Breaking Barriers: Achieving Workplace Equality for All

Fairness in the workplace demands more than publishing Equal Opportunities and Diversity policies. There are plenty of benefits diversity and inclusion brings companies, and an equally long list of barriers that prevent it.

Diversity is a hot topic for workers, employers and customers today

The American Bar Association (ABA) defines diversity as “the term used to describe the set of policies, practices, and programs that change the rhetoric of inclusion into empirically measurable change.”

When people talk about diversity, what are they talking about? In the U.S., diversity falls into what the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EOEC) defines as a protected class. Protected classes include individuals who are protected in the employment and hiring process under federal U.S. employment laws, and include the following:

Age (over 40)

Disability

Neurodiversity

Nationality

Pregnancy

Race

Sex

Veteran status

Practising diversity and inclusivity can make a positive impact that extends beyond an enterprise. Millenials are the fastest-growing consumer segment, and highly value diversity and fairness.

The 2017 Millennial Impact Report suggests 37% of millennials had changed the way they purchase products and/or services based on their interpretation of a company’s values.

In 2015, 81% of Fortune 500 companies published sustainability reports, up from 20% in 2011, according to a report released by the Governance & Accountability Institute.

The 2017 Millennial Impact Report also found that millennials identify civil rights and racial discrimination as the number one cause they care most about.

Diversity policies generally aren’t all that  inclusive

Many organizations have robust diversity policies that they enforce well for full-time employees. However, with an ever-growing contingent workforce now representing as much as 40% of the workforce for some employers, the protections afforded to full-time employees pay lip-service to freelancers and gig workers.

This divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ of fairness protection is an area of concern to 4 in 5 employers, but it can be difficult to rectify because the Employer of Record for these individuals will be a different organization with its own policies and protocols.

To make fairness work across a workforce, businesses must ensure that their policies carry across their entire workforce. As one commentator put it, if you’re not intentionally inclusive, then you’re intentionally exclusive.

Gender Pay Gap, Sexual Discrimination and Equal Opportunities

The gender pay gap has been a long-running issue in the workplace. Statistics show being a woman reduces both earning potential and career opportunities.

A report by the World Economic Forum in 2019 that women ‘will wait 217 years for the pay gap to close.’

What stifles fairness?

I’ve encountered many different attitudes towards topics like Equal Opportunities, Gender Gap and Diversity in my career as I’ve stepped through employments. In some cases, department chiefs acted like mini warlords and wanted to assert their own attitudes on the workings of departments, even though some of them held distorted views of what fairness looks like. Probably worse even than that were employers who turned a blind eye to unfairness and thought very little about topics like gender equality. Measuring the performance of Diversity and Equality policies by the number of complaints raised to HR departments is a blunt instrument on the march towards fairness in the workplace. In reality, the overwhelming majority of unjust behaviors are not reported. It’s simply not good enough to ‘wait and see.’

Tackling culture and norms of accepted behavior is essential

Experience working in a largely male-dominated manufacturing shop or building site and – even today – most of us would be shocked about what ‘normal accepted behavior’ looks like. Changing it, and stamping out unfairness is hard to do. Change leaders risk being criticized for ‘not recognizing banter’ and having ‘no sense of humor.’ But one person’s banter can be another person’s humiliation and distress.

Rarely is there a shortage of ‘policy.’ It’s very easy to write a document that describes how an organization ‘should act.’ The difficulty lies in resetting attitudes and re-coding behaviors to establish new ‘fair to all’ norms of behavior.

Doing something about unfairness in the workplace

There are a number of actions organizations can take to build fairness into their workplace norms of behavior:

• Formalize your policies and make them inclusive – It’s important that your policies are right and inclusive. It’s a good idea to get professional (and legal) advice if you’ve not written policies before. Given that the legal frameworks vary so dramatically from one country to the next, it’s important any advisor you choose understands the law for any territories your policy covers.

• Promote the positive reasons why fairness in the workplace is good for everyone – Nobody likes to be told what to do. Individuals react far better to change when they know it’s going to be good for them, and it’s just. Too much ‘stick’ and not enough ‘carrot’ will inevitably have a negative impact on results.

• Include the workforce in setting out acceptable behaviors and where to draw the line – While any fairness policy in the workforce must be grounded by the legal framework of Worker Protection legislation for the territory in question, it’s easier to make change work when individuals participate in agreements of how they should act. Try and enforce policies crafted in the back-office, and you will always encounter resistance from people who would prefer things to stay as they were.

• Consider the ENTIRE workforce – Organizations must work harder to make sure everyone that does work for them – whether full-time employees, temps, freelancers, consultants, contractors, etc. – enjoys the same standards of fairness. To do that requires cooperation with the Employers of Record for indirect contracted workers. It also demands fair treatment of the causal workforce, many of whom may be self-employed.

• Educate, educate, educate – You need to shout from the rooftops what fairness means and why it’s positive. You will need to communicate and share policies with all members of the workforce and do everything you can to help them really understand the demands and impacts of your policies. The use of friendly and informative videos can be a useful instrument. At the same time, it’s important to check to make sure people really get your message by performing simple assessments after any learning intervention.

• Adopt a zero-tolerance approach to inequalities of all forms – It’s important to thwart any unacceptable (or illegal) behaviors.

• Establish a ‘Respect’ agenda – At Workspend, we recommend organizations adopt a broader respect agenda that covers all aspects of fairness and inclusion. For the programs we run, we recommend all workers are trained in a respect agenda that is refreshed during employment. In the case of our own policies, we include corporate citizenship topics such as respectful communications, physical and mental health, etc. within our agenda.

• Celebrate examples of success – It’s always good to celebrate the success of other organizations and the positive impact fairness plays on individuals and businesses that champion these policies.

• Observe the golden rule of change – One of the worst-kept secrets of change managers around the world is to know that it’s better to change MORE THAN ONE THING during a organisational transformation. Change processes should leave individuals with no false impression that they can return to how things were.