B for belonging
Issue 144 - 20 June 2023 (9-min read)
Raise your hand (or leave a comment) if you have been made to sit through yet another diversity training at work, when the management hires a big shot consultant to tell you all the ways you should be more tolerant. At the end of the seminar, the executives can feel good they did something even if it doesn’t yield any profits per se, and employees can snigger among themselves at the futility of the exercise. Come Monday, life returns to usual.
If that sounds like something you’ve been a part of, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives are increasingly being questioned for their usefulness and their failure to bring any meaningful change. So this week, The Global Tiller takes a look at why this is the case. What are some ways in which DEI initiatives are trying to be more effective and what are the underlying causes that need to be addressed if these strategies hope to make a dent.
The need for DEI trainings arose in a deeply unequal corporate world. After decades of movements against patriarchy, colonialism and racism exposed inequities built into our systems, the corporate world also realised it needs to follow suit. Subsequent movements, such as MeToo and the Black Lives Matter protests, have acted as reminders they need to up their game. But have these made any difference? Hardly.
According to an Equality and Human Rights Commission report, unconscious bias training rarely changes actual behaviours and has little impact on explicit biases. A meta-analysis of hundreds of prejudice-reduction interventions found few that unambiguously achieved their goals.
Part of the reason is that diversity trainings and DEI initiatives in general tend to assume what the problem is and then seek a top-down approach to resolve it. Companies outsource to consultants who many not take the time to ask employees what problems they face and, therefore, suggest solutions that don’t work. At the end of the day, it’s just a tick in the box and a talking point for the companies’ next advertising campaign. This is what sustains the DEI-Industrial Complex.
And in this money-making complex enters belonging — a new buzzword that promises to address these shortcomings. Defined as the experience of being wholly accepted and included by those around you, this addition is the reason why companies are no longer talking about just DEI but DEI-B. The idea is to go beyond inclusion and have employees feel like they belong in the organisation, that their values and goals align with the overall company.
This stems from research that shows that the need to belong in the workplace comes second only to the need to belong at home. Yet very few employees feel that they belong. According to a 2022 report by the think tank Coqual, roughly half of Black and Asian professionals with a bachelor’s or more advanced degree don’t feel a sense of belonging at work. Last year, the Society for Human Resource Management conducted its first survey on corporate belonging and learned that identity-based communities, like employee resource groups, helped foster belonging, while mandatory diversity training did not.
A large part of this need for belonging also reflects the changes in the generational makeup of our workforce. Older generations tend to seek not much more than stability out of their jobs while younger generations don’t draw too sharp a line between the personal and the professional. More and more employees do not want to check themselves at the door at work and want to bring their belief systems and opinions to the team meetings too.
By adding the word 'belonging', companies hope to address this need. And there are experts who lead companies to do this effectively, focusing on nurturing healthy communication channels and spaces for different opinions. For example, a consultant whose approach allows everyone “to make mistakes, say the wrong thing sometimes and be able to correct it.” This avoids creating rigid identity groups and creates bridges where no side feels excluded.
And that is precisely the biggest critique of this new buzzword. Instead of addressing structural inequalities that favour certain groups over others, 'belonging' tends to gloss over the hard conversations in the interest of making everyone feel good. In fact, I’d go as far as to question why do we need to make sure everyone agrees? Why do we need to 'bring our whole self' to work when we don’t even bring our whole self to our families?
For companies that are taking this issue head on, the task isn’t easy. But the solutions require thinking that goes as deep as the inequalities. There is a need to have open, honest conversations to identify what the DEI issues are before starting an intervention to address them. There is also a need to set goals for DEI, instead of just having an after-seminar survey with self congratulatory feedback. How many women did you succeed in promoting to leadership roles after that DEI training? How many employees of colour reported better engagement levels in their work?
But there is a need to question these structures even deeper and to do it through the lens of intersectionality. Even if you managed to add this many people of colour to your team, how many actually brought in a diverse perspective, and how many just parroted the same rhetoric they learned at the same elite colleges? If studies show that the need to belong is so important for human beings, how come we only pursue it at the workplace and not in society, at large? Why do our governments run on the 'divide and conquer' principles instead of nurturing belonging for all?
