Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity of Thought: Café Culture Podcast

By gothamCulture
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Diversity Of Thought

Diversity of thought, also known as cognitive diversity, refers to the notion that each of us is unique; that we are raised and brought up differently, and we have different personal and professional experiences which influence how we think and interpret information. And this acknowledgment has become a core part of many companies’ efforts to drive innovation in their organizations and industries.

gothamCulture’s Kate Gerasimova, author of the article, “3 Powerful Ways to Improve Diversity of Thought On Your Team,”  discusses strategies that every organization can use to bring a thought-diverse culture to their organization, including hiring outside the box and how to brainstorm differently. Listen to more on this Café Culture Podcast episode.

Disability Inclusion at Work: From the Perspective of a Blind Professional

By gothamCulture
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Audio Book Player for visually impaired

One day, I was sitting at my computer listening to my coworkers as they busily edited a survey on Qualtrics. Because I’m totally blind, I was using a screen reader, which reads the screen out loud to me, and I was using keyboard commands instead of the mouse.  I pressed all the keyboard commands I knew, but they didn’t work the way they were supposed to. I knew what edits I wanted to make, but I couldn’t do it with the screen reader. So, I sat and watched as my coworkers completed the project, wishing I could contribute equally.

Why was this experience so difficult? The answer is accessibility, which means that the environment (such as a software environment) is designed to be used by people with disabilities. Qualtrics is just one example of a program that is not accessible to my screen reader. What else is not accessible? IBM-SPSS, which is a leading data analytics tool (and the sole tool we were taught in grad school). So, I was challenged throughout my statistics education. Also, most APA style articles published in leading journals are inaccessible, meaning that I require another person to read to me when I’m accessing literature. At one point, I was unable to do the job for which I was hired because they used a file management software called Mendeley, completely inaccessible to my screen reader. Imagine how frustrating it is to convince employers I’m capable when the software isn’t designed with blind people in mind. Read More…

Why Businesses Need to Talk About Disability and Accessibility

By gothamCulture
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Disability and Accessibility

An estimated 54 million Americans have at least one disability, making disabled individuals the largest minority group in the country (Disability Funders Network, n.d.). So when we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), why is disability so often left out of the conversation?

In 2020, only 27.5% of the largest U.S. companies had public-facing action related to including people with disabilities (Donovan, 2020). DEI initiatives and topics often leave out disabled individuals (Casey, 2021). It can be difficult to discuss a topic that has so many complexities and nuances, even down to its definition. There is no one universal definition of disability, complicating whether or not an individual will view themselves as disabled (Grue, 2016). Even if someone does identify as disabled or as having a disability, there are further nuances within the disability community.

For instance, some disabled people prefer identity-first language (Andrews, 2019), while others prefer person-first language (Crocker & Smith 2019), and general advice is to ask the individual one is referring to for their preference (Dunn & Andrews 2015). Disabilities can be acquired at any point in one’s life, meaning some individuals are born with a disability and others acquire a disability (World Health Organization, 2021). Some disabilities are visible and some are concealable (Grue, 2016). It can be hard to speak about the needs and struggles of such a diverse group of people.

However, talking about disability is vital in today’s workplace. COVID is estimated to have resulted in 1.2 million more disabled people in the United States in 2021 due to complications of the virus and conditions like long COVID (Roberts et al., 2022). The number of people with disabilities is rising in general, due to factors including increases in chronic health conditions and overall population aging (World Health Organization, 2021). Finally, researchers are increasingly viewing disability as a social-political group and examining social and cultural models of disability instead of simply medical models (Grue, 2016).

It can be intimidating to initiate conversations in your organization about complex identities. However, these conversations will eventually happen – it is simply a matter of when. Businesses should be proactive in starting these talks. There are plenty of disability organizations and activists that provide resources, workshops, and training on inclusivity. Documents like the Research & Training Center on Independent Living’s Guidelines: How to Write About People with Disabilities can serve as a reference in how to talk and write about people with disabilities (The University of Kansas, 2020). It is also recommended to include people with disabilities in designing and implementing any program or event that discusses disability. While some disabled individuals may offer input and volunteer to assist, people with disabilities should not be expected to design an event without any form of compensation. Further, while it is important to be open about the importance of accessibility, businesses should avoid “disability simulations” that are intended to empathize with the difficulties that disabled people experience (Pulrang, 2021). Simulations such as blindfolding a person to describe the challenges of blind people or requiring individuals to use wheelchairs for a day can treat disability as a costume.

