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COURSE PROJECT — PART ONE

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Work

Answer the following questions, using as much space as you need.

How would you describe the difference between “diversity” and “inclusion”? Articulate it in your own words here.

Answer here…

How are diversity and inclusion efforts talked about within your workplace? Is diversity valued? Is inclusion something people discuss and strategize about? Explain your experience and observations.

Answer here…

Which IAT test(s) did you choose to take? Do you think the assessment results held any truth or insight for you? Explain your reaction to your results.

Answer here…

Have you become aware of any stereotypes that are prevalent in your field or firm that affect the way decisions are made? Explain what you have observed.

Answer here…

Part Two

Examining Methods of Fostering Inclusion in Work Groups

Answer the following questions, using as much space as you need.

1. After completing this module, what ideas do you have for how managers can contribute to fostering inclusion in work groups?

Answer here…

1. Identify 2-3 issues that you think might be inhibiting full inclusion in your work group. What do you think might be lacking?

Answer here…

1. Review Professor Nishii’s strategies for facilitating inclusion and trust in groups. Identify the one strategy that you think will be most helpful. Offer a brief rationale for how you think it will help in your particular circumstances.

Answer here…

1. Outline the steps you plan to take to engage in controlled processing, as Professor Nishii described. How will this help you to reject stereotyping? Draw from the teaching content to support your plan.

Answer here…

1. Describe a time when you have observed someone who was internally motivated to avoid prejudice. What did you observe? What evidence do you have for your conclusion that the motivator was internal?

Answer here…

1. Offer an example of an external motivator put into place by an organization to motivate others to avoid applying stereotypes or prejudicial behavior. What have you seen?

Answer here…

Part Three

Assessing the Sources of Inclusion

Answer the following questions, using as much space as you need.

1. Review the work you did in the three assessments in this module. What surprises did you find? Describe your outcomes or findings here.

Answer here…

1. You have answered questions about the three levers of inclusion experiences: organizational, work-group, and immediate supervisor. Answer the following questions to identify gaps for inclusion:

Answer here…

To what extent….	Provide your evidence:
Does the organization's communications-related inclusion align with your own personal experiences of inclusion?	Answer here…
Are managers within your organization consistently committed to fostering inclusion?	Answer here…
Are your organization's D&I policies/practices consistently implemented within your organization?	Answer here…
Does the organization follow through with its claims about the value it places on inclusion by assessing progress against inclusion goals?	Answer here…
Does the organization demonstrate its commitment to inclusion by holding managers accountable for fostering inclusion?	Answer here…
Can employees count on a consistent message when it comes to inclusion?	Answer here…
Does your manager act in ways that help to uphold and reinforce the organization's inclusion values?	Answer here…
Do employees’ inclusion experiences vary significantly depending on the units in which they work?	Answer here…

1. When you completed the three assessments in this module, did you identify any areas for improvement? What were they?

Answer here…

1. Using the space below, draft a “memo” to your supervisor or manager in which you outline your ideas for improving diversity and inclusion efforts. Provide evidence from the work you’ve done in this course.

Answer here…

To submit this assignment, please refer to the instructions in the course.

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Work Cornell University ILR School

© 2022 Cornell University

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Assignment 1

Assessing the Sources of Inclusion

Instructions:

To prepare for this Assignment, pay particular attention to the following Learning Resources:

· Review this week’s Learning Resources, especially:

· Lecture – Distinguish Between D&I See Word doc .

· Lecture – Examine Methods of Fostering Inclusion See Word doc .

· Lecture – Assess the Sources of Inclusion See Word doc .

· Course Assignment 1 – See Word doc

· List of Strategies for Facilitating – See pdf file

· Visit the Implicit Associations Test (IAT) About the IAT (harvard.edu)

· View Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Video – https://youtu.be/dLAi78hluFc

Assignment: Complete “Course Assignment 1” document in its entirety

You will need Course Assignment 1 document to complete assignment – See Word doc

Part One:

In this part, you will draw critical distinctions between diversity and inclusion. Reflecting on the IAT assessment you chose to take, you will report on your experience with stereotypes and consider how you can take steps to consciously avoid applying stereotypes when making decisions.

Part Two:

In this part, you will further your efforts at examining diversity and inclusion with a focus on the work-group level. You will describe methods of reducing prejudice and improving psychological safety in the work group.

Part Three:

In this part, you will assess the three sources of inclusion examined in this module, and you will draft a memo to your boss in which you outline your ideas for improving diversity and inclusion efforts. 

· Provide comprehensive statements regarding the topic

· Clearly articulates and fully addresses all required questions.

· No plagiarism

· APA citing

· 3-4 paragraphs

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Distinguish Between Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity" and "inclusion" are not synonymous terms, and in this module, you will explore the different meanings of the two words from a practical point of view with Professor Nishii. You will have an opportunity to review a classic case in which the effects of labeling and stereotypes were observed among children and discuss the outcomes with your peers. You will investigate how stereotypes influence people's thinking and perceptions, including "positive" stereotypes such as labeling people "high potentials." You will also examine recommended methods for reducing prejudice and applying stereotypes to decision making.

What's the distinction between diversity and inclusion? It's important to listen carefully to conversations about diversity and inclusion. Although they mean different things in practice — and inclusion mission statements acknowledge that this is the case — the terms "diversity" and "inclusion" are often used interchangeably. Many organizations have yet to adopt practices that truly promote inclusion.

Video transcript:

So the question that I just posed to you is whether or not there's a distinction between diversity and inclusion. Everyone refers to the two simultaneously. We are even saying D & I when we refer to this space and in my own personal experiences, talking to people who practice D & I in organizations, it seems to me, when we start to talk about it, there is a distinction that's being made between diversity and inclusion, with the idea that inclusion includes more of the intangibles. This idea of creating the kind of environment where people can be successful, where people feel valued in their work. But as my conversations continue, I start to feel like, actually, inclusion is a very slippery construct. There's a saying that I've heard, which I think is pretty, pretty, appropriate here. The idea that trying to define inclusion is like trying to nail jello to the wall, it's very difficult. And, so, what I want to do is really try to clarify what we mean by that, because often what I find is that as we talk about inclusion, and as I ask questions about what companies are doing to practice or facilitate inclusion, it ends up feeling like we're talking about classic diversity management again. That the focus ends up being on things like targeted recruiting, mentoring programs, being very careful about tracking pay and promotion rates, and providing diversity training and employee resource groups and the like. And so, it starts to feel like maybe it's old wine in new bottles. That is, we've been doing these things for quite a while. These practices have been in place and have been considered best practices for quite a while. So, what is it that's different, about the inclusion tag that we're now adding to the conversation? Do these practices really help to promote inclusion? Once we define what we mean by inclusion, I hope that we'll start to see that maybe these practices alone are not sufficient for also cultivating inclusion in organizations.

Diversity With Inclusion

Throughout this course, you will hear from several industry leaders from the field of diversity and inclusion. In this section, three leaders talk about expanding the focus from diversity to inclusion within their organizations. Listen for cues about where they and their organizations are in the journey from diversity to inclusion — in particular, how they define and operationalize inclusion.

