How to save workplace diversity schemes from the DEI backlash (without collecting more data)

In a radio discussion on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace, a journalist asked me which year these schemes started in the UK. I felt thrown by the question. It assumed that the broad array of initiatives associated with DEI, including policies, training programs, themed events and staff networks, had an inception date. I responded, as I often do: “It’s complicated.”

DEI schemes are facing significant challenges. In the U.S., president Donald Trump has used executive orders to terminate initiatives across federal agencies. Some private companies, including those with headquarters in the UK, have also seized on this moment to cut these commitments.

Critics may argue the objectives of DEI schemes have gone too far and mutated into a dogmatic belief system.

It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly, for them, a line was crossed. Perhaps it was when senior civil servants urged their teams to recognize “white privilege,” when employers introduced changes to reflect colleagues’ neurodiversity or when policies began acknowledging trans and non-binary people?

As a researcher and writer on DEI, I find myself pushed into a corner. Aware that comments like “It’s complicated” do not create a snappy soundbite, I feel coaxed into defending all these schemes. Even though my work has long argued that many approaches do nothing to address entrenched inequities in organizations (for example, poor working conditions, low pay and precarious employment—problems not unique to minority communities).

Even worse, they can give the illusion of action, preventing more worthwhile initiatives from taking place.

But there is an opportunity to reimagine DEI in the workplace, ensuring that potentially transformative schemes are not abandoned because of political winds. That may also mean choosing not to defend schemes that were never fit for purpose.

To help shepherd in this new era, it is essential to focus on how organizations categorize and count workers. In most UK workplaces, employees are invited to disclose information about their sex, race, sexual orientation, disability, religion and other characteristics in their human resources record. This data is used to give insights on diversity across roles, calculate pay gaps, design recruitment schemes and for other targeted initiatives.

Data about workers’ identity characteristics—and the contours of categories that determine who counts—is the fuel that powers DEI schemes. For individuals who fall between category cracks, a data-first approach was never going to represent their lives and experiences in a meaningful way and always force them into boxes not of their choosing.

Focusing attention on categories and counting, I believe there are three principles that need to inform the future of DEI schemes.

1. Strengths and limitations

Let’s be honest, DEI schemes were never perfect. As a knee-jerk response to movements like MeToo and Black Lives Matter, many companies introduced initiatives that could never deliver all that they promised.

Noble objectives such as visibility and inclusion routinely failed to counter the risks that come with bringing people into historically hostile and exclusionary organizations. For example, initiatives that support women into careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) lose all value if they fail to change work cultures, meaning that women continue to leave the sector at a higher rate than men.

2. End the obsession with data

Data is everywhere in conversations about DEI—whether it’s the proportion of women in senior leadership roles or the number of survey responses from disabled employees. It can have a huge impact, but we need to temper our faith that data alone can remedy the stickiest DEI challenges.

Overoptimism in data embeds a belief that all aspects of a person’s identity in the workplace can and should be counted. Organizations need to consider what their schemes expect from workers, as inviting people to share information affects some staff more than others. For example, trans workers are forced to reveal themselves in the data to ensure they are not counted in the “wrong way” or, when choosing to withhold sensitive information, find themselves unfairly labeled as duplicitous.

However, archaic HR systems and other data-gathering technologies are often ill-designed to deal with experiences that are complex, fluid and overlapping. While many aspects of the workplace have radically changed during the past 15 years, employers’ approach to the collection of identity data has remained relatively static.

3. Shaping how people experience the workplace

In the process of categorizing and counting workers, DEI schemes partly alter understandings of what it means to see yourself as a member of a minorized community.

For example, designing the category “Black British” then collecting data about “Black British” workers partly constructs what experiences are understood to count. People put themselves into the category expected of them. While these categories can create a sense of community, they also impede the actions of individuals who go against stereotypes and pursue careers “outside the box.”

As US historian of science Theodore M. Porter observed, counting practices “create new things and transform the meaning of old ones.” In other words, efforts to count what happens in the workplace are always going to be partly shaped by who does the counting.

What comes next?

The interplay between DEI schemes and practices of categorizing and counting forces many workers into providing data that testifies to their existence and the harms they experience in the workplace. However, data does not always change the minds of decision-makers. Too often it can be discarded as anecdotal or biased because those collecting it shared life experiences with their research subjects.

What comes next needs to be anchored in solidarity across shared struggles. DEI schemes are not a special dispensation nor bending to a lower standard, but above all else they are about ways of working that empower everyone to excel.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.