The Power of Blind Auditions: A Lesson in Unbiased Hiring and Sustainability
A case study involving five top U.S. orchestras shows how a simple change in hiring practices can dramatically improve gender diversity and in so doing, promote sustainability. This is because diversity, equity, and inclusion are core components of sustainability.
Discussed in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) and other publications, women musicians in the five leading U.S. orchestras increased from just 5% in the 1960s and 1970s, to over 35% by 2016. It’s even higher today.
What drove this significant change? It wasn't:
- An increase in women attending music schools
- Pressure from government programs
- A conscious push by the orchestras to hire more women.
Not at all. Instead, the orchestras implemented one straightforward hiring design change: blind auditions.
These auditions involved placing candidates behind a screen during tryouts, concealing their gender and identity until later in the hiring process. This procedure ensured that the evaluators focused solely on musical talent, eliminating any potential bias based on gender or identity.
Now referred to as “blinding,” this hiring technique is now used by several different industries.
This structural improvement helps create naturally diverse and inclusive workplaces by expanding access and opportunity, again, all key components of an active sustainability program.
This approach may also address some of the historic root causes of workplace inequity. According to HBR, one of the benefits of blind hiring “is that it will likely lead to greater interview rates for members of disadvantaged groups.”
And why is this so important?
Studies going back to the early 2000s have all come to the same conclusion:
Organizations with a higher level of diversity have lower levels of employee turnover.
Inclusive and diverse workplaces tend to have higher creativity, innovation, and productivity levels.
Workplaces that foster diversity have reduced instances of interpersonal aggression, discrimination, or lawsuits claiming such conditions exist.
Traditional homogenous groups are often more susceptible to old ideas and "groupthink," while more diverse groups provide innovative ideas, more perspectives, and more information to consider.
Increasingly, employees feel more valued, trusted, and safe in a workplace that promotes diversity and inclusion.
This is why the orchestra study caught my eye. While the study did not conclude that these orchestras were necessarily better after they hired more women musicians, I suspect the unbiased hiring practices instituted lead to several benefits – such as those listed above – making them more viable, open to more ideas, and more representative of the communities they serve.
This instills hope for the future of sustainability as an increasing number of organizations recognize the value of diversity and inclusion, actively striving to foster more equitable and representative workplaces.
-Steve