According to a recent survey, 57 percent of American employees admit to swearing at work. (To me, that seems low. Also, count me in the “yes” column.)
Where is the line between swearing as harmless workplace banter and swearing as harmful, unlawful harassment?
Consider these two examples.
In Passananti v. Cook County, the 7th Circuit overturned a $4.2 million jury verdict in favor an employee who claimed that her boss had subjected her to sexual harassment by calling her a “bitch” on “numerous occasions” over a “progressive period of time.”
The court started its analysis of whether the use of the word “bitch” constitutes sex-based harassment by dismissing any argument that its common use has neutered the word:
We recognize that the use of the word “bitch” has become all too common in American society, and its use has permeated many workplaces. Common use, however, has not neutralized the word as a matter of law.
The court concluded that even though “bitch” is sexually based, its use must be examined in context to determine whether it constitutes harassment “because of sex.”
As with so many other things, when gender-specific language is used in the workplace, these cases and others recognize that context is key. We must proceed with “[c]ommon sense, and an appropriate sensitivity” to that context to distinguish between general vulgarity and discriminatory conduct or language “which a reasonable person in the plaintiff’s position would find severely hostile or abusive.
In Griffin v. City of Portland, the U.S. District Court for the District of Portland faced a similar issue — whether an employee of deeply religious convictions could claim religious harassment based on her co-workers’ repeated taking of the Lord’s name in vain.
Like the 7th Circuit in Passananti, the Griffin court concluded that context matters:
Suggestions in the record that profanity was used even when Ms. Griffin was not present indicate that much of it was not motivated by her religious beliefs. As I interpret the guiding precedent, even the category of profanity that uses “God” or “Jesus Christ” as part of a curse does not necessarily trigger the “because of” standard. If the speaker used the terms out of habit, perhaps without even thinking of their religious connotations, and not because of Ms. Griffin’s beliefs, then such language would not satisfy the “because of” standard and could not be used to support the claim.
With salty language, context most definitely matters. For example, when I was 12 years old it was okay ask for the “f**king salt” among a group of other 12 year old boys at summer camp; not so much with my parents at the dinner table at home.
Yet, in the day-to-day management of your employees, you should not get bogged down in the legal minutia of whether one employee calling another employee a “bitch” is actionable unlawful harassment. Employers should take seriously all harassment complaints in the workplace. If an employee complains about profanity, don’t ignore the complaint. Most cases of workplace profanity won’t turn into a lawsuit. Nevertheless, when it rears its head, use it as a tool to educate your employees about appropriate versus inappropriate language, the value of context when choosing words, and the importance of being tolerant and considerate around all employees. Otherwise, the context in which you might find yourself is that of a lawsuit.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Bill O’Reilly paid $32 million to settle a claim of sexual harassment brought against him by a former co-worker.
It’s horrible what I went through, horrible what my family went through. This is crap. It’s politically and financially motivated. We can prove it with shocking information. We have physical proof that this is bullshit.
Dude, I’m going to put this as nicely as possible.
YOU ARE NOT THE VICTIM HERE.
In the same interview, O’Reilly claimed, “I’ve never had one complaint filed against me by a co-worker in any human-resources department in 43 years. That encompasses 12 different companies.”
One of those former co-workers, Megyn Kelly (who settled her own claims of harassment against Fox News), tells a very different story.
Bill O’Reilly playing the victim card is exactly why we still have such a huge problem with sexual harassment. If someone accuses you of harassment, there are two things you absolutely cannot do.
The American corporation has a large harassment problem. From Bill O’Reilly, to Harvey Weinstein, to Roy Price, to Uber, to the small business down the street from you, to maybe even your own shop, sexual harassment is a massive issue.
When a harasser claims that he is the victim, he exacerbates the myth that sexual harassment in the workplace is not a problem. When you sexually harass women, when you send women unsolicited and unwanted pornography, when you force women into non-consensual sexual relationships, you are not the victim, they are. And to say anything else perpetuates the falsehood that harassment can be ignored and swept under the rug.
As an advocate for employers, let me say that this is not acceptable. It never was (despite the long history of harassment to which women have been subjected), and it is certainly no longer is. This shameful misbehavior, the corporate cultures that enable it, and the after-the-fact actions that attempt to justify it, must stop.
