Employers Don't Want DEI to Succeed!

Hey, it's Mark here and welcome to the next edition of the Employee Survival Guide where I tell you as always, what your employer does definitely not want you to know about and a lot more. It's Mark and welcome back. Today's episode is titled as employers don't want dei to succeed. dei is everywhere now in colleges and universities. Corporations at Glassdoor at the Securities Exchange Commission is a new multibillion dollar business industry catered to the new elite to solve an old problem bias. From my vantage point as an employment attorney representing employees, dei is a joke with no punch line. If dei was impactful and effective, that I'm not seeing it, we are just seeing more and even more rampant discrimination in the workplace. It is as if the opposite effect is of D is occurring, more discrimination. The bottom line is d is a marketing and propaganda instrument used by corporations and nothing more. Corporations are themselves to blame for the decades long history of employment discrimination in the American workplace. These private government entities rule with an iron fist paternalistically beating down employees into submission and coercion. I say coercion because many managers from every race, gender, sexual orientation, etc, do the bidding of their masters and the shareholders of Wall Street. The servant managers are too fearful to rock the C suite less they jeopardize the careers within the organization. The Executive Masters dance the same tune year after year but nothing nothing changes. Let's be clear, unless employers become more transparent and more humane to employees, dei initiatives will die. And discrimination bias will persist. Because discrimination pays. By transparency. I must be fully transparent. Of course I have to. during law school, I read the DEI and critical race theory Bible authored by Derrick Bell, although it wasn't called that it was called race, racism and American law. Honestly as a political science undergraduate and a fan of American history, the law course based on Professor Bill's book was a profound experience for me, overshadowing all other courses I was, quote unquote prescribed in my law education. This is my homage to a very thoughtful former law professor of mine. Discrimination in the face of Dei. In my professional life, I encountered stories of discrimination and failed dei initiatives daily. For example, I recently took a call from a dei titled employee at a well known company that makes money relaying the transparencies via employee reviews of other companies on their website. The employee was among a bipoc population that's called Black, Indigenous and People of Color. He she was experiencing illegal bias from the DEI executive that the company's dei initiative was meant to protect, among other employees. The company stated publicly quote, in the workplace diversity, equity and inclusion dei is a holistic approach to hiring, empowering, and retaining a diverse workplace. The goal of dei is to create an environment that encourages representation and participation of diverse groups of people, including people of different genders, races, ethnicities, abilities, disabilities, religions, cultures, ages, and sexual orientations, and people with diverse background, experiences and skills and experience expertise. For a D policy di policy to be successful. It can't be just a hiring strategy or an occasional workshop. It has to flow through the entire organization, creating an environment where employees understand what it means to be inclusive, can help give your team members a sense of belonging. And quote, I had to read it all because that's the stuff that I'm seeing out there. The propaganda, the state was written by the DEI lead and the organization who discriminated against the above employee. It was maddening to listen to the employees recounting of the events she experienced or he experienced, and I felt sorry to hear her go through the tale. She was not alone. This was not the first time I had had discussions with the personnel experiencing combative, internal relationships with a DI peers. When I say combative, I mean outright discrimination. In another recent example, when an African American employee was screamed at by her white supervisor and told she was in has an attitude, which is code for racism at work if you didn't know the source I'm going to quote from his in the the show notes, but it reads the quote the angry black woman stereotype has penetrated many parts of American culture, including the workplace. This pervasive stereotype not only characterizes black woman as more hostile, aggressive, overbearing, illogical, ill tempered and bitter. But it may also be holding them back from realizing their full potential in the workplace, and shaping their work in their work experiences overall. And ironically, the employee above that I mentioned was the leading salesperson within the organization and highly paid. I checked out her company's website the D AI initiatives on the website. This is a public company by the way, and found that the following window dressing I see repeatedly use quote, We are an exciting journey to build a culture that celebrates diversity and allows everyone to bring their true self to our blank community. And in the case of the employee above the her supervisor, she brought her quote unquote true self to work to manage this employee. The supervisor not only labels black woman as having quote, attitude problems, but also promotes other white employees. She intentionally leaves behind one highly educated Ivy League black employee, in the dust and gaslights her with defamatory statements about her performance to further suppressor career within the company, not an uncommon incident that I experienced with any people. The company's dei marketing piece further states quote, Our success depends on the diversity of perspective, thought experience and background within our workforce. We recognize that to a diverse and inclusive workplace leads to more