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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Design systemic equity and diversity into your organization Inclusion, Inc: How to Design Intersectional Equity into the Workplace moves beyond having tough conversations to deliver an innovative and proven approach to organizational diversity. Eschewing the "mindset-first" approach taken by many diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, author and GEN founder Sara Sanford focuses on countering the systemic barriers that abet inequity by adjusting "cultural levers" to facilitate organization-wide change. Inclusion, Inc offers sustainable and cost-effective solutions that yield real, measurable returns, supported by: * Data from thousands of surveys and interviews with executive-level changemakers. * Case studies from GEN-certified organizations. * Innovations drawn directly from the latest in behavioral economics and design-centered thinking. Perfect for business leaders, human resources and DEI professionals, and scholars and students of business, Inclusion, Inc will also prove invaluable to underrepresented employees and their allies seeking real, evidence-based solutions to the dilemma they frequently face: assimilate, or leave.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Language Guide
Black
DEI
Intersectionality
Neurodivergent
Underestimated
Note
PART 1: Equity—It's Not Personal, It's Systemic
CHAPTER 1: Beyond Good Intentions
Good Intentions, Few Results
The DEI Overwhelm
Stop the Trainings
A Perspective Shift: From Changing Mindsets to Changing Mechanics
GEN Certification: Discovering the Equity Trim Tabs
Is This Book for Me?
Beyond Good Intentions to Meaningful Impact
A Quick Guide to the Rest of This Book
Notes
CHAPTER 2: “But We've Always Done It This Way…”
But the Bias—Is It Really That Bad?
Lean In: The Self-Empowerment Paradox
Leaning In to a Double-Bind
The $8 Billion Training Trap
Diversity Trainings: Issuing Moral Licenses
Beyond Moral Licensing
Attending Trainings While Underestimated
Finding Affinity: Employee Resource Groups
Notes
CHAPTER 3: Why Should We Care?
The Future of Work
DEI: In Demand
Invoicing Exclusion: The High Cost of Underestimating Employees
The Myth of Meritocracy
The Best Person for the Job
The Meritocracy Paradox
Baseball Biases and the Power of the Collective
From Baseball to Business
Lehman…Siblings?
Beyond Diversity to Inclusion
Notes
CHAPTER 4: Shifting to a Systemic Perspective
Designing Some In, Others Out
Size: Male, Style: White
Cultural Levers: Disrupting Bias
Charting Paths of Least Resistance
Check. Check. Check.
Out from Under the Overwhelm
Make DEI Boring Again
Notes
CHAPTER 5: Inclusion at the Intersections
Frameless
Minorities in the Margins
The Costs of Trickle-Down Exclusion
Beyond Thin-Slicing
Designing Policy: Gathering Intersectional Perspectives
Implementing Policy
Evaluating Policy Impact
Notes
Summary of Part 1
Chapter 1: Beyond Good Intentions
Chapter 2: “But We've Always Done It This Way…”
Chapter 3: Why Should We Care?
Chapter 4: Shifting to a Systemic Perspective
Chapter 5: Inclusion at the Intersections
PART 2: Adjusting Cultural Levers
CHAPTER 6: Help Wanted—Inclusive Recruiting
Debiasing the Job Description
Help Wanted: Highly Qualified Job Ads
Who Is Seeing You?
Go In Blind
Notes
CHAPTER 7: The Best Person for the Job—Merit-Based Hiring
Debiasing the Interviewing and Scoring Process
Prepping for the Interview
During the Interview
After the Interview
Testing, Testing
Notes
CHAPTER 8: It's Who You Know—Protégés and Professional Development
The Seniority Gap
Different Mentors, Different Impact
Matching with Meaning
Meeting: Quality over Quantity
Mentoring After #MeToo
Mentoring Outside Your Circle
From Mentorship to Sponsorship
Choosing a Sponsee
Just One
Different Inboxes, Different Opportunities
Networking That Works
What Gets Measured Matters
Notes
CHAPTER 9: Exceed Expectations—The Performance Evaluation
Rate My Professor
Beyond the Ivory Tower
What Gets Measured Matters
Closing the “Open Box”
What Are the Criteria for Criteria?
Pre- and Post-Evaluation
Notes
CHAPTER 10: The Physiology of Pay
Pay Does Not Exist in a Vacuum
The Referral
The Offer
Separate Self-Evaluations from Pay (and Promotion) Decisions
Defining the Pay Gap: Equity vs. Equality
Not All Analyses Are Created Equal
You Found a Gap—Now What?
So, How Do We Talk About This?
Pay Equity Is Not One-and-Done
Notes
CHAPTER 11: Family Matters
The Mommy Track
Paid Leave—Not Just for Mothers
Non-Parents Also Need Leave
Destigmatize Taking Leave
Give Remote a Chance
Notes
CHAPTER 12: Leadership Material
The Confidence-Competence Trap
Transparency: Not Just for Pay
Which Came First: The Target or the Leader?