So shame on Bill O’Reilly and anyone making excuses for him.
I only wish he understood his disgraceful misconduct and his role in enabling that of others.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Just when I think I’ve hit rock bottom with my survey of the year’s worst employers …
The EEOC reports that it has sued a downstate Illinois IHOP franchisee for sexual harassment. While the allegations are bad, what makes this case worse is the allegation that the store owner ignored his employees’ complaints because the accused harasser was a close relative.
According to the EEOC’s suit, … more than 11 female employees at the Glen Carbon (Illinois) IHOP were subjected to unlawful sexual harassment including regular and repeated sexual touching and grabbing, lewd sexual comments and requests for sex, and offensive and threatening gestures. The general manager at the Alton (Illinois) restaurant made lewd and offensive comments to a male cook about his genitals and propositioned him for sex. Although the owner and managers were aware of the pervasive and egregious sexual harassment at both restaurants, they failed to investigate or take any action to prevent or stop the unlawful harassment, according to the suit.
A lawsuit is merely a collection of unproven allegations, and the EEOC could be pursuing false leads, but these allegations are horrific.
Indeed, as stated by James R. Neely, Jr., the district director of the EEOC’s St. Louis District, “The sexual harassment in this case is particularly disturbing because it involved the general managers of both restaurants, both of whom were close relatives of the owner, and the owner declined to take any action.”
If you ignore pervasive and egregious harassment complaints because the accused happens to be your close relative, you might be the worst employer of 2017.
Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.
Although he’d rather not be reminded of the blizzard that dumped 21 inches of snow on Chicago over two days in 2011, Adam Ochstein also shivers when he recalls the record-breaking chill when the city was hit by the polar vortex during the winter of 2014.
The CEO of StratEx, a Chicago-based HR service company, admits his business was ill-prepared for the natural disasters. Local business partners could empathize with inevitable disruptions, but since StratEx’s clients span the country, he remembers most did not care about the weather’s effect on business; they just wanted their services.
Ochstein, who has been the CEO for 16 years, is aware of the challenges faced by businesses now in southeast Texas and Louisiana given the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey. Spotty power and sporadic communication tools only add to the uncertainty in contacting employees regarding vital information.
During stressful times, companies need to be aware of ways to best communicate with their employees if technology is disrupted by natural disasters. They also need to have safety measures in place and make their workers feel comfortable while keeping the organization working.
Ochstein said boosting morale and showing empathy for employees is crucial in times of tragedy. StratEx paid for Ubers or taxis and catered lunch to make sure employees felt comfortable still coming to work as the blizzard set in. Once the snowstorm paralyzed Chicago, StratEx leaders realized the best way to continue was allowing employees to work remotely.
“[We used] any means necessary to communicate family first, business second,” Ochstein said.
Pam Goncalves, chief of staff for GuideSpark, an employee-communications software company, said communicating with employees through corporate social media channels and platforms and even simple phone trees keeps employees in the loop following a natural disaster like Harvey.
“Most HR teams, including GuideSpark’s, will then start dialing cell phones, land lines and emergency contacts until they have reached every last employee,” Goncalves said.
She noted that employees often need to relay critical corporate information to customers and business partners, so having crisis communication solutions in place is the next step that companies should have in place.
Those in leadership positions have a responsibility to their staff to communicate effectively in times of turmoil, and Goncalves said receiving a message from the CEO or the head of HR can alleviate worry and show support and empathy.
For example, if an employer has to temporarily close, encouraging employees to volunteer at local shelters can make them feel less helpless, she said.
“One theme in the overall communication is to remember extended family and friends,” Goncalves added. “Even though a company may not have been directly impacted by the disaster, that doesn’t mean its employees don’t have family or friends affected by the crisis.”
For Mishell Parreno Taylor, an employment attorney in the San Diego office of Littler Mendelson, the tragic times in Harvey hit home; she grew up in Houston and attended college there, and her family and friends still live in the area.
Parreno Taylor, along with her colleagues, published an insight piece on Littler’s website Aug. 29 about the legal responsibilities employers have after a hurricane. She told Workforce that everyone has to come together during times of crisis. Constant communication is essential, but if social media channels and phones are down, employers need to have emergency contact information and identify critical groups and services locally so there is a backup communication plan.
