A Roadmap to Equality in The Workplace

Due to recent events, my Zoom conversations around race relations, the racial divide, and inequities across the country have dominated meetings.  This topic has been brought up at board meetings, with business groups and in our personal conversations.  We are discovering that our organizations suffer the same ailments as found across society as a whole.  We have all tried to embrace diversity and inclusion in one way or the other, but we admit our efforts have been marginal at best.

A friend, who is a well-known sales consultant, had an insightful observation regarding teleconferencing.  She said, “With Zoom, we are all on the same playing field.  All our squares are the same”

I love that- all the squares have a common core.  Teleconferencing doesn’t discriminate, however, you still have to be invited to the conference call.

This topic has also dominated my team’s discussions because we are committed to helping our clients create equality in the workplace.  Companies who outsource HR to us desire these improvements.  Strong HR puts plans into actions repeatedly and over time.

Here is our suggested roadmap to put thoughts into action. Many times, it involves behavioral shifts and these initiatives must infiltrate every area of an organization to effect real change.

Leadership -. Heightened awareness surrounding the racial divide and other forms of discrimination in the workplace has leaders searching for critical tools and expertise to help them manage and mitigate people risks before, during, and after an incident. Leaders realize the benefits of a diverse workforce; diversity and inclusion is becoming more of a business imperative.

Organizational Behavior – Organizations need to create a holistic approach to diversity and inclusion programs, establishing a budget, diversity task forces, developing metrics, hiring diversity officers, and conducting diversity training in the workplace. Perform a culture audit. Behavioral changes may be met with resistance and it must include every aspect of HR- hiring policies, compensation, fair treatment protections, performance management, career mapping, training, discipline, and termination.

Hiring – Implement affirmative action framework, whether your organization is required to do so or not.  Examine prior selection of candidates with a trained eye to stop discriminatory practices. Examine the interview process, assessments, and interview questions. Cases have revealed some hiring tools are discriminatory uncovering unconscious bias.

Compensation – Perform an adverse impact study on the current compensation structures, especially for similar roles.  Reduce and/or eliminate hires based on the candidate’s ability to negotiate. It is proven women and people of color have less experience in salary negotiations. Rather, state the same salary range to every candidate, with specific criteria resulting in a lower or higher place in the range.

Fair Treatment – Develop safe mechanisms for employees to report discrimination.  Just like #Metoo in social media gave women a safe place to tell their stories of harassment, videos are exposing injustices and crimes committed against blacks.  There is a societal shift happening.  Many will not tolerate or remain silent to sexual or racial discrimination.  Hold forums where people of color can safely tell their stories. A President of a large bank recently held such a forum.  They had always thought of themselves as progressive but the forum revealed shocking stories, demonstrating the need to listen more and address inequities.

Make HR an independent and protected reporter!  Stop having HR report to the people that only want to control, contain, or conceal problems.  Deal with it!

Training – To building a diverse and inclusive culture, training is an effective tool to promote diversity, and educate employees on what diversity and inclusive thinking means in their day-to-day interactions with co-workers, customers, partners, vendors and others. One of the goals of diversity training in the workplace is to raise awareness of the value of collaborating with people of different cultures, races, genders, ethnicities, beliefs, experiences, and ideas.

Performance and promotion – Examine your promotion metrics and conscious/unconscious bias within the organization. Interviews reveal white men are told that they have all the right stuff and to go for it.  Females and people of color are told what they don’t have or the reasons they can’t go for it.  We have seen organizations with large percentage of females or people of color at the staff level and almost completely Caucasian men in management. Why?

We are all feeling the results of workforce shortages.  We cannot afford to turn away talent, new ideas, and creativity based on sex, race, or any other protected characteristic.  Period.

A holistic approach enables employees to understand how cultural competency, unconscious bias, civility, and workplace sensitivity apply to every workplace situation. Training is a good start but you’ll need help putting knowledge into action.

There is a new awareness of just how many people never get invited to the call…