“It’s very frustrating,” says one of the recruiters after our DEI panel discussion (diversity, equality, inclusion). “We must ensure more diversity in the organization, because that increases creativity and innovation in the teams. A large part of our recruitment process is therefore anonymous, which means we recruit from a very diverse pool. But when you see that the majority of your ‘diverse hires’ leave the company before the year is out, it feels a bit pointless.” She sighs deeply. “And then they open a new vacancy, but not as strange as last time, right? Aaargh…what are we doing wrong?”
What does science say?
First and foremost, it is a good idea to structurally recruit more diverse profiles (for example through an anonymous recruitment process). Bias and circumventing prejudices merely by ‘being aware of them’ does not work. On the contrary, after training aimed at raising awareness of prejudices, the biases even harder (Kahneman et al., 2011).
But also that diversity and inclusion are two different things. Diversity stands for the presence of differences in a group. An objective assessment. For example, a team can be very diverse in terms of age, major or cultural background. Inclusion, on the other hand, represents the experience of the members of the group, that they both belong in that group and have a unique contribution. So a subjective experience. A newly hired team member can experience inclusion when the team takes him/her out to their favorite lunch spot (“now you’re one of us!”) while also being interested in their new colleague’s unique history (“oh, we’ll can learn so much from your experience in marketing!’) (Shore et al., 2011).
To experience inclusion, employees must feel both that they belong and that they are unique. When they well to feel that they are unique, but not that they belong, they do not feel inclusion. This sometimes happens to temporary workers or consultants: the team members are happy with the extra help and fresh insights, but put no effort into connecting with the person. Conversely, when employees well get the feeling that they can belong, but not may be unique, they also do not feel inclusion. This sometimes happens to newcomers in very close-knit teams or organizations: to be accepted, they have to adapt to the group norm. And above all, don’t get too weird with different ideas, hair color or work habits.
This is probably where the problem lies in the organization of my conversation partner. The new people who start after the recruitment process differ from the existing team members on a number of relevant dimensions. They have been selected for this because it increases the diversity of the team. But existing team members may not want this at all. They want someone who fits well into the team (read: is the same as them or similarity attraction; Byrne 1971). Newcomers implicitly receive the message from them: ‘if you want to belong, you have to become like us’. And that was not the intention.
What can HR professionals and managers do to promote inclusion?
By emphasizing the following, HR professionals and leaders can facilitate and promote inclusion in teams (Homan, 2018; Kearney et al., 2009).
- Team members are more open to colleagues who are different if they see the value of that diversity, for example because they realize that the customers they have to serve are also very different. Or because they experience how rich the advice of a project group becomes when the problem is viewed from many different lenses. Uniqueness becomes an asset.
- Being very different from each other is also experienced as less difficult when there is an important, shared goal. Developing a new vaccine, for example. Or design an IT system that will make the lives of hundreds of colleagues easier. The differences become secondary to the greater goal.
- “In sameness we connect, in differences we grow” (Virginia Satir): by looking for what we do have in common, group cohesion grows. For example, that we all love good food. Or take a look at the examples in the beautiful TV 2 | All That We Share (youtube.com)). The differences are less prominent.
In addition, it is important to pay attention to the ‘horizontal alignment’ of the diversity strategy in your organization. To have optimal effect, the implicit message given during the recruitment process must resonate throughout the organization. Also in leadership training, in the evaluation process and in the way in which teams or departments communicate. If this shared line is not there, recruiting only for diversity makes little sense.
Guest author: Kathleen Vangronsvelt, Antwerp Management School
References
Byrne, D. (1971). The Attraction Paradigm. New York: Academic Press.
Homan, AC (2018) ‘Four differences! The many faces of diversity’, Behavior and Organization (3), 281-304.
Kahneman, D., Lovallo, D., & Sibony, O. (2011). Before you make that big decision. Harvard Business Review, June, pp. 51–60
Kearney, E., Gebert, D., & Voelpel, S. C. (2009). When and how diversity benefits teams: The importance of team members’ need for cognition. Academy of Management Journal, 52: 581–598.
Shore, L.M., Randel, A.E., Chung, B.G., Dean, M.A., Holcombe Ehrhart, K., & Singh, G. (2011). Inclusion and diversity in work groups: A review and model for future research. Journal of Management, 37, 1262–1289.
