Is Your Corporate Fixation on Diversity Quotas Creating A Breeding Ground for Discord and Resentment?
“I hired a Black woman onto our executive board. She was legitimately the best person for the job and it was a coincidence, rather than by design, that it also improved our board representation figures.
However, I was taken aback by how many side conversations I’ve had with white senior managers who believe they are being sidelined because of their race and feel like it’s “no longer cool to be a white man of a certain age” and that they, in fact, are the ones suffering from racism and discrimination.
It is giving me a headache!”
CEO, 2023 [Anonymous]
Good intentions do not excuse a lack of thought and substance.
In the rush to respond to increasing societal and stakeholder pressure to “do something” after the murder of George Floyd, jumping in headfirst to set diversity quotas or targets became the central strategy to showcasing commitment.
Corporations tend to like them (to differing degrees) because both are specific and timebound quantitative measures. However, quotas are usually mandated and sometimes legislated whilst targets are generally more aspirational.
The increasing resistance to corporate diversity programs; aimed at remedying the significant underrepresentation as it relates to race, is a phenomenon that many predicted. Why? Due a persistent and loud focus inn exclusively relying on targets and/or quotas to address racial disparities.
Being able to talk about how many Black directors or managers were hired last quarter might make you feel like you are on the right side of history, but without addressing the root causes as to why such representation was missing in the first place, many organizations have made a rod off their own back by inadvertently sowing seeds of division and resentment.
A blunt instrument to tackle a complex problem
I am not against setting stringent targets per se, but representation is an output not an input, yet we incentivise executive leaders to “hit the number”, whilst overlooking how they got there.
With demands to provide scorecards, readily accessible data of how many non-white employees are hired and promoted at any one time, the singular focus on these quotas or targets overshadow the more nuanced, and I would argue, more significant elements of workplace culture change.
Understanding the organizational levers that contribute to racial disparities that are often a combination of corporate culture, attitudes, behaviours, skewed decision-making frameworks, as well as policies, procedures, and poor corporate governance is crucial.
Quotas or targets alone can’t solve these problems.
And neither should be the only determinant of any employee’s career trajectory.
Logically we know this, yet despite what common sense tells us, we still perpetuate quota driven change initiatives that invariably tends to spotlight one demographic that finds itself caught in an uneasy and uncomfortable position: white men.
When you're accustomed to privilege equality feels like oppression
Privileged in corporate hierarchical power structures, and benefiting from consistent overrepresentation at board level, these leaders are witnessing a paradigm shift where the focus on equality, redistribution of power, increasing diversity (in all its forms) is perceived as a threat to them and other men coming up behind them.
We are seeing an increase in disgruntled employees who are objecting to diversity initiatives because suddenly life feels very unfair and when many white men (and women) feel threatened, and they occupy the most seats within an organization’s leadership structure, it doesn’t take a genius to understand the impact of that.
Organizations can suddenly find themselves at the junction of balancing evolving expectations to address a lack of representation and tackle systemic racism, whilst at the same time, feel worried about disengaging with these groups of employees and nervous about how to field accusations of reverse racism or discrimination.
This concern, and discomfort with the topic can therefore cause leaders to:
Reduce the task of addressing systemic racism to a mere numbers game.
Ignore or overlook the critical dialogue and informed counsel that delves deeper into what is needed to cultivate an environment where individuals who are capable, can and are willing to perform, can thrive without having to navigate the structural and behavioural barriers that show preferential treatment for some employees over others.
Engage in tokensim – i.e. recruit or promote only ‘one’ non-white person to satisfy expectations.
Dismiss the rumbles of dissention and resentment amongst employees who are least impacted, who cannot see (deliberately or genuinely) what steps you are taking to address the root causes and instead they perceive you offering opportunities and promoting based on an employee’s race and not merit.
Create a challenging and in some cases hostile environment for employees who are hired and promoted into your business yet have to navigate a culture where they are viewed with suspicion and their presence attributed to their skin colour (and other intersectional identities) rather than their capabilities and performance.
Sign-off on reputationally risky training programs. For example those that seek to educate and/or guilt employees into feeling ‘bad’ about their privileged status
Invite both internal and external criticism by focusing on race-based hiring strategies instead of improving business results through refining processes, procedures, and governance elements that lead to dismantling systemic racism.
Rarely within these discussions about what to do or not to do, is thinking about the Black and other non-white employees who continually find themselves existing in companies that flip flop between commitment and action, even if the so-called action is focused on quotas, targets, education and awareness, celebratory days, months, and weeks and so on and so forth.
Beyond diversity quotas and targets
Now is as good a time as any to really review what you have achieved to date, outside of initiatives and programs that are focused on pipelines and hiring practices.
There needs to be a focus on optimising inputs, a deeper dive into the conditions that lead to consistent favourable outcomes for some of your employees and consistent unfavourable outcomes for others, with race being a strong contributory factor.
Forearmed is forewarned therefore when challenged, you are in a much stronger position to defend the approaches that you have taken, and how what you have done and are doing, is grounded in addressing the root causes of racial disparities. This is in comparison to what everyone else is doing which is prioritising low-hanging fruit, that is superficial actions to change the visual makeup of your leadership team without any substantive work to address the conditions that sit underneath that.
Yes, there will be some employees and external bad actors who will claim that anything you do is a direct or indirect attack on white people. I’m surprised by anyone’s surprise about this.
However, rather than retreating at the first sign of disingenuous criticism, you can decrease the odds of employees filing legitimate claims (where there is genuine discrimination as opposed to hurt feelings or vague objections about general unfairness) by ensuring you focus on:
Structural change over window dressing, with the ability to evidence the what, how and impact
De-prioritise using quotas and/or targets as your sole or primary tool to advance racial equity
Think holistically about what needs to change to ensure your company is not perpetuating inequality
Clarity in messaging around what you are doing and why
Link your actions to optimising your culture to ensure better business and employee outcomes
Uplifting the voices and experiences of those most impacted by racism, not those who don’t like the idea of equity and not being the centre of attention
Ensuring there is explicit understanding that you can hire as many Black people as you like, yet it does not automatically mean that your organization does not have a problem with systemic racism.
Authentic leadership with substance
We must do better in translating commitments into action that dismantle the structures and challenge the behaviours that have, in our past and present, continue to perpetuate racial disparities within corporations.
The onus is on you as leaders to role model moral courage, tenacity, and humility to ensure your business operations balances profitability with fairness for those most impacted, not protecting the feelings of employees who have benefited the most from inequality. Yes, you need to be aware of the extent to which they are engaging or disengaging from what you are trying to do, but if you overly focused on that, you continue to be part of the problem.
In an ideal world, we would act because it’s the right thing to do, yet we know that holds no quarter in many business environments. Therefore, if you can at least move from taking a defensive stance to ward off criticism and instead demonstrate a genuine desire for cultural change, this is how you inspire and engage others to join you in this quest.