Trump has initiated a series of actions aimed at dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within the federal government. On January 20, he signed Executive Order 14151, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” directing the Office of Management and Budget to terminate all DEI-related mandates and programs across federal agencies.
The following day, he issued Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which prohibits federal departments from contracting with private organizations that enforce DEI, effectively rescinding affirmative action requirements in government contracting established since 1965.
Trump has also announced that the federal government would recognize only two genders, male and female.
Trump has vowed to “create a society that is blind to color and based on merit”. Like many things Trump does and says, this thinking is inherently flawed. Diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or DEI, ensure you’re hiring and promoting based on merit and not physical characteristics.
Why DEI programs are necessary
We need programs that create diversity in the workforce because underrepresented groups are, well, underrepresented. We aren’t tapping into the merit that exists in those groups.
For example, women occupy just 10% of the CEO positions at S&P 500 companies. It’s not because men are smarter, or more ambitious, or better qualified, or have more merit. According to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, it’s because 90% of successors to departing CEOs already have connections to the S&P 500 firm or the board when the time to hire a new CEO arrives. Spoiler alert – those connections are men.
This same study finds that S&P 500 boards actually prefer to hire women, but the challenge of locating female candidates is expensive and so the men who already have close ties win the positions.
One way to overcome the shortage of women in the CEO talent pool is to locate women lower in the organization and ensure they have the same opportunities as men to rise to the top and be in those circles with the men – that is, have a DEI program. When a qualified woman goes on leave to either spend time with her new baby or for medical reasons related to pregnancy or birth, for example, she may be overlooked when she returns because she’s missed some important opportunities to shine while she was gone.
An effective DEI program could help her overcome that.
Not because she gets special treatment just for being a woman, but because as a person who’s as qualified as a man she’s entitled to the same opportunities as men who don’t take leave to have babies. And, if she lives in one of the 12 states that have abortion bans, she may suffer medical problems that could be addressed with abortion, but will be forced to carry the baby anyway and miss out on even more opportunities to prove her worth.
To suggest that women and men with the same merit have, and will continue to have, equal opportunities without DEI is absolutely ludicrous. We’re already so far apart – as evidenced in the everlasting wage disparity of 84 cents for every dollar – and the dismantling of DEI programs just pushes us back even further.
The business case for diversity and equity
I wish I didn’t need to make a business case but because the notion of offering everyone the same opportunities is lost on so many, I’m going to. This article summarizes a bunch of the research on this topic. Here’s some highlights:
- The World Economic Forum research shows companies with above-average diversity scores drive 45% average revenue from innovation, compared to those with below-average diversity scores driving only 26%.
- A McKinsey & Company study showed that companies in the top 25% for racial/ethnic and gender diversity were respectively 36% and 25% more likely to have superior financial returns.
- Great Place to Work research showed that employees in a diverse and inclusive company are 5.4 times as likely to want to stay for a long tenure. (This is important because turnover is expensive in lost productivity, and training, recruiting and hiring costs.)
- A study from Harvard Business Review found that cognitively diverse teams find solutions faster by trading new ways of problems-solving. (While cognitive diversity can be present in homogeneous teams, it’s more likely to be present, or at least present to a greater degree, in diverse teams.)
Additionally, an organization not focused on DEI will harm its ability to expand its market.
If everyone thinks the same about customers, and thinks about the same types of customers, how can the organization grow? And so, without DEI initiatives consumers’ lives will change, too. But not for the better.
For example, a female friend of mine owns and runs a successful 7-figure business. Her husband has his own job and stays out of hers. When she applied for a line of credit, however, the bank told her she needed her husband’s signature – a cosigner to guarantee the loan. That’s probably because the interest rate was high – women-owned business loans average 2.38% higher than those offered to male-owned firms.
And compared to white-owned businesses, Black-owned businesses are charged 3.09% more in interest, Hispanic-owned firms 2.91%, and Asian-owned 2.88%. That’s because systemic inequities exist, not because this group has less merit than white people.
