APS Blog

The Easy Way to Increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Your Organization

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:00:00 Z

Diversity, equity, and inclusion. If you work in human resources, or a related field, you’ve heard these terms before and, odds are, you have some idea of what they mean. But just so that we are all on the same page, I’ll use the following, heavily borrowed, definitions for diversity, equity, and inclusion:

Diversity includes all the ways in which people differ from each other. Though this is often limited to race, ethnicity, and gender, it more broadly includes age, nationality, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education level, marital status, language, and physical appearance. Diversity also includes differences in ideas, perspectives, and values.
Equity concerns fair treatment, access, and opportunity for all people. Equity is about providing recognition, promotion, and compensation that is consistent with one’s work and qualifications. No one should be provided special treatment or privileges based on anything but performance.
Inclusion concerns creating working environments where everyone feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. Inclusive environments embrace diversity.

There are at least three reasons organizations should care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. The first is moral. Basic standards of human decency tell us that all people are of value and have something to contribute to society. Moreover, all people – regardless of background – deserve to be treated fairly, sharing equally in the benefits and burdens of society.

The second reason to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion is legal. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The act also established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which further expanded Title VII to include discrimination based on age, gender, and disability. Ultimately, organizations found to be in violation of the laws are subject to legal ramifications including fines.

The third reason to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion is to do better business. Solving business problems like growing market share, understanding clients for different markets, and ensuring your advertising isn’t off-putting to certain groups is easier and more efficient with people from a diverse set of backgrounds. In 2015, Bud Light added the tag line “The perfect beer for removing ‘no’ from your vocabulary for the night” to their label. The advertising was immediately criticized. One cannot help but think that if the marketing team had included just one woman, they would have immediately realized this was a really bad idea.

The good news is that many organizations today get it. In 2005, fewer than 20% of the Fortune 500 had officers/programs for diversity and inclusion. In 2016, that number was closer to 60% and is poised to climb even higher. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are good for the organization and they are here to stay. But many organizations still struggle to increase their diversity and inclusion. The purpose of this essay is to make the scientific case for the use of personality assessments as a direct way to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Making Personnel Decisions

When it comes time to hire someone, or to promote someone to a higher role, there are lots of valid ways organizations can go about doing this. Obvious options include asking for referrals, looking at resumes, and conducting an interview. All these methods, to various degrees, are valid predictors of workplace performance. Unfortunately, all these methods are also heavily subject to bias. Referrals practically guarantee that you will reduce diversity (i.e., people tend to only refer people with whom they are familiar, and we tend to be most familiar with people who are similar to us). While resumes may appear to be unbiased, they frequently include opportunities for implicit bias to occur. For example, some names may reflect ethnicity (e.g., John Logan vs. Juan Lopez) and even educational experiences may be a better reflection of parental socioeconomic status than ability to perform on the job. And, of course, interviews are full of opportunities for bias to creep in. The data are clear, with classic methods of making personnel decisions, you get increased workplace performance, but also increased bias. Ultimately, this reduces diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The good news is that it is easy to eliminate bias from personnel decisions: just make decisions at random. That is, if you decide to hire or promote people on a completely random basis (i.e., rolling dice, drawing names out of hat), it is guaranteed that you will not be making biased decisions. Unfortunately, it is also guaranteed that you will not be making the most effective decisions in terms of your organization’s long-term performance.

But there is still one more alternative, one way that you can increase both long-term performance and increase your organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion: scientifically validated personality assessments. Decades of research on personality assessment (broadly speaking) show effectively zero differences in scores due to race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, language, physical appearance, education level, or disability. (There are age differences, but these reflect maturity and are not biased against older adults.) At Hogan, we gather personality data from millions of people – from virtually every ethnic background – all over the world on an annual basis. Our own data show no meaningful differences in test scores as a function of group status. As just one example, the figures below show average scores on our three core assessments – the HPI, the HDS, and the MVPI – for different U.S. racial categories. The scores are so close that they are virtually identical.

But with personality assessments, you don’t just get diversity, equity, and inclusion. As already mentioned, you can do that simply by choosing people at random. With scientifically-validated personality assessments, you also get a track record of predicting workplace performance. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.

TL; DR

The point here is simple: If all personnel decisions were made using scientifically-validated personality assessments, unfair discrimination in the workplace would cease to exist. Personality assessments lead to increased productivity and engagement, as well as increased diversity, equity and inclusion. If you are serious about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in your organization, using scientifically-validated personality assessments is an easy way to do that.

Improving Diversity and Inclusion: Practical, Evidence-based Recommendations

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:00:00 Z

Original Post: Hogan Assessments

The protests against systemic patterns of racism and police brutality following George Floyd’s death, the success of female heads of state leading their countries through the global pandemic, and the recent United States Supreme Court decision prohibiting workplace discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation are just a few of the topics that are spurring discussions about diversity and inclusion (D&I) right now.

Although these current events have brought D&I to the forefront, this topic should not be new in the workplace — addressing D&I concerns should be a critical priority for all organizations. However, many organizations struggle to create diverse workplaces, especially at the highest levels, and to promote cultures that allow all employees to feel heard and included.¹Fortunately, organizations can leverage Hogan assessments to help address these concerns and create a more diverse and inclusive culture.