One Is Not Done
Reaching Critical Mass: The Art of Setting Targets
Identifying Leaders: Start at the Beginning
The Application and the Nudge
Notes
CHAPTER 13: Blueprints for Inclusive Workspaces
From Open Plans to Closed-Off Realities: The Inclusive Office Design Trend That Wasn't
Return to Work: A Chance to Reimagine the Open Office Space
Role Models Matter
A Safer Workplace
Notes
Summary of Part 2
Chapter 6: Help Wanted—Inclusive Recruiting
Chapter 7: The Best Person for the Job—Merit-Based Hiring
Chapter 8: It's Who You Know—Protégés and Professional Development
Chapter 9: Exceed Expectations—The Performance Evaluation
Chapter 10: The Physiology of Pay
Chapter 11: Family Matters
Chapter 12: Leadership Material
Chapter 13: Blueprints for Inclusive Workspaces
PART 3: Zooming Back Out—The Big Picture
CHAPTER 14: AI Won't Save Us (Unless We Save It First)
Bias for—and in—Action
Algorithmic Attrition
The Half-Life of Encoded Bias
The Fairness Standards
Who (or What) Is Missing?
Who Is Creating the Model?
Are You Evaluating Impact Through an Equity Lens?
Debiasing Your Data
Transparency
Notes
CHAPTER 15: DEI Principles to Live By
Stage 1: Creating Your DEI Strategy
Stage 2: Implementing Strategy
Stage 3: Communicating Your Strategy
Notes
CHAPTER 16: Hold the Door
Walking Away
Beacons
The First—and Last—Cultural Lever
Summary of Part 3
Chapter 14: AI Won't Save Us (Unless We Save It First)
Chapter 15: DEI Principles to Live By
Chapter 16: Hold the Door
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 9
FIGURE 9.1 Occurrences of words in ratings of female vs. male professors, by...
FIGURE 9.2 Occurrences of words in ratings of female vs. male professors, by...
FIGURE 9.3 Occurrences of words in ratings of female vs. male professors, by...
FIGURE 9.4 Occurrences of words in ratings of female vs. male professors, by...
Chapter 10
FIGURE 10.1 Comparing predicted and actual compensation, by gender
FIGURE 10.2 Comparing predicted and actual compensation, by race
FIGURE 10.3 Comparing predicted and actual compensation, by intersection of ...
Chapter 14
FIGURE 14.1 Adopted from We All Count
FIGURE 14.2 Adopted from We All Count
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Language Guide
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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SARA SANFORD
INCLUSION, INC
HOW TO DESIGN INTERSECTIONAL EQUITY INTO THE WORKPLACE
Copyright © 2022 by Sara Sanford. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sanford, Sara, author.Title: Inclusion, inc : how to design intersectional equity into the workplace / Sara Sanford.Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.Identifiers: LCCN 2021062103 (print) | LCCN 2021062104 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119849766 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119850038 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119850021 (epub)Subjects: LCSH: Intersectionality (Sociology) | Work environment.Classification: LCC HM488.5 .S26 2022 (print) | LCC HM488.5 (ebook) | DDC 305.3—dc23/eng/20220119LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021062103LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021062104
Cover Image: WileyCover Design: Wiley
For my parents, for always believing.
And for anyone who's ever been underestimated.
Language Guide
Readers will come to this book with varying levels of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) vocabulary. The dialogue around DEI is continuously evolving, and words can have different meanings for different people. This brief guide provides a common language framework for the rest of the book. It is not intended as a glossary, but rather to clarify how DEI language is being used in Inclusion, Inc.
Black
Why is “Black” capitalized in this book, but not “white,” when referring to race?
In July 2020, the New York Times announced that, after a month of discussion, they would capitalize Black when describing people and cultures of African descent.1 Hundreds of news organizations, including the Associated Press, made the same choice in the spring and summer of 2020. Most news organizations have declined to capitalize “white” because it is an identifier of skin color, rather than of shared experience.
For the reasons stated by these organizations, I have chosen to capitalize “Black” and not “white” when referring to race in Inclusion, Inc.
DEI
The term “DEI” stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this book, it is used to refer to the field of work that focuses on ensuring that employees of all backgrounds—especially underestimated backgrounds—are included, treated fairly, and given the same opportunities to advance as their peers.
Diversity. The presence of individuals who differ from one another in a range of ways, such as socioeconomic status, age, gender identity, ethnicity, race, language, and religion.
Equity. Fairness of treatment for employees of all backgrounds. The distinction between equity and equality is important: Equity does not mean equal treatment, but rather creating equal access to opportunities through equitable practices.
Inclusion. Moving beyond recruiting underestimated individuals to involving them in decision-making and valuing and rewarding their contributions. One of my favorite definitions of inclusion came from DEI expert Verna Myers: “Diversity is being asked to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance.”
Intersectionality
How class, race, age, gender, sexual orientation, and other aspects of identity “intersect” with one another or overlap. For example, the experiences of being Latinx or being a woman are not the same as being Latinx and a woman. Certain biases are only experienced when living at the intersection of these two identities.
Neurodivergent
Refers to individuals who experience different neurological functioning than the majority of the population. Neurodivergence may present as autism, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, Tourette syndrome, or in a number of other forms.
Underestimated
Why is the term “underestimated,” rather than “underrepresented,” used to refer to individuals and groups that experience bias in the workplace?
In 2015, Arlan Hamilton founded the Los Angeles–based venture capital firm, Backstage Capital, to invest in “underestimated founders,” including founders of color, women, and those who identify as LGBTQ. She also used the term “underestimated” in the title of her book, It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage.
