Business book blog | Beat Gender Bias

For years now, organisations of all sizes and across all industries have been grappling with the challenge of accelerating women into leadership positions. A growing body of research from both the corporate and academic worlds show that more diverse organisations perform better than their less diverse peers. Organisations such as BHP have delivered better outcomes, including safety, operational results and employee engagement by focusing on setting a more inclusive vision for the future and targeting their efforts towards specific diversity goals. But where do you start? And how quickly can you expect to see the results of your efforts?

Dr Karen Morley’s new book, Beat Gender Bias, provides practical insights into the challenges organisations face in fostering an inclusive culture and the focus required to successfully meet their gender diversity goals.

Gender bias is just one of the many challenges that organisations need to overcome in order to become inclusive, innovative and growth-focused. With practical steps that leaders and HR managers can take, Dr Morley outlines the steps to make bias visible in organisations and how simple actions such as deliberate thinking styles and language changes can overcome deeply rooted and invisible biases that permeate through organisations and undermine high-performance culture efforts. Through stories and examples, Dr Morley shows that when the invisible becomes visible, it’s much more likely that the case for change will be taken seriously.

The book covers the many positive performance outcomes organisations can achieve by fostering a more inclusive culture that promotes belonging and wellbeing of all members, coupled with supporting individual team members to be more open to difference and the possibilities it can bring.

By sharing actions and activities that organisations and leaders can undertake to start or progress on their gender diversity journey and exposing the hiding spots where gender bias lurks that need to be uncovered and removed, the book provides some tangible examples of how progress can be made.

Overall, the book provides insights for leaders and HR managers with suggestions to promote inclusion by engaging people in the bias problem and make them accountable for their actions.

Lynsey Devitt, June 2020