Note: The job titles listed below were held by our experts at the times of their interviews.

Ana Duarte-McCarthy, managing director and chief diversity officer at Citi since 2002, is responsible for the development and integration of Citi’s global workforce diversity strategy for hiring and developing diverse talent, fostering an inclusive work environment, and ensuring management accountability.

Elizabeth Nieto assumed the role of global chief diversity and inclusion officer at MetLife in June 2012. Since then, the company has defined a new global D&I strategy, launched the Global D&I Council chaired by the MetLife CEO, and designed a four-year implementation plan focused on the development of women globally as well as on regional initiatives (e.g., people with different abilities, emerging talent, U.S. veterans, LGBT).

Lucida Plummer leads the Diversity Business Resource Networks and the Local Inclusion Action Teams at MetLife. As such, she's responsible for defining the strategy and ensuring the operating model for all of the networks in line with the Global Diversity & Inclusion office and the entire enterprise.

Video transcript:

It has been interesting the evolution of diversity and the inclusion of inclusion in part of this practice. What we learn is just having people that were different was not enough, if they were not engaged in the company. If they didn't feel that they had a say; they could influence the organization. So that adding of the word inclusion really changed the practice, not just by bringing people into their organization but developing, creating advancement and retention of those people that were different than the normal of each one of the organizations. 

I believe that in our case at MetLife, we also evolved and in the last couple of years, we had looked at different ways of creating inclusion. Mostly on giving managers the tools to re-think about the way they behave. We usually say, you don't do diversity and inclusion on Monday morning, and then you manage the rest of the week. You really do inclusion every day as a leader when you interact with your employees, with your teams. So, that's how we're talking about diversity and inclusion differently at MetLife. >> And I think that Elizabeth is right. The shift from just on diversity and why we're talking about inclusion, really has started to pull in a lot of different components of what you want to do with it, the toolkit. Breaking down, I think the misconceptions that people have had in the past about what it all means and why we're doing it, why it's important? We've been doing a lot of work around unconscious bias, which to me has really taken diversity and inclusion as a practice to another level. 

So that people understand not just what people perceive as the nice to do, the right thing to do, the politically correct thing to do, but the reasons why we are who we are because at the end of the day, it's not about having people not be who they are in the workplace, it's about celebrating the differences that people bring to the workplace, but understanding where everyone's coming from at the same time. >> I also think that inclusion has brought the white male into the conversation. Before, they felt that they were not part of this. And now when we're talking about inclusion, they see their role. And when we're talking about diversity, we're bringing diversity in the broader sense. So it's not about one characteristic, it's everything that you bring. It is to say bringing the whole self. And inclusion allows us to create that conversation that this not for some people, this is really for the organization. >> In the last decade there's been a big push to move from talking about diversity practices to diversity and inclusion, and I've been at Citi nearly 20 years. So in looking at the work we've done across those 20 years, the definite shift to inclusion has been more focusing on looking at the mix, which is what diversity has historically looked at. Who are you bringing in? Is that mix bringing in significant representation from the available labor pool? Does it take into consideration groups that historically have been underrepresented? And then the shift to inclusion really supported a mind shift to looking at how are people being perceived? Are they being fully developed? Are there any roadblocks in the way? And looking at it more proactively, sometimes I'd come to talk to people and they would immediately think it's like an audit. Let me get my metrics out, let me show you what we're doing. And what I want to talk to them about are people. How are these people doing? What's going on within the organization? What's the environment like? Let's look at who's being promoted. What's the succession plan look like? Are women part of that? What other diversity is part of that? And so it starts to look at it as a broader ecosystem. So I think it's an important shift because historically again, looking at making sure we're making these good faith efforts. Around the world generally that's women, and then as you start to look at different local countries, there are different groups that might be diverse in that country and historically haven't been part of the labor mix and then once individuals are in, now it's inclusion around are people feeling respected, valued? Are they feeling like they look up and see people that they can see as role models and not necessarily people that look like them but people who clearly value them.

 So it's an interesting shift and it's a very important one. Otherwise it's really a check-the-box exercise around ensuring that the mix is there, and not really looking at the broader impact of bringing people in who >> One of the things that we've been doing differently to support inclusion is, we're using the word first and foremost. The aspect of including the word creates conversation so, unless a why are you in diversity and inclusion? Why the semantics? 

So adding the context of the language is helpful because people start to then understand what it is in terms of this continuum. So, we bring in this diverse mix of individuals but the inclusion aspects look at ensuring the environment is supportive and also how we approach the work. So, a lot of what we do now focuses around development of the workforce and the lens that we bring to it is, looking at individuals across various strands, characteristics and understanding the various characteristics and how they might be supported more effectively. So as an example in the last number of years in the United States, there's been a real thrust on looking at the opportunity to recruit military veterans. So as we look at our recruitment and sort of recruitment programs, leadership development programs, even our employee resource groups or networks, are they groups that can just naturally bring in a population that's somewhat different at Citi? Or is there an opportunity to differentiate? So one of the things we've seen in particular around military veterans has been a fabulous growth of employee resource groups focused on military veterans. Open to all employees but there are individuals who become part of it. They themselves might be members of former military servicemen and women. They might be individuals who have children deployed. They might be individuals who had military service members in their family or they might be individuals who just want to learn more about the military or get more involved in for example, community efforts. So that's a pretty good departure from where I'd say we were ten years ago where if someone had said, "What are you doing in the US around military veterans?" We would have had a focus on recruitment, in particular around ensuring just sort of that regulatory purview and what are we doing to support military veterans. We would not have had all those other nuances around the work that we're doing. So I think that sort of illustrates how inclusion has become much more focused on not only what we're doing across the common community, but also what are the things we can do to support these characteristics that are increasingly changing as we go through the years. >> Some of the awards that the process of going through an award that exist there in the market, is important because it gives you an idea of what other companies are doing, as well at some of what the media and the external customer is expecting of our organization. So. It is the process of going through the award that for me, it's the learning for the organization. Looking at what other companies are doing from an employee resource group, can we be looking at that and learning from that. What are they doing from a communication perspective from their leaders? So the process of going through awards are important if you take that as a learning process for your organization versus a check-in-the-box for the organization.

 

Defining Equity

Equity theory refers to people's desire for their inputs — their time, energy, effort, etc. — to be matched equivalently to their outputs; e.g., achievements, growth, validation, acceptance. In terms of diversity and inclusion, equity and equity theory are pivotal because they create a framework for showing how marginalized workers often see lower outputs compared to their peers.