If workplaces are destroyed or deemed unsafe, companies may offer employees remote work options. Goncalves remembers employees having to work remotely in 1989 after the Loma Prieta earthquake devastated the San Francisco Bay Area at a time when communications tools were primitive compared to today’s standards. Parreno Taylor said employers and employees must be clear about wage and hours when working remotely, while remembering that everyone is doing the best they can.
“If you have people out there putting in time and working remotely there is an obligation to compensate them for that time,” she said. “It’s important, though, from wage-hour claims that an employer communicates time and attendance policies that shows compensable time and is accurately reporting time.”
Parreno Taylor stressed the importance of supporting each in the weeks and months following Harvey’s destruction. She translated her insight column into Spanish for the diverse population in southeast Texas. She shared that company leaders need to listen to employees and “make sure to balance the needs and morale of your workforce with continuing the workforce.”
Continuing the workforce is easier now for Ochstein, who said StratEx has over 100 employees around the country and would be better equipped collaboratively and with safety if another natural disaster were to occur.
“We have a drill in place for how we handle some type of business discontinuance or natural disaster; we have all the communication and collaboration tools,” he said.
Ariel Parrella-Aureli is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Kevin Synoga knows what it is like to work a creative job in a not-so-creative field, but is happy to be in the hard-working environment of his colleagues. Synoga, a graphic designer at a transportation engineering firm, sees happiness at work not solely in creative fields, although surveys show happiness and creativity are often paired together.
A recent survey by staffing firm Robert Half’s found more than 12,000 U.S. and Canadian workers in creative positions reported the highest levels of on-the-job satisfaction and interest in their work, compared to employees in the accounting and finance, administrative, legal and tech fields.
“Creatives like their jobs more because that’s the direction they are taking with their career,” Synoga said. “Other people in finance jobs and similar fields may have fallen into the jobs instead of having a really guided point to what they wanted to do.”
Chicago tech startup Curiosity.com offers creative articles on a variety of topics through multiple platforms and is committed to teaching readers something new every day. Patrick Cerone, brand partnership manager at Curiosity, works with the company’s editorial team to create compelling content so he knows the potential of creatives achieving happiness at work if they feel a connection and appreciation for their work.
“When you’re creating something, you’re putting a lot of your thoughts, ideas and inspiration into the project, so it’s more than just a job,” Cerone said, who also has a background in marketing. “The right job can be a real source of happiness and fulfillment, so the potential is there.”
Company culture is a big part of happiness, too. In a separate survey, The Creative Group, a smaller marketing division of Robert Half, asked 400 U.S. marketing and creative employees to describe their office culture in one word. Creative workers said their culture is friendly, family and diverse.
At Curiosity, Cerone described his work culture as caring, intellectually curious and committed, adding that everyone is supportive of each other.
“Those who have good relationships with their coworkers are 2.5 times more likely to be happy at work,” said Diane Domeyer, executive director of The Creative Group. Having space for flexible hours, communal working areas and casual dress codes allows for more creativity, compared to the more buttoned-up environment of accounting and finance firms, she added.
But Synoga, who has worked in other corporate environments, argued that’s not always the case for more rigorous, less creative industries, like engineering. Engineers passionate about their work aren’t considered unhappy or dissatisfied with their job, even if the culture is less social and more focused on awards and daily accomplishments.
“Those people are actually more driven to their jobs than creatives could be,” Synoga said, adding that engineers, which could be considered creatives, can be more driven if they have passion.
To merge the divide between strict cultures and creative spaces, Domeyer suggests firms encourage design thinking, a systematic approach to solving complex problems and developing products and services that satisfy customers’ needs, and gives employees access to tools for further professional development.
“Make it easy for employees to collaborate and brainstorm solutions to business challenges by offering communal spaces to meet up and share ideas,” she said.
Domeyer added that instilling work pride by working toward awards and other forms of accomplishments, as Synoga alluded to, is a shared goal to make all employees happy at work and create communal satisfaction.
“Remind staff why your organization is a great place to work,” she said. “Don’t assume they know it.”
Ariel Parrella-Aureli is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Open office spaces can work, but they need a balance and it depends on the industry.
