This article is written by Sarah Margles, senior policy advisor, Ontario Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade

As public servants, our priority is the public good. And I expect that for most of us, this aligns clearly with our values. But what we strive for is not always the direction we actually take. Partly, this is because of biases that lead our organisations, colleagues, and yes, even ourselves, astray.

The term unconscious bias appears more and more in the media, in conversations with colleagues and in strategic plans for human resources. In part, I suspect, it’s because many conscious biases have become evident — from secret Jewish space lasers (USA) to women who “talk too much” (Japan).

These overtly discriminatory and biased comments pose a challenge. Those of us who see them as egregious tend to distance ourselves by thinking, “we are not those people”. But we have biases as well, even if we don’t think we do. In fact, in both obvious and subtle ways, we’ve heard these biased sentiments our whole lives, re-iterated over and over again, and our unconscious minds have grabbed hold.

The ghosts of our founders

As public servants, we manage the most significant systems in society — healthcare, education, criminal justice, economic growth, transportation, food access, housing, social assistance, and so on.

When any of these systems have biases, which they all do, our ability to serve the public is severely hindered.

It is important to remember that no one wants to have unconscious biases. Most of us feel pretty bad about how our biases cause us to act in opposition to our values.

I live in Canada. More specifically, I live in the province of Ontario (and work for the Ontario Public Service). This is a great province and I’m happy to live here. Yet, our systems were created by the province’s early settlers — White, Christian men, heterosexual, able-bodied, from the dominant economic class. The systems were created by them, and thus for people like them.

While small fixes have been introduced over the years to accommodate influxes of immigrants from around the globe as well as Indigenous communities who were here all along, the systems still do not work for everyone.

Today, although our demographics have changed from those of our founding fathers, there is still so much overlap that the system tends to work better for some of us than others. And our trust in the public service, and the smart and well-intentioned public servants, leads us to assume that everyone is doing their best. And they probably are. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do better — if we together find the courage and the tools to do things differently.

Because the systems continue to fail so many, doing things differently is a must.

Charting a course

The obvious question is how. Here are a few key places to start.

  • Work with your colleagues to unlearn your biases. Take a training together. Read a book together. Watch videos together. Create structures that push you to have conversations about biases on a regular basis.

  • The tricky thing about our biases is that we can’t see them, but others can. Create a culture of gentle and informative feedback, so your team can support each other to recognise and eliminate their biases.

  • Brainstorm as a team where bias may be inadvertently driving the work you do as public servants.

  • Think stakeholders — who don’t you consult with and how could you access them? Who do you consult with, but largely dismiss or ignore their input?

  • Think consultants — who gets hired to advise your team (and what demographic groups do they come from)?. Think about how your team could procure advice from other groups.

  • Think about shrinking the distance between those who make the decisions and those who are affected by them — sometimes this means diversifying your team. Sometimes it means improving the way communities can engage with what you’re doing. Often it means shifting the paradigm from designing for people, to designing with them.

  • Think data — collect and make use of data on your policies, programmes and services to pinpoint adverse impact and identify barriers for some groups. Then work to remove the barriers and eliminate adverse impact.

  • Think culture — culture eats strategy for breakfast. So you’ll need to identify the biases that are present in (and even perpetuated) by the culture of your team or ministry. Find ways to use this as an opportunity for collective growth rather than a naming and shaming activity. Ask everyone to weigh in on biases in group culture and team dynamics. Find agreement that ridding these from the public service will be a good thing.

It’s not a blame game

It is important to remember that no one wants to have unconscious biases. Most of us feel pretty bad about how our biases cause us to act in opposition to our values. Remember also that our biases set in without our consent or awareness. That means we are not at fault for the biases we have. We must be gentle with ourselves, and each other, as we unlearn them.

But we are responsible for ridding ourselves and our teams of bias. We must strive to use clear and flexible thinking, rather than our default unconscious minds, in our work.

But we are responsible for ridding ourselves and our teams of bias. We must strive to use clear and flexible thinking, rather than our default unconscious minds, in our work.

I won’t pretend this is going to be easy. It isn’t. (If it were, we would have done it already). It takes sustained determination because it requires us to move our unconscious inclinations into our conscious minds, and then make conscious decisions when we’re accustomed to following default patterns. That takes intention and effort, every day.

It's also hard because we have to look directly at the ugly parts of ourselves: which isn’t fun or enjoyable. In fact, it’s usually heartbreaking. It can be helpful to remember that this heartbreak points to all the places where we, as public servants, can do something about it. We just need to get ourselves in shape.

The public includes everyone. Pointing fingers doesn’t help. Feeling bad doesn’t help either. Changing structures helps. Building our competencies does too. The only way forward with overcoming our biases and improving our institutions is together. — Sarah Margles

We want to hear what you think about this article. Pitch an article to us or send your comments to [hello@apolitical.co](mailto:hello@apolitical.co)

(Picture credit: Unsplash)