Video Transcript:

Equity theory. So equity theory was first introduced back in 1963 by John Adams. He was a workplace behavioral psychologist; really famous. Equity theory is one of the most well-known theories of motivation. The basic premise is pretty simple. The idea is that people are really attentive to how fair or equitable their outputs are relative to their inputs. The greater people's assessments of equity, the more motivated they are to give it their all at work. However, when people perceive that their inputs-to-outputs ratio is imbalanced — in particular, when they're putting in more than they're getting out — they're motivated to try to achieve balance. Usually, people do this by adjusting their inputs over which they have more control. This often translates into lower motivation to expend effort at work; that is, people tend to withdraw from their work when they feel that things are inequitable. When you think about this input-to-output ratio, you can think about it quite broadly. Inputs include all the things that we bring to our jobs or contribute to a particular task or project; for example, our effort, our energy, expertise, our relevant past experiences, our commitment, positive attitude and a willingness to cooperate with other people. Outputs generally consist of both the formal and informal rewards that matter at work. They include tangible outcomes like pay, job growth, promotions, and job security, as well as less tangible but really important work outcomes like validation and respect, recognition, psychological meaningfulness of the job, and a sense of achievement and fulfillment. Assessments of equity or inequity are based not just on our own assessments of our input-to-output ratio but also on social comparisons; in other words, how our own input-to-output ratio compares to that of others. People compare themselves to others both within their current organization and sometimes also to others outside of their organization. Interestingly, people tend not to notice imbalances that are in their favor. In other words, they're less likely to think it's unfair when they receive greater outputs relative to their inputs when they compare themselves to others.

Many organizations and individuals confuse the terms "equity" and "equality." While these terms are similar, their meanings are different, especially when they are put into action. Equality refers to giving everyone the same opportunities and materials without taking other factors into consideration. Equity refers to giving everyone resources and opportunities based on their circumstances in order for everyone to achieve a fair and equal end result. This means that equity takes into account people's experiences with privilege and oppression and how those factors have influenced their lived experiences and opportunities, including the inputs that they could reasonably be expected to bring to bear. 

Organizations can fall into the trap of encouraging equality over equity. Equality can feel simpler to achieve because it isn't specialized; the result, however, is that providing opportunities and resources through a lens of equality often perpetuates existing inequalities. By committing to scrutinizing existing practices to identify how they may be inequitable for some and making needed changes, your organization can actively improve the experiences and outcomes of individuals with historically marginalized social identities and improve their overall sense of belonging and inclusion.

This same principle also applies to leadership. It is myopic to expect that the same leadership behaviors will have an equivalent impact on experiences of inclusion across individuals, regardless of their social identities. Using an equality-based or "neutral" approach, a leader might invite employees to contribute by saying, "I encourage everyone to speak up." Yet this fails to recognize that some employees experience greater barriers to psychological safety due to their marginalized identities — for example, the threat of being more heavily scrutinized or having their competence doubted, or feeling chronically unseen and unappreciated at work — that make it riskier for them to voice their perspectives freely. An inclusive leader facilitates equitable access to experiences of inclusion by recognizing and dismantling these barriers.

Where Adams's Theory of Equity Falls Short

Adams's theory of equity only tells part of the story about equity and its relationship to bias. Adams's theory does not account for the fact that inputs themselves can be biased — that inputs can contain bias or be impacted by bias. Outputs are also subject to unconscious bias, particularly when those outputs are impacted by human intervention.

Video Transcript:

In its most basic form, Adams's equity theory is a rather simple and elegant theory. However, we now know that it falls short in some important ways. First, it assumes that people's inputs, including their actual contributions or performance, are not themselves biased. It doesn't take into account the fact that there are factors outside of an individual's control that shape their inputs in fundamental ways. Unless we correct for prior sources of inequity, existing disparities tend to be perpetuated. An example would be to use the absolute value of the rigor of the coursework that a student has completed in high school as an indicator of their worthiness to be admitted into a university. But this wouldn't be fair because the types of courses, including the availability of advanced, rigorous coursework, are highly dependent on the wealthiness of the neighborhood in which the school is based and that a student happened to attend. A more equitable input to consider would be to consider the rigor of the coursework that an applicant chose to complete relative to what was available to them. Another example might be to hire recruits out of college based on their prior work experiences or internships, assuming that these experiences reflect a candidate's ability and their motivation unaffected by their circumstances. But it fails to acknowledge that people's past experiences are heavily influenced by factors that are outside of their control; for example, the career networks that might be available to them based on the college that they attended or through their families, or familial obligations that may have precluded them from being able to take really good internships because they were away from home. 

A second way that Adams's equity theory falls short is that it fails to acknowledge that the input-to-output equation is rigged. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that there are factors that act as multipliers of that throughput process between inputs and outputs for some individuals, but other factors act as inhibitors of this process. This is because the way that inputs are perceived by others is shaped by historical and systematic privileges and barriers. For example, we know from research that evidence of competence that's demonstrated by people who are role incongruent — that is, they're different from the prototypical person in a role — their competence tends to be doubted or more heavily scrutinized. While their success tends to be attributed to situational factors like luck or to really great help from other people, their failures tend to be attributed to them. But the opposite is true for people who are role congruent. Attributions of success are made to them as people and failures are attributed to things that may have been outside of their control. What does this mean? This means that the same inputs will be discounted for rule-incongruent individuals compared to role-congruent individuals. That means it will lead to lower outputs for them. Again, it's when these factors are outside of the actor's control that inequities are exacerbated.

Whereas both privileged and marginalized individuals can be the target of individual and personal sources of discrimination, the same is not true of institutional and structural sources of discrimination.

Discrimination at the structural and institutional levels can be either intentional or assumed to be neutral, just like at the individual level. Intentional structural discrimination is when policies that are created and implemented by the dominant group are designed to have a harmful or disempowering impact on minoritized groups. An example is when the intentional reduction of governmental oversight of voting districts makes it possible for states to purge the names of some registered voters in an attempt to bias election outcomes.

There are also institutional policies that may be assumed to be neutral but that have a differential impact on groups due to pre-existing structural inequalities. An example is when organizations set the salary of new hires based on their prior salary or their "salary expectations," which ends up carrying past wage discrimination forward to future jobs.

Forming Stereotypes

The video "Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes" demonstrated how feelings of belonging and uniqueness influence behavior. This example applies to adult behavior as well.

Video Transcript:

So, what did we see in this video about the Brown eyes, Blue Eyes experiment? What we saw is that in the beginning, the children differed based on whether or not they had brown eyes or blue eyes but there was no social value or significance associated with having blue or brown eyes. People weren't motivated or concerned, or motivated to group people into brown versus blue-eyed groups. It didn't matter to the children whether or not they fit into either category. 

