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Words like diversity, inclusion, equality, and respect come up more frequently in everyday workplace conversations. In public speech, diversity focuses more on gender; but in reality, it implies a varied range of differences such as age, country of origin and culture, religion, sexual orientation, abilities, and so on. Diversity can achieve better business results and positively impact an organization’s reputation, but it can also lead to unintentional, toxic practices.
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Just because your organization has a diverse workforce; however, doesn’t always mean everything is fair - especially pay.
Google, which publishes its state of workplace diversity every year and has championed new paths to diversity and inclusion practices, admits to an oversight on such pay gaps.
Though men are not widely considered the disadvantaged gender group, in 2019, the Silicon Valley giant found that it was underpaying men more than women for doing similar work.
Your employees want fair pay across diverse lines. The Workforce in Europe 2019 survey showed that 68% of respondents would consider changing jobs if their employers had existing wage differences for diversity (unfair pay).
Unintentionally, diversity can cause tensions in your company culture. To prevent that from happening, a culture of trust and commitment to personal authenticity is required.
How does it really work? Check out the graphic below:
An organization is the sum of the ways each one of its members sees the world and how these perspectives are related.
Some brave people are authentic and show their true selves no matter the circumstances. The vast majority, however, need a trustworthy environment supported by a sense of psychological safety before opening up. We will only see different people when we allow, we accept, we embrace the authenticity of each person. When management is based on trust, companies can achieve 106% more energy at work, 76% more engagement (Paul Zak, from the book Trust Factor).
A fundamental step is to align people-related systems or processes to a culture of trust and equality. Here are some examples of what those processes are:
You can start by evaluating these segments and asking the following:
Measuring the extent to which these people-related systems, policies, operations, and approaches enable staff to easily live diversity, inclusion, equality, respect, and authenticity. After that, in a proactive and consciously way, refine your strategic approach, embedding those elements into its people-related systems.
Bad intentions are not always the cause of discrimination. Ethically speaking, bad things happen not for what we are, but in spite of what we are!
Learn more about our People-Systems Audit Workshop, which allows our team to work with you to recognize where the gaps and strengths of your culture exist and determine your next best steps:
