The recent news that large corporations — Meta and Google among them — are reducing their diversity, equity and inclusion staff does not worry Elise Ahenkorah.
Ahenkorah, a Calgary-based inclusion and diversity specialist who works with companies worldwide, doesn’t believe they were truly serious about inclusion in the first place.
In her view, some companies focus more on making public statements about diversity, equity and inclusion when it’s popular to do so than on creating environments that bolster diversity, equity and inclusion.
On the other hand, she does not think corporate promises to hire a certain number of workers from underrepresented groups are necessarily a sign of progress.
Focusing just on meeting quotas is “a really short and risky approach that usually ends up in people leaving because they feel tokenized,” Ahenkorah said.
Employees may wonder if they were hired only to meet corporate diversity goals. Their colleagues may question their ability to do their job well. This can create tension between employees, she says.
Some wonder if the greater corporate focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is itself on the way out. In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd in the US, many companies made public statements about wanting to increase the racial diversity of their staff. Not anymore.
Lululemon founder Chip Wilson recently expressed his distaste for the way the brand has leaned into the “whole diversity and inclusion thing.”
“I think the definition of a brand is that you’re not everything to everybody,” he said in a Forbes profile. “You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in.”
Many US companies are changing their corporate diversity practices after the US Supreme Court ruled against race-based university admission practices last year, the Financial Times reported this week. Some are concerned that a program created for employees of specific races may be open to legal challenge.
At the same time, TD Bank recently released the results of a third-party racial equity audit, becoming the first Canadian bank to do so. The audit, conducted by Canadian law firm WeirsFoulds LLP and US law firm Covington & Burlington LLP, concluded the bank had made “significant efforts to recruit diverse talent” and had a “strong culture of promoting diversity and inclusion across the bank.”
According to the auditors’ report, TD has exceeded a commitment it made in 2020 of doubling the number of Black employees in North America who are in vice-president or higher roles by 2022.
It has not met its goals of having women in 45 per cent of senior positions in Canada by 2025, or of increasing the number of Indigenous, Black or other racialized groups by 25 per cent. But the report says the company is on-track to meet these goals.
Using data to create measurable results is a key part of current diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, says Ahenkorah. In 2017, she founded Inclusion Factor, a company that uses data to help companies develop DEI goals that can be implemented and gradually changed over time and measured. Companies cannot change everything at once — they can’t boil the ocean, she says.
“Diversity is an outcome of inclusion and equity,” she said. “Diversity will come once you have the culture that will be able to attract and retain that type of talent.”
A ‘snapshot’
The federal Employment Equity Act specifically identifies four groups that face greater barriers to employment: women; Indigenous people; racialized people; and people with disabilities. The law requires federally-regulated businesses or organizations that employ at least 100 employees to develop plans to remove employment barriers for these groups.
Most provincial and territorial securities associations require publicly-traded companies to disclose to their stakeholders how many board members and senior managers are women. The Canadian Securities Administration, an umbrella organization for securities regulators, is considering requiring similar reporting for additional minority groups.
Racial diversity audits will likely become more common, says Christie Stephenson, executive director at the Peter P. Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business. “Investors want to be able to assess risk and opportunity around [diversity] at the companies that they’re considering investing in or they are invested in,” she said.
Information about the demographics of a company’s staff can help investors make decisions about where to put their money, she says.
Audits provide an unbiased “snapshot” of an organization at a particular moment, says Nouman Ashraf, an associate professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. They can help identify gaps in companies’ employment practices.
Conversation starters
Conducting audits is not easy. Questions about race, sexuality or disabilities may seem invasive.
“I like to think about it in terms of having a conversation face-to-face,” said Saphina Benimadhu Waters, a Canadian-certified inclusion professional and consultant who works with several publicly-traded companies.
Employees need to feel “psychologically safe” when answering these “very personal questions,” she said. This means allowing individuals to disclose — or not disclose — as much information as they feel comfortable.
Participation is also voluntary. Results are anonymized, so responses cannot be traced to specific employees or verified, says Ashraf.
This combination of voluntary disclosure and voluntary participation makes diversity reports different from financial reports, which provide a comprehensive picture of a company’s finances. Financial auditors also independently verify selected items from a company’s financial statements, whereas diversity auditors are unable to do so due to privacy considerations.
Ashraf recommends auditors ask questions that allow employees to describe their experiences at the company.
Audits can be “great conversation starters that give you data,” said Ashraf. They are only beneficial if the results are used to help improve a company, he said.
“Audits are tools. And the utility of a tool is directly tied to its intent and how well the data is used,” he said.
Companies should ask employees for feedback on the results as soon as possible, he said.
“There needs to be an openness to letting the data tell the story and not just looking for data that fits the story [companies] already have in mind,” says Ashraf. Organizations that want to reinforce positive self-perceptions will find data to support that, he said.
Ahenkorah says some of the shifts among diversity, inclusion and equity efforts are good. Many DEI leaders that emerged after the anti-Black racism protests of 2020 have moved on to other pursuits, she says. “They were running on passion and not expertise and experience,” Ahenkorah said.
The leaders who are left have more skills.
Fostering inclusion requires strategic planning, leadership and accountability. “It takes a certain type of individual to be able to manage that type of portfolio,” she said.
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