But as soon as the teacher Jane Elliott attached some social value or significance to having either brown eyes or blue eyes, even when this distinction is largely arbitrary in that it's not really associated with differences and competence, the teacher was still able to attach the social value to the categories and as soon as she did, it altered the way that the children interacted with each other. The children became motivated to categorize themselves and others into the groupings, either the higher or their lower status groupings, and they started to see each other not as the people that they were, the friends that they were, but as representatives of these categories, the representatives of the stereotypes that the teacher had established about brown-eyed people versus blue-eyed people. And what we started to see was that strong ingroups versus outgroups formed and it was the us-versus-them effect. Research shows that these stereotypes that we have about different groups tend to form pretty quickly. They tend to be pretty stable even in children. For example, research on gender stereotypes shows that children as young as two, three, and four are already have very clear stereotypes about what girls are like and what boys are like, or what girls should be like and what boys should be like. As early as children can speak, for example, boys tend to talk very aggressive stories, 87 percent of the time. Whereas, girls tell aggressive stories only 17 percent of the time. So, they're acting in ways that are consistent with the stereotypes that they have about how boys versus girls should act and when children age two to four were asked to work together for rewards, boys tended to use physical tactics 50 times more often than girls. Again, reinforcing the power that these stereotypes can have on people's behavior. So, stereotypes are thought of as a type of schema. They're merely a cognitive or knowledge structure in the brain, so you can see here in the graphic. What happens is that every time a particular trait or characteristic is associated with the label, so here you can see the F is meant to denote females and the M is meant to denote males, so, take for example that the label female is associated with the trait emotional or dependent. Every time that somebody sees this association between the label and the trait, it becomes strengthened. And so, different socialization experiences, different exposure to the media, can repetitively reinforce these associations until they basically become so strong and so reinforced that they become automatic. So, what happens is that the moment somebody sees the label female, or sees somebody who would be categorized into that label, female, the traits that are associated with that label automatically become assigned to that person. This is what some people call top-down information processing such that, as soon as we see somebody, we as people tend to have a need to categorize them. And once categorized, we use that label and we apply all the different information that is part of that label to that person regardless of how well the individual actually fits that label. Psychologists link this back actually to a basic human need and animals do this too. It's the basic tendency to have to categorize somebody as friend or foe. So, we take visual cues and we have a need as people to categorize them. So, it's thought to be an almost automatic process that happens in the brain.

How Stereotypes Influence People

Key Points

The labels we attach to people will influence how both we and others see them.

Stereotypes influence what we encode, what we notice, and what we remember.

We end up seeing what we expect to see.

Stereotypes influence what or whom we see. The most prominent physical features that a person has — for example, their sex and their ethnicity or race — trigger the most rapid categorization. And once categorized schema content is applied, that's who we see, regardless of how similar that person actually is to the stereotype. The danger is that it leads us to assume things that we might not actually see and make comments like, "They're all alike." It also prevents us from recognizing the variability that actually exists across people in a particular category because we're assigning all the characteristics or traits of that category to all the individuals who become labeled as belonging to that category.

We tend to notice information that is consistent with our schema, and we tend to disregard or not notice information that is inconsistent with our schema. Unsurprisingly, it's more difficult for us to process information that is not consistent with the schema. What we see in research is that if you provide somebody with a label, a schema, or a stereotype prior to exposing them to somebody, or to some stimuli, it then influences what information they notice.

The labels we attach to people carry power to influence how we perceive them in terms of their competence, their behavior, and their capabilities. Research has been done on trainees labeled "high potential" vs. "average." Trainees who had been given the "high potential" label had much more positive interactions with the team leaders; those labels influenced the ways that leaders perceived and interpreted the trainees' behavior. They saw behavior in the trainees that they thought was consistent with being high potential and the leaders invested more effort in coaching those trainees. In turn, the trainees enjoyed that interaction more. This is the power of labels.

This is the power of self-fulfilling prophecies as well: We end up seeing what we expect to see. And it can end up having a very profound impact on what we see as actual performance in that these self-fulfilling prophecies end up leading to behavior or incidents that confirm our stereotypes. Stereotypes influence what we remember — not just what we encode and what we notice, but what we recall about people. People therefore tend to more easily recall information that is consistent with the schema but we tend to have more difficulty remembering irrelevant information.

People also tend to recall more details about ingroup members and have a harder time remembering things about outgroup members. Research shows it's easier to remember negative things about outgroup members, and it's also easier to remember ways in which these outgroup members are different, rather than similar, to members of the ingroup.

So when you consider the implications of this within an organizational context, you could think about, for example, what an interviewer is able to remember, after speaking to a person who is similar to or different from them, about how well that person might fit the job. Or when someone is doing a performance evaluation, they might be able to recall more positive things about a person who is similar to them and more negative things about a person who is dissimilar to them.

Many scholars argue that these seemingly small biases in perception and recall can end up snowballing over the course of a career so that performance evaluations in one year end up influencing evaluations in another year. Perhaps, over time, these unconscious biases help explain some of the gaps that we see in the representation of women, ethnic minorities, and members of other marginalized groups in senior levels of management.

Reducing Prejudice

Left unchecked, stereotypes or unconscious biases can affect decision making in significant ways, although as Professor Nishii hopes to make clear, that's not necessarily going to be an inevitable outcome. People can actively reject stereotypes, as she discusses here.

Video Transcript:

So talking about the negative effects that stereotypes can have on perception I think can be a little bit depressing. I don't want you to take away from this the idea that if the IAT showed that you have some type of stereotype against some group, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will behave in a prejudiced way against members of that group. Research shows some meta-analyses, studies of studies, show that the relationship or correlation between a particular stereotype and engaging in actual prejudicial members of that group is only 0.27; the highest correlation is a one. So that means that it doesn't necessarily mean that stereotypes lead to prejudice, but they can—they can if the stereotypes are left unchecked. What we know is that difference between prejudiced people and non-prejudiced people is that low-prejudice people engage in controlled processing. This is in contrast to automatic processing. That means that they actively reject stereotypes, the content of these stereotypes and they replace them with more egalitarian thoughts, they replace them with a motivation to try to see what's actually there, how a person actually is instead of allowing their assumptions, the traits that are associated with the stereotyped labels to guide what they see. We have to be aware, however, that if you don't engage in this active controlled processing, then these stereotypes or unconscious biases can affect decision making in significant ways. So, there are a number of ways in which we can motivate people to engage in that controlled processing instead of the automatic processing. Some people also refer to this controlled processing, as bottom-up processing. So you're actually collecting personalized individuating information about a person based on what you see, and you're using that to formulate a more accurate image or understanding of the person. 

And so there are two categories of factors, let's call them, that can influence whether or not somebody engages in that controlled processing. So we've got these external motivators. So external motivators are when you can motivate somebody to avoid prejudice because they feel some sort of obligation to be that way, or because they want to avoid embarrassment or punishment or any sort of other negative consequences. So, we can do this in organizations by holding people accountable for the personnel decisions that they make, reward more positive behavior or penalize negative behavior, so this is really more of a compliance focus. We can also have personnel decisions made by a panel so rather than have a single individual rate somebody in an interview or a training context for example, you have more than one person do it, and so then all the raters are aware that there are also other people rating performance and they're motivated to try to be accurate so they don't look too off base. Also when people know that they will receive receive some feedback on the way that they are evaluating somebody, they tend to try to be more careful because they don't want to receive bad feedback. As you can see, these are all examples of trying to behave—behaving in a certain way because you're trying to control how people will react to the way that you're behaving or to the way that you are evaluating other people. There are also internal motivations for engaging in that controlled processing. So, somebody that is internally motivated wants to be non-prejudiced because it's important in and of itself for them to be that way. So when somebody values that non-prejudicial behavior, for example they value being open minded or they value learning about other people, then they tend to slow down and collect that individuating information that allows them to form a more accurate understanding of the other person. So, we see this happening more when people's outcomes are dependent on somebody else. If what you value, what's important to you, is dependent on somebody else, then having an accurate understanding of that other person becomes much more important. You need to be able to predict the way that they are going to be. You need to be able to coordinate with them better and this produces this motivation for people to slow down, check themselves and make sure that they understand the other person better. When people recognize the costs associated with bias and exclusion, they can also be internally motivated. It could be that they themselves have experienced some form of bias or prejudice and therefore are motivated not to produce that same reaction and other people. Perhaps they've seen other people suffer from bias and inclusion, and therefore don't want to perpetuate it, or it could be also that they have experienced some form of negative or inefficient group dynamics as a result of prejudice and so they realize that that hurts everybody and then become motivated to try to stop that process. Also, when people share stories with each other, when they reveal things about themselves often, also when people make themselves vulnerable to other people, we tend to see that this elicits a good reaction in that it tends to promote liking and trust. And when people reveal more about themselves, then they tend to become more motivated to see that person as the person has revealed themselves and to behave in a way that's fair for that person. And so they tend to start to disregard the stereotype and utilize instead that information that has been shared with them by that person.

