What's Next for Workplace Equality?

For many of us, the latter of these questions may be considered as largely unimportant or even redundant, however, in an age of continual inequality, in which unconscious bias remains an issue very much at the forefront of public consciousness, can we honestly say we are doing enough to truly champion an egalitarian workplace?

In this month’s Hot Topic, we are exploring equality and the crucial role we as managers and leaders can play in both creating a culture of equality and breaking down barriers of workplace discrimination.

The talented worker: What’s equality got to do with it?

Whilst there’s no denying that an organisation with a rich pool of talent will hold a significant performance advantage over its competitors, many businesses (or more pressingly, managers working within them) are believed to often struggle to get the most out of talented individuals who operate within their working teams. Whilst managers may look toward the deployment of motivational techniques or financial incentives as a means in which to manage their top talent, recent research proposes that it is the promotion of egalitarian principles which may in fact hold the key toward unleashing our team’s full professional potential.
Drawing upon statistics obtained from some of Europe’s best performing football teams, it has been proposed that squads with greater representation of marginalised groups will regularly outperform their less diverse counterparts. Transferring these findings into a business context, it has been suggested that we may well be able to enhance our teams’ natural talents through promoting greater equality within our own organisations, or to be more specific, through promoting institutional and psychological equality.
Institutional equality primarily reflects the initiation, enactment, and enforcement of laws aimed at enhancing our civil liberties and reducing all forms of discrimination. Institutional equality seeks to promote freedoms of expression and beliefs (e.g. freedom to practice religious beliefs), associational and organisational rights (e.g. freedom of assembly, demonstration, and open public discussion), and rule of law (e.g. specific policies which guarantee equal treatment). Moreover, institutional equality predicts psychological equality – the belief we should be continually striving toward creating a supportive climate of moral equals, who exist in a shared system of established norms and values. Through creating a more supportive climate (built on principles of social justice, equal opportunity, loyalty, helpfulness, and honesty) we can bolster motivation amongst our underrepresented groups which not only enriches the quality of our talent pool but also facilitates enhanced workplace satisfaction and performance.

Deconstructing Discrimination

Enhancing equality and reducing discrimination may not be regarded as mutually exclusive but they are certainly related and undoubtedly of equal importance. Let’s consider some ways in which we can help tackle discrimination within our own place of work.

The individual level: At an individual level, we must not overlook the importance of providing instrumental support (i.e, providing tangible and physical support provisions) and emotional social support in the battle against workplace discrimination. More importantly, we must find ways to empower marginalised groups to feel safe and supported in proactively challenging acts of discrimination.

One way in which we can transfer power to targets of discrimination is through impression management. To elaborate, through encouraging targets of discrimination to openly acknowledge their marginalised characteristics (e.g, race or sexual orientation) and ensuring other members of our working teams do the same (in a manner which is sensitive and appropriate) we can promote more honest and open conversations. Moreover, this open dialogue will enable potential targets of discrimination to feel confident in refuting existing stereotypes, through providing ‘counter stereotypical’ facts and information on a regular basis.

A further avenue we may wish to explore relates to direct prejudice confrontation. Current research would indicate we are still not doing enough to directly address discrimination, and as such, we should strive to ensure all members of our working teams endeavour to (1) increase the detection of discrimination (especially more subtle manifestations of discrimination), (2) help people understand that discrimination is an emergency which must be dealt with immediately, (3) enhance perceptions of personal responsibility, (4) teach positive confrontation through behavioural monitoring training and practice.

The organisational level: At an organisational level it is crucial we do not simply state we are opposed to discrimination; we must actively demonstrate our dedication to its destruction within our place of work. From a selection and promotion perspective, we must think about how we can demonstrate greater impartiality through the use of multiple performance predictors (e.g, clear and quantifiable job performance metrics and cognitive ability tests) to reduce risk of implicit bias or being accused of overlooking marginalised groups. Furthermore, any measures we employ should also be evaluated to ensure there are no items which may disadvantage marginalised groups.

From a training and education perspective we face an unfortunate reality in which the efficacy and impact of training programmes remains somewhat contentious. Many discrimination-based training programmes have been evidenced to only have a small to moderate impact on employees over a short-term period. To address this perceived absence of impact, we must collectively ensure we are able to accurately assess the true efficacy of these programmes, through gauging metrics such as positive behaviour change or evidenced increases in specific supportive behaviours (e.g, actively attending events in support of underrepresented groups).