Many companies today recognize that workforce diversity is both a moral imperative and a key to stronger business performance. U.S. firms alone spend billions of dollars every year to educate their employees about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). But research shows that such training programs don't lead to meaningful change. What's necessary, say the authors, is a metrics-based approach that can identify problems, establish baselines, and measure progress. Company managers and in-house lawyers often worry that collecting diversity data may yield evidence of discrimination that can fuel lawsuits against them. But there are ways to minimize the legal threats while still embracing the use of metrics.The authors suggest first determining your risk tolerance and then developing an action plan. You will need to track both outcome metrics and process metrics and act promptly on what you find. Starting with a pilot program can be a good idea. You should also build the business case for intervention, control expectations through careful messaging, and create clear protocols for accessing, sharing, and retaining DEI data.
Companies spend millions on antibias training each year in hopes of creating more-inclusive--and thereby innovative and effective--workforces. Studies show that well-managed diverse groups perform better and are more committed, have higher collective intelligence, and excel at making decisions and solving problems. But research also shows that bias-prevention programs rarely deliver. So what can you, as an individual leader, do to ensure that your team is including and making the most of diverse voices? How can one person fix what an entire organization can't? Although bias itself is devilishly hard to change, it is not as difficult to interrupt. The authors have identified several practices that managers can use to counter bias (and avoid its negative effects) without spending a lot of time or political capital. In hiring, leaders should insist on a diverse pool, precommit to objective criteria, limit referral hiring, and structure interviews around skills-based questions. Day to day, they should ensure that high- and low-value work is assigned evenly and run meetings in a way that guarantees all voices are heard. In evaluating and developing people, they should clarify criteria for positive reviews and promotions, stick to those rules, and separate potential from performance and personality from skill sets.
The technology industry has a big problem with diversity, one that seems to be getting worse: In 1991 women held 37% of computing jobs; today they hold only 26%. But if tech firms want to get serious about hiring, retaining, and promoting more women, they'll need something more effective than sensitivity or mentoring programs that "fix" individual behavior, and longer lasting than cultural change programs. The author suggests an approach that borrows from tech's own playbook on experimentation: Collect detailed data on bias in your organization, identify company-specific ways to measure its effect, create hypotheses about how to move those metrics, and then throw some spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Working women face four kinds of bias: prove-it-again (continually being asked to prove their competence), tightrope (backlash for being too assertive or too nice), maternal wall (erroneous assumptions about mothers), and tug-of-war (pressure to distance themselves from other women). All four affect hiring, work assignments, evaluations, and promotion and compensation. Companies need to understand how, and then thwart these biases with "interrupters," small changes to business systems that stop patterns of bias. They can be as simple as adding "salary negotiable" to want ads--which closed the pay gap between men and women by 45% in one study. Doing anything once will not change organizational culture. Bias needs to be disrupted constantly, and the iterative interrupter approach may well be the way to do that.
The good news is, more and more workplaces are embracing flexible work arrangements. The bad news is, employees aren't. The authors explain why this is, and delve into the 'class' issues associated with workplace flexibility. They also show that employees classified as 'professionals', 'the working poor' and the 'missing middle' face significantly-different challenges in their quest for work/life balance.
Most managers know better than to blurt out, "This is no job for a woman." Yet many are surprisingly open about their bias against mothers and other caregivers. This type of discrimination takes the form of comments like "Don't you feel bad leaving your kids at home?"; assumptions about mothers' lack of commitment to work or inability to handle a tougher load; and blatant differences in salary and promotional opportunities. Such behavior can get your company into legal trouble, say the authors, a distinguished professor at the University of California's Hastings College of Law and an associate professor at Harvard Business School. In the United States, the number of family-responsibilities lawsuits jumped almost 400% from 1998 to 2008. In federal court, the success rate of plaintiffs in these cases is high; roughly two-thirds of them prevail--about twice as many as prevail in all employment discrimination cases. And it isn't just mothers who are taking firms to court: Men and people caring for elderly parents are also filing suits and winning them. Executives need to be aware of the costs, which include settlements that can run into the millions, negative publicity, and the loss of valued contributors. To avoid them, they should educate themselves--and their employees--about the law, work to eliminate any stigma associated with flextime in the office, and set clear policies about family-responsibilities discrimination.