"All of the White People Went First": How Video Conferencing Consolidates Control and Exacerbates Workplace Bias

TL;DR

This paper examines how video conferencing tools influence workplace bias during meetings, highlighting features that can either exacerbate or mitigate bias and proposing mechanisms for bias reduction.

Contribution

It identifies specific VC features that impact bias and introduces strategies to transfer or improve control to reduce bias in virtual meetings.

Findings

VC features influence meeting bias dynamics

Transferring control can mitigate bias

Enhancing leader control can reduce bias

Abstract

Workplace bias creates negative psychological outcomes for employees, permeating the larger organization. Workplace meetings are frequent, making them a key context where bias may occur. Video conferencing (VC) is an increasingly common medium for workplace meetings; we therefore investigated how VC tools contribute to increasing or reducing bias in meetings. Through a semi-structured interview study with 22 professionals, we found that VC features push meeting leaders to exercise control over various meeting parameters, giving leaders an outsized role in affecting bias. We demonstrate this with respect to four core VC features -- user tiles, raise hand, text-based chat, and meeting recording -- and recommend employing at least one of two mechanisms for mitigating bias in VC meetings -- 1) transferring control from meeting leaders to technical systems or other attendees and 2) helping meeting leaders better exercise the control they do wield.