Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace: A majority of U.S. workers say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing, but relatively small shares place great importance on diversity in their own workplace

Friends,

As we consider the current politics surrounding DEI programs, there are many things to consider as there is often a big distance between saying one values workplace diversity and the task of actually carrying it out and managing it well. 

At the University of Texas where I work, managing it meant a well-conceived infrastructure that took decades to develop that existed to address the diverse needs of students with respect to gender, race, ethnicity, ability, socioeconomic status, veteran status, sexual orientation, undocumented immigrant, and first-generation college students. A focus on diversity at the college level prepares whites and non-whites, women and men and trans individuals alike for our highly diverse world, and potentially diverse working environments upon graduation.

In addition to this recent, excellent Pew Research analysis as reported by (Minkin, 2023), I'm providing you with other references so that you can see for yourselves the high value that Americans have for diversity, despite real differences in perception of it based on race, gender, and political party membership.

There are credible and powerful research studies dating back to 2015 by McKinsey and Associates (e.g., Hunt, Layton, & Prince, 2015) that show how diversity matters for positive work environments, more highly committed employees, and these same organizations' financial performance. 

I know that I have appreciated diversity at UT and fear that the elimination of DEI offices and initiatives will negatively impact so many of our students' sense of belonging and even alienate faculty who find this anti-diversity political agenda to be punishing and backward. 

Diversity is truly our strength as a country. And we're only becoming more diverse. It's reckless and destructive when incumbents pass harmful legislation because they're primarily concerned about maintaining themselves in power as opposed to what's good for society.

-Angela Valenzuela

#DEI #Diversity #DiversityMatters #Diversity in Education #DiverseSociety #UnityThroughDiversity #DiverseWorld #InclusionAndDiversity

References

Hunt, V., Layton, D. & Prince, S. (2015, Feb. 2). Diversity matters. McKinsey & Company (London). Link 

Irwin, L. (2024, Feb. 13). Most say diversity makes US stronger, but fewer support DEI training: Survey, The Hill. Link

Minkin, R. (2023, May 17). Diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace: A majority of U.S. workers say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing, but relatively small shares place great importance on diversity in their own workplace, Pew Research. Link

Patrick, H. A., & Kumar, V. R. (2012). Managing Workplace Diversity: Issues and Challenges. Sage Open, 2(2). Link

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace

A majority of U.S. workers say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing, but relatively small shares place great importance on diversity in their own workplace

BYRACHEL MINKIN | Pew Research | May 17, 2023

Workplace diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, or DEI, are increasingly becoming part of national political debates. For a majority of employed U.S. adults (56%), focusing on increasing DEI at work is a good thing, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. But opinions about DEI vary considerably along demographic and political lines.

Most workers have some experience with DEI measures at their workplace. About six-in-ten (61%) say their company or organization has policies that ensure fairness in hiring, pay or promotions, and 52% say they have trainings or meetings on DEI at work. Smaller shares say their workplace has a staff member who promotes DEI (33%), that their workplace offers salary transparency (30%), and that it has affinity groups or employee resource groups based on a shared identity (26%). Majorities of those who have access to these measures say each has had a positive impact where they work.

Related: How Americans View Their Jobs

This nationally representative survey of 5,902 U.S. workers, including 4,744 who are not self-employed, was conducted Feb. 6-12, 2023, using the Center’s American Trends Panel.¹ The survey comes at a time when DEI efforts are facing some backlash and many major companies are laying off their DEI professionals.

Jump to:

• The value of DEI efforts at work
• The importance of a diverse workforce
• DEI measures and their impact
• How gender, race and ethnicity impact success in the workplace

Some key findings from the survey:

• Relatively small shares of workers place a lot of importance on diversity at their workplace. About three-in-ten say it is extremely or very important to them to work somewhere with a mix of employees of different races and ethnicities (32%) or ages (28%). Roughly a quarter say the same about having a workplace with about an equal mix of men and women (26%) and 18% say this about a mix of employees of different sexual orientations.
• More than half of workers (54%) say their company or organization pays about the right amount of attention to increasing DEI. Smaller shares say their company or organization pays too much (14%) or too little attention (15%), and 17% say they’re not sure. Black workers are more likely than those in other racial and ethnic groups to say their employer pays too little attention to increasing DEI. They’re also among the most likely to say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing (78% of Black workers say this), while White workers are the least likely to express this view (47%).
• Women are more likely than men to value DEI at work. About six-in-ten women (61%) say focusing on increasing DEI at work is a good thing, compared with half of men. And larger shares of women than men say it’s extremely or very important to them to work at a place that is diverse when it comes to gender, race and ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation.
• There are wide partisan differences in views of workplace DEI. Most Democratic and Democratic-leaning workers (78%) say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing, compared with 30% of Republicans and Republican leaners. Democrats are also far more likely than Republicans to value different aspects of diversity. And by wide margins, higher shares of Democrats than Republicans say the policies and resources related to DEI available at their workplace have had a positive impact.
• Half of workers say it’s extremely or very important to them to work somewhere that is accessible for people with physical disabilities. About three-in-ten workers (29%) say this is somewhat important to them, and 21% say it’s not too or not at all important. A majority of workers (76% among those who do not work fully remotely) say their workplace is at least somewhat accessible for people with physical disabilities.
• Many say being a man or being White is an advantage where they work. The survey asked respondents whether a person’s gender, race or ethnicity makes it easier or harder to be successful where they work. Shares ranging from 45% to 57% say these traits make it neither easier nor harder. But far more say being a man and being White makes it easier than say it makes it harder for someone to be successful. Conversely, by double-digit margins, more say being a woman, being Black or being Hispanic makes it harder than say it makes it easier to be successful where they work.