When I accepted my first office internship at Human Capital Media, I asked many of my friends the same question: “What’s your office like?” I heard much of the same answer: an open office space.
As the trend toward open office spaces hits the workplace and studies emerge about their effectiveness and innovation, questions are rising about this Silicon Valley-inspired model that is supposedly the future of office spaces.
How does it boost productivity and deal with office distractions? Does it further disconnect employees with the eternal presence of technology? The discussion becomes more interesting when you consider in conjunction with another rising workplace trend: remote working.
Many employees work from home and have flexible work arrangements, so their comfort level has seeped into the office design. Airbnb’s office is said to be like entering someone’s house; creative homey nooks with hanging lights, colored walls and antique portraits and memorabilia for private concentration, standing-only desk cubicles or large sleek lounges with wall plants and dog-friendly spaces had the company received rave reviews for its space.
Mixed with a modern office setting of ample wooden tables for conferences, meetings and productive vibes, it’s no wonder the space won Glassdoor’s 2016 Best Place to Work. Modern spaces like these are heading toward a future where the work-life balance will be less office space and more working from home. These spaces are acting as a “second home” while losing the title of a typical “office.”
While it depends on the job, most corporate industries and technology-aiding jobs can be done from home or any space that lets you have a flexible schedule and not have much of a commute, like these open environments. In a recent Forbes article by Sydney Parker about humanizing the future of the workplace, she wrote that balance is coming to fruition for convenience, according to experts on office spaces and design.
“Panelists [at the Bisnow Seattle Workplace of the Future event] envisioned office spaces intermingling with residential and retail cores, allowing workers to walk, bike and work remotely from home. In the future workplace, an individually determined work-life balance will not be a lofty aspiration, but a shared reality,” she wrote.
Millennials are one group pushing for flexible work hours and remote work access, according to HR experts and millennials themselves. In my first blog post for Workforce, I wrote about millennials’ influence on shaping the workforce and their growing presence in tech fields.
As a millennial, those benefits in a job are extremely attractive and allow me to have better control of time management and work around other commitments. Being constantly plugged into social media and computers for work, office spaces no longer need to be so segmented and traditional, which younger generations know well.
These office spaces are similar to working from home and allow flexibility in work schedules and boost engagement and creativity, studies show. According to Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University, a 2014 study he conducted of a call center’s remote workers showed their increased productivity when they were able to work from home over a span of nine months, as compared to workers in the office. According to the Harvard Business Review interview with Bloom, who is a co-director of the productivity, innovation and entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, this was because of their quieter environment and their flexible schedule to start earlier, take fewer breaks and work around family commitments.
He brought up the point that not everyone has the discipline and motivation to work remotely; some need manager support and thrive on a work-specific space with obvious company culture. As with anything, balance is key to success, and it applies here in workspaces and work remotely.
Working only from home would not be conducive socially and work-wise, but having a mix of office days and work-from-home days could be a healthy alternative to keeping morale alive, having manager support when needed and keeping employees connected to the organization. Bloom mentioned this model would also save money for companies.
To move with the times, companies need to be open to remote work flexibility, balance modern workspaces that act as a “second home” and less confinement, while also listening to the needs of their employees. If someone is used to a closed office or works better in those spaces, they should have that option.
A New York Times op-ed called out Google for wrongly creating an office open space that is destroying work culture, but what is actually wrong is not accommodating an employee’s need. More recently, Apple’s employees have threatened to quit over the company’s new floor plan, featuring open office layouts. Having the balance between social and quiet rooms and closed offices, like we have seen with Airbnb, is the future of office design and can push employees to work from their office “home” with co-workers.
Ariel Parrella-Aureli is a Workforce intern. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
It is not breaking news that a bad hire can come with a high price tag — recruiting costs, training costs, man-hours and morale issues — not to mention the lost productivity.
But there’s another recruiting misstep that could cost you as well, and it’s probably something you don’t often think about: poor candidate experience. While you as a hiring manager have decision-making power, candidates with options aren’t going to stick around if they are not having a good experience.
If you come across as unorganized in your search and onboarding — as if the role isn’t a priority — then you’re turning potentially great hires into dissatisfied customers that could have a negative impact for your brand.