I wanted to adopt this term because in many cases, I believe it is more accurate than “underrepresented.” For example, “underrepresented” is not accurate when women make up over half of a group. Although they may not be underrepresented, they remain underestimated.
When you see the term “underestimated” throughout this book, I am using it to refer to groups that have historically experienced systemic bias toward a facet of their identity, such as race, gender, age, nationality, disability status, or other characteristic that is not considered the “default.” I think this term better reflects the untapped potential of these groups.
I still use the term “underrepresented” occasionally, when it is a contextually accurate descriptor of the group or individuals being discussed.
Note
1.
John Eligon, “A Debate Over Identity and Race Asks, Are African-Americans ‘Black’ or ‘black’?”
New York Times
, June 26, 2020,
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/black-african-american-style-debate.html
.
PART 1Equity—It's Not Personal, It's Systemic
CHAPTER 1Beyond Good Intentions
I thought 2016 was going to be a year for the underdogs. The Cubs were having their moment. It had been 108 years since they had won a World Series.
Yes, Cleveland had home field advantage. Yes, the Cubs were coming back from a 3–1 deficit, and only five teams in history had come back from that far behind to win. But when I deplaned in O'Hare, I believed the fanaticism surrounding me could beat any odds. I hadn't felt that kind of energy since Seattle's “Refuse to Lose” euphoria in '95.
I wasn't in town specifically for the Series, but I came from a baseball-loving family, and my parents had Chicago roots, so I was going to soak it up while I had the chance. Everywhere I went, I was seeing either Cubs signs or Hillary signs. #ImWithHer banners peeked out from under End the Curse! flags. All around, history seemed to be in the making.
I was in Chicago for work, and at the time, I had what I thought was a corporate do-gooder's dream job, overseeing DEI programming for a large financial company. I had spent the first part of my career advocating for equity from the other side, either in nonprofits and international NGOs, or through the lens of public policy. I had seen the limits of working on systemic problems from the outside, and I wanted to drive change from within. So, I had made the leap to the financial sector, determined to diversify the original old boys' club.
At the time, I felt optimistic. My employer had invested both time and budget. Employees, including executives, had attended trainings. We made sure our website didn't feature only stock photos of white men, and we ramped up our recruiting efforts to diversify our candidate base for job openings.
We had also created affinity groups for people of color and women, to provide a sense of community and opportunities for networking. To support our women's affinity group, we decided to invite a dozen members to join our executive team at a major financial services conference in Chicago. They would have an opportunity to get to know our executives over an intimate dinner and learn how committed our leadership team was to our diversity initiatives.
The dinner fell on the seventh game of the Series. I caught the top half of the first inning in the hotel lobby before we all left together. At the restaurant, a mainly Black waitstaff showed us to our private dining room. Pseudo castle doors separated us from the rest of the restaurant. The waiters gripped the iron door handles with both hands, braced themselves, and heaved backward to unseal them and haul them open.
We had our own décor—mock Medieval. I imagined the instructions the waitstaff had probably been given to provide us with “exceptional” service in this finance-friendly steakhouse that resembled so many others.
For me, the dinner was a means to an end. I needed to see that our leadership team understood the promise of diversity initiatives as a business imperative. I wanted management to genuinely believe supporting inclusion was a good call.
Those hurdles had now been cleared. Our affinity group had made it to the castle. Around us hung wall art in powerful frames: out-of-period noblemen in braided coats on rearing steeds, both species puffing out exaggerated chests. These were no rough-shod ponies of the Wild West; flaxen manes cascaded over their elegantly rounded shoulders. Hooves glistened. These were proper equine trophies, symbols of their riders' net worth.
“Have you decided on your order?” A waiter interrupted my thoughts.
“The salmon, please. Thank you.”
As he left the room, I overheard a snippet of the Cubs game broadcast in the restaurant. Bottom of the fourth. I couldn't hear who was ahead.
I was seated between the VP of Business Development and my boss, a woman I looked up to and had learned from. She was one of few female leaders in the industry. Glancing around the table, I felt a brief sense of pride. The women from our affinity group seated with the executive team made this the most gender-balanced financial dinner I had attended.
I had gotten to know one woman at the table a little better during the conference. I'll call her Irene. She had confided to me that she had waited for decades to launch her own career in finance because she felt that, as a woman, she wouldn't have been taken seriously until a few years ago. I had assured her that she was in the right place, that our affinity networks were created with her in mind.
As the night went on, I lost track of how long we had been there. I excused myself to use the restroom. As I pushed open the heavy door to reenter the main restaurant, I saw there were no guests left. Tables had been wiped and chairs were stacked against the walls. I cringed. The waitstaff were patiently standing by the walls, hands folded over their aprons, waiting for us. We were already an hour over our time. We were the customers I had dreaded in a previous life. I apologized and said I'd try to get our group to wrap it up.
The kitchen radio blasted the game. They were headed into extra innings.
When I returned to our room, I told the group that we were the only ones keeping the place open and suggested we take the party back to the hotel bar. But the conversations carried on. After another 20 minutes, one of the Black waiters slipped in gingerly and asked if everyone was happy with their evening before they wrapped up for the night. He was ignored. He tried again. “I'm so sorry to put an end to what looks like such a fun night, but we are going to have to be closing up soon.”
Irene cut him off. “Oh, honey, we pay your bills, so we'll be leaving when we're leaving.”