Five ways to drive successful DEI initiatives by Diana Ellsworth | McKinsey

There really is a lot to know and understand with respect to DEI. For example, the piece below that points powerfully to the importance of context in determining DEI policies.  

So a myth is that DEI policies are the same everywhere when they are not, particularly if done well.

McKinsey.com has a number of helpful reports, including this one.

-Angela Valenzuela

MAKING DEI WORK Five ways to drive successful DEI initiatives  Diana Ellsworth | March 2023 | McKinsey A lot of research tends to focus on the challenge side of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI): the manifestations and root causes of inequity. There’s been less research, however, on the solution side, on “What does it take to make progress on DEI?” So, in partnership with the World Economic Forum, we created the Global Parity Alliance, and looked for lighthouse examples of companies that had made progress, and to see if lessons from those companies can be applied elsewhere. What we found is that there is a recipe, with five success factors as the key ingredients, for driving successful DEI initiatives—but that there is no recipe for which initiatives work best across the board. That’s because context is key. In fact, the first success factor is to gain a nuanced understanding of root causes.  Often, companies don’t approach DEI the same way they approach other aspects of business strategy. They often underinvest time and effort to deeply understand the problem they’re trying to solve. Instead, companies will launch initiatives because they saw, say, a mentorship program succeed somewhere else, and they say, “Let’s launch that here.” In a rush, often because of good intentions and an eagerness and desire to show employees that they’re “doing something,” companies might skip that step of really understanding exactly what the problem is that they’re trying to solve. So while an early-career mentoring program for women sounds innately appealing, when you ask the company to really dig into its data, it may be that women are actually advancing just fine early in their careers. The problems are at other points along the pipeline. Perhaps sponsorship of midcareer women is more important, or perhaps the company should be looking to root out bias in the review process. The initiatives that are most successful are ones in which the companies spent the time up front to really understand, “What is the problem we’re trying to solve?” and “What are the root causes for why the needle is stuck?” The second success factor, “a meaningful definition of success,” goes hand in hand with the first. The most successful initiatives understand both the problem they’re trying to solve and what success will look like once they’ve solved it. They have a real understanding of “Where are we today?” and “Why are we here?” and “Where are we trying to go?” This isn’t rocket science—these are the keys to attacking most business problems. But, again, many DEI initiatives don’t start with these basic business fundamentals. “Often, companies don’t approach DEI the same way they approach other aspects of business strategy.” The third success factor is “accountable and invested business leaders.” Senior leadership’s commitment and accountability are necessary for a successful DEI initiative. And if the initiative requires changing a set of practices across the company, you’ll need a broader set of committed business leaders. Role modeling is important. This is a topic where a lot of people can be skeptical, and they need to see that leaders are personally making changes in line with the new way of working suggested by the initiative. Furthermore, leaders must be prepared to devote themselves, and the company’s resources, over time. Many successful DEI initiatives needed substantial time to get to the desired outcome. Some may not move the needle meaningfully for a year or more. But that time isn’t wasted. You’re laying the foundation to attack a complex problem that may have vexed the company for decades. And since these problems tend to be quite hard, it’s best not to try to tackle everything all at once. The “let a thousand flowers bloom” approach to DEI is a recipe for failure. The fourth factor is “a solution designed for context.” Strong initiatives seek a fit-for-purpose solution. They build on a nuanced understanding of the starting place, the root causes, and a clear view of success, and they are strategically designed to address the issues. Sometimes this can mean launching a new effort or intervention, but often this means changing a variety of things that already exist, such as policies, processes, or learning and development programs.   The final success factor is “rigorous tracking and course correction.” Many companies don’t do this with DEI. For instance, they don’t define the specific leading indicators and ultimate outcomes that they hope the initiative will change—and thus, they don’t have the data to discuss if it’s working, how it might be improved, or if the results can be accelerated. It’s one thing to be able to cite the number of people who took part in an initiative, but it’s far more meaningful to be able to track details like “people who participated in the program were promoted twice as often as those who did not,” or “participants stayed with the company at a 40 percent higher rate.” Here, too, you need to be patient. There’s going to be a period of time where you see more progress on the leading indicators than you do on the ultimate outcomes that you’re trying to achieve. But if you stick with it and start to see a real ROI, it becomes easier to commit for the long run—and getting DEI right is definitely a project for the long run.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Diana Ellsworth is a partner in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

