By Rounak Morsalin, Blue Sky Graduate Assistant & MBA Candidate
When I joined the Blue Sky Institute (BSI) as their new Graduate Assistant (GA) for the year 2021-22, I thought I knew what diversity, equity and inclusion were. But gradually I realized how little I knew. I am from Bangladesh which is a small country in southeast Asia. Though it is small in size, it is rich in its resources and many global companies have their operations there. In my last career, I was a HR professional who was responsible for managing the hiring needs of 25 global and local companies including L M Ericsson, Philip Morris, Proctor & Gamble, Unilever Bangladesh. After moving to the US, I realized I have some knowledge gaps and networking gaps in the industry. So I decided to go for an MBA and joined the Career Track MBA Program of Boise State University. My passion for managing talents from diverse backgrounds and willingness to contribute to a meaningful purpose has led me to the role of GA at BSI. Based on my experience in Bangladesh, I did not encounter any activity around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and the world of DEI was completely new to me. The understanding I share here is based on my own research and discovery I made throughout my personal journey towards DEI.
DEI go hand in hand where each of them cannot survive without the other. Diversity is often confused by people’s visual appearance such as ethnicity, race, gender, etc . For example, it is thought that if you are a woman, you are diverse where most of the demographic is male. This is visible diversity. But interestingly, diversity can be invisible as well. Sometimes we can find a team in a professional setting who can be cognitively diverse even though they come from similar backgrounds. For example: In a group, all team members can be female but they bring different expertise from different backgrounds such as healthcare, management, marketing, technology etc. So diversity is the different experiences that people bring to a space such as organizations, and communities. On the other hand, inclusion is about creating a space where welcomeness, belonging and respect have created an equitable opportunity for people to show up and have an impact in the workplace in a meaningful way. Here equitable opportunity means that it is accessible to everyone. And equity is meeting people where they are. So some people might need more support because they are already ten steps behind another person.
To understand the thought process of people who are practicing or advocating for DEI, I went through several resources like TedTalks, podcasts, youtube videos and articles. The youtube video of Janet Stovall on “How to get serious about diversity and inclusion in the workplace” helped a newcomer like me to realize the reason behind the involvement of Blue Sky Institute in DEI. “It’s because business has the power to do something which no other entity can do. Business can dismantle racism. That’s why we work with organizations, try to educate them, work with them so that they implement Inclusion in their practice.” Stovall explained why it is not possible for universities or churches alone to make a significant impact in DEI. Only 3,982 degree granting institutes are present in the US and only 35% of the demographic goes to church. But for business, 162 million people are working in the US workforce alone. Then she explains why business should cultivate inclusion and how companies can implement inclusion effectively. So if we need to make an impact, we have to start from there.
According to Janet, ethnically diverse companies offer 33% better performance, best workplaces for diversity offer 24% higher revenue growth. Usually, the customer base of the US includes 13% black, 18% hispanic which gives us a total of 31% of our population. So, it only makes sense that a company’s workforce represents the population demographic. That way companies will be able to relate what their customer demands or expectations of the consumer.
When I watched the TedTalk on the Surprising Solution to Workplace Diversity by Arwa Mahdawi, it was indeed an intriguing experience for me. Because it helped me to think more in depth and it portrayed a much clearer picture of current DEI practice in the corporate world. This talks about the superficial approach that many companies adopt dealing with diversity in the workplace.
“Many employees feel awful about diversity training. They think that diverse employees get jobs because of tokenism, and it makes them resentful and increases prejudice among them. That makes the whole situation even worse. We need to get rid of institutionalized inequality and get rid of barriers that stop companies from becoming more equal (Mahdawi,2016).” If a company adopts surface level tokenism as a strategy to practice DEI, the employees are looking at the efforts and are actually attributing it to tokenism or diversity schemes. And this does not help anyone. She suggests, it will take time and there is no quick solution to this real problem. We need to discuss it more. Our micro effort will result in macro changes. All of us need to minimize unconscious biases from our position. Mahdawi also mentions blind auditions and assigning challenges anonymously as a tool to remove biases in the recruitment process. A company named Gap Jumpers used this approach of assigning challenges anonymously and found out that 60% more candidates were selected from minorities than before. Also, 125% more women were selected for interviews as compared to resume screening. In her last few minutes of the episode, she mentioned the Great British Diversity Experiment where research found that a cognitively diverse team can help a team become more creative and productive compared to a homogenous group. That experiment suggests that “diversity is the new Darwinism.” Since the world is changing so rapidly, they will have to either evolve or go extinct and tokenism is not the answer. Tokenism is not evolving.
I particularly loved how she mentioned that we need to get rid of the word diversity altogether. Because diversity is the new normal. Diversity is the new norm and it should be treated as such, it is an important detail that needs attention and normalization. Though we hope for change to occur, it will not change without everyone’s effort. The progress we achieved in DEI so far was possible because of the contribution of every educational institution and organization who believes in DEI. We need to be each other’s ally, we need to advocate for others and we need to practice inclusion more efficiently to progress further in achieving DEI in our life. When we have that consciousness that everyone needs a fair chance to prove themselves, everyone has the right to be treated equally regardless of their ethnicity or background, and everyone needs to feel included to perform his or her responsibilities better, whether it’s in a community or a corporate set up, and when the whole system starts to act on that belief, I believe DEI will have a much better chance.
My exposure to the research I did for understanding DEI as a GA, created an awareness within me that helps me to see the root cause of the issues happening around me. When I see an unfair practice happening in my surroundings, now I am able to recognize my responsibility to participate as an ally. I realize the power I have to change things instead of accepting the mistreatment of others as a way of how the world operates. With that understanding, at present I am actively trying to practice advocating for mistreatment recognizing my responsibility to disrupt these actions. I am more able to differentiate between performative gestures and true impactful DEI practices which shows that my knowledge is more in-depth. This will change how I choose an employer in future. As an HR professional, I will work to break my own implicit bias and I will also ensure that those I am managing also understand their implicit bias.
References
TED. (2018). How to get serious about diversity and inclusion in the workplace [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/kvdHqS3ryw0
TEDx Talks. (2016). The Surprising Solution to Workplace Diversity [Video]. https://youtu.be/mtUlRYXJ0vI
Lisa Kolbasa. 2021. Colorful up hands [Vector illustration]. Shutterstock. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/colorful-hands-vector-illustration-55945171