3 ways to fight unconscious biases: training, listening and… not preaching!
💖 The purpose of The Allyance is to help both companies and candidates: companies wanting to reach excellence in hiring and candidates wanting to find the perfect companies.
➡️ Bettina Reveyron is Social Impact Lead at Doctolib. She asked The Allyance to deliver three training sessions on unconscious biases in recruitment.
➡️ Natacha Niox-Chateau, who is Head of Talent Acquisition Excellence and leads the DEI taskforce at Doctolib, attended a couple of these sessions.
💬 We sat down with them and asked them about their experience.
__ __ __🔗 DIVERSITY IN ACTION N°13 - Bettina Reveyron & Natacha Niox-Chateau
__ __ __Bettina, you are Social Impact Lead at Doctolib. This job title is pretty new in France. Can you tell us more about it?
Bettina: You are right, this is new in France. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has now gathered momentum. Before, social responsibility was perceived merely as a matter of image. Therefore, it came under the purview of PR teams. Now, things have changed on many fronts and companies feel pressure from
📣 Public opinion as well as from their employees,
⚖️ Legal constraints both at a national, European and international level,
🕴️Their own investors.
As a result, CSR is now a cross-company issue.
At Doctolib, I am in charge of the social impact roadmap. This puts me in a very specific position because Doctolib is impact native, that is the company facilitates access to healthcare in a native manner. My role was created in order to accelerate and amplify already existing things.
I work on:
🌳 the environmental impact of our products and our company,
🤝 diversity and inclusion in our teams,
🚪the accessibility of our products, for instance for disabled people or people with computer-literacy issues,
📺 how to use our visibility in the media to further greater common causes like healthcare prevention and awareness.
As you can see, this represents a vast array of topics because of the core business of Doctolib.
Can you describe your collaboration with The Allyance?
Bettina: We had wanted to set up training sessions on unconscious biases for Doctolibers, managers and hiring managers for a while. We met several companies and decided to work with The Allyance for many reasons. We immediately got along with Caroline on a personal level. She also displayed an in-depth knowledge of the tech world and had worked with international companies. In addition, several people I knew recommended her. All this made us feel very confident in her and in our choice.
Our collaboration went very smoothly. ✂️ Caroline was attentive to our needs, she didn’t resort to cut-and-paste methods and delivered a message tailored to our company. 🔎 In order to do that, she made the effort to grasp the specificities of Doctolib and was always in tune with us. She is empathetic and does not preach. She managed to understand where we stood and helped us grow from there.
Natacha: As someone who attended the training session, I would like to stress that Caroline is a great educator and took the time to explain her points, which is far from simple when you have only one hour to address 50 people remotely! I was very happily surprised to see that she had gathered all the necessary information in order to understand our corporate culture. At the same time, she used many examples from other companies which helped us to get some perspective on what we do well and where we could do more. This is fantastic for a company like ours that has great ambitions while being at the beginning of its journey on the topic of unconscious biases.
Bettina: I would like to add that I really appreciated Caroline’s data-driven approach. She is not an ideologue.
The Allyance delivered three training sessions, including one specifically for the Executive Committee. Why was it important for you?
Bettina: For us, it is crucial to raise awareness among the decision-makers on these issues! 😎
Natacha: We really want to train not only our employees but more specifically our managers on unconscious biases. In addition to the training sessions delivered by The Allyance, we set up a compulsory in-house program that all managers will have to attend before the end of the year.
What were the reactions to the training sessions?
Bettina: ✅The reactions were overall very positive because there was an expectation that Doctolib had to tackle these issues. Trainees appreciated the fact-based presentation, the clarity of the argument and the examples from other companies. ❎ On a less positive note, some people would have liked to have their own prejudices debunked during the session, but that would have required more time for interactions and workshops.
Natacha: On some aspects, our company is already quite advanced, for example we already have competency-based interviewees and diverse interview panels. If we could have fit in more workshop time, it would have been great because Caroline’s training brought out some fascinating points.
Will you organize new training sessions and how will you take things forward?
Bettina: That’s a big yes!
Natacha: Absolutely! And I would like to add that we have already taken some steps forward:
⭕We got inspired by Shirley Sandberg and her book Lean In. We have set up lean in circles, that are a bit like lunch and learn sessions. They constitute a tool for awareness-raising.
💻We have also created a compulsory e-learning program for all managers in order to fight biases in recruitment.
🏅Within the recruitment department, we have started several workshops drawing on Google’s #IamRemarkable method. We have certified coaches working for us pro bono in these workshops. Both female and male employees attend them in order to prepare for their quarterly interviews.
Would you recommend The Allyance?
Natacha: 🏆 Yes, because we had a perfect experience that completely fit our needs!
Bettina: 👍 I agree! Caroline is a fabulous sparring partner on issues related to diversity. She has a great level of expertise and knows how to build trust on these often touchy topics. Sometimes, tackling unconscious biases can be very sensitive and can generate a lot of emotions. Caroline was able to navigate this without judgment in order to carry her message across and help us reach our goals.
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CONCLUSION
A few words from Caroline, The Allyance CEO:
“Supporting Doctolib’s DEI efforts has been one of my biggest projects this year! Thanks to a trustful partnership, we succeeded to train more than 120 Doctolibers. The feedback I got was enthusiastic and made me proud. I know the teams will keep up the good work!
✔️ Want more?
If you are interested in knowing more about The Allyance trainings, feel free to get in touch with us.