How to Solve Your Diversity Problems with System Thinking and Technology

If you are serious about enhancing diversity and inclusion within your organization, you must take a system view, and create buy-in from your team before you buy a suite of technology solutions.

In 2018, the human resource technology sector saw an investment of more than $4 billion. As the market matures, we see the arrival of new tools, platforms, apps, bots, algorithmic assessments. The buzz is “AI-driven” everything — a new suite of tools to diversify your workplace.

The quick-fix appeal of technology to solve diversity problems attracts many HR practitioners. There are no quick fixes for diversity problems. The solutions are complex. However, technology can help when it is part of a systems approach.

Engineering Example

The engineering profession in Canada has the laudable goal of having its membership reflective of society. Consider gender. Twenty-five years ago, seventeen percent of the undergraduate engineering students in Canada were women. While some engineering schools have increased the participation of women significantly, overall, today it is eighteen percent. There have been hundreds of programs and countless individuals working to change this. Studies and our behavioural data show that there is no difference based on gender or race on the likelihood of an individual being a high performing engineer.

However, given that more than half of the undergraduates have a close relative who is an engineer and engineers make up about two percent of the population, and that 90 percent of engineers are male, we should not be surprised that the numbers have not changed. Individuals who want to be engineers continue to come from the same demographics.

The gap for Indigenous people is much more significant. Similar statistic exists around the world.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.” — Jessie Potter

Our engineering training shows us the importance of system thinking for the technology we create. However, this thinking does not extend to our social systems and achieving the goal of having its membership reflective of society. A new approach is needed. We need to find ways to inspire more people to consider engineering as a career alternative and provide more flexibility in admissions processes.

Narrow View of Diversity

The attention to diversity and inclusion is not new. Until recently, diversity and inclusion were viewed as a workplace-compliance issue. Affirmative action laws drove initiatives. Efforts focused on the diversity of protected classes like gender, race, age, religion, national origin, and disability.

Many firms have problems in expanding their diversity hiring programs beyond these protected classes. The Diversity Leadership Council at Johns Hopkins University provides a broader framework — the diversity wheel. However, very few organizations use it in their programs.

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” — Maya Angelou

Most folks end up hiring people like themselves. Moreover, hiring processes are designed to ensure this occurs. Some systemic and personal biases happen during the filtering phase and the balance during the interview.

To make a significant impact, it would be best if you changed at the process level. Otherwise, your existing systemic and personal bias will continue to govern every hiring decision you make. Furthermore, businesses spend too much energy on trying to find “ideal” candidates. Given that there is little correlation between great candidates on paper and high performers, resources are better spent assessing if the candidate will be a top performer.

My previously insight, How to Eliminate Bias from Your Selection Process, sets out in more details.

New Spotlights on Inequity

Times are changing. Movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter put a spotlight on inequity. Also, the ongoing spectacles in the media of legal and public relations nightmares for high-profile employers. For example, Google employees staged a massive international walkout over the organization’s handling of sexual harassment and general fairness.

This attention helps educate society that diversity is about much more than affirmative action and elevates the importance of diversity and inclusion to organizations.

Within organizations, the Human Resource team leads with the awareness of diversity. However, it requires champions from the C-Suite to elevate the profile and to take a systems approach.

Diversity Is No Longer Just A Compliance Mandate

Diversity and inclusion are business imperatives. Rather than the legacy focus on growing the representation of an underrepresented group in the workforce, diversity is a bottom-line priority. An inclusive workplace where individual differences, of all types, are respected, appreciated, and treated fairly is good for the business. The highest level will occur when we evolve to focus on the diversity of thought.

“Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.” — Malcolm Forbes

Many studies show the value of a diverse and inclusive workforce. The Harvard Business Review links diversity to strong financial performance and increased innovation revenue. Sixty percent of employers surveyed believe there is a direct fiscal impact on the organization when it is competitive in inclusion and diversity. The correlation is strong.

Though the value of diversity is increasingly apparent, employers struggle to change. Since affirmative action legislation was enacted over fifty years ago, workforce diversity has received much attention. Most of these efforts to increase diversity failed.

