A brand new page titled “Managing Unconscious Bias” was launched by Facebook on Tuesday, featuring a training course and informational videos aimed at diminishing bias and improving diversity in the workplace.

As long as it helps isolating biases in the hiring process, the social media giant is willing to share this designed guide with others.

Firstly, the training was accessible and provided to Facebook employees, afterwards becoming accessible to the general public, to job-seekers and employers, with the role of educating them on the essence of the existing bias in the hiring process.

As a result of Facebook’s decision to publish the training material, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, reported in a post that a key-role of the promotion of diversity in the workplace is correcting

“the unconscious bias that all of us have.”

Sandberg also reported that statistics and studies show that job applicants with ‘black sounding names’ are less likely to get a call back from hiring agencies than those who have ‘white sounding names’, that applicants called Jennifer are prone to earn a lower salary than those called John, for instance, and that companies who actually consider themselves highly meritocratic and individual-oriented are inclined to showing more bias.

Workplace diversity is a current issue for Facebook itself, whereas, in June, statistics showed that 68 percent of its employees are men, 84 percent of men working in the technology fields. Over half of the employees of the social networking giant are white. Hispanics represent just 4% and African Americans are only 2% of Facebook’s U.S. workforce.

Lori Goler, Facebook’s head of Human Resources, said that:

“It’s not a competition, it’s part of making the entire industry better.”

She also reported that she believed that they were in a moment, a time-frame, when a company that had something that was working, would share it back with the ecosystem.

All in all, Facebook’s goal is creating a bias-free community, a more welcoming one to different people and ideas.

Whereas psychologists say that people tend to judge based on social norms and stereotypes, some companies tend to pay white men more than women and persons pertaining to minorities.

For instance, CODE2040 is a nonprofit organization that creates pathways to educational, professional, and entrepreneurial success in technology for underrepresented minorities with a specific focus on Blacks and Latino/as.

Laura Weidman Powers. CODE2040 Co-Founder and CEO, says that:

“Companies like Facebook and Google embracing unconscious bias training as a core part of their learning and development is an important step towards closing the diversity gap in tech. The next critical step is to equip teams with the ability to translate awareness into impactful action.”

Photo Credits rosebfischer.files.wordpress.com