Fighting virtual racism in the workplace

Budrigannews.com – What would you do if one of your coworkers made a racist comment while you were at work? Would you challenge it or let it pass?

This is just one of many scenarios that the US startup Vantage Point includes in its training program to deal with workplace racial discrimination.

The company, which was established in 2017 in Los Angeles, offers courses on unconscious bias, diversity, and inclusion. Employees wear virtual reality (VR) headsets and are immersed in real-world scenarios where they witness discrimination and are asked how they would respond.

The founder of the business, Morgan Mercer, is a biracial woman who has faced racism and sexism in the workplace. She believes that virtual reality (VR) technology is essential for conveying her point to those who haven’t had these experiences.

She tells, “I realized how effective it is in truly putting you in a person’s shoes.” Giving you a first-hand account of what it’s like for someone to flinch whenever you pass them, what it’s like for someone to yell at you in the street, or what it’s like for someone to stand a little bit too close.

Glassdoor, a job and recruitment website, found that nearly a third of adults surveyed in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany had either witnessed or experienced racism in the workplace. It may be more difficult to keep staff members from ethnic minorities employed in such a setting.

Additionally, diversity is beneficial to the bottom line. Companies with a more diverse workforce are likely to be more successful, according to a 2020 McKinsey report. It found that companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity were 36% more profitable than businesses in the bottom quartile, after surveying 1,000 businesses in 15 countries. Companies with more than 30 percent female executives typically performed better than those with fewer.

Vantage Point started out by teaching businesses how to stop sexual harassment. Now, it teaches about all kinds of bias, from gender inequality to bullying based on sexual orientation or race. It launched a course this summer that focuses on systemic racism and the Black Lives Matter movement’s concerns.

The startup has collaborated with businesses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and France and has raised nearly $4 million in funding. Data analytics company Looker, which Google purchased in February for $2.6 billion, and international law firm Latham and Watkins are among its clients.

Cornell Verdeja-Woodson was Looker’s global head of diversity, equity, and inclusion in 2019, when the company enrolled approximately 200 employees worldwide in Vantage Point’s training. In 2019, the company became a diversity business partner for Google Cloud.

He tells, “Like most organizations, we were focusing on how to diversify our workforce.”

To educate employees about unconscious bias during the recruitment process, Verdeja-Woodson wanted to go beyond conventional training methods. We can talk about it in training with slide decks, but people want to see it, he says. They don’t realize until they are actually going through the experience, “Whoa, this makes more sense to me now.”

Verdeja-Woodson says that employees’ feedback was overwhelmingly positive, despite the fact that he acknowledges that it is difficult to quantify the training’s direct impact. There was an increase in confidence in addressing the issue and awareness of unconscious bias.

According to Mercer, businesses use a variety of metrics to determine success, one of which is staff retention gains.

More Robots sold everywhere in Japanese stores

She asserts, “It is extremely important to be bringing diverse perspectives to the table, because that is where you will truly have the mixture.” The fresh perspectives and concepts that will actually lead to the learning, education, creativity, and inspiration that businesses work so hard to cultivate internally.”