“We are all different, which is great because we are all unique. Without diversity life would be very boring.” — Catherine Pulsifer 

The common theme is that too many organizations approach diversity as a compliance issue. They are using the approaches including mandatory diversity training, job tests, and grievance systems. They continue to expect different outcomes.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is an approach to problem-solving that sees complex entities as a series of components with each part interacting with and influencing the rest. Systems thinking should be applied to organization design and management.

The approach is useful to managing organizations: the various divisions, units, and teams – the components – of a large organization are seen to interact with and affect each other continually. In effect, they behave collectively as a system.

The configuaration of the system determine its performance. The elements interact, not merely by the results of individuals’ actions or effort. As such, leaders need to take a ‘whole-system’ perspective if they are to maximize organizational performance, instead of just looking at the efforts of each program.

Creating a culture of systems thinking takes time. You need to embed the knowledge and behaviours needed to make decisions and take actions, that will help the system.

Systems thinking should not be the preserve of a select group of senior leaders. A whole-system perspective is available through mapping workflows and processes among the entire workforce. In this way, any changes to the system can start with a clear idea of the organization’s aims and purpose – and crucially, the needs of its end-users.

HR teams are already well placed to lead systems thinking in organizations, usually having a less target driven approach than their counterparts and a better view across all departments. Although shifting an organization’s culture can be a slow process, HR can start a whole-system approach through processes they own, including recruitment, onboarding, and performance appraisals.

Laying the Foundation for Success

“Talent management deserves as much focus as financial capital management in corporations.” – Jack Welch

We provide strategic insights to help organizations with their diversity and inclusion strategies and plans. My in-depth understanding of systems thinking and work to correct the gender balance supplies a unique lens through which to look at transforming an organization’s approach to diversity.

The questions we ask cascade logically from the first to the last.

• What are our broad diversity and inclusion aspirations and the concrete goals against which we can measure our progress?
• Across the opportunities available to us, where will we choose to focus and not focus?
• In our focus area, how will we choose which promising practices we will adopt?
• What capabilities do we need to build and maintain to ensure these new practices achieve the intended results?
• What management systems do we need to build and use to maintain our critical capabilities related to diversity and inclusion?

Our approach makes developing and implementing your strategy easier and more meaningful. It saves you from endless visioning exercises, misdirected SWOT analyses, and lots of uninformed big thinking. We help you in crafting your diversity strategy in concrete chunks through iteration of the answers to the five questions. The result is that you get a better diversity strategy that you can carry out, with much less pain and wasted time. The then teach you Purdue University's process of Strategic Doing™.

Here are some of the elements that need to be included in your strategy.

Get Started

Start by identifying the champions and your core diversity team to look at both your business opportunities and your processes. You are trying to build a movement within your organization rather than a program. Establish a means to ensure the right make-up of teams provides a diversity of thought in solving problems. The team should use Strategic Doing™.

Find Your Diversity and Inclusion Champions

Successful diversity champions understand and can articulate the business case for diversity. They need to speak passionately and openly about diversity and shares stories and their journey. Champions have strong influencing, engagement, and right behaviour traits, including being diverse, inclusive, and collaborative. These leaders must be willing to get knowledge and gain a deep insight into her/his organization and the systemic and unconscientious bias that exist, along with a desire to learn and adapt promising inclusive practices.

They understand that they must be visible and willing to take the time to assume their role in making a change. The champions will network to create an inclusive environment that is safe for employees to be their authentic selves.

Diversity champions will be starting difficult conversations, asking tough questions, and challenging the status quo. They need to be role models, mentors and teach by example.  These champions should also inspire others in the organization to become diversity champions.

Executive Support

Getting your senior leadership team on board at the start of this change process is critical. Set expectations that your leaders embrace this responsibility and show a commitment to diversity. You want your executive to put forth their best people to be on the diversity team. Also, you could tie executive bonuses to diversity recruiting goals. Microsoft announced such a program in September 2016. It worked. A year after introducing the program Microsoft’s global employee base was 27.3 percent female compared with 25.8 percent the previous year. It climbed to 28 percent (June 2018), per its latest diversity report.

Develop, measure and report on the goals for your programs.

