Reworked

On 12th April 2018, two black men were arrested in a Starbucks branch in Philadelphia while waiting for a friend to join them.Mobile-phone video footage of the pair being put in handcuffs in front of disbelieving onlookers soon went viral. The arrests sparked demonstrations outside the branch and wider outrage across social media.As part of the company's response, Starbucks announced that it would close more than 8,000 of its US stores on 29th May to run unconscious bias training sessions for around 175,000 employees. It was an unprecedented move in high-street retail.Jane Farrell co-founded EW Group in 1992, and is one of the UK's leading experts on diversity and inclusion. Jane recently appeared on Radio 4's Today programme and Channel 5 News to talk about the Starbucks incident and the resulting spotlight on unconscious bias training.In this episode of Reworked, Jane speaks to Rachael Wilson about the rise and rise of the term 'unconscious bias' in public and professional discourse