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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion - DEI, sometimes known as EDI or D&I, take your pick - has in recent years become a standard function within large companies and institutions. It is not without controversy, especially in the US. Let me be clear: I don’t believe DEI is a giant conspiracy against white males. The rise of DEI is an emergent phenomenon, the result of HR departments expanding their empires and senior managers passively consenting to progressive-sounding initiatives in order to be seen to be doing the right thing, or at least the safest thing, in an increasingly politicised environment.
Just as in the 1980s nobody ever got fired for buying an IBM, nobody the 2020s gets fired for commissioning a course on unconscious bias; the difference being that IBM computers were demonstrably useful. For employees, DEI is more of a timesuck than a form of brainwashing: it means you have to fill out more forms than you would otherwise, and go to training days about the menopause or anti-racism, and nod politely at the trainer as they spout tenuously supported blather. It’s a bore but it’s not a satanic corporate cult.
DEI is still quite problematic, however. It has so far involved a ton of training, and the training has been of very low quality. A recent academic study used data on 800 American firms over three decades. The authors found that five years after diversity training for managers became compulsory, the proportion of senior black women and Asian-Americans actually dropped. That is just one study, but there are many studies with similar findings, as the sociologist Musa al-Gharbi shows in this comprehensively substantiated piece. In short, the evidence suggests that diversity training is ineffective at best and actively harmful at worst.
DEI may not be evil but in current form it is decadent. If organisational leaders have One Job, it is deciding on the most productive allocation of time and money. They should hate making staff spend time on activities which aren’t truly valuable and resent paying money to dubiously qualified consultants. This is before we get to the moral harms caused by bad DEI: the way it slips into a kind of soft authoritarianism, shutting down reasonable speech, and compelling, directly or indirectly, speech or behaviours deemed righteous; the way it sets members of different identity groups against each other, making it harder for staff to forge productive relationships (this is absolutely the worst thing about it; see al-Gharbi for more).
The insidious assumptions which underlie these problems - DEI’s focus on ‘equity’ of outcome rather than on integrity of process; its tendency to see identity labels rather than individuals; its disparitism - the facile and anti-scientific idea that any disparity in social outcomes is evidence of oppression and must therefore be corrected for - should be exposed and interrogated. But since I don’t want this to be one long moan, I’m going to discuss how to make the DEI we have better. So, if you hold a senior position in a large organisation, this is for you. It’s based on my conversations with various organisations, and with some very informed Ruffian readers. I propose nine principles or guidelines:
- Define Your Goals
- Actions Over Symbols
- Simplify Ruthlessly
- Favour Universal Solutions
- Resist Abstraction
- Cultivate Class and Cognitive Diversity
- Check Your Viewpoint Diversity
- Measure Efficacy
- You Are Not a Political Movement
Define Your Goals. It’s good to start with scepticism about whether DEI is necessary at all. There are obvious costs: it’s expensive and it adds complexity. So why are you doing this? If your answer is ‘because everyone else is doing it’, perhaps it’s time to think again. Ditto if you come up with some boilerplate about wanting to be an inclusive organisation. Be clear. Do you want a DEI program because you feel you’re not drawing from a wide enough pool of talent? Or because you need a way of handling political pressures, from without or within? Either is legitimate but the most effective DEI programs will be the ones designed to meet tangible, clearly defined needs rather than vague aspirations.
Actions Over Symbols. Much DEI energy is poured into linguistic tinkering and symbolic gestures - pronouns, rainbows - which annoy many and satisfy nobody. If you’re going to do DEI, do it properly: organise your processes around it and find more imaginative ways to be inclusive. I’ve been working with the ad agency Saatchi and Saatchi, which has made the expansion of its talent pool the key priority of its DEI programme. They identified the cost of accommodation in London as a key barrier to talent from poorer backgrounds, and formed a partnership with the London Hostel Association to provide cheap accommodation in central London for entry-level employees. It’s part of a wider series of initiatives which have been designed and directed the company’s senior leaders. DEI shouldn’t be left to HR.
Simplify Ruthlessly. I recently got chatting to the head of internal communications at a large global company. She told me her company now celebrated 134 ‘special days’, raising awareness of various minorities, from Native Americans to the neurodivergent. There used to be only a few of these days, she said, but the number had grown and grown. She liked the idea of celebrating minorities, in principle, but it was her job to ensure every one of these days was communicated appropriately, and this made for a lot of work for her, and her team. It took up time they’d rather be spending on more important tasks, like operational updates and policy changes. Pruning this thicket was hard, however. If she gently suggested that one of these days be cut from the schedule she received ferocious pushback from staff who had proposed its inclusion in the first place. Why was their day any less valuable than the day for Group X? This problem is inherent to a theory of social justice which regards every identity claim as equally legitimate. There’s no theory of where to draw the line. You see it in the ever-expanding acronym LGBTQIA+ (that + sign a wearied acknowledgement that this can’t go on forever) or solemn assertions that there are 100+ gender identities. That adds up to a lot of admin. The question that should be asked of every DEI-related activity is, how can we simplify this issue, rather than complicating it? And sometimes, you will have to say, no, because doing this will take up too much bloody time.
Favour Universal Solutions. I’m told that a global entertainment company uses something called a privilege grid. Employees are invited to list to all of the social privileges to which they are heir in terms of class, education, gender, sexuality, race and so on. A total privilege score is then calculated. The list of potential privileges keeps expanding: there is now a category for “looks privilege” (reasonable enough on its own, since there is plenty of evidence that good-looking people are treated more kindly than their less fortunate peers, although since the employees are asked to self-report, the score may not be entirely reliable). In a way, the grid is a creditable attempt to acknowledge the complexity of social relations; a black man with a post-graduate degree may find he is more privileged than a white colleague who didn’t go to university, especially if he’s hot. But as with ‘special days’ it’s hard to know when to stop. What about ‘love privilege’ - someone who grew up in a poor but loving family may be seen to been better off than someone middle-class who grew up with dysfunctional or abusive parents. I mean we could go on, and on, until we accept that there is something called the universal human condition which is both burden and privilege, and which comes in an infinite variety irreducible to maths. I suggest companies place less importance on identity boxes and pay more attention to the needs which unite everyone: to be treated with respect, to learn and be challenged, to be rewarded fairly and recognised appropriately. Get better at meeting those needs for everyone and marginalised people will benefit disproportionately. DEI activity should put a premium on solutions which affect the maximum number of groups and which cut across identity boundaries.
Resist Abstraction. A common response to various kinds of social prejudice is to try and eliminate anything that might lead to it from the hiring process. Hence the rise of ‘blind hiring’, which has a decidedly mixed record, sometimes resulting in fewer minority candidates being hired. It is very difficult to engineer prejudice out of a complex social process, and when you try and do so by giving recruiters less information on candidates, the whole process is impaired. The UK Civil Service asks candidates not to include any information which might identify them in their application, which means they can’t even talk about the jobs they’ve done - pretty crucial information for the hirer, you would have thought. Of course, the more ‘sophisticated’ applicants know how to game this system by sneaking in the info. Better to state goals clearly (eg ‘hire more minority candidates’) and have faith in your staff to adjust accordingly. Humans are complex and context-rich and shouldn’t be reduced to a few abstract interchangeable measures.
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