by Sharelle Burt
December 3, 2024
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) isn’t going anywhere
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) isn’t going anywhere as corporations have honed in on innovative ways to keep it aliveincluding artificial intelligence (AI), Business Insider reports.
During a roundtable discussion with corporate executives, they identified ways DEI is evolving, thus helping companies keep the principle alive. Indeed’s Chief Revenue Officer Maggie Hulce has seen companies switch to skill-based hiring to continue hiring diverse candidates. She says the new process focuses on what the future of work looks like over the present. “Let’s focus on the skills that are required for the future of work and what we are looking for from leaders in our company,” Hulce said.
“And then be more consistent in the application of holding that bar.”
That’s where AI comes in.
Shifting the focus to the skills needed for a company to succeed and using artificial intelligence tools to help bring in-house talent to the surface, the narrative of DEI moves away from its conflicts and gears toward the benefits. “We can’t do it the old way. We have to have the conversation in a new way,” Purvi Tailor, the vice president of human resources at Ferring Pharmaceuticals, said.
“It becomes much more about inclusion and changing mindsets and creating awareness about your own biases.”
Verizon’s global head of talent acquisition and DEI, Spring Lacy, agreed, saying, “It dismisses this notion that you have to lower the bar if you want diversity in your organization.”
“We’ve got lots of super smart, super skilled people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQI community, who just aren’t seen for all of the biases that you talked about,” Lacy continued.
“You don’t have to lower the bar.”
Major corporations and institutions including Microsoft, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the country’s largest retailer, Walmart, have given into the pushback from conservatives’ efforts to dial back on their DEI values; however, companies are finding ways to remain committed. Ferring has focused on all the aspects of DEI, but specifically on inclusion. A study from McKinsey & Company correlated inclusion to a person’s sense of belonging within an organization or their experience. Great benefits count as key to an employee’s experience.
In 2022, the pharmaceutical organization introduced unlimited financial support for creating a family including IVF, adoption, surrogacy, or birth for all employees, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. “We talk about more of the ‘I’ than we do about the ‘D’ and the ‘E,’” Tailor said.
“We do it to show the kind of culture and working environment that we want to have. It’s all about inclusion and bringing your whole self to the workplace.”
Within other companies like MasterCard, AI is being used to train, coach, and give feedback on how leaders engage with their teams, hoping it gauges accountability. “It’s really important that we drive shared accountability across our 34,000 employees around the role that each of us has to collectively play in creating this culture of inclusion where everybody feels that they can belong,” Lucrecia Borgonovo of MasterCard said.
Accountability will be the way to play as college students graduating from co-ed life to the workforce have experienced bouts of being silenced on certain campuses fighting to save DEI initiatives. Black leaders on the campus of the University of Michigan, according to the Michigan Daily, say their critiques have been “flattened” by those who “don’t believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
“This intentional weaponization of our voice as Black students is particularly harmful, as it has succeeded in planting the false-narrative seed that DEI systems and programs simply don’t work and that “both sides” don’t like it,” student Princess-J’Maria Mboup said.
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