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Examine Methods of Fostering Inclusion in Work Groups

Think about what it means for managers to be inclusive with their direct reports or team leaders and foster inclusion within a small work group. What behaviors do they use to promote inclusion? In this module, you will explore some of the recommended strategies that people can use to promote inclusion. You will examine ways to create an inclusive climate and consider how people can bring about more inclusivity in decision making.

Creating an Inclusive Climate

In this series of videos, Professor Nishii examines an inclusive climate from several perspectives and makes some practical recommendations about what people can do to foster inclusion.

Developing Trust Video Transcript:

Psychological safety is a construct that helps to explain the differences that people experience and whether or not, they feel comfortable admitting when they don't know, or taking risks within their work group. Psychological safety refers to the belief that people are safe in taking these risks, and expressing their work-relevant thoughts and feelings. The issue to think about here is if team members can't bring themselves to speak what's on their mind that is they censor themselves, then they won't experience inclusion, nor will the group benefit from their perspectives. If team members don't trust each other, then they're going to waste time and energy thinking about what they should say, and what they shouldn't say, and wonder about the true intentions of their peers when they're interacting with them. In order to actually speak up within a group context, people need to know that even if they make a mistake, if it's a well-intentioned mistake, then others won't think less of them. That they won't be penalized, they won't be resented for saying what they did, and that it's okay for them to ask for help and for them to ask for information or feedback. That's not a sign of weakness that instead, it's actually something that's expected as a part of learning. Within the context of diverse groups, it's essential that people share these expectations about the kind of impact, if any that these cultural differences can can bring to the group. If people value the idea that different perspectives will help the group, this should help to promote psychological safety and help people to feel that it is safe for them to express the perspectives that they have even if they might be counter to those that have been expressed by other people. In order to facilitate psychological safety, one of the most important conditions as I've already alluded to is that, you need to prioritize trust and respect within a group. There are a number of activities that groups often engage in to try to promote trust. It's good to take these or other steps proactively rather than assume that trust will develop well in a natural way. So, you've probably heard of outdoor ropes courses, and maybe you've even done one yourself. 

The purpose of these courses is to take people out of the work group context, and really focus on developing trust across people. Across members of the group. But there are other less physical outdoorsy ways of doing this too. So, one method that is sometimes used in organizations is to create, deliberately create the space for group members to engage in storytelling, or sharing personal information about themselves. So one example is for each group member to answer a set of questions, so here are three questions for that could potentially work. So, one would be very kind of easy introduction into this discussion would be: Where did you grow up? How many kids were in your family? What was the most difficult or important challenge of your childhood? And people then have a chance to tell some story about where they came from, and how they grew up. And in telling that story, often people make themselves vulnerable. And the people then listening, see that, and that tends to promote a sense of liking and a sense of trust. And also, in revealing something about your personal life, people learn to get comfortable being open about other things. So if I can be open about something that was really difficult for me, well then I can be open about something that's happening today at work. And when people share these personal stories, they also develop a deeper understanding of each other, and they start to then be able to interpret their coworkers' behaviors within the context of this more personal information. There are other things that groups can do too. So, during what we call the chartering process, that's when a group comes together, it's important for the group to take the time to establish the goals and expectations that the group has for itself. And in this process, it's important to speak explicitly about psychological safety. For people to establish shared, expectations for the importance of protecting that psychological safety, and for the importance of sharing these dissenting views that we will have this openness to diversity that the diversity of perspectives and ideas. And the group leader, but also, other members of the group can play a very important role in providing kind of real-time permission to group members to continue with that sharing of diverse ideas. To say look, I know we're having a really difficult conversation right now, it's uncomfortable, but this is good. Let's keep going. Let's try to get to the bottom of this. That real-time permission can be more powerful than kind of theoretical abstract permission for the group. And finally, it's important that I've emphasized this several times, but it's important to minimize status differences within the group to the extent possible. What happens when we have status differences is that the people who are in a lower status position tend to censor themselves more. They tend to feel pressure to assimilate, and to the extent that they feel that way, they're less likely to feel safe in expressing any sort of dissenting views. And if that happens, well, we've kind of lost the value in diversity.

Video Transcript – Different Groups

I'd like to talk about climate for inclusion. I'm thinking here about the climate of a work group, rather than the climate of the larger organization, because what we see in research is that the different groups or departments within an organization tend to take on slightly different climates. The construct of climate for inclusion helps to pull together some of the ideas that we've been talking about related to the importance of meaningful interpersonal connections and psychological safety and trust. I think that most people are used to talking about organizational culture. They think of organizational culture as an organization's personality or values. Organizational climate is a related construct, but it's more specific, and it's more strategically focused. So, I'll tell you a little bit about organizational and then move to talking about climate for inclusion more specifically. 

