This is why Diversity Hiring has become a beauty contest
Diversity hiring has become a beauty contest for companies, here are the true benefits of a diverse team and how you can achieve it.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a post on social media about a team that won an ‘award’ for being the most diverse team. For me that was the perfect example of what has gone wrong with diversity goals of companies.
The diversity hype turned companies into reactive little creatures looking for likes because their team is so extremely diverse. They don’t celebrate internally the benefits coming from having a diverse team, but they want to live up to moral standards so they can show their family and friends how much they care.
Diversity is most popular in the context of the workplace.
When Google finishes my…
But unfortunately diversity has become a way for companies to do well in the public eye, driving superficial motifs (‘look how extremely diverse we are’) which have diminished the true meaning and value of it.
The discussion on diversity shouldn’t be about recognition (awarding companies for being diverse), the discussion should be about the necessity for a team and a business to be diverse and the actual benefits it provides.
What people think diversity is
Because of the hype around diversity, it is looked upon in a very superficial way. People think they need people from diverse ethnic backgrounds for example (enough coloured people in the team) because they like to be perceived as a company that cares about diversity. Colour is a popular diversity factor because it is clearly visible. Same for gender.
Usually companies hiring for diversity are not aware of the actual benefits of having a diverse team and they have no idea on how to achieve it.
Some people also look at diversity as a moral obligation. They feel pressured to do what’s right and therefore they hire people in underrepresented groups. But also this is not leading to any actual benefits of diversity in a team, and when people are hired merely for moral reasons instead of because there is an optimal match between their skills and interests and the job, you’re not helping them at all.
You shouldn’t give someone a job offer because they are female, gay or black. Nobody wins if you do so.
What diversity really is
Diversity in essence is being dissimilar (different from each other). In traditional media and on social media diversity is usually presented as a problem of skin colour, sexual orientation and/or gender.
But having a diverse team is about a lot more than that.
A diverse team is one which differentiates in personal identities and therefore covering a variety of qualities, interests, preferences and beliefs.
The true value of diversifying a team is that you create a collective identity that as a whole can signal, analyse and address as many different problems and solutions as possible to get to the best possible outcome.
As a cross functional team (a tech product team for example) you really have a problem when you only have people who can think in a process driven, structured, analytical way (the ‘blue’ personality type) and nobody in the team is expressive and imaginative (the ‘yellow’ personality type).
The problem that is likely to occur in such a team is that everyone gets lost in the data and detail of things and the team is not able to build something unique that is not only based on historical patterns.
Personality is a good example of a differentiating attribute (diversity factor) that is not mentioned regularly in the media. But there are a lot more attributes you can look at in building a diverse team.
Diversity factors other than skin colour, sexual orientation or gender:
- Personality
- Skill
- Cultural background
- Interests…
