Diversity During Adversity: It All Gets Real In a Recession
- By Winston Thomas
- March 07, 2023
As the global economy sputters and recession shows its ugly head worldwide, diversity efforts are being culled.
Some point to it as one of balance. Take tech companies, where most of the recent layoffs occurred.
We’ve always known that men dominate many tech departments. So when the layoff starts in the nontechnical departments, there will be a gender imbalance. It’s one reason why we are seeing more gender-related lawsuits.
But explaining this gender bias away as a regrettable but unavoidable statistic overlooks a significant problem. It’s that women are still facing discrimination even after a decade of talking about it.
“Women are often subject to gender bias. Whether this is unconscious bias, such as assumptions that women are not as technically proficient as men, or overt discrimination, such as being passed over for promotions or pay raises, gender bias presents another barrier to women’s progression,” observed Shweta Jain, senior director of universal banking at Finastra.
Diversity and the bottom line
It’s not just women who are more likely to lose their jobs. Chief diversity officers (CDOs) tasked with overseeing DEI goals are also leaving or being let go.
A study by Revelio Labs with the Washington Post and Reuters found that diversity leaders are being laid off in major companies, such as TripAdvisor, Glassdoor, Amazon.com, Twitter, Intel and Nike.
Jo Goh, senior director and head of APJ partners and SMB sales for APJ at Alteryx, who is at the frontlines of the diversity battle, believes companies must find the right formula. She also feels that companies need to realize that diversity advantages outweigh investment.
For Goh, working in the male-dominated tech industry, the advantages are evident. “I think the solutions come from the strength of the people, and you need to have a great mix of talents across your teams to build strong and relevant solutions.”
Instead of making conscious or unconscious biased calls on gender, diversity is really a call for hiring based on outcomes.
“So I think keeping your eye out on the business outcomes that you're trying to achieve and work backward from there to ensure that [hiring] requirements remain open-minded,” says Goh.
Diversity also makes a company more resilient. “Having people with similar skill sets in your team is not going to help you scale, and that's not going to help you sustain the growth needed [in lean times],” says Goh.
“Have different people with different skill sets and different backgrounds — it is like a melting pot. Yes, it is more work for you as a leader, but it is very, very much more rewarding,” she adds.
Goh suggests company leaders look past gender and focus on aptitude. “I look at hiring for aptitude versus attitude. I have hired people into roles where it's their first time. I understand their challenges because I have been in that position myself.”
Codifying diversity into company DNA
So, why are companies cutting back on diversity if it is shown that it matters to their survival and success?
For the most part, analyst reports and articles argue that many companies approach diversity like a tick box activity. When it came to standing by these commitments during tough times, many decided to untick.
Not all companies are cutting back on diversity. For example, Goh feels at Alteryx, diversity “makes up the DNA of the team.” Part of this effort lies in creating communities and safe places where people with different backgrounds and gender can come together and connect.
Goh also sees value in working with these varied communities. She actively encourages her team to collaborate to “give them that diversified opinion and allows the team to go faster as a collective.”
Alteryx is also going further than engagement and collaboration. The company is working with technologists to ensure their emails and job postings are neutral.
“This is to make sure that we are not excluding everyone and we're not marginalizing anyone as well,” says Goh.
She is also calling to “arm better” the company’s HR and talent acquisition team to ensure biases are eliminated “and we avoid making some assumptions based on the candidate's background, gender, ethnicity, etc.,” she said.
Diversity takes effort, seriously
It’s a continuous investment, not a one-off. It can be a challenge for leaders, especially those in male-dominated industries or schooled in traditional ways of thinking.
However, research reports show that all that effort pays off — especially in a recession.
McKinsey's “Diversity wins: How Inclusion Matters” report found that companies with more than 30% women executives were likely to outperform those with 10-30% representation. Gartner’s “Drive Results Through Workforce Diversity” whitepaper stated that diversity could improve workforce productivity by 12% and intent to stay by 20%.
All this shows is that cutting back diversity now might be the biggest mistake companies will make and bite them later when everyone rushes to hire again.
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends and DigitalWorkforceTrends. He’s a singularity believer, a blockchain enthusiast, and believes we already live in a metaverse. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/cienpies
Winston Thomas
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends. He likes to piece together the weird and wondering tech puzzle for readers and identify groundbreaking business models led by tech while waiting for the singularity.