Defining Diversity and Inclusion

There are different ways to define D&I in the context of the workplace. These borrowed definitions are helpful ways for us to better understand what we are referencing when discussing diversity and inclusion²:

Diversity concerns all the ways people differ from each other. Though this is often limited to race, ethnicity, and gender, it more broadly includes age, nationality, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education level, marital status, language, and physical appearance. Diversity also includes differences in ideas, perspectives, and values.
Inclusion concerns creating working environments where everyone feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. Inclusive environments embrace diversity.

Why Should We Care about Diversity and Inclusion?

Both diversity and inclusion should be important to organizations as they seek to do the right thing, avoid legal recourse, and deliver key business outcomes. Given these reasons, it’s not surprising that the majority of survey respondents (75%) in a recent study by Pew Research consider it important for their organizations to promote diversity in the workplace.³

Even if there were no moral imperative or risk of legal challenges, organizations could not ignore the strong business case for creating a diverse workplace. As one example, some estimates suggest that organizations with higher levels of gender diversity can outperform organizations that lack female representation by up to 58%.⁴

The positive impact does not stop there. Organizations with more D&I practices tend to have lower levels of absenteeism and turnover and higher levels of organizational innovation and performance. However, even with these notable outcomes, many employees still say their organizations are not doing enough to create inclusive environments.

How Can Hogan Help Your Diversity and Inclusion Goals?

There are a few reasons you should consider using Hogan’s personality assessments in your D&I efforts. First, personality assessment promotes fairness in selection. Our research shows that personality is a strong predictor of performance without producing meaningful subgroup differences. This means we recommend solutions that can help you identify the best talent without discriminating against any group, thereby preserving diversity in applicant pools. Contrary to popular misconception, using personality for selection does not create a workforce of people who have the same personality profile. Hogan creates selection profiles that are specific for each job and would vary across jobs within the same organization. Within a job, we typically only screen on a few personality characteristics for which people will have diverse scores on scales in the profile range and even more so across other personality characteristics.

Second, you can use Hogan’s personality tools to identify and develop leaders who will promote diversity and inclusion. We analyzed data from more than 5,000 individuals to explore the components of Hogan’s personality inventories that predict supervisor ratings on behaviors, such as

discouraging discrimination and prejudice;
relating well to a variety of people;
recognizing the unique potential of each person;
showing respect, tolerance, and open-mindedness;
respecting views different from one’s own;
treating others with respect regardless of race, gender, appearance, religion, and beliefs;
valuing diverse perspectives;
displaying sensitivity to issues related to diversity and culture;
having the ability to see the world through the eyes of others; and
displaying sensitivity to the needs of others.

We meta-analyzed within-study correlations across 47 organizations and found that Adjustment, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Prudence, and Altruism had positive relationships with behaviors related to diversity and inclusion. Additionally, Excitable, Skeptical, Bold, Mischievous, Recognition, and Power had negative relationships with D&I behaviors. This suggests that people who are optimistic, perceptive, warm, conscientious, tolerant, open-minded, not defensive, trusting, modest, humble, honest, sympathetic, and concerned about helping others will work to foster an environment of inclusivity, regardless of race, age, gender, background, and ideas.

Implications

The importance of diversity and inclusion and the steps you need to take to make your workplace more diverse and inclusive cannot be outlined in a short blog. In fact, half-baked attempts at improving D&I initiatives can have negative impacts. An appropriate organizational culture is necessary to nurture diversity and inclusion. Some research suggests that organizational diversity structures alone, such as diversity policies, diversity training, and diversity awards, can cause white males to have illusory perceptions of fair decision-making procedures impacting minorities (i.e., a “we checked the box” attitude).⁵ This can lead to white males reacting harshly to claims of discrimination because they might assume all D&I issues have been addressed. Further, we haven’t even touched on the complexity of thinking about diversity in a global context.

While we cannot give you a silver bullet, we do provide these practical recommendations for consideration in your larger D&I initiatives:

First, use the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI), Hogan Development Survey (HDS), and Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) to select and promote all employees to increase diversity, hire qualified candidates, and promote fairness in hiring. Using assessments that do not discriminate will lead to more diversity at all levels.
Second, use the HPI, HDS, and MVPI to select, promote, and develop leaders who will create a diverse and inclusive environment.
Finally, use the HPI, HDS, and MVPI to provide feedback to employees and enhance their awareness of biases they might have that could stifle D&I efforts.

For more information, make sure you check out our webinar on the topic. You can also listen to our recent The Science of Personality podcast episodes, “Women in Leadership” and “SCOTUS LGBTQ Decision and What It Means for Your Organization.”

*This post was authored by Amber Burkhart, Kimberly Nei, Chase Winterberg, and Jessica Walker.

References

Jones, S. (2017, June 9). White Men Account for 72% of Corporate Leadership at 16 of the Fortune 500 Companies. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2017/06/09/white-men-senior-executives-fortune-500-companies-diversity-data/
Kapila, M., Hines, E., Searby, M. (2016, October 6). Why Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Matter. Independent Sector. https://independentsector.org/resource/why-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-matter/
Horowitz, J. M. (2019, May 8). Americans See Advantages and Challenges in Country’s Growing Racial and Ethnic Diversity. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/05/08/americans-see-advantages-and-challenges-in-countrys-growing-racial-and-ethnic-diversity/
Moran, G. (2017, January 23). How These Top Companies Are Getting Inclusion Right. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/3067346/how-these-top-companies-are-getting-inclusion-right
Kaiser, C. R., Major, B., Jurcevic, I., Dover, T. L., Brady, L. M., & Shapiro, J. R. (2013). Presumed fair: Ironic effects of organizational diversity structures. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(3), 504–519. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030838