COVID-19 Blog 4: Will corporate diversity initiatives go down the tubes during and after the pandemic?

Are your diversity initiatives going downhill during these trying times?

I really do have a fear that the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts across many organizations will be set back several years during this time of the Coronavirus pandemic. If DEI is truly a strategic initiative for organizations to thrive and grow into the future, why should things stop now?

In January, before all this COVID-19 stuff really started, I wrote a two part blog series:
Part 1 (Link): Huge Gaps in Diversity in Business Leadership – A Systemic Issue Needing a Systemic Approach
Part 2 (Link): Five Tactics to Address the System Issue of the Lack of Diverse Business Leaders

In Part 2, the 4th tactic I shared was “never letting up”. I shared that often executives see a little progress (“we now have an African-American in the c-Suite, women in management has gone up from 18% to 20%”) and then the budget gets cut and work stops. Then things will take their natural course and revert back to the old pattern. Dr. Vida Robertson, professor at the University of Houston, often states “you cannot take the foot of the gas or the vehicle will stop.” In this case, since it is an uphill battle, the car will go backwards once you take your foot off the gas!

Over the past 3 months, I have seen every in-person diversity training initiative I had scheduled between March and June cancelled, with little or no effort to reschedule or consider going web-based. In fact, even one 4-week webinar training series was cancelled since the organizers felt people would have too many other things to worry about instead of diversity.

My largest fear is that when we slowly reopen the country, that many corporate budgets will be slashed to try to turn out a decent annual profit statement, and diversity efforts will be one of the first items severely cut.

And then the ramifications could end up being:
• The predominately white male senior leadership will retain more of the leaders like themselves, impacting employment and promotion opportunities for under-represented minorities. And it wouldn’t be deliberate or mean-spirited, but simply unconscious bias taking its natural course.
• Diversity recruiting efforts may be cut resulting in less hires of qualified diverse candidates.
• Respectful workplace training would be cut, and some employees may revert back to old habits of forming non-diverse teams and making their diverse co-workers feel unwelcomed.
• Some companies may experience additional revenue drop as they fail to effectively sell and market to diverse customers.
• Philanthropic giving to diverse community organizations may be curtailed.

Interaction with diverse people may be less frequent during these days of social isolation.

Organizations need to realize that in challenging days, an increased focus on diversity, equity and inclusion is warranted. Tactics you may want to consider at this time include:

• Offering web-based DEI training to your employees, especially those who may have a decreased workload at this time and capacity to take some online trainings. In fact here is one being offered on June 9th: Introduction to LGBTQ+ Workplace Equity.  Options can include general offerings or having your own customized training.
• Doing some strategic work and planning and how you can advance DEI initiatives in a more virtual workplace.
• Encouraging diversity councils and employee resource groups to meet virtually during this time.
• Encouraging one-on-one virtual employee connections or mentoring relationships be formed with a focus on connecting with dissimilar people.

Embrace diversity even more during these challenging days!

COVID-19 Blog 3 – Diversity and Interpersonal Interactions during the pandemic

During these months of living through the Coronavirus pandemic, I will continue to writing blogs about my diversity, career development and leadership consulting through the lens of living through this pandemic.

Questions to ponder – how does what we truly think about diversity and inclusion manifest itself differently during this interesting time we are living through? Can some routine daily interactions show us how we may really feel about diversity?

I would like to share a story shared by a Black professional colleague of mine. In a recent trip to a home supply store, he needed some advice about a product he was buying for one of his home improvement projects. He was directed to a middle-aged white female employee who was the expert on that particular product line. As he approached her, when he was maybe 8-10 feet away, the woman stuck out her arm and hand in the “stop” movement reminding him to remember the social distancing rules. He asked his questions standing about 8 feet away.

Ten minutes later, my colleague saw the same store employee having another interaction with a white female customer with about two or three feet of distance between them.

So now some hard questions need to be asked:
• Was the store employee really worried about social distancing, or was it perhaps more of an uneasiness around men, black people, or black men that dictated her behavior?

In the US, the Coronavirus is disproportionately impact minority communities

• Did the store employee perhaps think that it was more likely that she could catch the virus from a black person than from a white person? I hope you all have been hearing about how the Coronavirus is disproportionately impacting minority communities.

• During this time of sheltering at home and social distancing, are we all going to have less and less interaction with diverse people?

• Finally, raising this up from a personal experience discussion to a broader discussion, what can we learn and what can we do about the statistics showing that minorities in the US are catching and dying from the virus at extremely higher rates than the white majority?

Now, on the positive side, I have now started watching the 6:00 World News Tonight on ABC and I really appreciate the wide range of gender, racial and cultural diversity of medical professionals shown and interviewed in the stories.

As our country and the world continues to unite to fight this insidious virus, let’s keep in the front of our minds the continue progress we need to make in the area of diversity, equity and inclusion. As we do more virtual interaction, lets also keep in mind:

1) That we can use this time to set up connections and interactions with diverse people from ourselves

2) To remember the economically challenged people who may not even have the technology or the living space to even connect to outside world.