Our server nodded and retreated. As the door was slowly closing, but still partially open, Irene exclaimed loudly, to the whole room, as if sharing a joke she needed everyone to hear the setup for, “You know what I miss? Back in my day, I could have called him ‘boy’ and no one would have had a problem with it. Back in my day, I could have had him fired for speaking to a white woman that way.”
A moment later I found myself standing. I was on my feet, an involuntary reaction, irrepressible. I was not weighing questions of correctness; it was far more basic. Somehow I thought I could not be the only one, but around the table my colleagues were only staring, staying seated, saying nothing.
“Oh honey, sit down, don't get upset,” Irene urged.
Nervous laughter rattled through the room.
My hands went cold. How could I be the only one? They all said they cared. They made public statements. What are they doing? Why is nobody saying anything?
A roar was audible from the kitchen. The Cubs had gone ahead.
When my voice came, it was shaking. “Back in your day,” I reminded Irene, “you wouldn't be sitting at this table. Back in your day, you wouldn't have been taken seriously as a woman in this profession. We're all here tonight because we don't want to go back to that time.”
An exec nervously pushed around chunks of his surf and turf. I picked up my purse and coat, gave the castle doors one last shove, and left.
I rushed past the servers waiting to clear our table, out of the restaurant, and into a lone taxi waiting like a lifeboat.
On the way back to the hotel, triumphal horns blared throughout the city. I wanted to rejoice with my euphoric driver, but I was stunned.
I was not a victim in this situation. Nor was I a hero—I was simply mistaken. I thought that because our company had invested in these inclusion initiatives, our culture had actually changed. I thought the executives sitting at that table who had stated their commitment to diversity and attended trainings would have stood with me. I didn't think I was going to be alone.
We had checked all the right boxes, but the unspoken code of conduct hadn't changed. We had had our moment of truth, and nobody stood up.
And by running the programs that let us think we were the good guys, I was complicit.
How had this happened?
≈
The following Monday, I got the call from HR: My position no longer existed in the organization. I was terminated, effective immediately. The reason given was a recent merger. I knew about that merger. I had helped coordinate the resulting reorg, and I knew that all staffing decisions had been made months ago, so I found this difficult to believe. Either way, we were happy to part ways.
A few months later, I attended a CEO panel at the top of Seattle's World Trade Center. The topic: What Does It Mean to Be an Effective Leader?
The year was 2017, and the #MeToo hashtag had turned into a rallying cry for millions. Social activist Tarana Burke had coined the phrase in 2006 to build solidarity among survivors of abuse. More than a decade later, Alyssa Milano retweeted the phrase one night, and by morning, a movement was born. Around the world, women were taking the secrets they had kept inside whisper networks out into the international spotlight. Hollywood's leading ladies founded Time's Up to cover legal costs for victims seeking justice. Everywhere I went, I heard “Me Too.”
Tarana Burke held the movement accountable, continuing to speak out for women who weren't going to be protected and still had to show up to hostile workplaces every day. For the movement's legacy to have meaning, she argued, employers would need to take meaningful action. It was up to business leaders to take the next steps.
In the audience at the Trade Center, I was waiting to see which CEO was going to take that next step. The panelists spoke about managing growth in a quickly scaling business, retaining customers in the face of increasing competition, and the impact of artificial intelligence on their industries. For all these topics, they had best practices, data, evidence, key performance indicators, and actionable takeaways.
Then the moderator asked the question I had been waiting for: “What is your approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion?”
A silent pause. Chairs creaked as the panelists' postures changed, their legs uncrossed and recrossed, they leaned backward slightly, getting a little distance from the microphone. Women in the audience made eye contact with each other. I realized many of us were holding our breath.
Finally, one of the panelists took the mic. It was the first time I had heard hesitation in any of their voices. The brave volunteer paused after each word, as if looking for approval that he was on track. Like a spelling bee contestant, he was waiting for each syllable he spoke to be the one that would disqualify him:
“Honestly…my…my approach to DEI…Well, I…I lead with love.”
The others followed:
“Everyone at our company knows that we care about diversity. We don't have an [air quotes] approach [end air quotes] as much as it's just in our DNA.”
“Every day, I come in being my most authentic self, and I think that lets everyone else know they can be their authentic self, no matter their background or gender.”
Polite applause.
These answers cited no data. No best practices. No KPIs. No plan.
No next steps.
≈
Fast-forward to three years later. In the summer of 2020, in the wake of George Floyd's murder, corporate statements of solidarity flooded LinkedIn feeds. CEOs publicly renewed their pledges of commitment to racial justice, to equity, to inclusion. The Black Lives Matter movement had gained unstoppable momentum, and business leaders felt the pressure to vocally reaffirm their support of Black communities.
I was living in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood at the time, three blocks from the East Precinct that had become the movement's infamous ground zero. I think the zone's temporary residents in tents and makeshift shelters were still deciding whether they were occupying the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) or the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP). Clickbait-seeking helicopters had become my round-the-clock white noise reality. From my apartment balcony on the third floor, Seattle's downtown peaks floated above Puget Sound. The corporate trapezoids of the financial district cut the skyline in business-casual shades of blue and silver.