Exclusive research and insights from CareerBuilder’s 2017 “Candidate Experience Study” show what peers and competitors have identified as shortcomings in their process, illustrate the role for technology to help improve the process and provide tips to make things easier for employers and prospective employees.
In partnership with Inavero, CareerBuilder surveyed 4,512 workers (ages 18 and over), 1,500 hiring decision-makers in the United States and 504 workers in Canada in an effort to understand the factors that influence candidates’ job search experience. Here are some aspects employers are struggling with according to study results:
Not having a quick apply process for every device: The application process itself can contribute to a negative experience for modern candidates as “applications taking too long” (28 percent), “having to customize documents for every job” (34 percent) and “uploading a résumé into a system but still having to manually fill out fields” (29 percent) are reiterated as frustrating aspects of the process by a considerable number of candidates.
Not preparing hiring managers: On average, only 2 out of 5 hiring managers are prepped by recruiters or talent acquisition specialists. Of those who do, only 2 out of 5 prep hiring managers specifically on the topic of candidate experience. This means only 16 percent of hiring managers overall are prepped by specialists to help manage the candidate’s experience.
Not having an effective career site: An employer’s career site is important for getting key information, according to 89 percent of job seekers. But a quarter of employers (24 percent) say their company career site doesn’t accurately portray what it’s like to work for their organization, and only 45 percent of candidates say they can typically tell what it would be like to work for a company based on their career site.
Not tailoring communications methods to specific segments: The ever-emerging multigenerational workforce demands a shift in the way we communicate. Millennials significantly prefer email communications (57 percent) over phone calls (31 percent), whereas baby boomers significantly prefer phone calls (58 percent) over emails (37 percent). Generation Xers have equal preferences toward email and phone calls (47 percent for both).
Not recognizing when the employee experience really begins: The lines between the candidate and employee experience are blending — at least in the eyes of candidates, as 3 in 4 say their candidate and onboarding experience with a company is the first part of their broader employee experience with that company.
Not building relationships with candidates for future opportunities: The most valuable resource an employer has is their talent pool. While it is important to attract the top candidates, it is equally as important to frequently and effectively communicate with your talent pool, but more than a third of employers (35 percent) say they don’t put time into doing this.
Not having an efficient background check process: Employers that want to keep top talent from talking to other companies while they want to receive employment screening results should improve their screening process. Sixty percent of candidates continue communicating and interviewing with other companies while waiting on background results.
Not having the right ATS or an ATS at all: Organizations currently utilizing an ATS, or applicant tracking system, reported placing more emphasis on the candidate, employee and hiring manager experiences. For example, those who currently use an ATS are 25 percent more likely to have a standardized process to help deliver a consistent candidate experience.
Not informing the candidate where they stand: More than half of job seekers say employers don’t do a good job of setting expectations in terms of communication at the beginning of a potential hiring interaction. Eighty-one percent of job seekers said continuously communicating status updates to candidates would greatly improve the overall experience.
Not staying connected with candidates once they have accepted the position: Once the hiring process is in the post-acceptance and onboarding stage, the expectation is for the process to be seamless and frustration-free for new hires — yet a noticeable number of candidates say this stage has not been ideal. Two in 5 candidates (40 percent) say they’ve experienced a lack of communication in the past between when they accepted the job and their first day of work. This is not surprising, since less than half of employers (47 percent) have a formal process in place for communicating and interacting with candidates between the day they accepted the job and the day they start work.
Not paying attention to how their employer presence/brand is portrayed on social media: Employers are trying to reach an audience, and they can’t afford to let their brand’s social media pages fall by the wayside. Yet, 60 percent of employers don’t monitor their employer presence/brand on social media. Of those who do, 68 percent take steps to encourage positive reviews while 16 percent just react to negative information.
Not treating candidates with the same respect as employees: While the majority of employers (51 percent) say the line is blurring between the company experience and employee experience, less than half of job seekers (49 percent) say employers treat candidates with the same level of respect and accountability as current employees. This is an issue since the vast majority of job seekers (nearly 4 in 5) say the overall candidate experience is an indicator of how a company values its people.