innovative ideas, more fruitful collaboration, and a more vibrant culture and quote, I am deeply sorry, but the above employee currently is so stressed out that she's undergoing treatment for quote situational depression, and has been prescribed medication to cope with the workplace hostility and fear working she now possesses. Adding insult to injury. The employee has already complained to the human resource department, not once, twice, but three times without resolution. As you know, company investigations are worthless and do nothing to remedy the fiasco we see far too often. The employer I mentioned above further stated they wanted to, quote empower our employees by quote creating a more inclusive work environment while promoting a welcoming and respectful work environment. Our E R G's Employee Resource Groups empower and connect employees across seven categories African descent, LGBTQ plus sustainability, veterans and first responders, women, Hispanic, Latin and young professionals and quote, give me a break. This sounds more like search engine optimization to attract visitors potential employer employees and customers to the website just collected the information from the level of discrimination experienced by the employee. My example above did not feel welcomed, did not feel respected and did not feel empowered and finally was not remotely connected to her white supervisor and co workers were all promoted. But if you liked this marketing message, they left a link on the bottom of the webpage it says quote join our team. Go Team Go the failure of the DEI industrial complex. I found the following conclusions from an article in the Harvard Business Review. Quite illuminating and about how ineffective dei is within the corporate environment. Quote, inclusion, dei industry, the actual efficacy of the uncomfortably large proportion of our flagship services, talking points and interventions, unconscious bias training racial sensitivity workshops, the business case for diversity, resume anonymization and the like is lower than many practitioners make it out to be. unconscious bias training rarely changes the actual behaviors and has little impact on explicit biases. A meta analysis of hundreds of prejudice reduction interventions found that that unambiguously achieved their goals many popular interventions run the risk of backlash, strong adverse reactions that sustain or even worsen the inequality that practitioners attempt to eliminate even the business case for diversity. a decade's old rhetorical framing and justification for for dei work has been found to be backfire on the marginalized groups feelings of belonging weaken support for diversity programs, when organizational performance drops and quote. So what do we make of the failure of the industrial complex? I propose solution for the DEI fiasco. The Harvard Business Review article proposed the following solutions to solving the DEI fiasco and perfecting it, however the author just cannot overcome the power of the employer and its insatiable desire to protect itself from the employee liability. dei is not the best is not in the best interest of the employer because it's truly because I truly effective di would divulge way too much in internal corporate that actor activity. dei is merely a cover for protecting the employer against employees who challenge their illegal employment activities. Notwithstanding this reality check, the author proposes the following solutions and I'll try folks to give you the both sides of the coin here. Number one, identify the DNI challenges before prescribing di solutions. Quote, too many organizations start their DDI journeys with arbitrary di interventions that have no clear objective. And the author suggests, quote, your organization should start by listening and learning through di audits, employee surveys, focus groups and other interventions that collect valuable data required to take effective action including disaggregated demographic data, and, quote, got to get rough. This is so called EEO one data, you can go to the show notes and find the link in EEO. One component is a report that is a mandatory annual data collection that requires all private sector employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors, with 50 or more employees meeting certain criteria to submit demographic work, Workforce data, including the data by race, ethnicity, sex and job categories. As an employment attorney having access to the treasure trove of the AI audits, employee surveys and focus groups would yield a damaging blow to employers. This author of the Harvard Business Review article suggests the transparency. But no employer will permit this disclosure for fear of an endless stream of employment discrimination cases, D AI initiatives will fail for the above reasoning, the disclosure equates with liability. Number two, the author says quote finding the right specialists. Quote, while there has recently been pushed back in the industry against the one size fits all solutions, that continuing demand for organizations for di generalists and incentivizes practitioners to continue offering these exact things, and as no doubt contributed to the rapid, deliberate proliferation of cookie cutter di firms, consultancies, offering virtually the same services, and, quote, the author proposes more substantial research and vetting of dei specialists to go beyond the visible list of di influencers. I didn't know there's a DI influencers, did you? I gotta check my Instagram. Hey, maybe I can have a second career as the specialist. What are the qualifications anyway, the author suggests speaking with the consultants and references seriously. All the consults are in the forums the hourly fee to charge employers to tell employers what they employers already know. This is surgery circular logic, if you accept the notion that employers never want to di in the first instance, it's bad for business. The author goes on. Number three, quote measures not only measure not only inputs, but outcomes. I call