Until next time, take care and stay safe!
Hira - Editor - The Global Tiller
…and now what?
Who are you? How do you define yourself? Do you build your identity out of where you were born, where you live, what religion you practice, your political ideals? Or maybe a bit of all this?
When it comes to identity, it can be messy. It is an individual’s perspective and approach that comes to define who you are as you.
Where do you belong? Where is home? Where or what is your community? Do you define belonging on your own? Do you need to be legitimised for it?
All those questions are common when it comes to defining you and the people you consider as part of your community (and vice versa). It often leads to misunderstandings, biases, judgments and many heated conversations. But, in the end, we can probably agree on the fact that there’s not one response to any of these questions. There’s no other legitimacy than the one we give to ourselves.
When you enter a workplace, you enter with all these complexities that define (or not) who you are. Added to this is the fact that, very often, we tend to showcase some parts (and not all) of our personalities, behaviours, ideas and beliefs depending on the context. Are we the exact same person at home and at work? With our partner and our friends? In front of our boss and in front of a colleague?
Humans are complex beings. Communities are complex entities. So it’s obvious that it will lead to difficulties in communicating, understanding and collaborating with each other. Does that mean it’s bad? Some will tell you: yes, we should live on our own, with our kind (good luck defining this). Others will tell you that we thrive on diversity, because we learn more. So we just need to find ways to make it work.
And that’s what all those diversity trainings are about. We try to make things work and, as usual for any tools, processes and methods, it’s a simplified version of reality. Obviously it won’t bring grand results.
But putting all the blame on consultants is probably a little harsh. Firstly, the management is usually the one asking for linear, direct results: if my team attends a diversity training, there will be no more conflicts or discrimination. C’mon, it’s training, not magic!
Secondly, the staff are usually coming full of biases, preconceived ideas and ideologies and try to take from the presentation ideas that fit their own agendas. C’mon, it’s training, not a political platform.
Then there’s society as a whole. Society (and by this I mean customs, mentalities, traditions or just the lack of curiosity or understanding of complexity) is a major culprit in this story and consultants are probably just an offspring of it.
How often have you been defined just by the place you were born? No matter how long you’ve been living away from it, people will only see you through this lens. You are the place where you’re born (and usually in a very generalised preconceived view of it), period.
If not, let’s look at the colour of your skin and define your identity through the colour label that’s the closest to your skin completion. If not, let’s see if you practice this or that custom or if you abide by this or that belief.
Workplaces are spaces where people from our communities come together to spend some time. Employees are people and members of communities, so pretty much an offspring of our societies. Whatever happens in the workplace is often just a magnified version of what happens in our daily lives.
As someone born in France (and thus seen as a French person, period), I have learned the national motto: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. We hear a lot about the concept of Liberty as the paragon of what is the most important thing ever. We hear a lot about Equality.
But very few talk about Fraternity, which is literally a “body of men (and by this we mean ‘human’) associated by common interest”. It doesn’t say we all have to be the same. It doesn’t say we all have to agree. It does say we have to form a body associated, or united, by a common interest.
At work, we share this common interest: for the organisation to thrive, for everyone to bring the best of them. By that logic, our communities should share a common interest too. But as talks of polarisation and divisions plague the news every day, it seems that belonging is needed not only in the workplace but our daily lives too.
Whatever you live in your life, you end up bringing it to work. And not a single consultant can have the power to sort out the deeper problems of our societies.
So, as a complex body of complex individuals, let’s come together to understand our shared complexities by helping each other understand who everyone is, by welcoming and not excluding, or by simply remembering that no identity is right, no community is homogeneous. And, for that matter, let’s remember that our universe today happened because a slight percentage of variation in the original mix happened, enough to create movement.
And this magical space where everything happened, including you, me and everyone after, is where we eventually all belong.
Philippe - Founder & CEO - Pacific Ventury