DIRE Warnings, Part 6: Summary and Conclusions
How Diversity, Inclusion, Representation, and Equity are supposed to work and where they go wrong.
This article is Part 6 in a series. Part 1 summarized what the series will demonstrate. Part 2 addressed the definitions of equity, diversity, and inclusion including misconceptions. Part 3 addressed relevant (Canadian) legislation and psychology. Part 4 addressed representation proper application of concepts. Part 5 addressed failure modes.
Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are often mistaken for other principles such as representation, quotas, or affirmative action, which are closer to the opposite of EDI. EDI is not about differences in social categories – race, ethnicity, gender – nor about head-counts or percentages, nor about where they fall in the org chart. This confusion is common enough that the Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion (CCDI) designed their training course, Diversity and Inclusion Fundamentals, around dissuading participants from making or continuing these misconceptions.
The thing that is diverse in the principle of diversity is the individual; we each have multiple dimensions that affect who we are and what we have to offer. Respecting diversity means getting to know each person as an individual, questioning assumptions (stereotypes), and seeking dissenting views.
From the CCDI course, at the core of these diverse dimensions is personality (Layer 1), which binds the rest together, including social categories and immutable traits (Layer 2), choice-based experiences such as education, hobbies, and interests (Layer 3), and organizational circumstances (Layer 4).
From the CCDI course and the research literature, the function of EDI is to recognize, respect, and treat people as multi-dimensional instead of one-dimensional (diversity!), to embrace the diversity of dimensions that people bring and remove barriers to their contributions in all of their dimensions (inclusion!), and to recognize that because of this diversity that people have different needs as individuals to be able to contribute equally with others and to accommodate those different individual needs (equity!).
For clarity, the following definitions follow from, and are consistent with, the CCDI training, the research literature, and relevant Canadian legislation:
Diversity is about the individual and the variety of unique dimensions, qualities and characteristics we each possess. Diversity is not about differences in immutable traits such as race, ethnicity, or gender, or more generally about a single dimension.
Inclusion is about organizational culture that embraces and values the diversity within individuals by seeking multiple views, being flexible, and facilitating input from everybody. It is about treating individuals as whole persons, not along one-dimensional traits.
Representation refers to the numerical presence of specific characteristics with respect to the availability pool for a given occupation and region. It is a method of checking for barriers, not a generalized target outcome.
Equity is about acknowledging that individuals are different and accommodating what each individual needs, where reasonable, in order to be successful. Equity is not about grouping people and comparing statistical outcomes.
Accommodation is flexibility in practices and procedures without which an employee could not participate productively and effectively in the workplace.
Principles of good EDI policy include addressing how individual people are treated, hired, included, and supported. From the employer perspective, EDI policies target creating higher performing teams by leveraging diversity across dimensions to eliminate barriers and biases such as groupthink and cognitive biases, and attracting a wider talent base.
From the individual fairness perspective, EDI policies help to fulfill the principles of the Canadian Human Rights Act “that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices”.
These goals are aligned and consistent with the CCDI training, research literature, and legislation. The legislation is limited to removing barriers associated with discrimination based on Layer 2 social categories and immutable traits, but this is a subset of EDI and the principles are aligned. For example, EDI more generally removes unnecessary barriers that limit the contributions and thriving of introverts and parents by making sure they have opportunities to contribute.
Policies and programs aimed at implementing EDI include mechanisms for getting to know individuals, such as mentoring programs, training programs in different personality types and how they communicate, means for collecting ideas an input from everybody on equal terms, and encourage dissenting, differing views, and debate. With respect to hiring, promotion, and retention, EDI policies targets removing biases and can draw on the feedback mechanism of representation to localize where barriers may exist in the system, based on a comparison with the availability pool.
Programs such as Women in STEM that aim to address barriers and biases are a good fit with EDI. Components that aim to attract greater numbers at the inflow source via outreach marketing efforts (e.g., attract more women to STEM fields in high schools) are technically not part of the DIRE system, but are complementary. Part 7 of the DIRE Warnings Series will provide examples of potential policies and activities that fit EDI and things to avoid.
When EDI programs follow the intent of EDI they help individuals, teams, and organizations to thrive by overcoming cognitive biases such as groupthink and confirmation bias. They do this by focusing on informational diversity and informational conflict (debate): different experiences, different knowledge, different perspectives, and different ways of thinking.
Organizations should be careful to avoid interpersonal and value-based conflicts on teams. In psychological terms, this means avoiding tribal psychology such as by identifying people as belonging to different groups based on race, gender, ethnicity, religious, or political lines, or valuing people based on those characteristics. This particularly evokes group psychology and causes dysfunctional teams and organizations. To avoid this, it is important to emphasize that Layer 2 traits such as race and gender are characteristics of individuals, not groups of people.
The group psychology failure mechanism is one of many when EDI is misapplied. It is often misapplied by confusing diversity with representation combined with confusing representation with target quotas.
When representation is misapplied using arbitrary targets or general population, or false baselines, many failure modes emerge. It incentivizes undercutting and shortcutting by violating legislation and privacy to hit target numbers without actually fixing anything. By setting the target outcomes, while also setting a diverse input population and a fair system that values EDI that transfer inputs to outputs, there are no free variables and so the system becomes over-constrained. This causes the system to grind to a halt or finds the weakest constraint or organization function that can break or burst.
The left side of Figure 1 shows a flowchart diagram modeling how EDI and representation are supposed to work in alignment with the CCDI training course, legislation, psychology, and the research literature in terms of the value of EDI. It includes outreach mechanisms aimed at increasing the inflow as well, showing how such efforts also consistent with application of EDI and representation, so long as the outcome variables are left free to vary by the free choice of diverse individuals, often in the form of trade-offs.
The right side of Figure 1 shows Misconceived EDI, some of the incorrect uses, and some of the failure mechanisms and modes. (These are representative failures. Not all failures may show up and not all potential failure modes are shown.) The result is a broken system with a dysfunctional organization.
Given the failure mechanisms and modes from applying EDI principles incorrectly, and how common these errors and failures occur, and that these failures tend to make work environments worse than they started, it is critically important the organizational managements understand how EDI is supposed to work and monitor its application for potential misinterpretation.