Failures of Diversity and Inclusion Strategies

Diversity and inclusion strategies are often incorporated into an organization in order to include a variety of perspectives, improve productivity, innovation and revenue. The strategies must be well planned out, have strong foundations with critical thinking to weigh the pros and cons of every step that is included. Often the downfall of diversity and inclusion strategy implementation is that there is a surface level strategic thinking.

Common Downfalls in Strategy Implementation

Surface-Level Strategic Thinking

One of the factors that contribute to the failure of diversity and inclusion efforts is the poor funding that is allotted to these programs. This, in some cases, forces the internal teams to develop strategies that usually require the assistance of external consultants or subject matter experts.

Often, when programs are developed by internal teams, they cater to the status quo and fit the new practices into the existing organizational culture. Well-developed diversity and inclusion strategies will bring changes in the organizational culture wherever required and these changes will benefit the organization indirectly in other functions and over the long term. So, the lack of this essential change itself marks the beginning of a diversity and inclusion program that will produce a low impact or may even have adverse effects on the company.

Insufficient Diagnostic Approaches

Another factor is the diagnosis that is performed before creating diversity and inclusion programs or practices. The internal teams that work on diversity and inclusion programs are usually good at solving problems within a given budget, but due to the limited budget and time allotted to this process, they do not spend enough time of diagnosing the actual issues. The lack of understanding the problems results in a product that hardly address the issues that exist within the organization.

Unconscious Biases in Recruitment

Unconscious biases may be one of the more sinister factors that contribute to the failure of diversity and inclusion programs. Even when recruitment strategies are aligned to diversity goals, unconscious biases creep int recruitment processes such as sourcing, filtering and interviewing.

A common type of unconscious bias that creeps into organizations is the affinity bias where people tend to hire people that like which tends to be someone who is like minded. Use of the term “culture fit” is one of the concepts that aids the affinity bias during the hiring process. Over time this leads to the organization having a majority of people with similar opinions and perspectives which will cause stagnation and loss of competitive edge.

Overlooking Discrimination in Strategy Formulation

Often those who devise the diversity and inclusion strategies, overlook the discrimination that contributes to the lack of diversity and inclusion. Often job descriptions include gender-specific language which deter members of the other gender. During hiring promotion and sourcing, often inclusive language is not used which does not reach out to diverse candidates.

Conclusion

Failure of diversity and inclusion strategies mainly occurs due to the lack of in-depth analysis of the problems in the organization or a surface-level strategy that is put together with a limited budget, in a limited time period. Enough time and money invested into complete analysis will aid in plugging in the relevant strategies and improve chances of long-term development.