xxxix) Encourage Diversity

Diversity should go beyond just race, age and gender, and include experience, expertise and ways of thinking.

"...the issue of diversity is not just about encouraging more women......it's also about hiring people of different ages, socio-economic backgrounds and cultures and with different qualifications..."

Yolanda Redrup 2016

Diversity is more than gender, ethnicity, generational, etc, it is about a range of perspectives, point of view, ideas, etc plus experiences and personality. The greater the range to choose from, the more chance of selecting the most appropriate solutions.

Need to understand how to encourage diversity. Decades of social science research has shown that you won't get people on side by blaming and shaming them, and then re-training them (Frank Dobbin et al, 2016). Most diversity programs are based on a training and legalistic grievance framework. Yet they are not increasing diversity nor reducing bias in recruitment, promotion, etc. In fact, there is research suggesting that this type of training can activate biases rather than reduce them, and that a legalistic grievance framework will push the diversity issues underground. While people can be easily taught to respond correctly to a questionnaire about bias, they soon forget the right answers; the positive effect of diversity training is at best short-term. Voluntary training works better than mandatory training.

Training to improve diversity by focusing on unconscious bias
"...bias and stereotype is in our natural, evolutionary defence, a mechanism that goes back to our early roots: the primitive man saw a snake, he didn't have time determine whether it was poisonous or harmless; his brain said snake! and he reacted. Our brains today are taking more than 11 million pieces of information at any given moment; because we can only process around 40 of those consciously, our non-conscious mind takes over, using biases and stereotypes and patterns to filter out noise......snap judgements are usually biased..."
Liza Mundy, 2017

The traditional 'sensitivity training' to encourage diversity in the 1980s and 90s usually was confrontational; people were made to listen to somebody telling them how they should behave and act. It usually provoked a negative response from participants, ie I'll do the opposite!!!

Some research has shown
"...telling participants that many people hold stereotypes may be more likely to exhibit bias......even just talking too much about gender inequality can serve to normalise it..."
Michelle M Duguid & Melissa C Thomas-Hunt as quoted by Liza Mundy, 2017

Generally linking financial incentives, like bonuses, to meeting diversity targets works.

In fact, organisations get better results when they ease up on the control tactics. Better results occur when there is increased on-the-job contact with minority workers. One way to establish more contact is to develop self-managed teams which allow people of different roles and functions to work together. This will increase contact amongst diverse groups of people because specialties within the organisation are still divided along racial, ethnic, gender, etc lines. Having people work side-by-side breaks down stereotypes.

Other ways include mentoring, regularly rotating management trainees within the organisation, social accountability (plays on the need to look good in the eyes of colleagues/peers), appointing a diversity manager (can prompt managers to consider diversity in their decision-making), etc.

An indication of lack of diversity can be the use of nicknames. Nicknames can create familiarity and favouritism amongst those who have nicknames and create an exclusion zone against those who don't.

Studies have shown that decision-making improves when there are diverse perspectives included. Also, people who experienced diversity first-hand improve their cognitive skills and intellectual self-confidence How to improve cultural diversity

i) Leaders have skin in the game (most male senior executives have women who are important in their lives like mothers, wives/partners, daughters, nieces, etc)

ii) Collect data (how do staff identify their cultural, etc backgrounds)

iii) Accountability & Targets (targets are important stepping stone to cultural change)

iv) Tackle Bias & Discrimination (question the assumptions behind your decision-making, especially around selecting/promoting staff)

v) Cultivate Diverse Leaders (promote professional development of staff from diverse backgrounds so that they can reach their full potential)

vi) Be Prepared to Stand up and Speak Out (for those under-represented be prepared to support and fight for equal treatment)
(sources: Hannah Tattersalls, 2016a; Frank Dobbin & Alexandra Kalev, 2016)