What Is "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion", and Is It a Good Thing?

Great Debates
1

Topic question is the premise for debate.

Continuing the discussion from What were you THINKING?:

I’m vaguely aware that there are studies showing the benefits of workplace diversity, but since I am not and have not been actively involved in or had any interest in DEI programs I haven’t mentally linked such benefits to DEI training specifically. And really, like the whole critical race theory, it’s very difficult for me to reduce the concept to tangible practices because the search results are notoriously nonspecific. Probably because I don’t know what I’m supposed to be searching for.

~Max

2

DEI ought to mean a lot more than “the more non-white-skinned people we have, the better,” but unfortunately, that’s what a lot of employers think of it as.

As for “equity” - it’s often a loaded word. A lot of its detractors consider it to mean “equal outcome rather than equal opportunity” - a perception that isn’t helped by the fact that some of its supporters do in fact intend it to mean just that.

3

Will link to this that matches a lot of what I did see referenced in my recent DEI training:

Statistical Proof DEI Works

Of course, there are many reasons why diverse working environments should be encouraged. But did you know the hard facts that prove the effectiveness of intentionally encouraging DEI programs?

Increased Financial Performance: Companies in the top quartile for racial and ethnic diversity are 35% more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians. (McKinsey, “Diversity Matters,” 2015)

Innovation: Diverse teams are 87% better at making decisions and 20% more likely to make a bold decision. (Cloverpop, "Hacking Diversity with Inclusive Decision Making," 2017)

Better Decision Making: Teams that follow an inclusive process make decisions 2X faster with 1/2 the meetings. Decisions made and executed by diverse teams delivered 60% better results. (Cloverpop, “Hacking Diversity with Inclusive Decision Making,” 2017)

Job Satisfaction and Employee Retention: Companies with more diverse management teams have 19% higher revenue due to innovation. This finding is significant for tech companies, start-ups, and industries where innovation is the key to growth. (BCG, “How Diverse Leadership Teams Boost Innovation,” 2018)

Enhanced Company Reputation: 67% of job seekers consider workplace diversity an important factor when considering employment opportunities, and more than 50% of current employees want their workplace to do more to increase diversity. (Glassdoor, “The Glassdoor Survey,” 2014)

This one comes directly from the DEI training I got, showing that indeed, Women are benefiting from minding diversity in genders too:

Holding equality as a value is not just a matter of fairness or doing the right thing. Nor is it about PR or “optics” or even my own conscience. It’s a crucial part of building a good business, plain and simple. And there is an endless amount of research to prove it. A McKinsey & Company study, for example, showed that companies with more gender diversity on their executive teams were 21 percent more likely to outperform less diverse teams in terms of profitability. And a global survey of more than 20,000 publicly traded companies by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that the number of women holding executive positions in corporate management correlated with increased profitability.

4

ISTM that anybody who reductively defines the term that way, either pro or con, is misleadingly oversimplifying a pretty nuanced concept.

Consider, for example, the difference between “an equal division of profits” and “an equitable division of profits”. The latter often refers to dividing profits between partners in proportion to the amount of each partner’s investment, as opposed to giving them numerically equal amounts. In such a case, usually the partner who had more money to start with is getting a larger share of the profits too.

Which is a very far cry from the conservative caricature of “equity” as just a kind of “woke” redistribution policy to give more of whatever to people from historically disadvantaged groups.

“Equal” implies that everybody’s getting exactly the same, while “equitable” implies that everybody’s getting whatever allocated amount is most fair overall in a given situation. That’s an important distinction that can’t just be boiled down to “redistribution to favor the disprivileged”.

5

Okay, here’s a couple examples from the web. The top results for “what is DEI”, in fact.

2022 McKinsey & Company Article

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-diversity-equity-and-inclusion

" For companies looking to bolster inclusion and step up their DEI efforts more broadly, five areas of action stand out:

  • Ensure that diverse talent is well represented.
  • Strengthen leadership accountability and capabilities.
  • Be fair and transparent, enabling equality of opportunity.
  • Promote openness and tackle microaggressions, bias, and discrimination.
  • Foster belonging through unequivocal support for all the ways diversity manifests."
University of Iowa 2019-2021 DEI Plan (Click to show/hide)

https://diversity.uiowa.edu/sites/diversity.uiowa.edu/files/2021-05/DEI%202%20pager%20Goals_Definitions%20updated_0.pdf

GOAL ONE: Create and sustain an inclusive and equitable campus environment

STRATEGY 1-A: Consistently, clearly, and boldly communicate the message that diversity, equity, and inclusion are critical to the university’s academic mission.
STRATEGY 1-B: Enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion-related central communications and marketing of diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments and events.
STRATEGY 1-C: Strengthen the university’s leadership infrastructure to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
STRATEGY 1-D: Integrate the leadership of historically marginalized communities in advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
STRATEGY 1-E: Ensure that administrators, faculty, and staff are effective at promoting, modeling, and implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion core values.
STRATEGY 1-F: Enhance the campus physical and technological environment for inclusion and accessibility.