The advice for these conversations is often simple: be teachable. Non-disabled individuals who are newly learning about disability-related topics are likely to make mistakes or use the wrong wording. Allow disabled individuals to challenge and correct information, assumptions, or language. Welcome constructive criticism without becoming defensive. Amplify disabled voices and perspectives.

In an age where so many companies avoid the topic of disability together, stand out by telling your employees and consumers with disabilities that they’re welcome in your organization.

~ Nikita Williams is an I/O Psychology graduate student and gothamCulture intern

References:

Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R.(2019). # SaytheWord: A disability culture commentary on the erasure of “disability”.Rehabilitation Psychology, 64(2), 111.

Casey, C. (2021, September 13). Do your D&I efforts include people with disabilities? Harvard Business Review. Retrieved April 15, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2020/03/do-your-di-efforts-include-people-with-disabilities

Crocker, A. F., & Smith, S. N. (2019). Person-first language: are we practicing what we preach?. Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare, 12, 125.

Disability Funders Network. (n.d.). Disability stats and facts. Disability Funders Network. Retrieved April 15, 2022, from https://www.disabilityfunders.org/disability-stats-and-facts

Donovan, R. (2020). 2020 Annual Report: The Global Economics of Disability. Return on Disability. Retrieved April 15, 2022.

Dunn, D. S., & Andrews, E. E. (2015). Person-first and identity-first language: Developing psychologists’ cultural competence using disability language. American Psychologist,70(3), 255.

Grue, J. (2016). The social meaning of disability: A reflection on categorization, stigma, and identity. Sociology of Health & Illness, 38(6), 957-964.

Pulrang, A. (2021, August 27). 3 mistakes to avoid when including disability in your DEI programs. Forbes. Retrieved April 15, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/08/27/3-mistakes-to-avoid-when-including-disability-in-your-dei-programs/?sh=118807c629aa

Roberts, L., Ives-Rublee, M., & Khattar, R. (2022, February 9). Covid-19 likely resulted in 1.2 million more disabled people by the end of 2021-workplaces and policy will need to adapt. Center for American Progress. Retrieved April 15, 2022, from https://www.americanprogress.org/article/covid-19-likely-resulted-in-1-2-million-more-disabled-people-by-the-end-of-2021-workplaces-and-policy-will-need-to-adapt/

The University of Kansas. (2020). Guidelines. Research & Training Center on Independent Living. Retrieved April 15, 2022, from https://rtcil.org/guidelines

World Health Organization. (2021, November 24). Disability and health. World Health Organization. Retrieved April 15, 2022, from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health

Expand Your DEIB Strategy With Supplier Diversity

By gothamCulture
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Supplier Diversity

At gothamCulture, we conduct bi-weekly internal meetings dedicated to discussions about Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) and how to continuously embed them in our operations, services and work. One of our ongoing initiatives is to ensure the diversity of our network of partners and suppliers and the fair opportunities for them to be included across our projects and workstreams. In other words, we are actively working on achieving and maintaining supplier diversity; a key item of any DEIB strategy.

So what is supplier diversity?

Supplier diversity is a proactive effort to ensure that all potential suppliers have fair and equal opportunities to conduct business within an organization’s supply chain. Organizations that exert this effort create opportunities for inclusion of minority, underserved and underrepresented group-owned businesses such as ethnic minorities, immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, armed forces veterans, and people with a disability.

Why is it important to achieve supplier diversity?

Like every genuinely developed and implemented DEIB initiative, supplier diversity is critical for your people, your customers, your business and the bottom line, and the wider community.

People: Across the nation, people have vocalized their expectations around prioritizing DEIB in their organizations. In our own State of Culture 2021 study, we found that organizations performed better from a culture perspective when they openly and honestly discussed diversity and social justice issues. Moreover, the new generation of candidates value working for organizations that are actively investing in DEIB. Therefore, supplier diversity can impact employee satisfaction and in turn retention as well as widen your talent pool for recruitment. Read More…

Podcast: A Citizen-Centered Approach to Police Reform

By gothamCulture
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gothamCulture Podcast

In this episode of the gothamCulture Podcast, Chris Cancialosi talks with customer experience expert and CEO of TribeCX, David Hicks, and law enforcement officer and mindset and wellness expert, Joe Smarro about taking a citizen-centric approach to police reform.

