Shifting Attention, shifting outcomes: using salience nudges to debias access to opportunities within organizations

It was a pleasure to host Dr. Manu Munoz from Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research on July 1st as part of our Speaker Series on Decision and Design at the KD²Lab.

His talk focused on exploring a subtle and non-coercive method—called a salience nudge—to address bias in organizational decision-making processes. Rather than imposing strict affirmative action policies, the approach gently reminded decision-makers not to overlook talented individuals from low-status backgrounds. Dr. Manu Munoz presented findings from a natural field experiment within an organization, where nominators for a prestigious training program were randomly assigned to either a control group or a treatment group that received the salience nudge. The nudge significantly increased the nomination rate of low-status candidates—from 23% to 31%—bringing representation in line with their actual presence in the organization without causing backlash or lowering nominee quality. A follow-up study confirmed that the effect was driven by increased salience rather than external pressure or attempts to debias.