As convincingly argued by Texas State University System (TSU) History Professor Jeffrey Helgesen, the public is right to concern itself with the re-opening of our schools, colleges, and universities, asking the key question of whose interest this serves. As outlined herein, McKinsey & Company has a history of closing schools. So why are they the corporation of choice for TSU's re-opening? 

We have enormous talent, knowledge, and resources in our universities and communities.  So why aren't our communities engaged in crafting a response? Something as dangerous and multifaceted as COVID cannot be fully outsourced anyway.

We, as a public, most especially students of color that overwhelmingly attend these school systems must be very discerning and wise with any corporate response to a crisis that ALWAYS spells not only corporate profits, but an expansion of an ultimately racist and classist agenda to corporatize public education. They would be legitimate if they were involved in the fight for greater funding of our colleges universities, but they are not—and that means something.

Thanks to Dr. Estela Bensimon for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela

McKinsey’s approach to school reform is precisely not what we need right now. (Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

WEB ONLY / VIEWS » JULY 2, 2020

My University Plans to Reopen This Summer, Based on Advice From McKinsey. That’s Terrifying.

McKinsey & Company is pushing a military-style, corporate response to the Covid-19 crisis in public higher education. What we need is an anti-racist approach.

BY JEFFREY HELGESON

The infamous 1970s “busing crisis” in Boston may seem far-flung from efforts by university administrators to confront the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. The connection, however, came home to me recently when I learned that the administrators of the Texas State University System—where I have worked for a decade—are planning a return to campus this summer, following the advice of the controversial corporate consulting firm, McKinsey & Company.

Just as corporate leaders came together to help oversee desegregation of Boston’s public schools nearly 50 years ago, today, business interests are again at the table, this time guiding school administrators on how to reopen in the midst of a deadly outbreak.

McKinsey’s advice has already undermined effective responses to the pandemic in other sectors than higher education. Volunteers from the firm have been central to the Trump administration’s botched efforts to procure personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals. Meanwhile, the firm has profited from state-level officials looking for a veneer of legitimacy in their efforts to limit the distribution of unemployment and food aid to those now in poverty. There is no reason to believe McKinsey’s advice for public higher education will be any more promising.

The administrators I work with in the Texas State University System, nonetheless, have called on messaging from McKinsey & Company to sell our faculty and staff on the plan to return to face-to-face instruction—originally on July 6, now August 24—and to do so while absorbing the impact of severe budget reductions during an ongoing spike in Covid-19 infections in Texas. To facilitate this reentry into on-campus work and study, McKinsey is selling a top-down, closed process. They have laid out a military-style crisis response that includes no systematic efforts to collect the views of faculty, staff or students. Instead, they’re calling on the people most at risk upon returning to campus to embrace both possible infection and a post-pandemic “new normal”—defined by austerity.

A history of privatization

McKinsey & Company is not new to the business of restructuring public education. The firm has been a key player in the effort to exert private-sector control over Boston’s public schools since at least the 1980s.

The history of the 1970s “busing crisis” in Boston is well-known. Images of white Bostonians stoning school buses transporting Black children to previously all-white schools, and of demagogues tearing the city apart with appeals to “white pride,” have been seared into our collective historical memory. Yet fewer are familiar with what is perhaps that period’s most lasting legacy: the insidious way corporate and finance leaders exploited desegregation to privatize public education.

In 1974, Federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity issued a landmark decision calling for the immediate desegregation of Boston’s public schools. Local school officials, however, refused to enforce Garrity’s order. To meet this resistance, Garrity personally oversaw the implementation of desegregation. Looking for help wherever he could get it, Garrity invited corporate leaders to partner in that process. Yet many Bostonians were skeptical of this new corporate intervention.

McKinsey & Company stepped into the Boston school reform effort as advisors to the philanthropic foundations that funded public-private partnerships in education during the 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s, McKinsey advisors were helping to advance the cause of publicly-subsidized, for-profit charter schools.

