Our society is experiencing a seismic shift faster than at any other time in human civilisation. A dance step can become a viral trend within hours after a live broadcast on social media, and it is just a matter of days for a virus to spread and become a global pandemic.
We are more global citizens, and the ripples of every action have a far broader impact than we can imagine.
Sometimes this makes us believe that we are far more knowledgeable, tolerant, and inclusive of various cultures. However, the divide among us can be primitive, and the quick-fix solutions fail to resolve the issues and often worsen them.
One of such practices is called tokenism.
What is tokenism?
“The practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from underrepresented groups to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce.” – Oxford dictionary
Most of us have experienced tokenism in any work environment, and some may have knowingly or unknowingly participated in the larger scheme. The reasons are obvious; this concept impacts every social construct around us, not just in the present times, but it stems from our childhood in the societies where we have grown up.
When I look back to my childhood, there used to be that girl who was “allowed” to play with the boys, probably with some pre-defined rules.
Also Read: Autistic founders, advocates share their vision of a more inclusive workplace
Also, countless examples of forced inclusion of a character from a minority gender, ethnicity, race, and sexuality in books, movies, and popular culture have influenced me since childhood and continue to do so even today.
How does tokenism impact our careers?
Workplaces are just a reflection of society. The examples of tokenism are endless, and if you are still with me, you might be thinking, how does this impact me? It affects you in every way possible, from your career choices, growth, and compensation; tokenism impacts our professional and personal lives.
You can either belong to the majority with unconscious biases and prejudices shrouding your decision-making and actions or from the minority with immense pressure to outperform and display stereotype characteristics. Both groups pull each other down, hindering a fair and equal growth trajectory that everyone deserves.
Leadership that lacks a deeper understanding of these issues can pose a considerable risk to the organisation’s brand image.
Diversity and inclusion in the workplace
The concept and apparent benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) have been well-established. However, the actual implementation or fulfilment of the ethos in the workspace is rare and often sporadic.
Most employers consider their DE&I goals as an afterthought and develop policies that emerge from insufficient understanding of the current state and the potential risks that loom in the future.
Often recruiting a token individual seems necessary to create the impression of inclusiveness and diversity and not pay too much attention to building a sustainable process.
How to address the problem?
Businesses cannot create disciplines and work cultures within a few days, so they must consider a continuous process that delivers tangible benefits to justify the investment.
To solve a complex problem and establish a culture of equity and inclusiveness, the organisation must mobilise every employee, especially their leaders. Most employees must address the problem statement, be more accountable, and course-correct before it is too late.
I recommend starting here.
Analyse the current state
Ally with external diversity experts to inspect and evaluate the situation with zero biases. These can be time-consuming, but unfortunately, there are no shortcuts.
Generally, a comprehensive diversity audit can take several months and involves interviews, focus groups, data collection, and analysis — the complexity increases for multiple locations, departments, hierarchies, etc.
Implementing automation can improve efficiency and effectiveness by swiftly and accurately capturing the data but is often ignored as this is perceived to be a one-time effort.
Define the action points
Exploring and understanding the data expose the fundamental strengths and challenges of the organisation and benchmarking with the industry to identify possible opportunities and threats.
The data must eventually lead to actionable insights that will lay the foundation of the values and aspirations of the organisation.
Introduce policies and improve processes
A review of policies, procedures, and practices from a legal and compliant perspective and a comparison with other organisations and industry’s best practices enables organisations to define policies and realign processes that impact the entire employee lifecycle.
Adapting to token hiring or setting arbitrary quotas at this stage can lead to deeper diversity issues in the future.
Measure the changes
Key metrics to track the impact include employee sentiments and engagement. The objective is to develop relevant DE&I reports that will monitor the changes and drive meaningful progress to establish a diverse work culture.
Organisations can look beyond pragmatism to evaluate KPIs like productivity and profitability, realign the talent assessment methods, and define outcomes of specific learning and development programmes.
Why is the problem not getting addressed?
Larger organisations invest in being legally compliant and mitigate future DE&I debacles stemming from gender biases, racially or religiously charged incidents that lead to complaints and protests and may culminate into large-scale resignations and tarnished image as an employer. But that does not help society as a whole.
Also Read: Why we cannot talk of diversity without inclusion
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) employ two-thirds of the total workforce in the EU, half in the US, and 98 per cent of all Australian businesses!
SMEs often fail to see the benefits and relevance of diversity and find the implementation overwhelming.
The absence of formal human resource expertise often leads to low awareness amongst business owners and employees.
Hence, the struggle for businesses, the authorities, and society continues, and innumerable cases of biases never get addressed. Often practices like tokenism leave the workforce more segregated and dissatisfied.
Can technology solve the problem?
While various technology startups are actively resolving critical societal challenges like drug development, crime prevention, and agricultural yield, when it comes to DE&I, there are fewer early research and market applications.
A group of global experts in artificial intelligence, lawyers, and software developers is working together to develop a platform called KarmaV that can help organisations improve their diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies, monitor performance, and mitigate unconscious hiring decisions.
Ground-up development of algorithms based on linear explainable models is implementing fairness and ethics in the recruitment process.
Organisations can improve their diversity score and reduce hiring costs simultaneously by being more accessible to underrepresented groups and evaluating applications unbiasedly. The objective is not to create a tool that enhances the organisation’s public appearance by making lofty promises or suggesting knee-jerk actions but to build a highly-productive and engaged heterogeneous team.
Concluding thoughts
If DE&I technology can solve more existential business challenges, like profitability and talent acquisition or retention, rather than generating results that turn out to be more smoke and mirrors, both enterprises and small and medium-sized businesses will adopt it to thrive.
Developing value and delivering tangible outcomes for the early adopters should be the primary focus for the solution providers to create a lasting positive impact on the whole society.
–
Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page
Image credit: Canva Pro
The post Building a diverse and inclusive workplace sidestepping tokenism appeared first on e27.