habits most often in decisions regarding people (hiring, selecting for a project), preparing to give feedback and finding solutions to challenges
• Participants site the greatest opportunity to support their learning and application is to see more role-modeling from leaders (22%)