Study after study has shown that the well-intentioned ways of trying to achieve fairness in the workplace—trainings, leadership development programs, networking events, speaker events—simply haven’t delivered results in terms of equity and diversity. The reasons they haven’t worked has been the subject of exhaustive study by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Iris Bohnet and Senior Researcher Siri Chilazi. Both are affiliated with the Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy, where Bohnet, a behavioral scientist, is co-director. They say that most training programs focus on changing individual behavior, while their research and experiments have shown that changing systems—especially in a way that targets key moments in an organization’s operations where bias is given free rein—is much more effective. Fairness is a tough issue these days and the politics of the moment can make it a difficult subject even to talk about, but Bohnet and Chilazi join host Ralph Ranalli to discuss data-driven and research-backed ways they say can make workplaces more fair, more cohesive, and more productive. They also discuss these techniques in their new book: “Make Work Fair.” Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi’s policy recommendations for organizations looking to improve workplace fairness: * Approach organizational improvement like a doctor diagnosing a patient; use data to reveal gaps, pain points, and areas for improvement; and gain a thorough understanding of the issues before implementing solutions. * Design targeted interventions to address fairness gaps, and implement those interventions as experiments to test whether they work as intended. * Start small, prove concept, inspire learning about what works across your organization. After rolling out new processes, continually review and refine them.