Down on the street, at metropolitan basecamp, Black lives mattered. “I'd rather repaint gray buildings than bury my Black friends!” a leader of the movement shouted across the street through a bullhorn. In the afternoons, teenagers marched—hundreds of middle school and high school students under my window together, singing, making sure everyone knew the words to the songs that drowned out the helicopters. I felt hopeful, knowing that this time, their voices hadn't just reached my windows and faded out. They had traveled beyond, to those downtown windows, to the top floors.
Employees and consumers were demanding a new level of accountability, and national publications held CEOs to account, to ensure that they were walking their talk. For the first time in years, business leaders were forced to revisit their diversity data.
An email showed up in my inbox from a colleague who had attended the CEO panel with me three years earlier. Subject line: “Lead with Love.” He had forwarded me an article calling out executives who had made very public statements over the previous few years that they valued diversity, that it was “baked in” to their companies' cultures. The feature was a two-page spread. On the left side, dossiers of the self-proclaimed Good Guys and their solidarity statements. On the right, diversity reports from the companies they oversaw. A decade of diversity data showed little to no progress, year after year, with some companies regressing. The CEO who proclaimed “I lead with love” as his guiding DEI philosophy had the largest photo. The caption below: “Leadership or Lip Service?”
Good Intentions, Few Results
These individual companies and leaders are not anomalies. While some strides have been made toward workplace equality over the last 50 years, over the last two decades progress has stalled. Looking beyond the wage gap, women and minorities are still underrepresented in leadership,1 receive less access to senior leaders,2 and are leaving the fastest-growing sectors, such as tech, at higher rates than white men,3 citing “culture” as the primary reason. Women—especially women of color—are more likely to have been laid off during the COVID-19 crisis,4 and experts estimate that decades of progress toward workplace equality have been erased by the pandemic.5
Despite the rise of MeToo and Black Lives Matter, many workplaces have taken a step backward: Men are less likely now to want to mentor women than they were before the MeToo movement.6 Managers are less likely to advocate for employees of color than they are for white employees,7 and employees are more receptive to constructive criticism from a male manager than from a female manager.8
In short, we're still stuck.
Despite this sobering snapshot of the status quo, when it comes to equity and inclusion, there is good news:
We've been doing it all wrong.
The DEI Overwhelm
I was asked during a recent interview to pick one word to describe how business leaders feel about DEI. I think they were looking for “committed” or “optimistic.”
I chose “overwhelmed.”
This feeling isn't limited to business leaders. I spend my days listening to employees across all levels of organizations talk about what diversity and inclusion mean to them. In these conversations, I hear a lot of recurring themes:
White employees want to support their peers of color but don't know where to start.
Employees of color are told over and over again, “We need to hear voices like yours. We need more people of color to speak up.” Then, they do speak up and they hear, “You're making your peers uncomfortable. You should just focus on leading your team. You're pulling the race card.” Some find, after speaking up, that they're suddenly left out of meetings and important projects.
Men want to be allies, but they're worried they're going to say the wrong thing.
Women take advice to “Lean In” and stand up for themselves or negotiate for a raise, only to be told they're too aggressive or arrogant. Other women see these consequences and avoid speaking up, and then are told it's their own fault that their careers aren't progressing.
Managers and executives start to explore DEI strategies and become paralyzed by an ever-changing DEI vocabulary, contradictory messages, and seemingly endless nuance. If they do implement new inclusive policies, they find a new segment of their employee base is angry at them.
Employees who feel their neurodivergent status, age, or caretaking responsibilities impact how they're treated at work aren't sure they have a “right” to speak up, because what they're experiencing doesn't seem as bad as overt racism or sexism.
This is just the beginning. Whatever the particular mix of overwhelm looks like in each organization, I see the same repeated outcomes: Underestimated employees eventually realize their only choices are to assimilate or leave, and the businesses and employees both miss out. (Arlan Hamilton coined the term “underestimated” to refer to groups that have historically experienced bias.) Even if businesses manage to hold on to these employees, employers won't get the benefits of their unique insights, since they will never feel comfortable showing up authentically.
Employees who do choose to leave find they don't know how to determine if another employer will be better. Many “Most Inclusive Workplaces” lists are sponsored, or their criteria are unclear or unsubstantiated. Large organizations that appear more diverse than others don't show their attrition numbers. They may just be in a continuous cycle of losing and rehiring employees to keep their diversity numbers up. Alternatively, they may have diverse overall numbers, but zooming in could reveal that none of that diversity shows up in leadership.
Employees don't know where to look. Employers don't know what to do. In general, there's a lack of clarity about what works—what behaviors, processes, and practices should be tracked to catalyze progress toward equity at work.
I wrote Inclusion, Inc to provide this clarity.
To get out from under the overwhelm, we have to start by understanding the status quo. What have businesses been doing to address DEI, and why isn't it working?
Stop the Trainings
American businesses spend $8 billion a year on diversity trainings.9
The quintessential diversity training came out of a 1960s workplace focused on compliance. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin, and a barrage of discrimination suits quickly followed. One of the most common remedies was a court-ordered mandate for the organization to train all employees in anti-discriminatory behavior. Many companies wanted to avoid costly and embarrassing lawsuits and preemptively implemented trainings, collecting signatures from employees afterward, acknowledging that employees understood the consequences of noncompliance.