One in four employers says the amount of time it took to fill their last opening was too long. Hiring isn’t easy, but don’t lose sight of the plight of candidates. Job seekers on average say it takes them about 2 1/2 months — 10 to 11 weeks — to find a job, from when the search begins to when they accept the offer. During this time, they spend just over five hours a week on average on job search related activities.
Your job is hard, but so is the candidate’s. That’s why it’s crucial to understand how to improve your candidate experience — and technology can help you get there.
Rosemary Haefner is chief human resources officer at CareerBuilder. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
I posed this question to friends and family and got a variety of answers. A librarian’s assistant enjoyed her job mostly because in the hours spent shelving books, she could listen to music, did not have to interact with other people and was not bothered by the sun. Someone in the audio/video space sometimes felt disconnected from co-workers in his closed office but appreciated that space when knee-deep in the audio-editing process.
What’s your ideal work environment? Photo from West Elm.
Personally, I enjoy some mixture of outdoor space, where I can assess my notes in the sun, and indoor space, where I can lay out pages on a large table and make my own organized mess while I work. Cubicles are perfectly fine except for some tasks when it’s nice to get a change of scenery. Open workspaces are perfectly fine except for some tasks when I need seclusion.
Providing more variety in office spaces is a major theme in Workforce’s upcoming video story about modern workspaces. Human Capital Media video and multimedia producer Andrew Lewis and I visited the West Elm collection and spoke to Peter Fowler, the vice president of Workspace at West Elm.
Fowler caught us up on many trends in office design. Meanwhile, we also visited the Chicago office of health and wellness company Vitality, which modernized its office space two years ago. Todd Burman, vice president of quality, partners and risk at Vitality, talked us through their design process which meshed with many of the concepts Fowler brought up.
One important idea in these conversations was the rise of the open workspace — and how adopting that alone is not effective. In the extreme part of the open office trends, companies just took down walls, and eventually people figured out that didn’t work, said Fowler.
“At one point, we were getting rid of every closed office known to man,” he added. An exaggeration, yes, but the idea behind that holds true. Doing the total opposite of a closed office space isn’t the solution to problems of the closed office space.
The solution is balance, said Fowler. “Real estate is not getting any cheaper, and we have to be really clever with how we use space these days,” he said. So, as an employee’s personal space gets smaller, a clever solution could be to provide more spaces to work that fit different work needs, from quiet, more secluded spaces to open, collaborative areas.
Vitality strived to find the balance between a completely closed office and a completely open office when it redid its space, said Burman. His suggestions for balance were valuable to hear. Vitality utilized white noise makers and other sound abatement features so that people still felt some degree of privacy in open spaces. It also put people next to the resources that they would utilize the most. For example, it put wellness strategy managers, who spend all day on the phone with clients, next to small call rooms where they can have private conversations.
Another major takeaway from these interviews was the connection between design and employee well-being, which Workforce explored in our upcoming video story.
What’s been especially interesting, for me is comparing the ideas from these interviews with what studies have found. In theory, I like and agree with many of these concepts. But if a company is to shift their office design specifically to appeal to employees, the impact on employees matters.
For example, a recent report looked at the impact activity-based working environments, or ABWs, have on employee behavior. An ABW is “based on the premise that no employee ‘owns’ or has an assigned workstation. Rather, the broader workspace provides employees with a variety of predetermined activity areas that allow them to conduct specific tasks including learning, focusing, collaborating and socializing.”
This is like the extreme version of what Burman and Fowler discussed, where personal space was shrinking but at the same time employees had more times of communal spaces to choose from.
Leesman, an independent assessor of workplace effectiveness, found that many ABWs have employees with traditional work styles, meaning they stay in one place rather than use multiple settings. Yes, allowing all this alternative space was good in theory, but people might not be using these separate work settings as planned.
“This may be because the nature of their role doesn’t require them to work in a mobile way; or it could be because the physical, virtual and cultural infrastructure does not actively encourage the appropriate mobility behavior,” said research company Leesman CEO Tim Oldman in an email statement.
Taking all this into account, the question becomes, how do you motivate employees to use your new, modern space when you’ve gone through a redesign? What if their jobs don’t easily allow them to make that switch throughout the day? How can a company make something trendy and potentially effective for employees into something practical and actually effective?
I don’t have the answer, but I imagine that cultural infrastructure Oldman hinted at above plays a big role.
