Work Nouveau

Prejudice.

The price of prejudice Jan 15th 2009 From The Economist print edition “It’s what you do that counts-not what you say you’d do”, got me thinking about the effect of prejudice in the workplace and the potential role of Enterprise 2.0 and social networking.

Finding an genuinely unprejudiced person is going to be pretty hard. We all have prejudices about things forcing us to make judgements on people before we know them, or misinterpreting their actions when we do. Prejudice can apply to so many areas, gender, age, religion, race, education, social background, sexuality, nationality, lifestyle, stereotypes, etc….. Here I don’t want to examine the prejudices fuelled by mindless xenophobia, or homophobia, but those which most of us keep under control intellectually but which may subtly undermine an organisation whilst not actually leading to active discrimination.

Most of us gain our first impressions of people via the primary senses, mostly visual and aural, but others come into play as well especially those that infringe our personal space ie touch and smell. Appearance, level of education, cultural background (e.g. regional accents) all influence the weight we give to an unfamiliar collaborator. We are also affected by what others say, and most of us are able to some degree to separate gossip from objective comment, but prejudice will affect this ability.

When using a social network the first impressions are usually generated by the content of the contact, although some of us may not be able to look past spelling and grammar.

I recently looked for a review on a particular smart phone, and after reading several unhelpful reviews, I watched a couple of video reviews. These were equally superficial, however the last one was in depth, factual and informative. However I had to watch it twice as the first time I was overly focussed o the fact that the presenter looked and sounded like a gangster rap artist, however that prejudice being quickly overcome I was able to focus on the content quality. In a face to face environment the chances are that we would never have reached the stage of a meaningful information exchange.

Even going back to the forums on Compuserve, I encountered and exchanged posts with people for some time, and upon meeting them for the first time immediately felt as though they were friends or close colleagues. That doesn’t mean there were not some surprises. One fellow who projected an image of an enthusiastic teenage geek actually turned out to be a rather elderly enthusiastic expert. Others however were instantly identifiable across a crowded room without having even seen a photograph.

The point is that prejudice puts barriers in the way of effective communication at all levels within an organisation, or with suppliers and customers. Social networks have some potential in bypassing some of our natural prejudices helping information to flow.

There have certainly been cases of employers or potential employers using social networks as a form of pre employment vetting, and some where employees have been discriminated against because of their online activities outside of work, but in general the call to common sense from all involved could be enabling the openness of social networks to have a favourable impact on the way in which we work together.