Over decades, trainings expanded to accommodate LGBTQ employees, as well as other groups, and many workplaces now prefer to call them “unconscious bias” trainings. Even as they've evolved, one aspect of trainings hasn't changed: their ineffectiveness.
Morgan Stanley had trainings, before they shelled out $100 million to settle high-profile sex discrimination lawsuits. Bank of America's trainings didn't keep them from paying $160 million in racial discrimination settlements. Uber had trainings before paying millions to settle a class action suit brought by 420 female and minority engineers alleging gender and racial discrimination. These totals don't take into account the enduring costs of tarnished brands.
Multiple studies published in the Harvard Business Review conclude that diversity trainings don't work and often backfire. These studies found that white men who were asked to attend diversity trainings were actually less likely to hire and promote women and minorities.10 In general, participants who attend trainings in which they're told that we all hold biases leave those trainings believing that they are the exception, and their actions become more rooted in bias, not less.11
One of the reasons that biases are so insidious is that learning about them doesn't actually rid us of them. While becoming more aware of them can increase our ability to identify bias in others, it does not increase our ability to recognize it in ourselves. In fact, the stronger our biases are, the worse we are at seeing them, and the more neutral we believe we are. When this phenomenon is scaled, the more meritocratic we believe we are as an organization, the more biased our systems may be.
Chapter 3 describes in greater depth why trainings and other common approaches to DEI, such as affinity groups and the Lean In prescription, fall short. It also introduces new perspectives that can give businesses a competitive DEI advantage. For now, a quick preview: The difference between businesses that break the DEI inertia and those who stay stuck is defined by one key perspective shift: Equity isn't personal. It's systemic.
A Perspective Shift: From Changing Mindsets to Changing Mechanics
In a 1972 interview with Playboy magazine, the visionary architect, inventor, and philosopher Buckminster Fuller introduced the timeless wisdom of the trim tab—a small mechanism that helps stabilize an enormous ship or aircraft—which would become a central metaphor in his philosophy:
Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks that's it going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me trim tab.”
The truth is that you get the low pressure to do things, rather than getting on the other side and trying to push the bow of the ship around. And you build that low pressure by getting rid of a little nonsense, getting rid of things that don't work and aren't true until you start to get that trim-tab motion.
To reorient our businesses toward a more inclusive future, we need to stop asking employees to push harder against the bow of the ship, and instead, decrease the resistance employees face. We need trim tabs. The environmentalist movement gives us a good example of what this looks like.
Let's say you're an environmentalist who's traveled out of town to present your findings at a conference. While you're prepping for your presentation and running back and forth to networking events, your values don't change, but your focus and your actions might. You may be distracted and less vigilant about turning the lights or AC off in your hotel room every time you leave. Despite your environmentalist moral core, you're accidentally wasting energy.
European hotels figured out a behavioral design hack that reduces their energy bills and makes it easier for their environmentally conscious guests to act in alignment with their values.12 Hotel guests must place a room key into a slot on the wall to activate the lights and temperature control system in their rooms. When they leave the room and take their key with them, they don't have to think about turning off the lights or the air conditioning. They just turn off when the key card is absent. By adding a trim tab, the design of the room has taken thinking (and willpower) out of the equation.
The human brain carries at least 200 unconscious biases that cognitive science has recognized.13 Scientists estimate that unconscious biases drive between 75 and 90 percent of our decision-making, without our even realizing it.14 Current approaches to DEI rely on employees to stay vigilant against incursions of unconscious biases that they're probably not even aware of, while performing well at challenging jobs. We're asking employees to push against the front of a very, very large ship, and we've seen how it's played out. We've plateaued. We've made all the progress we can make under the “try your best” model.
We still have a chance to change course. We can either ask employees to keep pushing against the front of the ship, or we can adjust our equity trim tabs and focus on correcting mechanics rather than mindsets.
GEN Certification: Discovering the Equity Trim Tabs
When Ford needed to improve quality in the 1980s, they plotted defect rates on charts that were visible to everyone in their factories. In today's automotive marketplace, Tesla has refocused the measurement spotlight on a new metric that matters: Delivery Performance—the percentage of fulfilled deliveries that meet the customer-promised delivery date. Any employee can log on to Tesla's KPI dashboard, at any time, to see the company's progress toward its 90 percent Delivery Performance goal. Digital dashboards that track business-critical function data provide a clear, quantifiable standard for employees to aspire to.
Employers, however, have never had such a measurable standard for equity in the US workplace. This has left them to take “best guesses” in an area that already feels fraught with complexity. Maybe moving networking events to work hours will get more women to participate, but without measurement, who knows? Maybe stating that leadership supports Black employees is enough to make them feel included, but without measurement, who knows?
Employees and employers both want clear benchmarks that go beyond good intentions. The LEED certification gave businesses this clarity around environmental stewardship by outlining the exact steps they need to take for certification. Our DEI-focused organization, GEN, wanted businesses to have this kind of playbook for workplace equity.
Seeing the impact other standards have made, we partnered with the University of Washington to create the first standardized certification for intersectional equity in US businesses: the GEN Certification.
Creating this certification meant finding the equity trim tabs. We found hundreds. We refer to them as “cultural levers” that can be adjusted to design bias out and equity in. Like the wall holder for the hotel key card, these simple redesigns take resistance out of the equation. As Fuller would say, we're “getting the low pressure to do things…getting rid of a little nonsense, getting rid of things that don't work and aren't true,” making it easier for everyone to make decisions based on merit, rather than bias.
