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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 14. Hannah Valantine, “The Science