GOAL TWO: Recruit, retain, and advance a diverse campus community of faculty, staff, and
students

FACULTY

STRATEGY Fac 2-A: Communicate a clear and convincing message that diversity, equity, and inclusion are inextricably linked to the academic mission.
STRATEGY Fac 2-B: Implement research-informed programs to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion in faculty search and selection processes.
STRATEGY Fac 2-C: Implement research-informed programs to assess and enhance the retention and advancement of underrepresented faculty.

STAFF

STRATEGY Staff 2-A: Communicate the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion at all levels of staff and administration.
STRATEGY Staff 2-B: Embed diversity, equity, and inclusion in all talent acquisition practices and support departments in recruiting a diverse staff.
STRATEGY Staff 2-C: Support and implement programs and devote central resources to enhance retention of a diverse workforce and promote an inclusive culture.

etc. etc.

Builtin.com Article

What Does Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Mean in the Workplace? | Built In

For employers and people management professionals alike, the biggest challenge is knowing where to start.

“There’s no quick fix,” Colman said. […] “It’s not going to be a single HR person that addresses the issue of DEI for a company,” she added. “Lean on your professional community. You’re not going to be able to have all the answers because you don’t have all the perspectives.” […] “I think the mindset has always been to avoid talking about these things,” Colman said. “We typically put them in the handbook and address them in training maybe once a year. We didn’t want to make people uncomfortable. I think right now, the call to action is about understanding how to navigate that discomfort and how to use that to elevate your workforce. It’s about doing the important work that is long overdue and becoming inclusive and equitable.”

This kind of non-specific language is typical. Ensure you have diversity? Strengthen leadership? Be fair? Promote openness? These aren’t tangible actions. What efforts? What initiatives? What programs?

More traditional media is only slightly more informative.

CNN Article

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/09/us/what-is-dei-and-why-its-dividing-america/index.html

What does DEI look like at work?

[…]

Kelly Baker, executive vice president and chief human resources officer at Thrivent, an organization that provides financial advice, said DEI in the workplace can be a mix of employee training, resource networks and recruiting practices.

Her company, for example, has resource groups for women in leadership, young professionals, Black employees, Hispanic employees, and military veterans, among others.

[…]

Thrivent also seeks job candidates with diversity in their race, geography, gender and industry background, Baker said.

ABC Article

https://abcnews.go.com/US/dei-programs/story?id=97004455

What is DEI?

[…]

DEI initiatives focus on three main areas: training, organizational policies and practices, as well as organizational culture, according to Erica Foldy, a professor at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Initiatives focusing on policies, practices and culture are intended to correct inequities within an organization, said Tina Opie, a DEI consultant and professor at Babson College.

This could look like implementing accessibility measures for people with disabilities, addressing discriminatory hiring practices and pay inequity, holding anti-bias trainings and more.

So it could be resource groups for women, young people, people of a given ethnicity, or veterans. What is a resource group? What does it mean to have a resource group “for” people of these specific backgrounds, as opposed to for employees generally?

Or it could be seeking job candidates for their diversity. How is that different from (illegal) quotas?

Or it could be accessibility measures for people with disabilities. This I think I get. Like building a ramp if an employee uses a wheelchair. But I’ve never heard of anyone describing ADA accomodations as DEI.

Addressing discriminatory hiring practices - how?

Addressing pay inequity, this is an instance where the word equity throws me. Are we talking about equal pay for people with different credentials or seniority, or are we talking about paying people who are similarly situated the same amount? Like if I have an LPN and an RN doing the exact same job, according to principles of DEI should I pay them the same? Or more generally if I have two employees from different backgrounds doing the same work, one of which asks for $X, and the other asks for $X + $Y, and if these prices are typical among applicants of their respective backgrounds, am I justified in paying them different wages?

Holding anti-bias trainings, that’s primarily what I think of when I hear diversity, equity, and inclusion. But beyond stereotypical “Happy Holidays” I don’t really know what goes on there.

