Pledge to promote workplace diversity

FAYETTEVILLE — The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville has signed a pledge to advance workplace diversity and step up training on unconscious bias.

UA last month announced it has joined the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion Group. Mostly businesses — including Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods — have signed the group’s pledge.

Members agree to support “complex, and sometimes difficult, conversations about diversity and inclusion” and to “implement and expand unconscious bias education.” The pledge also calls for the sharing of best practices.

Unconscious bias education “enables individuals to begin recognizing, acknowledging, and therefore minimizing” potential blind spots, the pledge states.

Training videos referred to by the group talk about mental shortcuts common to all. The videos describe how biases can be countered in part by taking time to “slow down” and ask questions, as well as get perspectives from others.

Yvette Murphy-Erby, UA’s top diversity officer, said some UA employees have completed unconscious bias training but diversity-related training will be expanded and more people will be trained.

“Unconscious bias, to me, that’s a big fundamental piece. It’s a big part of the foundation, that people don’t know what they don’t know,” Murphy-Erby said.