Meet people around you with an open mind. Actively promote everyone's participation in different community encounters. Pay attention to how the people around you are doing and how your behaviour affects them. Use language that everyone can understand – this way, everyone can participate. ​

Be aware of the assumptions and generalisations you make. Our backgrounds, experiences, and positions differ from one another. This affects our ways of thinking, perspectives, and how we work with people. Even if you feel safe and accepted, do not assume that everyone else feels the same way. ​

​Give space for everyone, stay open to new perspectives, share experiences, listen to others, and try new ways to promote open discussion and build mutual trust. You may ask questions and can disagree with others. ​

We are bound to make mistakes, so give each other room to make mistakes and be sensitive and compassionate to yourself and others. If you make a mistake, acknowledge it and try to adjust your actions accordingly. Approach others' mistakes and misunderstandings with understanding and try to discuss the matter with others. ​

Taking care of a safer environment is an ongoing process. We do not tolerate any form of inappropriate treatment, bullying, or harassment. If you notice or experience inappropriate behaviour, do not hesitate to act. Try to address inappropriate speech and behaviour by respectfully but firmly pointing out things you find unacceptable. Ask for help when needed. Support is available, and Aalto University has clear and consistent procedures to address harassment and inappropriate treatment. 

Discover strategies and tools for promoting equality, diversity and inclusion within the workplace, empowering team members to collaborate effectively and learn from varied perspectives to drive innovative solutions. This course aims to introduce the basic terminologies and concepts of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at Aalto:

• Building your EDI knowledge – Establishing a crucial baseline for becoming more inclusive in our actions
• Understanding the value of EDI – Placing EDI in Aalto’s context to explore why it’s essential to our community
• Developing inclusion competencies – Transforming your growing knowledge into practical skills
• For personnel: Inclusive Aalto community - Workday

Other materials

• Why Diversity Matters in Academia webinar(> Workday)

• Steps to equity is a self-study material package containing short videos with discussion guidance and questions: Steps to equality and equity material package

• How to get serious about diversity and inclusion in the workplace? (TED Talk)
• How diversity makes teams more innovative (TED Talk)
• The untapped genius that could change science for the better (TED Talk)

• Diversity Doesn't Stick Without Inclusion (Harvard Business Review)
• Why Diversity Matters? (McKinsey)

It’s important to become aware of the concept of 'unconscious bias'. The phrase 'unconscious bias' refers to our tendency to make automatic assumptions about others based on our own backgrounds and experiences. If not acknowledged, unconscious bias may easily lead to unintended discrimination which can cause racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequalities. Biases affect us even when we have good intentions, especially when making decisions regarding other people. This is a compelling ~2 minute video by The Royal Society which captures the essence of bias in academia.

Reflecting on our own thoughts and actions in our everyday life is important. Can you recognise your own biased thinking patterns? To support reflection, you can use the Implicit Association Test by Harvard University. The IAT test measures and breaks down the individual associations we make between people and their identities, helping us to become better acquainted with the stereotypes we hold as implicit.

Unconscious biases can prevent organizations from being diverse, equitable and inclusive. We are offering eLearning to Aalto personnel for Understanding and Tackling Unconscious Bias. Course requires signing in to Workday Learning. 

Bias may also lead to microaggressions. To better understand how other experiences may differ from your, see the video on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDd3bzA7450

eLearning - Understanding and Tackling Unconscious Bias

Unconscious biases can prevent organizations from being diverse, equitable and inclusive. The aims of this course are:

• To build participants’ awareness of what unconscious biases are, and how and why they are formed
• To support participants in recognizing the impact unconscious biases have on their own behaviours and in their workplaces
• To enable participants to take action to prevent the impact of unconscious biases

Readings

• Unconscious Bias Briefing (Royal Society report)
• A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in STEM

Videos

• How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them (TED Talk)

Journal articles

Pritlove, Juando-Prats, Ala-Leppilampi, Parsons, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Implicit Bias, Lancet, 373(110171), 2019

Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoll, Mark J.Graham, Jo Handelsman, Faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (41),16395-16396, 2012

We want everyone in our community to feel well, respected, supported, and valued. We recognize that we have a journey ahead of us. Wellbeing and sense of belonging start with support and small daily actions. Through appreciative encounters and truly seeing each other, we foster an empowered community that thrives by working together.

The Aaltogether hub is a platform for everyone. Knowledge and training help you forward, events and networks are for encounters, and stories inspire.

