Diverse group of business executives
It’s widely understood that workplace diversity is a positive productivity factor. Given that many organizations now set and measure diversity targets, why aren’t diversity programs more effective? And why do even the executives responsible for them turn over? One reason may be that the very idea of diversity—and diversity hires—suggests that the people being sought are not the norm; instead, it’s the people who are not diverse hires who set the standard.
In a conversation with Gena Cox, organizational psychologist, executive coach and author of Leading Inclusion: Drive Change Your Employees Can See and Feel, she explains that an organization may feel it's gone out of its way to find diverse candidates. But if recruiting different people is “your primary focus, and everything else in the organization stays the same,” then those who are supposed to be beneficiaries of diversity won't feel good about life in the organization. Try these five strategies to give your organization a better chance of benefiting from your diversity work.
Know What Really Matters To Employees
Hiring more diverse people may not be enough to increase diversity if that's the only significant change your organization is making. You may be able to generate temporary diversity, but those people won’t stay in an environment that isn’t structured to support their belonging, says Cox. People who are underrepresented look for several “tangible things to provide the evidence that this is a good place to be,” she explains: “being seen, being heard and being valued.”
Being seen means having the opportunity to be yourself, not having to mask or try to fit into a certain box to be acceptable to others. Being heard is “being able to express my point of view and knowing that there is space for my ideas so that I can be as influential as any other person.” Being valued includes receiving positive feedback and recognition, getting promotions and career opportunities, equity of compensation and access to prestigious customer- or client-facing roles. If those qualitative experiences are missing, you're likely to have a revolving door of diverse candidates, diverse employees and diverse attrition.
Set The Stakes At The Leadership Level
Don’t sideline issues you care about. If you commit to ensuring equity and inclusion, assign diversity accomplishments and measurements to people who sit at the leadership table. Designating someone several levels down or to a new person who doesn’t know the organization or isn’t part of the leadership’s inner circle won’t get the job done. But don’t give the job to someone who doesn’t believe in it. Employees of every kind will see where issues of inclusion and equity reside and whether the people helming these initiatives have both clout and commitment or not.
So when leaders say, “I already think we’re spending too much time on these ERGs” or “You’re asking me to do things that aren’t core to my business,” they may hit their diversity targets but probably don’t plan to work much on inclusion or equity. “You’re either leading 100% of the people and you’re an effective leader, or you’re consciously choosing to lead effectively for only 75% of the people,” says Cox. “You may think you’re happy with that, but that means you’re an ineffective leader.”
Ensure That Managers Are Skillful At Giving Feedback
“The number one complaint from people who are underrepresented in organizations is that their managers don't give them the feedback that will enable them to grow and thrive,” explains Cox. “Our managers and leaders have been disproportionately educated about operations, finance, marketing and sales, but they’re untrained on [providing realistic and developmental feedback], so they go through life pretending these issues aren’t real and that if we ignore them they’ll go away.”
Unfortunately, when feedback isn’t given early or effectively enough, mistakes and other annoyances start piling up and the eventual urgent feedback can feel unnecessarily harsh. Even worse, Cox says, “When leaders bury their heads in the sand, it doesn’t mean that the people around them don’t still see the problem. In fact, they wonder why your head is still buried in the sand.”
Recognize Cultural Norms That Have Impact On Your Workplace
It's incumbent on senior leaders to be aware of how all employees feel, since qualitative factors frequently determine “whether they stay or go, keep learning and have the capacity to innovate. People who feel misjudged or ignored will not consistently perform as well.”
In American business culture, employees often withhold bad news from their leaders about such things as customer dissatisfaction and operations snafus. They’re even less likely to disclose how unincluded they feel or how they don’t believe anyone in the company supports or cares about them. This can look like whining or weakness; for people who worry that they’re only there to make the diversity numbers, that vulnerability is too hard to deal with. People who do speak up can feel even more shut out or shut down.
It becomes urgent for employees who believe, as Cox says, that “every day I have to go into this situation, deal with this [uncomfortable or demeaning] stuff, and no one in this company is protecting me or helping me. They don’t care. I only have two options. I could stay here and keep my mouth shut and live with it. Or I could go.” So Cox asks leaders, “What if you knew this was what is going on below the surface—and you didn’t fix it?” Because leaders don’t hear enough from their direct reports, they need tools like consistent surveying, focus groups or other formats to learn directly from employees what their experience is really like.
Build Stronger Interpersonal Relationships
Leaders must invest in getting to know their employees, particularly those who are unlike them, and direct the management beneath them to do the same. Whether individual differences are racial, disability, neurodivergence, sexuality or gender, leaders must have the interest to learn about and understand the full breadth of employee experiences.
Cox recommends using a three-pronged approach of “curiosity, connection and comfort [even when] your whole body is telling you to run in the opposite direction…you’ve got to start there with just the willingness to explore.” Then you can move toward connection, which Cox defines as a combination of empathy and respect. No matter how many formal structures are put in place, she says, it still comes down to one-to-one interactions. “There’s no shortcut [to get to comfort with other people], but we all know it is possible…there isn’t any alternative to walking up to a person, getting them in a place where they’re comfortable and safe and having a one-to-one conversation.”
This work is harder and takes longer than merely hiring people in a representational way. But by investing in these relationship norms and practices, you’ll increase the chances of maintaining an enterprise that’s both diverse and effective, and is perceived by everyone as a good place to work.
