top of page

Lorne Epstein's keynotes and workshops reduce workplace bias.

Reduced bias allows your teams to make better decisions, forge more inclusive cultures and build stronger relationships. 

​

Keynotes & workshops are offered online and in person.

They are data-driven and experiential.

UNCOVERING UNCONSCIOUS BIAS

90-120 minutes

Participants learn and experience the source of their unconscious bias, how it affects their relationships, and ways to mitigate bias and improve their decision-making. This experiential workshop gives participants greater flexibility to make better business choices, see beyond their perceptions, and explore and implement alternatives.

 

Participants will:

  • Discover how priming bias works.

  • Conduct a personal social network analysis.

  • Develop new skills to minimize bias in business decisions.

  • Learn how unconscious bias affects diversity and business strategy.

  • Use double-loop learning and deductive reasoning to mitigate bias.

           

CREATING 

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

90-120 minutes

Participants develop an awareness of psychological safety to support a culture of sharing ideas with freedom. Participants discuss the literature explaining what psychological safety means, how it improves DE&I and practices on how to create it.

 

Participants:​

  • Explore what psychological safety looks like in the workplace.

  • Develop new language and awareness about psychological safety.

  • Gain skills to work effectively with co-workers to establish psychological safety in the workplace.

  • Practice in small groups to create psychological safety.       

COLLABORATIVE COMMUNICATION  

90-120 minutes

Participants explore how human beings can improve their performance, reinforce positive behaviors and improve negative ones. Participants learn language tools so that when they speak up and have questions, suggestions, or concerns, they are better able to communicate clearly and to hear others.

 

Participants learn the four steps of Collaborative Communication:

  • Observing without judging.

  • Expressing feelings.

  • Clarifying one's needs.

  • Making specific requests.        

Lorne speaking at SHRM Inclusion 21 in Austin

CREATE AN 

UNCONSCIOUS BIAS ACTION PLAN

90-120 minutes

After taking the Unconscious Bias Workshop, participants complete an action plan to mitigate unconscious bias in their organization. Participants:

  • Explore ways to apply tools to mitigate bias in their workplace.

  • Create an action plan, including developing and testing one or more solutions in their workplace.

  • Gain skills to work effectively with co-workers to develop DE&I solutions.

 

Participants learn the "Five Pillars Framework" and use this model to explore solutions along five pillars: Metrics & Feedback Loops; Common Language & Awareness; Talent Acquisition Life Cycle; Organizational Processes and Values & Norms

REDUCING BIAS IN RECRUITING  

​

As a former recruiter, Lorne can help your teams recruit and hire the strongest candidates.  To reduce bias in your recruiting strategy, he recommends you update your job descriptions and train your teams on how to interview. Using scorecards and experiential interviewing your teams will be able to  evaluate candidates based on observed and measured skills.  

BUILDING SCORECARDS 

3-5 hours 

Scorecards reduce bias in the interviewing process. Participants create an interview scorecard that will make interviewing people more productive and consistent. Scorecards reduce bias by ensuring interviewers use the same predetermined metrics for evaluating candidates. Participants use these scorecards as a road map and framework to build the candidate interview process and align teams behind standard criteria for assessing candidates. They are also used to develop job descriptions and postings.

​

Participants:

  • Identify the job goals and derive the job description and advertisement.

  • Ask questions that elicit the required information to assess a person’s ability.

  • Create blind scores that offer consistent metrics for an organization's strategy.

  • Create a feedback mechanism to determine the validity of questions and answers based on employee performance over time.

​

EXPERIENTIAL INTERVIEWING 

3-5 hours 

​

Experiential Interviewing reduces bias in workshops. Participants develop exercises to determine a person’s ability to succeed in the position based on a demonstration of actions representing the work they would be doing. Participants learn how to create an interview process that allows candidates to be evaluated based on their performance of tasks relevant to the job. Interviewers reduce bias by witnessing candidates in action instead of only assessing candidates based on what they say.

​

Participants learn the science that drives experiential interviewing.

  • Develop and practice methods to create experiential interviewing scenarios.

  • Gain skills for creating your own experiential interviewing process.

  • Develop and test one or more processes you can use in your workplace.

  • Leave the workshop having created experiential interviewing for an actual position in your organization.

REMOVING BIAS from JOB DESCRIPTIONS 

90-120 minutes

Participants learn to create job descriptions that reflect the position's needs and mitigate bias that might unnecessarily restrict diverse candidates from applying.

 

Participants:

  • Review and highlight bias in job descriptions.

  • Create critical questions to uncover the goals the position seeks to attain.

  • Learn what words, phrases, and themes contain biases to understand which to embrace and which to avoid.

  • Focus company job descriptions so that they will be seen and read by more people.

  • Make distinctions between company values and culture to mitigate bias.

WORKFORCE DEMOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS

Research & Report 

​

You receive quantifiable data that shows if you are hiring to the diversity available in your geographic area. The report compares job classifications broken down by gender and ethnicity inside and outside your organization. 

​

The report allows you to: 

  • Focus on specific criteria to increase diversity.

  • Demonstrate your commitment to diversity in the workplace.

  • Know if you are hiring more or less than the available talent in your marketplaces.

  • Develop a data-driven talent acquisition strategy to close the gaps.

           

bottom of page