Over years, we beta tested these cultural levers, certified companies, and tracked their progress. We found out what works and what doesn't. Those findings form the blueprint for this book.
Is This Book for Me?
This is not a women's empowerment book (though women may feel empowered after reading it) or a book on racist behaviors in the workplace. This is a book about designing workplace environments that counter the impact of bias to become truly merit-based. It acknowledges that we all have bias but does not exhort individuals to just try harder to prevent themselves from being influenced by it. Instead, it shifts the challenge from the employee to “be better” to the organization, to do better, and provides concrete steps and design elements that businesses can use to meet it.
While the solutions presented in this book will not rid the workplace of sexist or racist individuals, they will provide systemic designs that are more likely to discourage those perspectives and minimize their impact. Inclusion, Inc offers a “trim tab” approach: simple, purposeful redesigns that amplify the effects of process optimizations, turning them into agents of transformational change.
We all come to the workplace with varying levels of DEI understanding and experience. This book is meant for anyone who wants to build, and work in, inclusive workplace systems. If you identify with any of the following groups, this book is for you!
Business Leaders: Expectations on managers and executives to champion DEI continue to rise. Many are finding themselves overwhelmed by the amount of complicated, highly nuanced information surrounding diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This book distills the profusion of DEI research and theory into accessible, actionable takeaways for identifying flawed processes and creating inclusive cultures.
HR Professionals and DEI Leaders: HR leaders are now expected to understand DEI in ways they haven't before. This book will serve as a basic reference for understanding DEI concepts and provide a roadmap for streamlining DEI initiatives. Not only will HR professionals be introduced to new knowledge, they'll be given language to advocate for implementing inclusive practices in their organizations.
Underestimated Employees: This book is also for anyone who has had to leave behind who they are to function successfully where they work. For individuals who have felt that their only two options as employees were to assimilate or leave, this book breaks down the systemic barriers they've faced, gives language to their experiences, and provides evidence-backed solutions for which they can advocate.
Allies: Supporters of equity in principle often ask, “What can I do?” Anyone looking to improve their understanding of DEI concepts can use this book to become better allies and advocate for effective solutions.
Job Seekers: Job candidates want clear benchmarks to know if a potential employer has gone beyond talk to meaningful action. Anyone who wants to know if an employer is truly inclusive can use Inclusion, Inc as a “checklist” to assess whether an employer has gone beyond recruiting to authentic inclusion.
Beyond Good Intentions to Meaningful Impact
The methods in this book can take business culture to the next level.
Beyond Recruiting
: While representation matters, companies need to do more than just recruit. If employees continue to be recruited into organizations that do not have the mechanisms in place to reduce the impact of bias, both the company and the employees lose out. For example, in the tech sector, the highest percentage of women who leave their employer exit at midcareer—the point at which it is most expensive for the company to replace them.
15
Inclusion, Inc
addresses the pain points that cause underestimated employees to leave, saving employers the costs of attrition and turnover.
Beyond the Binary
: Simply looking at gender as the difference between women and men does not give a complete picture of gender equity. In addition, simply looking at DEI in terms of race and gender ignores the intersections of many other facets of individual identity. Understanding these intersections is essential to ensuring that efforts to foster equity benefit everyone, not just the dominant group.
Inclusion, Inc
offers solutions that address inequities faced by communities of color, those who do not identify with the binary definitions of gender, caretakers, minimum wage workers, those who have a disability, those who may experience ageism, and workers of underrepresented nationalities and religions.
Beyond Compliance
: Not being harassed or blatantly discriminated against is not a high bar for employee experience.
Inclusion, Inc
is driven by the knowledge that too many people aren't being given equal opportunities to demonstrate their talents. Underestimated individuals don't want to be tolerated—they want to be valued and appreciated on the same level as their peers.
DEI can be confusing for employers and employees alike. This book provides clarity so that employees can understand and recognize the facets of a truly inclusive workplace. It also provides businesses with an answer to “What can we do that works?” in the form of workplace design elements they can adopt immediately to become equity-centered, better serving employees, consumers, and society.
A Quick Guide to the Rest of This Book
This book has three goals, pursued in three parts.
The first, tackled in part 1, is to convince you that the trim-tab hypothesis is true. I want you to believe that shifting our perspective on DEI is important, that we need to leave old ways behind and focus on changing mechanics, not mindsets. This part will define who we're changing the workplace for, what will happen to them (and all of us) if we don't change course, and what it looks like to debias processes rather than people.
The second goal, addressed in part 2, is to show you how to implement the trim-tab approach by adjusting cultural levers throughout your organization. You'll learn how to attract more qualified candidates, hire the best person for the role, get the most out of meetings by actually hearing from everyone, and conduct a pay gap audit that's meaningful enough to turn into a pay equity strategy. I'll share why you should scrap the yearly review and what you should do instead. You'll learn why mentorship isn't enough, but sponsorship is, and how to make difficult decisions around transparency and target-setting.
This section will show how policies such as paid leave and flexibility may seem inclusive on the surface, but there is a right and a wrong way to implement them. From recruiting to professional development to office aesthetics and governance strategy, this part will reveal the trim tabs that unlock both social and financial returns.