Released: June 24, 2020

Show notes and transcript:

Imposter At Arms

By gothamCulture
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Every veteran eventually faces the same thing: the day they leave military service and venture into the civilian world to start the next chapter of their life. This is an exciting and uncertain period in a veteran’s life, where they’re thrown into the wild “real” world with only the skills they’ve honed as a servicemember. This transition period forces veterans to translate their existing skills into a value-add in civilian life and to figure out how they’ll engage the business community.

The process a veteran goes through in order to understand where their skills are valued and required in the private sector can take months or even years. It’s a process of self-discovery, devoid of the formal, regimented guidance veterans are used to having. Transitioning from active duty requires setting new civilian expectations for themselves, identifying how they want to use their skillset and ultimately picking a new career.

When transitioning into the civilian workforce, however, veterans often place unrealistic expectations on themselves and misinterpret the way society views them and their abilities. This misalignment of self-expectations and societal perceptions commonly results in a phenomenon known as imposter syndrome.

Seventy percent of people will experience imposter syndrome at some point in their life. Experts describe imposter syndrome as “an internal experience of intellectual phoniness in individuals who are highly successful but unable to internalize their success.” The syndrome often manifests itself through overworking, discounting successes, low self-assessments and anxiety about fear of failure. To understand how veterans develop and experience imposter syndrome, it’s helpful to take a look at their previous military environment. Read More…

CEO Spotlight: Dispelling Myths About Military Veterans In The Civilian Workforce

By gothamCulture
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Every so often, I dedicate my writing to a topic that is near and dear to my heart- raising awareness of employment trends and challenges for military veterans who are transitioning out of the service and back into the civilian world of work. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend a conference on this very topic at Amazon’s headquarters, hosted by Deloitte and other organizations dedicated to hiring veterans in their organizations as well as organizations that exist to directly provide transition support. 

Part of the day’s events included a presentation by representatives from LinkedIn who shared their latest Veteran Opportunity Report, a study using the massive data and insights available to the digital networking platform. What is important to acknowledge is that LinkedIn’s positioning as a powerhouse of professional networking puts its teams in a unique position to understand this topic in great detail. If you are interested in learning more about this untapped talent pool, I encourage you to download their report for yourself. In the meantime, here are some highlights that might surprise you. 

The quick stats:

  • Veterans remain with their initial employers 8.3% longer than their nonveteran counterparts
  • Veterans are 39% more likely to be promoted than their nonveteran colleagues
  • Veterans are 160% more like to have a graduate degree or higher as compared to nonveterans
  • Veterans with bachelor’s degrees have 2.9X more work experience than their peers

Read More…

The Network Gap and its Impact on the War for Talent

By gothamCulture
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Network

As much as you may believe in your heart that two, equally qualified people should have equal opportunity to thrive professionally, the fact is, this isn’t the reality in many cases. There is a wealth of research that supports the notion that the strength of a person’s network has a significant impact on their ability to successfully manage their careers and to gain access to opportunities that others may have access to.

LinkedIn, the premier professional networking platform has utilized their massive wealth of user data to understand how a person’s network not only supports their long-term success but what factors contribute to (or stifle) a person’s ability to develop healthy networks throughout their lives.

Meg Garlinghouse shared these insights in her article on the LinkedIn Official Blog

  1. Where you grow up. LinkedIn users who grow up in areas with a median income above $100k are 3x more like to have a stronger* network than other users.
  2. Where you go to school. Users who attend top schools are 2x more likely to have stronger networks.
  3. Where you work. Users who have work experience at a top company are nearly 2x more likely to have stronger networks.

This ‘network gap’ presents a reality that can hinder career opportunity for some simply based on factors that are partially, or completely, out of their control. Read More…

How Businesses Can Establish and Maintain Workplace Equality

By gothamCulture
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workplace

A survey on women in finance conducted by Financial News revealed that the fight against gender imbalance in the workplace is growing stronger, but familiar obstacles and issues remain. When women still think gender discrimination exists in the workplace and so many report having personally experienced discrimination, it’s evident that businesses need to work toward establishing and maintaining workplace equality. Furthermore, businesses need to portray the existence of that equality to female employees.