To lead by example requires you to look at the composition of your board and leadership team. Your initial goals may need to include timelines to achieve more diversity in those areas.

Diversity Team

You must have diverse people look at the problem to solve complex problems. Create a core team based on thought diversity to focus on diversity and inclusion. Moreover, not just diversity of gender or race.

Post the opportunity organization-wide and use behavioural analytics to ensure you get the full mix of diversity of thought. Set the team up to generate exponential results. This team selection process may become the model for selecting all of your high-performing teams.

Engage Leaders in Program Design

You must engage leaders and managers while developing diversity and inclusion policies and programs. Having some of your diversity champions from the C-Suite accelerates this process. Being involved in development provides your leaders with a deep understanding of what the organization is trying to achieve. Moreover, you will create a sense of ownership for its success.

Go Beyond Hiring

Attracting and hiring diverse talent is crucial and an essential first step. We often only look at diversity through a recruiting lens. Organizations need to match that effort by embedding inclusive and fair programs throughout their HR processes–talent programs, compensation, performance, coaching, training, leadership development, and succession plans.

Open Communication

It is also vital to coach your team on how to give and receive feedback. Remember that diversity and inclusion are about creating an environment where all employees feel seen, can engage, and appreciated. Communication is a critical factor.

Support Your Efforts With Technology

With a solid foundation in place, the following tools can then help your teams change, measure, and manage the behaviours needed for your diversity efforts to have a lasting impact.

“Only employees exceptionally suited for what they do, coupled with an intense love of what they do, produce exceptional results.” — Larry Cash

Best-Fit Staffing

A behavioural trait assessment instrument that predicts career success in a given role. Each applicant completes the same online assessment. It is scored by the platform to remove human bias. The most important determinant of career success is the fit between the individual’s behavioural traits and their career job role. Skill and knowledge are merely the price of admission. The process finds the best-fit people for you.

High-Performance Teams

Team development programs focus on building higher levels of team performance. Our programs use influential behavioural assessments of the team members find the barriers that are holding the team back. We ensure the team has thought diversity.

GenderDecoder (free)

An online tool that finds the gender-coded words set out in a research paper written by Danielle Gaucher, Justin Friesen, and Aaron C. Kay: Evidence That Gendered Wording in Job Advertisements Exists and Sustains Gender Inequality.

Textio

An augmented writing platform that reduces bias while increasing conversions. It uses language that engages candidates, using real-world hiring outcomes from millions of job posts and recruiting emails. You target the most qualified, most diverse talent pool.

Unbiasify (free)

A Chrome extension that hides names and profile photos on social networks, allowing reviewers to focus on experience alone when recruiting and sourcing candidates.

Cultivate

A platform that uses an organization’s digital communication data with AI to extract important organizational learning and unleash leadership potential.

JazzHR

A hiring platform with an inclusion product that helps remove bias by managing data that gets exposed to recruiters and hiring teams and helps change behaviour during the interview and selection process.

Small Improvements

A feedback and performance appraisal tool that helps prepare and guide managers on critical team conversations.

Vervoe

A new approach to candidate interviews and selection. Vervoe takes all prospective candidates in your hiring loop through a “job trial” where skills are assessed across four dimensions, then qualified candidates are presented based on their merit to do the job at hand. It claims to reduce bias and expand your candidate pool.

Apply The Principles Of Technological Stewardship

"We see vividly — painfully — how technology can harm rather than help. Platforms and algorithms that promised to improve our lives can actually magnify our worst human tendencies." — Tim Cook

Technological Stewardship — Behaviour that ensures technology is used to make the world a better place for all -- more equitable, inclusive, just, and sustainable.

Before adopting any technology, apply the Principles of Technological Stewardship. Technology is how people adapt to our environment to meet our needs or wants. You want to shape the positive impacts of technologies used in your organization and avoid any unintended consequences.

Principles of Technological Stewardship.

Concluding Thoughts

“Diversity is the one true thing we all have in common. Celebrate it every day.” —  Author Unknown

The right tools will help your diversity efforts. However, technology alone will not solve your diversity challenges. Creating an inclusive environment takes commitment, system thinking, organizational alignment, and sustained work. When you are willing to put in the work — the results will follow.