~Max

6

I was only able to access the first and third sources, for whatever reason Harvard Business Review only showed me one paragraph.

I take issue with your cite to the Linkedin article in as much as the studies it cites under “Statistical Proof DEI Works” refer to DEI as properties of a business rather than a process. Of course, the benefits of diversity and inclusion are positively correlated to businesses which have diversity and inclusion. That still does not help me link any benefits to DEI training.

The WIRED article, however, included helpful, tangible examples of company policies pursued in the name of DEI. A quota:

“I’d announced that going forward, at least 30 percent of the participants at any meeting, from a large management session to a small product review, should be women.”

an audit:

“They had a proposal. Why not order an audit to conclusively determine whether men and women were being paid equally? Convinced that the data would be vindicating, I immediately agreed to commission a salary review for all 17,000 Salesforce employees we had at the time.”

and closing of the pay gap the audit revealed:

“In all, we found that 6 percent of employees, mostly women, would need their salaries adjusted upward, and the total cost of these adjustments worked out to about $3 million.”

~Max

7

The McKinsey study showed a correlation between diversity and profitability (maybe: but I’ll leave that be for now).

It did not show that:

  • Diversity caused increased profitability
  • Specific DEI policies resulted in increased diversity (or profitability)

And not to put too fine a point on it, but McKinsey sells DEI training programs. That doesn’t by itself make their study wrong, but one should perhaps turn a skeptical eye toward them.

The evidence that DEI programs work at all is mixed at best. For example:

Virtually all Fortune 500 companies offer diversity training to their employees. Yet surprisingly few of them have measured its impact. That’s unfortunate, considering evidence has shown that diversity training can backfire, eliciting defensiveness from the very people who might benefit most. And even when the training is beneficial, the effects may not last after the program ends.

But did the training change behavior?

This brings us to the bad news. We found very little evidence that diversity training affected the behavior of men or white employees overall—the two groups who typically hold the most power in organizations and are often the primary targets of these interventions.

The training wasn’t completely worthless–you can read the article for some of the positives. But it is not nearly as straightforward as proponents make out, especially since the cause/effect relationship between diversity and company performance is also very mixed.

8

Is DEI a good thing? Read any book written by any kind of non-straight white male Christian to see what they go through daily. Not occasionally, but every day of their lives. And see what barriers they face and how their exclusion hurts and their inclusion changes the environments around them.

Does corporate training improve any of this? I’ve never attended a work training program that was worth the time, so maybe I’m biased. But why would anyone limit the value of DEI to corporate training programs? Wouldn’t it be better to remember that only a few decades ago women were often considered to be incapable of becoming doctors and today half the students at medical schools are women.

9

I’ve never heard that definition. It seems to me that almost everyone agrees that equity is about equal outcomes. One cite among many:

Equity, in its simplest terms as it relates to racial and social justice, means meeting communities where they are and allocating resources and opportunities as needed to create equal outcomes for all community members.

Perhaps some conservatives take a more caricatured definition, but it’s unnecessary: there’s more than enough in the definition from the proponents to criticize.

10

I have primarily read equitable as a synonym for fair (with inequitable being unfair). As in courts of equity, distinguished from the more rigid courts of law. Equitable principles, etc.

For me at least, equal outcomes is a new (and ironic) connotation I have only seen when reading about DEI.

~Max

11

I would say that’s right, but that equitable and equity, despite being adjective and noun forms of the same word, have differing connotations. I’d agree that equitable usually means fair, as with Kimstu’s example of proportional profits. But equity has taken on a distinct meaning in the social justice space.

12

I work in HR, and DEI has been a trend in my profession for the last few years even before it became a political issue.

Strictly speaking this isn’t really true. HR has been working to protect the company from liability due to discrimination long before DEI was in anyone’s lexicon. I’ve got plenty of anecdotes, but I’m going to be as brief as I can. One of the reasons DEI is a hot topic is because companies want to maintain a high level of employee engagement. Employee engagement is the degree to which a an employee gives a damn about their job and the company. Low engagement with employees is associated with high rates of turnover and low productivity and it’s generally thought to be in the best interest of the company to work for high engagement.

You might ask yourself, what does DEI have to do with engagement? Part of it is to make sure employees feel like they belong. That they fit in. When Bob from accounting comes back from his cruise with his husband we don’t want him to feel as though he has to lie and pretend like he just went with some buddies. We don’t want Rita to feel she’s treated any differently because she wears her hair in a natural style. While related, not all of these issues rise to the level of discrimination.