What has your experience been with open office plans and how employees have adjusted to them? Feel free to share in the comment section below.
D&I is usually focused on the experiences of minority groups. One of the downsides is that it sets up white males to feel discriminated against, as well.
Former Google employee James Damore’s 3,000-word assertion that women land fewer tech jobs because of biological differences rather than skills sparked a lot of conversation, particularly about the state of diversity training.
Organizations use diversity and inclusion training to prevent hostility and build inclusive, respectful work environments that foster a productive workforce. Google introduced diversity and bias training in 2013 and about three-quarters of its employees have gone through it.
The search engine giant fired Damore days after his manifesto went public. In part, Damore claimed it was the D&I training that led to him writing the memo.
Bill Proudman, co-founder and CEO of leadership development consulting firm WMFDP LLC, or White Men As Full Diversity Partners, said Damore’s argument sounded familiar to opinions he’s heard from other white males.
D&I is usually focused on the experiences of minority groups: African Americans, women and the LGBTQ community. Proudman said he sees the reason for this, but one of the downsides is that it sets up white men to feel discriminated against, as well.
“When the dominant or normative group sees inclusion, it’s about everybody else other than them,” Proudman said. “When it gets hard, [white males] don’t know how to stay in it because they don’t understand their mutual self-interest. They don’t understand how they’re being impacted by inequity in the system.”
Proudman said often in order for white males to care about diversity and inclusion, they need to be shown directly how it affects them.
“They need to understand how inequality is impacting how they assess talent, how they promote people and how they give performance feedback, so they really can hire and promote the best talent rather than the talent that is most comfortable —which becomes a huge win for them on a personal level,” Proudman said.
As Damore asserted in his memo, white males often come out of diversity trainings feeling like they are personally responsible for inequity or that they shouldn’t say anything about race or gender — and that’s a problem, Proudman said.
“Straight white men have to be brought into this inclusion work in a very different way than they have been historically,” he said.
The Current State of Diversity Training
In D&I training, the key is to focus on improving and enhancing the capability of people rather than correcting issues, said Doug Harris, CEO of the D&I consulting firm Kaleidoscope Group.
He said D&I education is most effective when employees receive individual training with the goal of learning specific behavioral expectations and desired competencies.
Some problems may lie in that the training is often not personalized.
“We have different things we have to overcome, different thought processes that we have to address,” Harris said. “We have to allow people to be able to do that.”
Harris stopped short of blaming training for Damore’s response.
“Everybody goes through education to get their driver’s license. Does that mean there’s not going to be any speeding tickets or accidents?” Harris said. “People aren’t saying that we need to go back and change the driver’s test because people are getting into accidents.”
That’s why accountability systems are so important, he said.
“Unfortunately, people are people,” Harris said. “And you can’t allow for behaviors impacting an inclusive environment.”
Many diversity education programs are focused around awareness rather than based around skills. Experts say that many people are uncomfortable because they haven’t been around a lot of diversity in their lives.
“Instead of judging those individuals, we have to support and assist them,” Harris said. “If we don’t, they are going to get in those circles of discontentment, start reinforcing their thought processes and believe it’s a good idea to send out a letter saying that women are inferior to men.”
Harris said there needs to be a way to speak respectfully about issues when people have questions and concerns. And if people want to talk about a problem, they should talk about their own.
“One of the biggest D&I issues is men getting together and speaking about what the problem with women is,” Harris said. “Work within yourself. There’s not a lot of energy for other people getting corrected while you’re staying the same.”
Room for Improvement
Part of Damore’s complaint was that there was too much shaming and emphasis on telling him what he can’t do or say. Harris said that’s a legitimate concern.
“Shaming, guilt and judgement should not be the objective of our education,” Harris said. “D&I education when done well should give people comfort, skills and beliefs to allow them to go to the other side and hopefully get new insights on how they see the world.”
Harris added that Damore’s reaction is not uncommon and that it’s probably why he felt the confidence to share it.
Proudman said he can see the eyes roll when some employees hear they will be doing diversity training again. “They think oh is this going to be another blame and shame the white guy session?” he added.
Unfortunately, a lot of people doing D&I work want to correct other people instead of building them up to be more inclusive leaders, Harris said.
