Jasmine Gartner Consulting

Have a look at the image above. Can you read it? If so, you are experiencing something very similar to an unconscious bias. Much like the symbols in the image, unconscious biases are rapid-fire shortcuts that we use to understand and assess a situation, so that we know how to act. In this way, bias almost functions as an unspoken language of assumptions of which we are often unaware. In other words, you don't look at the image above and try to figure out what each symbol mean

Does Employee Engagement Work?! Employee engagement has hovered at around 33% for many years now. So many people are working at it, so much of our budgets are dedicated to it. We try all the latest trends and technology – employee surveys, apps, and so on. Nothing works. And yet, for a lot of business people, engagement is a key strategy for simultaneously improving morale and the bottom line. Many organisations have people dedicated to implementing engagement. Let's Talk abo

When I was a kid, my mother always used to tell me not to speak with strange men, a piece of advice that I took to heart. Ironically, I now spend an awful lot of time getting into cars with strange men since I have to travel for work; since I don't own a car, that means I often use cabs. Life in the UK I've been living in the UK for four and a half years, and in that time, the vast majority of the cabbies I've met have been polite, charming and friendly. They've given me mini

Participant Observation As I've mentioned before, anthropology teaches us how to expose a culture's logic, by figuring out how to read people's behaviours and the rules they follow. This makes anthropology a perfect tool for understanding and promoting diversity awareness. What Do Behaviours Tell Us? A number of years ago, I led a workshop for a company, together with a colleague, Caroline, who represented the company’s union. We entered the room, and sat down, waiting for th

“You’re a – what?!” - The response I often get when I tell people that I’m an anthropologist is: “do you dig up dinosaurs?” Yet, there are many corporate anthropologists out there and we have a lot to offer the business world. So, I thought I’d explain a bit about what corporate anthropology is and why it is such a useful tool for implementing employee engagement. Any kind of anthropological endeavour involves looking at what people say and do in order to unearth the values t