After DEI backlash, embracing new ideas for fairness in the workplace

Much has been made of the recent backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion across parts of corporate America. The parade of headlines seems endless: companies scaling back DEI programs, struggling DEI consultants closing down or pivoting their businesses and a court ruling against DEI considerations on the boards of Nasdaq-listed companies by a slim 9-8 majority. In the latest salvo, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called for more “masculine energy” to counteract “neutered” corporate culture.

But what if the current moment represents an opportunity, rather than a setback, in our fundamental quest to create better and fairer workplaces?

It would be a tragedy to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater given that we are faced with an opportunity to actually make work better — for everyone. To move closer to the elusive ideal of a true meritocracy where the best of the best rise to the top, it’s time for an entirely new approach. Forget add-on events, one-off proclamations and trainings aimed at changing hearts and minds. The real work of making our workplaces fair entails tweaking our products, practices and procedures to embed fairness into the things we already do on a daily basis. Because fairness is not a program, but a way of doing things — and we all are on the hook to deliver.

As academic researchers, we study what works — and what doesn’t — to create organizations where everyone has an equal opportunity to perform at their best. For us, this means offering all employees a level playing field where some groups of people are not (dis)advantaged in a way they didn’t merit. The evidence is now clear that despite the best of intentions, the “corporate DEI” of the last several years has not been able to sustainably deliver on this vision. Put simply, we have misidentified the problem and invested in the wrong solutions. Fairness is not about what people think but about what they do. As such, solutions only work if they give people the tools they need to deliver on fairness.

Consider Astrid Linder, the research director of traffic safety at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, who aims to “make everyone in cars as well protected as possible.” Even though regulations only require crash tests using human dummies based on the average male body, Linder chose to make her own work more fair, and together with her team developed the world’s first female crash test dummies. Automakers like Volvo are extending these efforts to feature more people of all genders, ages, heights, shapes and weights in their safety tests. 

At British public broadcaster BBC, journalists seek to produce the highest quality journalism, which includes accurately representing the world they cover. However, some years ago presenter Ros Atkins realized that he did not have data available on the gender of the people he featured as experts on his own show. Atkins and his team decided to generate the data themselves by counting the gender of contributors — initially on Post-it notes. What began as a grassroots initiative in the newsroom has now grown into the global 50:50 The Equality Project, which is shifting journalistic norms toward fair representation.

At Google, what looked like a gender gap in retention turned out to be a “parent gap” upon closer examination of the numbers: When women became mothers, they were more likely than men to leave the company. Recognizing its responsibility to provide a level playing field for all employees, including parents of all genders, Google increased the amount of leave available for new parents from 12 to 18 weeks. This closed the gender gap in retention. The same motivation may have inspired the recent dramatic change in Tokyo, where the Metropolitan Government’s staff will work four days a week starting in April. “We will continue to review our work style in a flexible manner so that nobody has to sacrifice their career due to life events such as giving birth and caring for children,” Gov. Yuriko Koike explained.

The redesign of our workplace infrastructure should be at the core of our attempts to make work better and fairer. As Astrid Linder and Ros Atkins demonstrated, you do not need to be the CEO or an HR leader to do it. No matter our seniority, role or responsibilities, we all can make small, often low- or no-cost changes to the way we work. Just like you do not need to be a public relations or communications professional to write emails, speak up in meetings or create slide decks, you do not need to or want to be a “DEI expert” to make the everyday work you are already doing better, smarter and more fair.

Singer and entrepreneur Rihanna did exactly this when she founded her Fenty Beauty cosmetics line. Rihanna’s vision of “Beauty for All” was embedded into everything the company did from the get-go, and in 2017 Fenty Beauty launched with 40 (today, more than 50) shades of foundation to serve customers with all skin tones globally. Other beauty companies quickly followed suit and expanded their offerings to cater to more audiences.

The crucial truth about our workplaces is that the way we have designed them is not neutral. Most of the practices and procedures organizations employ to attract, hire, develop, evaluate, promote and reward talent — as well as create products, identify new market opportunities and serve customers — help some people more than others. Most of these workplace systems and daily practices have been largely untouched by traditional DEI efforts. But they can, and should, be made better.

Take the all-powerful resume. When more than 9,000 firms participated in an experiment that redesigned the traditional resume format, they unearthed a simple way to attract more and better talent. Female and male applicants who presented their work experience by the number of years (“5 years: Assistant Manager, Sales”) instead of by specific dates of employment (“January 2018-December 2023: Assistant Manager, Sales”) were significantly more likely to be invited to an interview. Focusing on the amount of experience rather than specific dates allowed the hiring firms to see beyond career breaks, which many employers — and the algorithms they use to screen candidates — tend to penalize (though without much empirical evidence suggesting that such breaks are predictive of future performance). Thus, the traditional resume format disproportionately advantages applicants with a continuous job history (who are currently more likely to be men).

The promise of the paradigm shift we are proposing is a world where the right people get to do the right jobs in the right way and at the right time — and where our economy gets to benefit from 100% of the talent pool, customers have access to the products and services they need and companies thrive by tapping new markets (the BBC did, in fact, gain new viewers, and Fenty Beauty inspired a lasting change in how beauty companies attract new customers). Realizing this vision requires us not to abandon the fundamental ideal of fairness even though many recent corporate DEI efforts have failed. Instead, it requires us to shift gears and direct our limited resources, effort, attention and goodwill toward the types of structural, embedded solutions that have been proven to yield measurable results — and make work fair for all.