this the proverbial black box analysis. The author's states, quote, organizations rarely connected dei initiatives to the outcomes they aim to achieve. And if they do, it's often in in an aspirational rather than a tangible sense and quote, If the author proposes, quote, instead, your organization should create tangible outcomes that aims to change tied to its dei data, and develop clear indicators and metrics to know when these outcomes have been achieved. These indicators and metrics allow an organization to hold stakeholders accountable, identify and celebrate initiatives, successes, or failures, and measure return on investment and make important decisions to tweak or change initiatives that are not working and, quote, I'm still exhausted reading this stuff. I cannot stand corporate speak is what I just read. This is utterly devoid of any reality. Nowhere does this author address the actual discrimination cases that are filed annually against the company both internally and externally. Company investigations are not transparent. Even if you work at Bridgewater Associates, sorry, how to think they're more profoundly employers don't take accountability for their actions. They cover them up. Can you separate denial mentality? It is not in the employers best interest to accept accountability, produce data and metrics unless they are faced with an investigation by the federal government. Yet the federal government itself is financially ill equipped. And I'm referring to the EEOC here, folks, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That's your taxpayer dollars at work. equipped to fight employers and fight in the federal courts themselves never want to step in front of the business judgment rule and l Tell you what that means. It means that they don't want become the super human resource departments to manage IT companies. It's a system folks, you need to understand it you work in a system. If you don't believe this reality, you are not paying attention. Employers have been successful in their manipulation management by their fixtures on K Street in Washington, DC. Number four, the author goes into her fourth issue in explanation and proposed solution, quote, having those do the work and formed the budget for it. The author states quote, well, what's the average salary for a Director of Diversity? These naive decisions from leaders with no experience, or knowledge about DDI, as a practice result in the perpetual under resourcing of dei work and forced practitioners to do too much with too little, and to take the blame for failure when they inevitably burnout. greater resources for practitioners commensurate with a greater degree of specificity and accountability tracked the budgets we request and quote, this is, this one is easy and like the others above, one way to kill an internal employer program is to provide limited funding and control. Again, it is not in the company's financial interest to dump tons of resources to reveal the lurid underbelly of the organization. It's a joke, don't you see? The author of the HBr Harvard Business Review article close with these parting yet insightful words, quote, The dei industrial complex will persist so long as there are corporations that care more about going through the motions, then eliminating inequality in effecting actual change, as well as practitioners that find this acceptable, and I cannot say it any better. There you have it. Even the author of the article realize the power of the employer as private government entity dictatorships sovereign, India has literally no choice chance of survival. Employers merely window dress Dei, but nothing more. The mighty corporate industrial complex in the bias at pedals cannot be remedied with the AI. The private government employer is powerful. The AI will fail. I'm apologetic to provide this dismal outlook about the AI. But we all need to confront the elephant in the room employers do not want di they and their handlers just want you to think they do. It's capitalism at any costs and D AI is just a hinderance until the AI makes a corporation money. It's merely a marketing piece troped out to sue the American workforce, and many social political minded people. This is the deep dark secret that no one wants to address. Of course, I do it. Conclusions in the real di Wow, one actually does exist. Who would know if you want an effective d effective and D program. Here it is. We are all Americans, regardless of the race, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability and age etc. We are told we are all equal under the law. To be an informed American today, one has to listen to the debate on both sides without judgment, and most importantly, with respect. Only then are you enlightened. Follow the golden rule. Treat others as you would want them to treat you. Which is the probably the best anti bias rule one can learn from, listen more, Judge less in your life be more enjoyable and less stressful and stopped dehumanizing one another. This is the eye and not the crap bantered about to corporations large and small for an hourly fee. My information is free. Use it wisely. That was my idea for the week. I just can't stand the AI. I hear it, see it, feel it. See the impacts of it. It won't work. It won't work not because of the people who who promote it, meaning the folks who are in the frontlines of it. It's the corporations because what it does it promotes the transparency to which companies don't want to show you. Now do you get it? The truth is hurtful to the company. They can't control their own internal people and their own internal biases no matter how hard they try. I know this is sad. Usually don't try to end on a sorrowful note but maybe my conclusion that a golden rule approach life might solve the bias in your own workplace. Because that's all you can do so you can control your own person in your own workplace. So give it a shot. Sorry, the reality is truthful here here it is, but till next time occur. 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