Diversity Programs Are Not Created Equal
Some work. Others fail consistently. Here’s why.
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Susan Fowler’s story about sexual harassment and discrimination at Uber would be shocking if it weren’t so frustratingly familiar. It mirrors Amélie Lamont’s experience at Squarespace, former Stanford University literature professor Michelle Karnes experience at one of the top academic institutions in this country, and the experience of students in New York’s education system.
In each of these scenarios, the responsible organization had a standard HR department with appropriate channels for surfacing harassment. We would also assume that, like most modern organizations, they all believed themselves to be unbiased and genuinely committed to creating a safe space for employees and students — clearly that didn’t happen.
Instead, there were two injustices committed. The first was committed by the individual(s) harasser, the second was committed by the group charged with protecting against this exact kind of behavior — HR. In each of these stories, the person who was harassed was ultimately punished for being harassed, experiencing job loss, demotion, and suspension as a result of speaking up; on top of the self-doubt and humiliation that runs concomitant with experiences of harassment.
These stories are not edge cases. Last year, Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev published an excellent analysis of what works and doesn’t work when it comes to diversity programs. They write:
“Among the nearly 90,000 discrimination complaints made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2015, 45% included a charge of retaliation — which suggests that the original report was met with ridicule, demotion, or worse.”
Let’s make this easy to understand — if you report discrimination at work, you are just as likely to experience further harassment as you are to experience justice.
The reason behind this is not brain science. Grievance systems, like most traditional diversity programs, are put in place to prevent legal repercussion, not to create an inclusive work environment. This is an important difference. According Dobbin and Kalev’s research, diversity programs aimed at the former are not only ineffective, they often make things worse.
Dobbin and Kalev looked at the three most popular lawsuit-preventing diversity programs, and they found these initiatives quite literally did more harm than good.
Grievance systems are just as likely to result in more harassment (this time at the hands of HR). Job tests do little more than cause hiring managers to scrutinize the results of minorities even as they overlook poor results among majority participants. And trainers who deliver mandatory diversity courses report meeting with anger and resistance, “and many participants actually report more animosity toward other groups afterward.”
Diversity programs aimed at preventing legal action result in even more hostile work environments.
Why is this? Lola E. Peters, author of The Truth About White People, says:
White people are so surrounded by discriminatory practice in their favor that they’re like fish in water.
Take that fish out of that water and it will be decidedly unhappy. We like to assume that the systems supporting our own advancement are fair and unbiased and we resent any implication to the contrary.
But there’s a bright side to Dobbin and Kalev’s research as well. While traditional diversity programs aimed at preventing lawsuits do not work, the data points reveals that there are diversity programs that are incredibly effective. What they’ve found is valuable information to companies trying to create a more inclusive workplace. But women and minorities looking to identify a safe workplace should also take note — there are proven diversity programs that actually work. These are the things we should all be asking about on our next interview.
The diversity programs that actually improve diversity numbers
Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard is a fascinating book about the weird world of human behavior and motivation. Authors, Dan and Chip Heath, summarize research done by John Kotter, Dan Cohen, and Deloitte Consulting aimed at understanding how organizational change happens. The Heath brothers write:
“in most change situations, managers initially focus on strategy, structure, culture, or systems, which leads them to miss the most important issue: the core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people, and the behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people’s feelings…In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems and solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.”
This truth is apparent in the research conducted by Dobbin and Kalen. Dobbin and Kalev found that the diversity programs that get results are much less about making rational appeals to the brain, and much more about influencing emotion.
Successful diversity programs focus on changing individual behavior by inviting people to “opt-in” to new perspectives and experiences.
You can bucket the successful programs into three categories:
- Self-selection
- Exposure
- Accountability
Self-selection
(Diversity programs: college recruitment, voluntary training, mentoring)
The core problem with mandatory diversity training is that it often elicits a reactionary response, “Why do I have to do this, I’m not biased.” As a result, we look for evidence that supports the idea we have about ourselves that we are not biased (instead of attempting to overcome those biases).
The opposite happens with self-selection — whether it’s voluntary training, inviting managers to mentor minorities, or inviting managers to participate in college recruitment of minorities. In each of these scenarios, something very different is happening, by self-selecting we start to think, “I am the kind of person who stands for diversity.”
Once individuals start taking action, there’s something to build on:
- A manager can point to a new hire that resulted from them participating in college recruitment.
- A mentor will begin to feel a personal stake in the success of their mentee.
- By participating in voluntary training, a person will change their self-perception, “I am someone who cares about diversity” and start to bring their behavior into alignment with that change in self-perception.
Inviting a person to take conscious action to improve diversity is a powerful tool in changing that person’s unconscious behavior.
Exposure
(Diversity programs: self-managed teams, cross-training)
One of my co-workers recently told me about a scenario where the candidate being interviewed was an Asian male. He was judged by the white interviewers as “not excited enough.” Luckily one of the interviewers was an Asian female and said, “Wait a minute, in Asian cultures, we typically don’t demonstrate our enthusiasm the same way as in American culture. And is ‘enthusiasm’ really a judge of his skills and capabilities?”
This is such a fantastic example of how diversity begets diversity. One of the biggest problems with creating an inclusive workplace is that many of us are simply inexperienced at working with people who are different than us, and the only way to fix that is to increase our exposure to people that are different than us.
It’s been over 60 years since America was a segregated country, yet for the most part, we remain very culturally divided. Neighborhoods still tend to divide along racial lines, most of us don’t work with disabled people, and with less than 4% of the population identifying as LGBTQ — you could realistically work an entire career and never work with someone who isn’t straight.
Self-managed teams and cross-training are tools that increase exposure to people that are different than we are. Self-managed teams are ad hoc groups across roles and functions in an organization that come together around a shared goal. These types of teams tend to be less hierarchical, giving women and minorities a greater opportunity to step into leadership roles.
Cross-training allows people to try different roles within a company. While rarely branded as a diversity initiative, cross-training has the unintended consequence of giving people exposure to a broader range of people within the organization.
Personal relationships change our perceptions about people groups.
Accountability
(Diversity programs: diversity task forces, diversity managers)
Accountability buddies are good for everything from helping us exercise more to eat better, make better use of our time, and hit our goals. Not surprisingly, accountability works for diversity as well. Dobbin and Kalev write:
Companies that appoint diversity managers see 7% to 18% increases in all underrepresented groups — except Hispanic men — in management in the following five years.
If we know that someone is going to ask us why we made the decision we made — why we chose to give a test, or not bring in a candidate, or let someone go—we’ll often behave better. Maybe it’s because we’re all secretly awful humans, but I think the more likely reason is that it forces us to put more thought into our actions. The human brain is a lazy, lazy thing. We should all be vigilant against its shortcuts. Accountability calls our brains to be more intentional about the actions it is taking.
Putting this knowledge to work
The classic diversity programs aimed at preventing lawsuits do not work. They didn’t work for Susan Fowler at Uber, they didn’t protect Amélie Lamont at Squarespace. But there are diversity programs that do work.
If you create diversity programs within your company — pay attention to the data. And before you take your next job, ask your hiring manager or future boss what they’re doing to create an inclusive, diverse workplace. If the answer sounds like the same old diversity programs aimed at simply preventing lawsuits (and you can afford to)— walk.
Creating diverse and inclusive workplaces isn’t easy, but it’s also not impossible. There is real data that shows what works and what doesn’t. Let’s use it.
Project Include has some wonderful case studies on how companies have successfully created diverse, inclusive workplaces. Both of these examples highlight how the programs identified by Dobbin and Kalev play out in real life.
