Every company is a microcosm, a miniature system inside the local population. Ideally, each employee population would reflect the local populations from which they hire. While this often isn’t the case, the dedicated people in Diversity & Inclusion work are trying to create that balance. The goal is not to gatekeep or maintain a role-call of diversity, it’s to open your hiring and employment policies to aptly include a more diverse population of employees.
Tokenism in Diversity & Inclusion Work
Diversity & inclusion is hard work, partly because it’s challenging to meet a diversity quota without slipping into tokenism. Tokenism is defined as diversity without inclusion; a perfunctory effort to meet numerical diversity goals or create the appearance of diversity without making effective changes. Tokenism can lead to hiring for the wrong reasons or reaching or diversity numbers in the wrong ways so that no difference is made and inclusion is not actually achieved.
So how do you avoid tokenism? What steps can you take to make sure your earnest efforts to increase both diversity and inclusion don’t become mere gestures? In the many years that this issue has been examined, a few best practices have surfaced to transform your numerical diversity goals into inclusive company culture.
1. Diversity as a Policy, Not a Checklist
First things first, stop thinking about the numerical goals. We can’t get rid of them, the business world will measure things in numbers and couldn’t be stopped from doing so. But at the same time, no hiring or promoting manager should be thinking about diversity when making a decision. They should be thinking about performance and motivation.
Instead, think of diversity as a policy transition. How can you make your jobs more visible and appealing to a diverse candidate pool? How can you make the roles or employee policies more inclusive for people outside your majority culture? If you make these changes, the numbers should take care of themselves.
Don’t approach diversity like a checklist, in which you need X board members and X engineers from minorities. Instead, find ways to change the policies so that employment is more inclusive overall.
2. Measure Impact Over Percentage
Checklist diversity leads to a common failing in data analysis; impact vs percentage. Perhaps 15% of your board are women, but do they have sway in discussions, vote, or lead projects? Perhaps you have 20% minority population, but are they in influential or except-level roles? Excluding these observations can lead to on-paper diversity without real inclusion.
The sole of tokenism is creating roles that essentially neutralize a diversity hire, like a board member with no effective power or influence. If the employees that contribute to your diversity score are not involved in the company culture, then no real changes have been made in the company culture or in the opportunities being created for minority professionals.
Take into account the impact that each minority employee is making, and the impact of each new role you are hiring for. Diversity has more meaning and a greater potential to create a diverse company culture when the team members have sway in the company.
3. Do Not Tokenize Your Photographs
Time after time, we hear stories about professionals who are pulled front-and-center for photoshoots because they represent the minority. Make an effort not to fall into this trap. Many companies begin a diversity effort because of an awareness of visual monoculturalism online. Marketers may be the first to point out the problem. But that doesn’t mean that diversity hires want to be the focus of photography. Even those who like to be in pictures (not everyone does) can quickly feel tokenized if they’re pulled into every single photo shoot, including those that don’t involve their team or their work.
Don’t to this. Make an effort to represent (and answer to) your real current diversity. Those minorities on your staff should appear in shots of their team, representing their work, and giving interviews on their expertise. But not in unrelated shots or included in events just for the photo-op. It’s worth having a special talk with your marketing team(s) just in case.
4. Diverse Options and Accommodations
One of the diversity weaknesses of a monoculture business is inclusive options. When your team lives similarly, the working options and benefits available may seem complete. But what about the needs of lifestyles that stem from other cultures? What about people with different health concerns, family structures, or natural schedules? What about people who need a different pattern of holidays?
Diversity and inclusion require your company to accommodate the diverse hires you welcome. You may need to adapt for parent hours, or for handicap accessibility. You may need to offer a wider variety of choose-your-own benefits so that people from all backgrounds and lifestyles can make employment with your work for them.
It’s easy to feel awkward reaching out to specific communities when the company culture is a majority who has never needed direct catering to. Don’t be afraid to target some of your new employment options toward the populations in your area and for lifestyles you know are common outside your current employee cultural cluster.
5. International Hiring Diversity
Lastly, enrich your employee population by considering international hires. Create a global blend of cultures where cultural differences become the norm.
Right now, with everyone working remotely, international hires are also just an internet-call away for remote team members. With international hiring, you can expand beyond local demographics. Become a magnet, drawing international talent to your local community.
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Diversity & inclusion professionals face a serious challenge; not just changing the way you hire but changing the way your company approaches diversity. It’s easy to accidentally slip into tokenism with percentages to meet, but with these methods, you can protect your team from accidental tokenism. Instead, you can alter your policies to create a more inclusive tableau of employee opportunities and experiences. Contact us for more hiring best practices and international recruiting services.