So, climate, organizational climate, refers to the shared meaning that employees attach to the events, policies, practices, and procedures that they experience and what that communicates to them about the behaviors that they see as being rewarded, valued, supported, and expected within the organization. So, climate has a strategic focus. So, in this case we're talking about climate for inclusion. So, it refers to employees' shared perceptions about what the organization's policies and procedures communicate about inclusion, and the behaviors, the inclusive behaviors, that they see as being rewarded and valued and expected of them within their day-to-day work lives. So, climate is created and maintained through a number of different mechanisms. Probably the most noticeable are the policies and practices and structures of the organization. Those that support the formation of a particular type of climate, that is, that support the formation of inclusive climates, including things like reward systems, training content, and the factors that are emphasized in selection and promotion decisions. So, the question is whether or not employees receive the message, through these various organizational practices, that inclusion is indeed a priority for the organization. So, this is akin to the first source of inclusion that we've talked about, that is, that organizational policies and practices communicate something very important to employees about inclusion. It's also important to keep in mind that it's a form of both direct and indirect communication that comes from up above about the importance of inclusion within the organization. But the day-to-day behavior of managers also plays a very important role in forming climate. So, managers engage in role-modeling, they communicate to their employees what's important based on the kinds of behaviors that they attend to, the kinds of behaviors that they reward in their employees, and the expectations that they communicate, and so forth. We will turn again to talking a little bit more about the role of managers. The other thing that helps to shape climate is the set of norms, the behavioral norms, that employees themselves create within their work group. So, what employees actually do and what they expect of each other. So, within this broader definition of climate, I'd like to now turn to talking about climate for inclusion more specifically. The important thing about inclusive climates, as I'll define it here, is that inclusive climates provide the conditions under which people rely less on stereotypical thinking, and under which groups are less prone to these counterproductive in-group out-group dynamics that can get in the way of that diversity value chain that I spoke about. There are three key dimensions to climate for inclusion. The first is that (again, think in terms of a work group or a work department) the employment practices within that group, that unit, need to be implemented in a way that is perceived as fair by the people working within that unit. So, employees are always looking for cues that tell them whether or not some employees, members of some groups, are favored over members of other groups. That is, by virtue of being a man or a member of some other demographic category, does somebody have a higher chance of success? Does somebody have greater access to resources and opportunities? To the extent that they do, then that will perpetuate these status hierarchies based on, in this example, gender. But to the extent that, in a work group, the way that practices are implemented does not have anything to do with one's gender or other demographic background, then in that context those status hierarchies are invalidated. They become delegitimized. And that's what we need. We need for people to really perceive that HR practices are fair in order for them to buy the message that inclusion is actually valued, and to start to break down some of those in-group out-group effects that we spoke of before. So, that is a kind of a precondition for inclusion, but that's not enough. So, what also needs to happen, and this is the second dimension, is that there need to be strong norms that cultural differences among group members will be integrated. That people are not expected to check their identity at the door when they come to work. That instead, people bring their whole selves to work. You've probably heard this term before. The idea is that people don't experience pressure to assimilate to some dominant majority, and that people are expected to develop these cross-cutting ties (by cross-cutting I mean cutting across traditional and that people are also given the latitude and the opportunity to engage in that kind of discussion that leads to more personalized understandings of one another. So, here the idea is, okay, so the diversity is now at work, right, people bring it to the table, so to speak, but it will only benefit the organization to the extent that the diversity of perspectives are actually leveraged in decision making. So, that's what the third dimension refers to, is the extent to which those inclusion and decision-making groups have to take proactive steps to actively seek and integrate the diverse perspectives that are represented among the employees in a group. People have to have a common commitment, so a shared commitment, to working through those differences, this conflict that I spoke of. People have to be committed to doing that. And there have to be mechanisms in place to make sure that those different ideas are actually expressed within the group.

 

Strategies for Facilitating Inclusion and Trust in Groups

Professor Nishii's can help foster inclusion in a group setting.

It's worth examining the ways in which you can foster greater inclusion and trust at the work-group level. Professor Nishii offers practical strategies for facilitating psychological safety and inclusion in groups, such as breaking groups down into smaller work groups and making sure the group membership rotates so that subgroups don't form. People tend to be more willing to take risks and express opinions in smaller groups.

Save this list of recommended strategies; you may want to use it within team meetings or other work-group discussions about inclusion.

The Role of the Immediate Manager

Inclusion isn't simply handed down to the staff by the CEO or executive director; it's important to keep in mind that everyone cooperates in creating a culture of inclusion. Managers play a particularly important role in facilitating work-group inclusion.

So now I'd like to talk about the important role that line managers play in fostering inclusion within organizations. There is certainly a lot of attention that's paid to the role of senior leadership when talking about diversity and inclusion. And it is true, senior leadership is critical. 

A lot of things have to happen from the top but it's not enough to focus on senior leadership. A lot of what happens, the experiences that people have at work are shaped by their immediate supervisor, not the people at the very top of the organization per se. And this is an idea that has been supported by decades of research, including research done by organizations like Gallup, that show that people end up leaving their organization because of the experiences they have with their immediate supervisor. Not necessarily because of the experiences they have with the broader organization or its policies and practices. So the manager is important because he or she is the implementer of practices. So you can have really great diversity and inclusion practices on paper that have been designed well by the senior leadership. But how those practices impact employees depends on how a particular manager implements those practices. So how consistently do they implement them, how fairly, how reliably, how do they talk about the practices? So the manager is this filter, in a way, through which the organization's practices are transmitted before they actually impact employees. Within the context of diversity this is certainly the case. What we see is that most barriers to diversity management actually emerge at the level of the line manager. So employees might learn about an organization's policies and practices during training or during the socialization process when they first join an organization. But what they learn there is tested against their day-to-day experiences, which are impacted or shaped by the line manager. And so it's really important that organizations focus on what these managers are or are not doing to promote inclusion. Ideally these behaviors should be part of the more general performance management system. There should be clear signals that managers are expected to engage in these behaviors as part of everyday management and that diversity and inclusion is not this add-on thing that they occasionally attend to. It's a way of managing employees on a day-to-day basis.

What are four ways that managers can promote inclusion?

Answer

Effective managers promote inclusion by (1) continually attending to inclusion dynamics; (2) clearly articulating norms and expectations related to inclusion; (3) role-modeling inclusive behaviors; and (4) holding others accountable for engaging in inclusive behaviors.

Manager Behavior — Fairness

As an immediate supervisor, the first thing to do is your own personal work; that is, take the time to identify and understand your own biases and prejudices. Subsequently, the supervisor should attend to certain themes in behavior. The first relates to fairness.

Manager Behavior — Cultural Integration and Differences

Whether or not employees feel safe and motivated to fully engage at work depends in part on the norms set by the manager's own behavior. Although all organizations focus on assessing and developing managers' task-related skills, knowledge, and abilities, many fall short when it comes to assessing and developing managers' social and relational skills.

Intersectionality

Key Points

Intersectionality refers to how your social identities interact and impact one another.

Everyone has different experiences with bias, discrimination, and inequity.

Intersectionality can be used to ensure your workplace is promoting equity, not just equality.

The concept of intersectionality was formally created by Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the specific interactions of bias and discrimination in the experiences of Black women. Broadly, the concept is about how your social identities interact or intersect in various situations, resulting in being treated with privileges and/or bias. The idea is that the meaning of one social identity is dependent on one's other social identities as well as the power and privilege (or lack thereof) afforded by those identities. 

Intersectionality is a concept that's important for everyone to understand because it provides a framework for understanding how bias and discrimination appear in the world.

When you enter a room, you don't enter as just one social identity; you carry all of your social identities with you, whether they are visible or invisible to others. Your race, gender identity, sexuality, socioeconomic status, (dis)ability, religion, ethnicity, etc., impact your life at all times. Sometimes, that impact is direct and results in being treated with privilege or bias by others. Other times, that impact is indirect.

This is the basis of intersectionality. Because all of your social identities have an impact on you and how others perceive and treat you, the way your identities intersect can result in specific, unique experiences of bias and discrimination. Consider Dr. Crenshaw's specific example of bias and discrimination toward Black women. Black women experience sexism due to their gender identity and anti-Black racism due to their racial identity. Because social identities intersect, this means that Black women often face bias and discrimination stemming from both marginalized identities at once.