The third goal is to get a handle on DEI tomorrow. Part 3 reckons with the future but starts by looking at the past, specifically at lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic. This probably won't be the last society-wide crisis that employers face, and we can learn from businesses that managed to keep equity in focus, even in the midst of upheaval. Businesses that double down on equity in times of crisis come out of them stronger and continue to outperform the competition. An equitable emergency response plan is a more successful response plan.
Part 3 will also provide tools and principles to navigate how AI and machine learning will impact the workplace. I believe we'll be seeing more and more businesses stating that their DEI strategies are “data-driven.” This doesn't mean that their DEI strategies are data-smart. Depending on how it is collected, analyzed, and interpreted, data can either drive transformative inclusion, or it can become a weapon of math destruction,16 encoding human bias and scaling it across an organization. This section will give you a framework for asking the right questions in your engagement surveys and analyzing DEI data with an intersectional lens.
Finally, this part finishes with DEI principles to live by, including a focus on communication. Alongside the opportunity gaps in many organizations, I also see persistent communication gaps. Managers and executives who want to further their DEI strategies fear that they'll say the wrong thing. Human Resources leaders create effective policies, but employees never hear about them or don't understand the benefits because the message is not communicated clearly. This section covers common DEI communication mistakes and provides alternative scripts that you can rely on for difficult conversations.
≈
Before we move on to learning how to shift our DEI perspectives and embrace more equitable systems, we need to answer one critical question: What if we didn't?
Notes
1.
“Being Black in Corporate America: An Intersectional Exploration” (Center for Talent Innovation, 2019),
https://coqual.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CoqualBeingBlackinCorporateAmerica090720-1.pdf
; Neysa Dillon-Brown, “Women And Minorities Are Still Underrepresented in the Boardroom,” Corporate Board Member, February 20, 2019,
https://boardmember.com/women-minorities-underrepresented-board/
.
2.
Lareina Yee, Alexis Krivkovich, Eric Kutcher, et al., “Women in the Workplace 2016” (
LeanIn.Org
and McKinsey & Company, 2016),
https://womenintheworkplace.com/2016
.
3.
Jessica Guynn, “Here's Why Women, Blacks and Hispanics Are Leaving Tech,”
USA Today
, July 9, 2020,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/27/toxic-workplaces-technology-women-minorities-retention/100977038/
.
4.
“Generations of Progress for Women and Girls Could Be Lost to COVID Pandemic, UN Chief Warns,”
UN News
, United Nations, August 31, 2020,
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/08/1071372
.
5.
Brittany Chambers, “How The Coronavirus Has Resulted in the Highest Job Loss for Women: Erasing a Decade of Progress,”
Forbes
, May 12, 2020,
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brittanychambers/2020/05/12/how-the-coronavirus-has-resulted-in-the-highest-job-loss-for-women-erasing-a-decade-of-progress/?sh=69fa558e192a
.
6.
Quentin Fottrell and Jeanette Settembre, “In the #MeToo Era, 60% of Male Managers Say They're Scared of Being Alone With Women at Work,”
MarketWatch
, June 16, 2019,
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/men-are-afraid-to-mentor-female-colleagues-in-the-metoo-era-heres-what-not-to-do-2019-05-20
.
7.
Laura Morgan Roberts and Anthony J. Mayo, “Toward a Racially Just Workplace,”
Harvard Business Review
, November 14, 2019,
https://hbr.org/2019/11/toward-a-racially-just-workplace
.
8.
Martin Abel, “Why Female Bosses Get Different Reactions Than Men When They Criticize Employees,” The Conversation, September 10, 2020,
https://theconversation.com/why-female-bosses-get-different-reactions-than-men-when-they-criticize-employees-145970
.
9.
Evan W. Carr, Andrew Reece, Gabriella Rosen Kellerman, and Alexi Robichaux, “The Value of Belonging at Work,”
Harvard Business Review
, December 16, 2019,
https://hbr.org/2019/12/the-value-of-belonging-at-work
.
10.
Frank Dobbin, Daniel Schrage, and Alexandra Kalev, “Rage Against the Iron Cage: The Varied Effects of Bureaucratic Personnel Reforms on Diversity,”
American Sociological Review
80, no. 5 (2015): 1014–1044, doi: 10.1177/0003122415596416.
11.
Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev, “Why Diversity Programs Fail,”
Harvard Business Review
, July–August 2016,
https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
.
12.
Erica Goode, “At Energy-Minded U.S. Hotels, They'll Turn the Lights Off for You,”
New York Times
, May 9, 2016,
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/business/hotel-energy-efficiency-carbon-footprint.html
.
13.
Wikipedia, s.v. “List of Cognitive Biases,” last modified July 14, 2021, 14:01 (UTC),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
.
14.
Hannah Valantine, “The Science of Diversity and the Impact of Implicit Bias,” National Institutes of Health, 2017,
https://diversity.nih.gov/sites/coswd/files/images/2017-12/implicit_bias_talk_for_toolkit_pdf_508c_0.pdf
.
15.
Kathleen Melymuka, “Why Women Quit Technology,”
Computerworld
, June 16, 2008,
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2551969/it-careers-why-women-quit-technology.html
.
16.
The term “Weapons of Math Destruction” was coined by former Wall Street quantitative analyst and current mathematician, data scientist, author, and data ethicist Cathy O'Neil.