Inequality

Many women find the discrimination becomes worse as they age and progress in their careers, and it is an often cited complaint, but how prevalent is it? In a poll of 2,000 female employees conducted by Investors in People:

  • 83 percent think gender discrimination still exists
  • Almost half of the respondents (45 percent) have personally experienced gender discrimination
  • 30 percent of men believe a difference doesn’t exists between men and women, but women earn 19 percent less per hour than men

Furthermore, over 60 percent of the Financial News respondents said they have suffered some form of gender discrimination by the time they put 15 years into the workforce. Since these women are experienced and considered valuable employees, encourage female staff –especially these women – to discuss discrimination and find ways to make sure the company doesn’t does not discriminate.

Only four percent of female employees think being female makes it easier to succeed. Likewise, 61 percent of women think they must work harder than male counterparts to be viewed at the same level of achievement by supervisors. To ensure this isn’t happening, companies must demonstrate that they’re measuring performance consistently and fairly by setting clear goals and measures for all positions, providing feedback, and conducting progress reviews throughout projects and quarters. They should also recognize and reward good performances while addressing and improving poor performances.

An astounding 90 percent of women want the government to force companies to conduct equal pay audits, demonstrating women are genuinely concerned about the inequality of pay between men and women. Businesses need to handle pay inequality concerns. If you think your company truly has equal pay, you should still take care of the perception of pay inequality. Generally, basic pay isn’t the concern; rather, the concern is performance-related pay.

Have transparency about how you determine someone’s pay. One company’s HR department reviews the compensation of one-third of its positions relative to national and local markets each year. They then make the average pay equal to the 50th percentile of the broad market, and the results are shared with all departments. The company also looks closely at each individual position to determine if the person’s proficiency and skill level should result in a higher pay than the 50th percentile. Now that you’ve seen the cold hard facts and some examples of ways to change your business culture, is there anything else you can do?

  • Talk with your employees about opportunities for advancement, and sit down with them individually to discuss their current career path and plans
  • Have an open door policy and encourage questions. Employees may be shy at first, so facilitate the conversation by making an effort to have coffee or lunch with one employee each week
  • In having these conversations, become aware of each woman’s individual circumstances, including her family life, and make sure your support and encouragement is clear
  • While it is important to have women in the top level of your business, make sure your focus is on the business as a whole, promoting at all levels

Unique Challenges

Women face challenges in the workplace that men may not face. Only 13 percent of women think having a successful career with a family is possible. Although men can also feel this burden, women are more likely to feel stressed by trying to balance work life and family life. To help ease this stress, be flexible with the work/family balance by:

  • Checking in often to ensure that not only are your employee’s needs being met, but her children as well
  • Initiate support for mothers without a strong support network such as backup childcare or a working mother’s social group
  • Be mindful of special circumstances such as the need to breastfeed at work or leave early due to family emergency or sickness, and be as flexible as possible.
  • Work with mothers on maternity leave to ensure they stay updated on the new happenings while they are gone, including any missed training or important changes

Women should feel encouraged and confident to either begin a job or return to their job when maternity leave ends, as well as maintain momentum in their careers, even if they take maternity leave. There is always pressure to succeed, but the pressure seems to be intensified when it involves women juggling work, family, and personal matters. In order to have a successful career in the long term, keeping momentum is imperative, which requires support from the business. It’s time to put an end to the stigma that women, including working mothers, have something to prove.

Inclusion

Although women-only networking events seem like a good idea, they should be avoided. Women want equality, not special treatment. While you can hold events that discuss and debate inequality issues, make them open to men and women. Having a balance of men and women at the top level of a company is important, but women should be fairly represented throughout a company. According to Financial News, businesses should establish “annual targets for recruiting and promoting women at all levels, from graduate trainees to vice-presidents to board executives.”

Although we’d like to believe workplace inequality is a thing of the past, it still exists. Businesses can do a lot to address inequality, as well as establish and maintain workplace equality. In doing so, you’re creating a healthy, diverse, respectful, and socially responsible culture for everyone – men and women alike.