Intersectionality can also mean that someone's experiences of bias and discrimination are impacted by their privileged identities. For instance, a white woman can experience sexism in a workplace dominated by cisgender white men, but her experience will likely look different compared to a woman of color in that environment. Sometimes, the white woman will experience benefits from her whiteness in a majority white environment; for example, she may be paid less than cisgender white men in her role, but she may have a higher pay than the woman of color in her role. Individuals with multiple marginalized identities tend to be tokenized and/or perceived as more deviant from the normative group. 

Finally, intersectionality is also a key part of promoting equity in the workplace. Intersectionality shows that different employees may need different degrees of support, resources, and systemic change to reach a space of equity — even if they share the same marginalized social identity. Creating a culture of equity and belonging in the workplace cannot come from very broad change; it requires the specificity of intersectionality to be sustainable.

How do you bring intersectionality into the workplace?

While intersectionality is a complex topic with a lot of nuance, there are tangible ways you can use this concept to create an environment of inclusion, belonging, and equity. The first is that it provides a reminder to pause and recognize that not all individuals who share a social identity can be assumed to have experienced similar levels of privilege and marginalization. Applying intersectionality results in greater empathy for the experiences of others and allows you to better identify bias and discrimination.

Here are some ways you can apply an intersectional approach to your work:

· Analyze organizational data using an intersectional lens. Look at how employees who are a part of multiple demographic groups compare in terms of compensation, growth opportunities, experiences of belonging and inclusion, and other metrics that can show inequity.

· Utilize intersectionality in programming for employee resource groups (ERGs), trainings, and other outlets meant to promote inclusion and belonging.

· Create long-term DEI goals with intersectionality in mind. Consider many different marginalized social identities and ensure that your goals do not tokenize any current or incoming marginalized employees.

· Scaffold intersectional resources and support for employees, such as formal mentorship initiatives and onboarding experiences, that promote an end-to-end culture of belonging and inclusion.

As with most DEI topics, this is only scratching the surface of intersectionality. You can learn more by reading Dr. Crenshaw's interview with Time magazine,  "She Coined the Term 'Intersectionality' Over 30 Years Ago. Here's What it Means to Her Today,"Links to an external site.  as well as her TED Talk,  "The urgency of intersectionality."Links to an external site.

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Assess the Sources of Inclusion

Ideally, inclusion is fully aligned and integrated across the organization, and that means at the organizational level, at the management level, and at the work-group level. What does this look and feel like to employees? In this module, you will examine and discuss your own experience with inclusion. You will read about what inclusion looks like to the individual employee and you will use helpful tools to assess inclusion at different levels. Finally, you will complete your course project, in which you report on your results and write a memo to your boss with your recommendations for improvements.

Organizational Level of Inclusion

If you are like many people, you focused on the variety of practices Company A uses to try to create a diverse work environment. At this point, what's important to recognize is that having these practices in place does not necessarily mean employees experience the organization as inclusive.

So the question that I asked you is whether or not you expect Company A or Company B to be more inclusive. Most people focus on the fact that Company A has a lot of diversity best practices or D&I best practices in place. And given that, it's easy to assume that Company A is probably more committed to diversity and inclusion issues. And that therefore, people might be able to expect that the company will invest more in their success, that they are more valued if they work for that organization, and probably that they'll experience some sort of pride for working for a company that has these best practices in place. And it's true that well-designed diversity and inclusion practices are indeed important and it's good for companies to have these practices in place. But the question is whether or not having these practices in place alone guarantees that employees will experience inclusion. It's important to keep in mind that these practices alone are often insufficient for promoting inclusion in all the different ways that we'll be talking about in this course. So I once heard somebody say that traditional diversity management is like counting numbers, whereas I think we can think about inclusion as making those numbers count. So a lot of these practices that had been in place for awhile, like targeted recruiting and having these mentoring programs and the like, help to attract people to an organization, help the organization to hire diverse employees. But they don't guarantee that the employees, once hired, once in the door, experience inclusion and end up staying with the organization. When inclusion, it requires is a fundamental shift in the organization's culture. It requires that there is a change in the way that people interact with each other at work such that traditional stereotypes can be debunked. And people can start to really interact in much more authentic ways, such that one's particular social category membership, like gender or race, ethnicity, or disability status, any of these social categories should no longer be predictive of how successful one can be within the organization, how integrated somebody feels within the organizational context. We'll talk a little bit more about these different definitions of inclusion but what I'm trying to point out to you here is the idea that these D&I best practices alone will not guarantee inclusion. In fact, there's some recent research by Alexandra Kalev and her colleagues that shows that these diversity practices that have been implemented by organizations for decades now are not actually successful at helping to increase representation at higher levels of the organization and senior management. Although some argued this is not inclusion per se, it is indicative of a lack of inclusion if people are not staying with the organization and advancing through the organization, such that women and ethnic minorities are represented in these senior leadership positions. And so we're starting to really focus in the research literature on the idea that we need to expand our view of what needs to happen within organizations, in order for people to be successful and to experience inclusion. The primary reason why these practices may be insufficient, they're actually probably two main reasons. One is that even really well-designed, well-intentioned practices are often not consistently implemented within an organization. There are a lot of reasons for that; managers have competing demands on their time and their resources, and managers differ in how committed they are to diversity, how much they value these practices in influencing them carefully. So that's one reason, the other is that these practices tend to focus on individuals. So individuals' decision making, hiring certain individuals, training them to have different They also tend to focus on key kind of decision-making moments in time like hiring, The practices don't tend to focus on the dynamics between individuals, so they don't address the social relational sources of discrimination and bias within organizations. And so even though they might help individuals to improve in certain ways and to develop new skills and amass new knowledge, they don't alter the social fabric of the organization. And to the extent that that's true, then we'll always continue to have these interpersonal dynamics that can get in the way of true success of individuals who belong to historically marginalized groups.

Citation:

Kalev, F. Dobbin, & E. Kelly. 2006. Best practices or best guesses? Assessing the efficacy of corporate affirmative action and diversity policies. American Sociological Review 71:589–617.

Inclusion and the Individual

Key Points

Does the person feel like an insider?

Does the person believe their uniqueness is valued?

For many people, the most salient context that determines their experiences of inclusion is their work group. It's where they have their everyday interpersonal interactions, and the nature of those interactions usually influences how included people feel.

People often leave companies due to their experiences with their co-workers and their immediate manager; it tends to be less about the organizational-level stuff that's going on. The climate of the work group, the norms of the work group, and the interactions that tend to unfold within that work group are all important determinants of feelings of inclusion.

The definition of inclusion developed by Colorado State University Professor Lynn Shore and her colleagues is based on two fundamental questions:

1. Does an individual feel as though they are treated like an insider within the organization? (In other words, does the person experience a high or low sense of belongingness?)

2. Does an individual feel that their uniqueness is valued within the organization?

The most ideal state, inclusion, is when people feel like they are an insider; they experience belongingness within the organization, they are able to be themselves, and their uniqueness is highly valued.

It is common for people to experience some form of pseudo-inclusion, and both the assimilation category and the differentiation category are examples of this.  Assimilation is when people experience a sense of belongingness, but there's a cost. It comes at the cost of hiding parts of oneself to blend in and be in accordance with whatever normative ingroup exists within the organization; as long as you don't rock the boat and you fit in, you can experience a sense of belongingness.