We did a survey a few years back, and one of the complaints was the promotion process was opaque. Nobody on the survey accused the company of discrimination, but they didn’t really understand the process which left doubts that bothered them. I myself experienced this a few years back when I started to wonder if my age prevented me from getting a promotion. So we made the process a bit more transparent making sure employees undertsood criteria for selecting candidates for interview and the educational/experience requirements for the position. We also removed the ability of hiring managers to see the names of people who have applied for the position (you apply for promotions at my company). We did this a few year ago, so next time we have a survey we’ll see if its made a difference.

At least at my company, our DEI efforts aren’t about avoiding discrimination suits. I’m happy to say management is pretty good about not doing stupid stuff that’s likely to get us sued. It’s more about engagement. We want to attract new talent and retain the talent we’ve already got.

13

I don’t think there really is a distinction so much as a difference of opinion. Take for example the same McKinsey Company cited by you, GIGOBuster’s Linkedin article, and me. They define equity like this:

Equity refers to fair treatment for all people, so that the norms, practices, and policies in place ensure identity is not predictive of opportunities or workplace outcomes. Equity differs from equality in a subtle but important way. While equality assumes that all people should be treated the same, equity takes into consideration a person’s unique circumstances, adjusting treatment accordingly so that the end result is equal.

Note that this particular company asserts that fairness entails equal results, so it’s really a matter of disagreement as to what is fair and what is unfair.

~Max

14

…Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is simply “Woke” and “Critical Race Theory” repackaged. It’s been a thing for decades. Then a few months ago people started saying “DEI this”, “DEI that”, but at its heart, in the context of how its being used now?

It’s simply an alt-right talking point, deposited into the public discourse, so people can stop calling everything “woke” because that was starting to get tired.

15

When it comes to finding employees, it most often comes down to casting a wider net in your recruitment efforts. If I wanted more Black applicants, I might advertise open positions to Black business organizations, go to recruitment fairs at historically Black colleges or universities, etc., etc., in additon to the places I’d normally post job positions.

16

Thank you for your post. I can wrap my head around things like wanting to fit in and not feel out of place due to orientation or hair style or what have you. I can also understand the problem and the rationale behind your company’s decision to make it’s promotion process more transparent. I didn’t realize the latter sort of thing fell under DEI.

ETA:

That clears that up as well, thank you.

~Max

17

That’s true enough, but it’s a rather strong assertion to be slipping into a difference of opinion. And doesn’t really change the discussion. Of course everyone supports fairness. It’s equality of outcome that’s contentious, whether we call it equity or not.

All that said, most sources emphasize the equality of outcome interpretation. The LinkedIn article is the only exception I’ve seen so far. And it is, shall we say, a bit heavy on the corpo-speak and reads a bit like ChatGPT.

18

Take for instance this question,

Now I could take into account that an RN or even an APRN has extra student debt to pay off, so if I pay her more than the LPN they might both still take home the same amount. Even assuming for the sake of argument that equity requires equal outcomes (pay), it’s not clear when the outcome is assessed and which backgrounds are considered valid differences.

Even in a traditional scenario, let’s say I have two new hires, one with a degree from an ivy-league school, and another with a less prestigious degree. We’ll say associate lawyers since that’s a field where I think prestige of the school still affects starting salary. The question is whether it is fair to take the prestige of the school into consideration. And do the tables turn if the other institution is an HBCU? If one applicant was a veteran, a woman, or has some other background my company lacks? My understanding of DEI is that I should be willing to pay more to recruit the minority member because they bring diversity to the table - but it doesn’t necessarily follow that I should dock the ivy league graduate’s pay. As GIGObuster’s cite about Salesforce shows, the solution might be to raise the minority employee’s pay at the cost of profitability.

~Max

19

No, the associate lawyer salary should be the associate lawyer salary regardless of the law school or other pedigree as long as the candidate goes through the selection process and meets the requirements such as having passed the bar. From the candidate that passed the requirements, then you can look at “best fit” or whatever.

Turn that question around and does it make sense to pay up for a white male ivy-leaguer or a black female ivy-leaguer. Or should both get the same pay for the same position?

20

Just the fact that there are fewer people with the second background, by the law of supply and demand, all other things equal so long as that background is relevant to my company they should be worth more to me. Except actually paying them differently on the sole basis of race and/or sex is illegal. It needs to be said I was thinking of a situation where individuals negotiate their pay, not a company pay scale. If I pay scale then there is no gap to contemplate in the first place.

~Max