Our ability and willingness to understand ourselves and the workspaces we’re perpetually curating are key. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, companies struggled to identify issues of inequality.

As we discussed in the data and design articles, the importance of awareness cannot be overstated. When we question assumptions, we disturb the unchecked premises that sabotage our goals. If most people gain employment via social connections and the vast majority of social circles are segregated, don’t we have a clear barrier to the goal we claim to have? When sourcing, interviewing, vetting, and onboarding candidates, when and how do we collect insight/feedback so we can improve upon our methods? How does an environment become conducive to a range of human experiences in an increasingly complex world?

In short, how inclined and equipped is your team to handle complexity?

Many teams have referenced how difficult it can be to curate a diverse talent pool and team.

Let’s consider the experience of your potential team members. How might they become aware of your vacancies? Are they posted on apps and platforms that require alumni affiliation or expensive subscriptions/memberships? Have you only circulated the notice to acquaintances…ones that statistically help form our homogenous social circles? Does your job/role description account for a balance of experience and degrees? Does the role require experience that is cost-prohibitive?

While rigor and quality require high standards, we must understand where our standards are rooted. How do we truly activate people (instead of assuming they don’t have value to bring)? How can we create industry onramps so people can help make our industry more robust by bringing outside perspectives and knowledge? How can we ensure these choices are facilitators for exchange vs mandates for assimilation?

We are all cultural beneficiaries, actors, and eventual predecessors. We are born into a world for which there is no manual and no universal understanding. When we enter the workforce, we bring with us the full extent of our collection of identities (e.g. the writer is a Black woman from the south side of Chicago), our socialization, worldview, and value system. In our conversations about culture fit, we often discuss it as if The Company Culture is something that we fling ourselves into and extricate ourselves from. And while I’m sure some workplaces have felt that way, there’s more to the story.

When we reimagine culture as something malleable, as something ever in flux and formation, it gives us room to be dynamic. Questioning assumptions of racial neutrality and post-racialism equips us to have real conversations about crucial data points: our inevitable differences. Recognizing how history impacts our present and visions for the future isn’t “making everything about race,” it’s demonstrating the willingness and wherewithal to understand your place and time in the world.

Adopting an equity framework only raises the bar for us all.

Perhaps diversifying your talent pool and team isn’t an issue for your organization.

To what degree is your organization equipped to maintain the diversity already present in your talent pool? Because we are multifaceted individuals, we have multiple identities and sites for potential understanding. Are you listening to the pain points they express (if there are avenues for doing so without fear of retribution)? How are resources for Employee Resource Groups allocated (including but not exclusive to time, funding, and decision-making ability)?

What policies address identity-based harassment? How does your organization respond when an employee’s physical boundaries are violated, when colleagues touch their bodies/hair without invitation or permission? How do you prevent an office culture where employees of color are misnamed/confused for one another? How does your institution respond when the barriers to productivity are a direct result of racism, xenophobia, ageism and other aspects of our cultural inheritance?

The intersectional nature of our lives can make for tension in the workplace. Just as personality types and communication styles differ, so can our experiences of facets of identity like ability, age, and gender. It’s not uncommon to see subgrouping within ERGs, where a group designed for women in the workplace sublimates the racialized experiences of some of its members (and similarly, how an ERG for Black employees succumbs to the same pitfall by deprioritizing the pain points of half their demographic).

Poorly crafted systems prove themselves to be unreliable. Teams equipped with vast budgets and elite credentials make decisions without understanding the reality of people who’ll need to make concessions for them.

The decisions we make are directly tethered to human dignity and our shared potential for flourishing.

Shifts in how we operate require fundamental changes. If we are to achieve the excellence we profess to chisel students into (students that will become our workers), our actions must fall in line with our visions, abilities, and values. If our teams are to do their best work, members must be capable embodiments of their unique experience and skills – skills that are only sharpened in community when engaged by others.

An equity approach to our working world realizes that difference is a rich, inextinguishable source of knowledge.