But there's a cost to that, both to the individual and the organization. We know from research that when people have to adopt facades of conformity, or a different persona, they experience higher levels of strain. It's more tiring. For the organization, assimilation means that the diversity that should be an element of the organization is actually not in play if people are withholding parts of themselves.  Differentiation means that the person is not treated as an insider within the organization yet their unique qualities are seen as necessary for the organization's success.

 The image highlights the differences between the lack of inclusion, pseudo inclusion, and full inclusion and learning.

It shows a table with four boxes arranged into two rows and two columns. Above the boxes along the horizontal axis it reads, “Does one feel s/he is treated as an insider (despite differences)?” Above the left-hand column it says, “Low Belongingness (Outside Status),” and above the right-hand column it says, “High Belongingness (Insider Status).”

Beside the boxes along the vertical axis it reads, “Is one’s uniqueness acknowledged and valued?” Beside the top row, it says, “Uniqueness not valued,” and beside the bottom row, it says, “Uniqueness highly valued.”

In the top box in the left-hand column, it says, “Exclusion. Individual is not treated as an organizational insider with unique value in the work group but there are other employees or groups who are insiders. No Inclusion.”

In the top box in the right-hand column, it says, “Assimilation. Individual is treated as an insider in the work group when they conform to organizational/dominant culture norms; uniqueness is downplayed (often because of low status). Pseudo Inclusion.” There is a square around this box, emphasizing it.

In the bottom box in the left-hand column, it says, “Differentiation. Individual is not treated as an organizational insider (e.g., socially excluded, fewer opportunities) but their unique characteristics are seen as valuable and required for group/organizational success. Pseudo Inclusion.” There is a square around this box, emphasizing it.

In the bottom box in the right-hand column, it says, “Inclusion. Individual is treated as an insider and also allowed/encouraged to retain uniqueness; feels safe in being and expressing oneself. Innovative decision-making most likely. Inclusion and Learning.”

R. J. Ely & D. A. Thomas. 2001. Cultural diversity at work: The effects of diversity perspectives

L. M. Shore, A. E. Randel, B. G. Chung, M. A. Dean, K. H. Ehrhart, & G. Singh. 2011. Inclusion and diversity in work groups: A review and model for future research. Journal of Management 37(4):1262–1289.

Aligning Three Sources of Inclusion

Not everyone will have the same experience within their work groups or with their immediate supervisors. This type of variation occurs in most companies. For that reason, it is important that companies have data that allow them to look at inclusion more deeply, and not just at company averages, to enable focused improvements.

Although benefits arise from improving any source of inclusion, it is most desirable to align the three sources for optimal outcomes. Research shows that individuals, groups, and organizations all experience positive results when all sources are aligned.

Alignment From the Employee Perspective

Ideally, the commitment to diversity and inclusion that an organization espouses aligns with what employees actually experience. When employees experience high levels of organizational, work-group,  and supervisor inclusion, they report the most favorable outcomes in terms of individual engagement, psychological and physical well-being, and, ultimately, job performance and intention to stay with the organization. Group processes (communication, coordination, decision making) and organizational performance outcomes (retention rates, financial performance, ability to attract top talent) are also best when all three forms of inclusion align.

Employee reactions to misalignment depend on to what they attribute differences; that is, on what employees think is the source of the differences between what the organization espouses and what they personally experience in their work groups and with their supervisors.

Individual and Personal Sources of Discrimination

At the individual or personal level, sources of discrimination can be intentional and unintentional. Here, Professor Nishii explores both types of sources and how they manifest on the individual level.

Intentional interpersonal discrimination refers to behaviors that are intended to have a harmful effect on members of another group. An example of intentional interpersonal discrimination is when someone deliberately ignores someone else's ideas or contributions because of their membership in a particular group; for example, based on their gender, race, nationality, disability, etc. Sources of interpersonal discrimination that are more neutral in intent are also possible; for example, behaviors that are based on unconscious biases that may have an unfair impact on members of another group. An example is confirmation bias. It's the tendency for us to only notice information that confirms our expectations. Confirmation biases perpetuate inequities because if our starting point for judgments about people who are atypical for a role is doubt and our brains notice data that confirm our expectations, then it's much harder for rule-incongruent individuals to have their competencies acknowledged. At the interpersonal level, both those who are high and low in privilege can be the targets of discrimination.

Burnout and the Diversity Tax

Key Points

Marginalized employees face the diversity tax in the workplace.

Burnout is more likely for marginalized employees because of the cumulative impact of the diversity tax.

DEI is a critical part of preventing and reducing burnout.

People with marginalized social identities are often told that they "have to work twice as hard for half as much." This expression is a summary of what is also referred to as the diversity tax.

The diversity tax is the idea that the inputs of marginalized people are or will be valued less compared to the inputs of non-marginalized people in the workplace. This often results in marginalized employees feeling like they must work longer hours, that their work must be of higher quality than that of non-marginalized peers, and that they should accept that other people in their workplace may be rewarded before them even if their work is objectively the same or higher quality.

Being aware of the diversity tax on its own is not enough to prevent it if you are a marginalized employee or if you are trying to create equity for your marginalized employees. The diversity tax is a function of the many small and large ways that inequity persists in the workplace. Every time a marginalized employee in your workplace gets less positive feedback for doing the same quality work as their peers, overlooked for their ideas and contributions, or less access to resources and compensation, it adds up. 

Burnout as a result of the diversity tax

The cumulative impact of the diversity tax results in burnout for marginalized employees. Burnout is an issue workplaces are facing for every member of their workforce — however, because of equity issues like the diversity tax, marginalized employees are more likely to reach a state of burnout and to reach that state with greater speed or intensity than their peers. A recent Gallup survey on employees with burnout found that they are 63% more likely to take a sick day than other employees, they are 23% more likely to visit the emergency room in the time they are employed, and they are 2.3 times more likely to look for other jobs.

Burnout is not due to employee laziness or a lack of motivation; it is a direct result of equity issues like the diversity tax, and it creates such a substantial environment of stress that people who experience it display greater physical health concerns. This means that if your organization is not addressing burnout and the cost of the diversity tax, it is not going to be able to successfully create an environment of equity, inclusion, and belonging. A culture of burnout for marginalized employees means that these employees are more likely to experience stress-related physical health concerns and a desire to leave their organization.

Addressing burnout and the diversity tax

The best ways to address burnout and prevent employees from experiencing the diversity tax involve diversity, equity, and inclusion solutions. DEI solutions not only seek to promote equity in the workplace — which, in turn, dilutes the impact of the diversity tax — but, when they are implemented successfully, they benefit all employees. A workplace that practices DEI in all areas shows its marginalized employees that they matter and expresses that through policies and practices that reduce bias and discrimination and elevate opportunities and resources for marginalized employees. 

For more information on burnout and some methods that your organization can use to address it, you can read Gallup's  "How to Prevent Employee Burnout"Links to an external site.  and watch Dr. Emily Nagoski's TED talk,  "The cure for burnout (hint: it isn't self-care)."Links to an external site.

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