Navigating Doctoral Maze and EDI

What are the potential challenges doctoral researchers can encounter in their work and career? What support is available to overcome these challenges? Play a game of Doctoral Maze and discuss EDI, academic career path and support available!

The game deals with both academic and EDI challenges. It was developed by Adriana Delgado for the course LC-1333 Navigate your doctoral studies while learning about equity, diversity, and inclusion as part of Equal Career Paths NOW! project in Aalto University, and it can be played, for example, in research group meetings. You can contact your school development manager. 

Doctoral Maze is also available for download and print at tasaarvoisestiuralle.fi

Evaluating people in job interviews or promotion discussions is one of the focal points of the inclusivity and diversity initiative. The way we evaluate others at work can either enable or stifle diversity and inclusion within our community. This checklist on less biased evaluation may be useful if you have an interview or promotion discussion coming up. Why not display this checklist on a screen in a committee meeting or at start of an interview or promotion discussion?

• Recruitment at Aalto(including tools to support more objective, merit-based assessment and handbook for quality and diverse recruitment)
• e-learning on Diversity and recruitments for faculty and staff
• Recruitment Bias in Research Institutes shared by ERC (video originally by Institució CERCA)
• Implicit Bias in Academia - a Challenge to the Meritocratic Principle and to Women's Careers, and What to Do About It (LERU Advice paper)

Journal articles

• Marieke van den Brink, Yvonne Benschop, Gender in Academic Networking: The Role of Gatekeepers in Professorial Recruitment. Journal of Management Studies, 51(3), 463, 2014
• Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, Carroll J. Glynn, Michael Huge, The Matilda Effect in Science Communication: An Experiment on Gender Bias in Publication Quality Perceptions and Collaboration Interest, Science Communication, 35(5), 603–625, 2013
• Steinpreis, Rhea.E., Anders, Katie.A. & Ritzke, Dawn. The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study, Sex Roles, 41, 509–528, 1999.
• Carol Isaac, Barbara Lee, Molly Carnes, Interventions That Affect Gender Bias in Hiring: A Systematic Review, Academic Medicine, 84 (10),1440–1446, 2019

A simple yet powerful way of fostering diversityand inclusion is discussing these issues openly within our own teams. If you are a manager, you can lead by example and bring up these issues in conversation with your team, encouraging an open dialogue. In addition to regular gatherings, team development days provide a good forum for discussing what diversity and inclusion mean within your team as well as how to support them. You can use exercises such as the privilege walk to facilitate discussion. As a teacher, you can engage in dialogue on diversity and inclusion with your students following inclusive teaching best practices, some of which are found in the material library below.

• Why Inclusive Leaders are Good, and How to Become One (Harvard Business Review)
• Jennifer Brown: How to be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive

Have you ever been in a meeting in which one of your colleagues undermined another participant, perhaps by making reference to their age? Have you ever taken part in a recruitment committee conversation about candidates and heard a member of the committee express stereotypical comments, for example about an individual’s cultural fit? This kind of language can be detrimental when it comes to recruitment process, as it gives irrelevant information weight, hindering our ability to evaluate suitability objectivity. Aim to respectfully tackle biased language by firmly and non-judgmentally confronting that which you don’t find acceptable. It's easier to identify bias in others than in yourself.

Read more:

• About inclusive language
• Tips on how to turn such situations into learning experiences instead of conflicts

Inclusion is relevant to the sense of belonging to the community. A sense of inclusion can be brought through teaching methods and means of interaction. Consider appropriate methods for both teaching and assessment. Be open to students, strive to create a safe learning environment, listen and discuss. Tell students what your choices are based on. Let them set goals for themselves and support the achievement of goals. Give feedback throughout the course and support interaction.

• Supporting students' sense of community and belonging
• Agreeing guidelines for inclusive interaction in course
• Teamwork First-Aid-Kit

External Resources

• Inclusive Teaching Strategies (University of Washington)
• Inclusive Learning Strategies (Stanford University)
• 22 Cases and Articles to Help Bring Diversity Issues into Class Discussions (Harvard University / Harvard Business Publishing)
• Diversity Toolkit: A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power and Privilige (USC University of Southern California)
• Harvard Inclusive Dialogue Cards

Interested in arranging a workshop, a facilitated discussion or an introduction on equality, diversity, inclusivity in your team? Please contact University EDI officer ida.salin@aalto.fi, tel.0505643299. Also, your school's development managers are great liaisons in EDI matters.