McKinsey has sought to privatize and close public schools even if it required skewing the facts. In June 2013, Boston Public Schools reported that the 128 buildings in the system had total a capacity of 61,300 seats, with an enrollment of 56,400. But just two years later, McKinsey reported to Mayor Marty Walsh that capacity had grown by nearly 150%, to 93,000 seats. This surge in capacity would justify shuttering dozens of schools. But where did they find all this extra space? As a parents’ group discovered through a Freedom of Information Act Request, McKinsey had counted hallways and bathrooms as classroom space. McKinsey’s role was not to shape sound policies to improve education, but rather to justify a predetermined policy goal: closing 30 to 50 district schools, privileging, as the parents concluded, “short-sighted cost-savings” over “equitable access to quality schools for all children.”

McKinsey’s approach to school reform is precisely not what we need right now. Mass school closures have been found to hurt surrounding communities and to consolidate private-sector control over urban schools. In the name of “excellence” and “choice,” privatization schemes have actually undermined the commitment to equity in education as a public good. As historian Diane Ravitch put it in her survey of McKinsey’s record in education reform: “McKinsey is always there, although there is no evidence that they are education experts… . Education has been warped for the past 30 years by the inappropriate application of corporate strategy to schools and classrooms and children.”

Military-style response

McKinsey appears to be using the emergency of the pandemic to undermine what is left of faculty governance and student voice in higher education. In a May 18 article published on McKinsey’s website, titled “Lessons from the generals: Decisive action amid the chaos of crisis,” senior partners Yuval Atsmon, David Chinn, Martin Hirt and Sven Smit lay out this militaristic strategy. Structural changes will be driven by protocols of “crisis management” defined by a “military-command structure” that will plan “across all time horizons,” while keeping focused on adopting “age-old principles of war.”

In 2016, an exasperated Boston parent asked, “Why hire a firm like McKinsey with a reputation for closing schools, if that wasn't your end goal?” We should ask our university administrators a similar question. Why look to a firm like McKinsey, with its record of corporatizing public institutions, if that is not your end goal? Is the objective merely to justify ongoing budget cuts, increased insecurity for faculty and staff, attacks on tenure, and declines in the quality of education? It is difficult to come to any other conclusion.

McKinsey’s advice makes no mention of fighting for more state or federal funding for public universities, which continued to decrease after the Great Recession of 2007-2009, even as state revenue and university enrollment grew. In the absence of increased funding we will see the extension of ongoing trends that increase tuition while lowering the quality of education. Students will pay more for an impoverished university experience. Technical training will prevail over the broad exploration of the humanities and social sciences. Growing ranks of contingent faculty and outsourced staff will struggle to keep up, as administrators increase their workloads and cut their pay. All of this will hit low-income and first-generation students the hardest.

The bottom line is that a McKinsey-style warlike response threatens to divert resources from students, particularly our working-class Black and Latinx students (the majority of students at Texas State), for whom higher education promises a path to the lives they strive to create.

Toward an anti-racist approach

Rather than corporate reformers like McKinsey & Company, we need to listen to students, faculty, staff and parents to recall the true purpose of public education. In 1977, looking back on the fight for desegregation in Boston, the legendary parent-activist and community-based crisis counselor, Ruth Batson, spoke to the heart of the matter: “The theory that has propelled Black people since slavery to educate their children,” she declared, has been that education is “a survival mechanism, a way out—a way out of ignorance, a way out of poverty—a way out of a binding and non-fulfilling job—a way out of exploitation.” The willingness of Black parents to “endure busing,” as Batson put it, reflected their need to go through what they knew would be a painful process in order to secure a quality education for their children.

Neither the attempt at desegregation nor the corporate-driven “reform” of public schools secured the access to a quality education that Batson and her fellow parents were seeking. Batson knew “busing” alone would not get the job done, but she was willing to endure it in the hope that it would be a step in the right direction.

What she could not have known is that “socially responsible” corporations would step into the process to profit off of school systems, thereby creating new barriers to the equity parents sought. One has only to look at the recent trend in privatization of elderly care in the United States, and its disastrous consequences for residents and staff during the pandemic, to see that privatization and consolidation is not a panacea.

We in the nation’s public universities are having to endure the challenges of dealing with a pandemic. The appearance of McKinsey & Company raises the fear that the return to campus will not only threaten our lives, but force us to act in ways that will undermine the kind of public education that can be “a way out” for our students. If that’s the case, we will have endured the pandemic to find that we’ve facilitated our public university’s turbocharged transformation into the corporate university.

Instead, in the midst of both a pandemic and the most widespread uprisings against racism in modern U.S. history, let us come together to demand an anti-racist state response to the Covid-19 crisis in higher education. The goal ought not to be maintaining morale by convincing faculty and staff to make warlike sacrifices in the interests of austerity. We must instead demand a democratically conceived project of reinvesting in public universities—cementing higher education as the public good that it is.