Why Some Companies Are Saying ‘Diversity and Belonging’ Instead of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’

Woodward, a 153-year-old aerospace company, required male employees to wear bow ties until the 1990s.

The company’s Chief Human Resources Officer, Paul Benson, knew that building diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the company required a major shift. “If you look at our org chart online, we’re a Shirayuri-like leadership team made up of older men,” he said. But employees wanted a more inclusive culture.

“People want to feel they belong,” says Benson. “They want to go to work, but they don’t feel the need to check their bodies at the door.”

Last summer, Benson began looking for a diversity consultant to fill the role. He wanted to find ex-executives who could “see the light” and empathize.

Instead, a Google search led me to a black comedian and former media personality named Caris Foster.she is the CEO of Inversity solutionis a consulting firm that is reimagining traditional diversity programming.

Foster said companies must address racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism in the workplace. But she believes that the tendency to overemphasize identity groups and reduce people to “victims or villains” can disempower and alienate everyone, including employees of color. ing. She says her own approach allows anyone to “make mistakes and sometimes say the wrong things, but be able to fix it.”

Benson was convinced. He hired Foster to deliver the keynote speech at Woodward’s Leadership Summit last October.

Shortly after taking the stage, she asked everyone to close their eyes and raise their hands in response to a series of provocative questions. “Have you ever locked your car when a black man walked by?” Did they think, well, Jews really are good at spending money? Did they question the intelligence of someone with a heavy Southern accent?

People timidly, timidly raised their hands. By the time Ms. Foster finished, almost everyone had their hands up, including her own.

“Congratulations. You are a certified human being,” she said. “It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about understanding when bias arises.”

Mr. Benson was relieved. “I was at a table with someone who started it all with his arms crossed,” he recalled. “His body language indicated that this guy wasn’t a believer. Halfway through he was laughing and clapping.”

He said Foster said people were saying, ‘Maybe you’ve never been an activist before, you’ve never been on this journey, but let’s see how we can move forward. , so that you can feel that you are okay with yourself,” he said.

In other words, she helped them feel involved in the conversation.

In a world where corporate diversity, equity and inclusion programs are evolving, the issue of belonging has become a recent focus.

Interest in creating a more inclusive workplace exploded in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd. Many companies turned to white boardrooms to address the systemic racism and power imbalances that made employees of color feel excluded from office life.

Nearly three years after that moment, some companies are now revising their approach to the DEI and changing the department name to include “affiliation”. It’s the era of DEI-B.

Some critics say it may be aimed at making white people comfortable rather than addressing institutional inequalities, or simply allowing corporations to prioritize harmony over needed change. I’m afraid I’m the only one.

“People who are not marginalized feel like they are part of the conversation,” said Stephanie Cleary, an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of Business who studies corporate strategies for diversity and inclusion. It’s a sense of belonging that makes it possible,” he says.

She believes that an abstract emphasis on belonging can help companies avoid the tough conversations about power—and the resistance that conversations often create. “The concern is that we’re just coining new terms like belonging as a way of dealing with that resistance,” says Cleary.

Foster argues that fairness doesn’t really exist if those in power, or “heterosexual white men,” feel excluded from the conversation. Traditional DEI practitioners “most want to register are the people they isolate and honestly disqualify,” she says.

Nonpartisan Nonprofit Business for America was recently interviewed More than 20 executives from 18 companies participated and found this to be a common theme. BFA founder and CEO Sarah Bonk said, “The way they’ve deployed DEI has further exacerbated the division, even though it’s tackling a valuable issue.” “It created some animosity and resentment.”

That’s why companies like Woodward are now hiring consultants who specialize in attribution and bridging. They are coming to the aid of executives who fear that divisions between nations will seep into the workplace, driving a wedge between colleagues and making everyone feel insecure and defensive.

Professor Cleary agrees that these are real problems. “I can see companies wanting to have structured conversations about how enabling us all to thrive helps us all,” she says. But she worries that “belonging” provides a cover for those who want to maintain the status quo. “There are still a lot of people with a zero-sum mindset,” she says. “If you support me, you will lose.”

Make full use of “yourself” in your work

This obsession with affiliation is the result of today’s widespread corporate standard of putting all your heart and soul into your work. Ideally, if you have the flexibility to work wherever you want, and the freedom to discuss social and political issues that matter to you, you’ll feel like you belong in the company.