Author

Ms. Morris is a life and career coach who strives to help others live the best lives that they can. She believes she can relate to clients who feel run over by life because of her own experiences. She spent years in an unfulfilling career in finance before deciding to help people in other ways.

Photo Credit: Stocksnap, Pixabay 

3 Powerful Ways to Improve Diversity of Thought on Your Team

By gothamCulture
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Diversity Of Thought

When I moved to the U.S., I started working at the community college library in Santa Fe, NM.

Some students only came to the library to see me, because a new foreign person was working there. I felt so special that they wanted to talk to me and ask for my opinion. As some students told me, it was interesting for them to get a fresh, diverse perspective and to learn more about me.

Coming from Moscow, which has a population of more than 12 million people, I was not used to a lot of attention for being “different.” But in Santa Fe, my diversity of thought set me apart.

Diversity of thought, also known as cognitive diversity, refers to the notion that each of us is unique; that we are raised and brought up differently, and we have different personal and professional experiences which influence how we think and interpret information. And this acknowledgment has become a core part of many companies’ efforts to drive innovation in their organizations and industries.

Diversity of thought has been found to be helpful to:

  • Avoid groupthink
  • Overcome subjective overconfidence
  • Listen to underrepresented opinions
  • Be aware of unconscious biases and look beyond stereotypes

While cognitive diversity is “defined as differences in perspectives or information processing styles” and is less visible than racial or cultural diversity, it shouldn’t be ignored. Recent research by Alison Reynolds and David Lewis found a significant correlation between cognitive diversity and high performance. They have run the execution exercise more than 100 times over the last 12 years with groups comprised of senior executives, MBA students, general managers, scientists, teachers and teenagers. In their research, teams with greater cognitive diversity performed faster, irrespective to their gender, ethnicity and age.

How to Increase Diversity of Thought

There are a number of different ways that leaders can increase diversity of thought in their organizations. Some of these include:

Hiring outside of the box

Once not known as a place that promoted a diverse talent, Silicon Valley is now thinking ahead by embracing neurodiversity. Many people with autism and/or dyslexia have higher than average abilities and can “bestow special skills in pattern recognition, memory, or mathematics.” Everyone to some extent is differently abled, we are all born and raised differently. Our ways of thinking result from both our inherent “machinery” and the experiences that have “programmed” us. Companies like SAP, Hewlett Packard, IBM, UBS and others are starting to adjust their policies to meet a broader pool of neurodiverse talent. Hiring diverse talent creates a major shift, and leaders are trying to adopt a new style of management or provide accommodations to cater to their needs.

Managing differently by facilitating open dialogues, creating a safe environment and assessing your employees:

  • Values and styles
  • Ways of thinking (divergent and convergent thinking)
  • Ways to approach a problem

Brainstorming: To diversify our thinking, consider using the six hat exercise which has been an effective way to approach a problem.

White Hat Thinking: Focus on the data available.

  • What data is available?
  • What information do you already have? What is missing?

Red Hat Thinking: Look at problems using reaction, and emotion.

  • How do other people react to this area?

Black Hat Thinking: Look at all the bad points of the decision. Look at it cautiously and defensively.

  • What could go wrong with approach in this area?
  • What are the biggest challenges?

Yellow Hat Thinking: This is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it.

  • What gets people excited?
  • What are my team’s strengths?
  • What would success look like?

Green Hat Thinking: This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas.

  • What are the possibilities?
  • How would an outsider approach this area?

Blue Hat Thinking: ‘Blue Hat Thinking’ represents process control. Mostly used when there is at least one other leader involved in the decision making process to determine when you need to “put on another hat.”

  • What is the next step?
  • What is our decision?

In The Medici Effect, Frans Johansson suggests breaking barriers to create innovation by learning a new field, breaking out of your network and reversing your assumptions. But, as illustrated in my personal example, even small changes can make a big difference. By adding socially diverse people to a group, people learn from different perspectives and experiences.

To increase a diversity of thought in organizations, leaders need to keep asking questions and challenge what’s in front of them, whether it is their talent, management style, or approach to a problem. That way they could see an opportunity where others won’t to stay ahead of the competition and to keep an inclusive workplace.