“I can’t just stay on my side and say, ‘Diversity education is just so beautiful and done so well,’ ” he said. “We’re an unregulated industry that gets unregulated results sometimes.”
Proudman said they don’t even call their work training, but rather awareness work centered around creating safe spaces for dialogue.
“Training is a tool but it is just one way to reinforce a particular set of skills, insights or efforts,” he said. “It has to be linked with other efforts within the organization.”
This development work takes place over years and Proudman said he has not figured out a shortcut in helping leaders live a culture of full inclusion.
“Part of it is how to help leaders have patience but also a sense of urgency — and have both of those running simultaneously,” he said. “It’s a paradox — and often people just want a quick fix.”
It’s a two-sided responsibility, Harris said. People need to speak to each other respectfully, but also need to hear what’s being spoken to them.
“The key is to choose people to support your organization who are really coming from a place of love,” he said. “And that love is not just for those who have been historically excluded, but it is for everyone.”
This story first appeared in Workforce’s sister publication, Chief Learning Officer. Ave Rio is the associate editor for Chief Learning Officer. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
A recent posting for a diversity-related job in a medium-sized organization included an all-too-common phrase in its description of the ideal candidate: “Must have a passion for diversity.”
Aside from “passion” and a few years of experience, the description said little else of substance about the ideal candidate’s qualifications. I could already tell the organization was off to a rocky start.
I can’t recall ever seeing a single job description in any industry for a finance director that included “passion” as one of its desired qualifications. The same goes for any other strategic leadership position, except for human resources, and that’s where the problem lies. In old school organizations, diversity and inclusion aren’t seen as strategic priorities like finance. In old school organizations, senior leadership doesn’t know their mission critical “why” for doing D&I, much less what meaningful goals to assign to that function.
Passion then becomes a substitute for clarity, competence, effectiveness and results. This leads to three problems.
The D&I leader and D&I initiatives will struggle to be taken seriously and effect any meaningful change. How is “passion” to be measured, or translated into results that matter?
Most of the people with “passion” for D&I are those most disadvantaged by its lack — women, people of color and LGBT people. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with a member of a historically underrepresented group spearheading diversity efforts, the widespread nature of this practice reinforces the notion that D&I is only about, and for, members of those groups.
Passion can get in the way, especially when it bumps up against the “caring imperative.” I recently had an online exchange with a person of color who took issue with one of my articles because they believed the article gave white people fewer reasons to care about people of color. But while caring is important to drive commitment (as with any strategic initiative), the goal of D&I is not greater caring, but more effective behaviors and more equitable systems and processes.
Caring is not required for a person to follow an equitable process or do more inclusive behaviors, especially once these become habit. Also, examples abound of people who care deeply but wreak havoc with their ineffective behaviors.
One of my favorite examples is a community leader in a city where I once lived who was deeply knowledgeable and passionate about diversity and equity, but managed to divide, undermine and alienate one community group after another with her lack of emotional intelligence and personal accountability. Organizations can likewise care about D&I, yet yield discriminatory or inferior results driven by inequitable systems and organizational biases, like in the oft-cited (and replicated) resume study. Intent does not equal impact.
Passion can also get in the way when it impedes one’s ability to look at “data” and make difficult, strategic decisions. I made this mistake myself as an internal D&I leader in a large organization. My passion and caring got in the way of taking seriously the fact that D&I in our organization was driven almost entirely by my energy and the personal capital of my high-ranking boss. We lacked meaningful commitment from key C-suite leaders, and this not only impeded our progress, but lead to clashes resulting in me leaving the organization.
This is not to say that passion and caring should be absent from D&I initiatives. In fact, all strategic leadership positions and initiatives should require both! But passion and caring alone aren’t enough, and certainly shouldn’t substitute for: (1) a mission-critical business case for D&I that is driven by senior leadership; (2) measurable, meaningful goals; (3) a trusted D&I leader with robust expertise and a track record of results; and (4) accountability.
The science is clear: diversity plus inclusiveness is an excellence multiplier. Therefore, D&I requires a commitment to excellence the same as any other strategic priority. Passion and caring aren’t enough on their own.
Susana Rinderle is president of Susana Rinderle Consulting and a trainer, coach, speaker, author and diversity & inclusion expert. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