My friend made a stink and the bank countered by offering her double the line of credit she was asking for without requiring her husband’s signature. Obviously, she had the financials and proof that she could handle the line of credit as the business owner, or they wouldn’t have come back so strongly to rectify their mistake.
Equity doesn’t steal jobs from those with merit, it gives those with merit opportunities to have jobs
DEI programs are also about giving underrepresented people the same opportunities as the majority, er, white men. Without DEI programs, white people will continue to claim better employment opportunities.
Harvard Business School proved this point when researchers created resumes for Black and Asian applicants, and sent them out for 1,600 entry-level jobs in the US. Some resumes left applicants’ minority status intact and some were scrubbed of all racial clues. Although qualifications were identical on the two resumes, Black candidates had a 25% call back rate on their whitened resumes, versus 10% on their true resume. Asian candidates received 21% call backs versus 11.5%, respectively.
In short, merit was the same between the two resumes the candidates sent out – it was the lack of focus on equity that kept those qualified candidates from employment when they submitted the resume that truly represented them. DEI programs are needed as employers continue to root out bias with applicant tracking systems and hopefully, fair and equitable hiring practices.
Inclusivity isn’t a diversity thing, it’s a basic human need
Inclusivity is a basic human need. It’s not limited to diversity initiatives. Regardless of physical characteristics, we all require psychological safety and inclusivity to be our best selves. You may remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, for example, which highlights that once people’s physical needs and safety needs are met, they need to feel like they belong and are valued in order to have healthy self-esteem. That healthy self-esteem is what allows them to be the best version of themselves, what Maslow called “self-actualized.”
In business, feelings of belonging and the resulting positive influence on self-esteem translates to more innovation, better customer service, better quality work, and all around thriving employees who bring positive vibes to work.
Google’s Project Aristotle found that teams with an environment focused on value and respect – where people could speak up and share ideas and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or humiliation – were more successful than those who didn’t.
As Amy Edmondson put it in her book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth:
What they had discovered was that even the extremely smart, high-powered employees at Google needed a psychologically safe work environment to contribute the talents they had to offer. The team also found four other factors that helped explain team performance – clear goals, dependable colleagues, personally meaningful work, and a belief that the work has impact. As Rozovsky put it, however, “psychological safety was by far the most important…it was the underpinning of the other four.”
That’s right folks, even people with all that merit need to feel valued and respected at work.
Social sensitivity, a concept closely related to psychological safety, is the ability to understand others’ thoughts and feelings, and it too is a predictor of team performance. Of course, having some DEI training would assist people in honing in on the skills of paying attention to how people react, asking questions, and responding to their needs. We need to spend time including people and understanding them in order to have social sensitivity.
Interestingly, as of 2023 we here at Civility Partners have had many requests for training programs on being an upstander when witnessing toxic behavior of any kind or level, and creating trust and psychological safety, specifically because we are not DEI experts. Organizations seemed to be realizing that people were burned out on DEI programs, and that because speaking up when you witness gossip or other non-diversity related behaviors is important too, they addressed the topics with us – who build positive thriving workplace cultures.
So while some organizations are backing out of DEI initiatives altogether, hopefully they’re still offering programs that can bring people together, create space for real conversations about how each person experiences the world, and ultimately build a strong and cohesive team because of it.
DEI needed if hiring on merit
A focus on DEI ensures you’re hiring, training and promoting the most qualified person – the one with the most merit. Without DEI it’s entirely possible you miss out on that person due to biases and established company norms that perpetuate hiring and promoting sameness.
Once you’ve hired a diverse candidate, your focus on equity ensures you give that person the same opportunities as the majority group, so that their merit can shine.
And inclusion means that you bring them into the fold so all that merit can be tapped into for decision making, innovation, and building your market share.
Merit and diversity are not mutually exclusive. To suggest they are is repulsive.