Working hard was floated before the pandemic, but became something of a requirement at the height of the pandemic as companies tried to stem the wave of retirements. They also responded to concerns that many feel alienated at work.According to a 2022 report by the think tank coqualNearly half of Black and Asian professionals with a bachelor’s degree or higher do not feel a sense of belonging at work.

Last year, the Human Resource Management Society conducted its first survey on corporate affiliation. Seventy-six percent of his respondents said their organization prioritized belonging as part of his DEI strategy, and 64% said they plan to invest more in belonging efforts this year. bottom. Respondents said identity-based communities like employee resource groups helped foster a sense of belonging, but mandatory diversity training did not.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, wishes we didn’t have these conversations about identity and belonging. “In a time of increasing political polarization, many people’s whole selves don’t align with the whole selves of their colleagues,” said the self-described centrist. “I’ve heard from a lot of managers that they can’t stand the constant conflict over people’s identities anymore.”

In 2017, he and colleague Caroline Mail Institute for Constructive Dialogue‘s flagship product is an educational platform called Perspectives. The tool uses online modules and workshops to help users explore where their values ​​come from and why people from different backgrounds hold opposing values.

In 2019, CDI began licensing Perspectives to companies. Annual pricing ranges from $50-$150 per employee license. Companies can also book a menu of live training options ranging from $3,500 to $15,000 per day.

Allegis Global Solutions is a workforce solutions company with 3,500 employees and an early adopter.

Already, the platform has helped the company navigate some complicated political situations. Last June, a 26-year-old personnel coordinator named Shakara Worrell was at a conference when she learned that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade. “The whole conference was canceled,” Worrell said. “That’s when I realized I wasn’t the only one who had a heart drop.”

Worrell, who is of mixed race, said he came to Alésis partly because the company prioritizes belonging. She recalls reading the news of a police assault at her previous job and feeling that she had to keep her emotions in check.

“I just remember sitting in the Cube and not being able to give my opinion,” Worrell said. She remembers thinking, “I really don’t belong.”

Not so with Alesis. There, Worrell co-leads Elevate, the company’s employee resource group dedicated to empowering women. After the Supreme Court ruling, she and her fellow members decided to hold a series of events to help employees understand the ruling. When I let the HR team and her DEI team know about it, they were given an outlook.

“Whether you agree or disagree, we wanted our employees to feel okay,” Worrell said.

And were they? Alegis said about 200 people attended the first virtual meeting. Worrell then followed up with one attendee who spoke in favor of the court’s decision.

Worrell recalled a colleague telling her, “Even if I’m the opposite person, I still feel it should be shared.”

“Aggressive attitude toward group labels”

Irshad Manzi, Founder of Consultancy Firm moral courage collegesaid that the “almost aggressive focus on group labels” is a major problem for mainstream diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. “It forces people to stereotype each other. I happen to be a Muslim and a staunch Muslim,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I interpret Islam in the same way as other Muslims.”

Manzi believes that people now use “attribution” as “an implicit admission that the traditional DEI isn’t working.”

So what approach works? In 2018, Autodesk, a software company with 13,700 employees, began planning a cultural refresh.

Autodesk president and CEO Andrew Anagnost said some employees were afraid of offending each other and defaulted to a “fainted kindness” and “passive-aggressive” attitude. rice field. He felt unsupported and some refused to speak at meetings.

Autodesk has changed its name The Diversity and Inclusion team is the Diversity and Belonging team. Managers have learned strategies to recognize their own defensive thinking and counteract it.

They were given poker chips to “play” every time they spoke to avoid dominating the discussion.

The company paid bonuses to its employee resource group leaders to demonstrate their worth. And Anagnost has stepped up to become an executive sponsor of his Autodesk Black Network.

But the company also worked on equities. The company moved its new office location from Denver to Atlanta, knowing it would be advantageous to attract black engineering graduates.

Autodesk regularly surveys employees about their workplace experience. After the cultural change took hold, attribution scores increased for women and employees of color and decreased for white men, Anagnost said.

“Then it became normal,” he said. “Well, certainly, trying to increase representation in other areas will narrow the opportunities in some areas to some extent. , the threat level is reduced.”