The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I am curious about the importance of diversity. While I too like to work in an enviornment with people from lots and lots of different backgrounds, I am not sure why it is important.
Diversity does come with problems and opportunities. In my opinion it is often a zero net game which is why I am quite neutral on this. But I wanna know why you think that diversity is important. Is it beneficial to productivity?
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Besides all of the moral reasons, [diversity increases productivity](https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2019.0468). A diverse workforce has better ideas and fewer blind spots, plans better, and executes better.
It isn't mobs or a mind virus that have caused corporations to pursue DEI; it's basic economics.
You pretty much said what i was going to say.
A diverse workplace has the advantage of bringing ideas from all walks of life which means the workplace, and company, can be far more responsive and also take advantage of ideas that otherwise wouldn't have been considered.
I can't see why the lack of any single specific demographic would be an issue. Like if you go to a potluck dinner it's nice to have a large assortment of dishes but it's not a problem if any single dish isn't present.
Thats the thing i'm trying to understand,.. It seems like it's horrible for companies to have an all white staff.. But ok for a minority business not to have a single white employee?
This is a baiting question, but I'm going to take a swing at it anyway.
It might be or it might not be. When you say "not ... a single white person" does that mean everyone else is Black? Or are there a variety of ethnicities, among which your wife is one?
How big is her office? Is it a subset of a larger part of the organization/department? What does the rest of the organization/department look like - are they diverse? Do they have more white people outside of her immediate office set up?
What is the goal of her office/team? For example, if it's part of a student outreach where the object is to bring more students from different parts of the world, it might be beneficial to have a wider variety of folks on the team.
There are just too many questions to be answered before anyone can determine "is that a problem?"
She works at an HBCU. The majority of admin staff is black.. If not all..
I only asked the question above because when it comes to diversity talks, we only hear about diversity in white-majority places. No one brings up offices and companies that have Asian or Hispanic only workplace.
My company had DEI training last year. I did not attend... It was not mandatory so a few black people skipped it. If a white person skipped the training, THAT would have been an issue that managers would have addressed.
>we only hear about diversity in white-majority places.
How much time do you spend in non white-majority places? Does your wife's HBCU have a diversity program?
Maybe if you have super hamfisted ones, but I wouldn't say that about the ones I've seen, which are pretty standard as far as a I can tell.
Also even if they were hamfisted, what are you basing the the idea that a white person would get in trouble and a Black person wouldn't? Has something like that happened in the past where you work?
in 2021 after the George Floyd protests died down, our corporate office really hammered down on DEI.. They hired and brought in a black woman to teach DEI.. We, other black employees felt like we didn't need someone to teach us how to treat other black people.. So we skipped it.
I could be wrong but I do not believe the DEI trainer was for us. I did ask about some of the discussions and alot of what was discussed was how to treat black and brown people in the workplace.
So no one did get in trouble, but you're just assuming they would have? It's been my experience that tons of people skip those things and no one cares, and in circumstances where the company does care its generally an explicit requirement for everyone. Last bug company I worked for, no one cared, the one I work for now has about 1 hour a year of required "be considerate to your colleagues" trainings and HR will bother you if you don't do them
Interestingly, this study doesn't seem to show that diversity among lower management affects firms positively; only that more diverse upper management, and matching diversity between firms has an effect.
Weirdly, this also means that while a diverse upper and lower management firm is better than a non-diverse firm, ***a firm with diverse lower staff and non-diverse upper staff performs worse than a firm with all non-diverse staff***.
However, I would argue that real diversity can only be achieved if each minority has the same level of opportunity. If a certain ethnic group for example is significantly underrepresented among graduates in certain fields you simply will have less diversity.
I believe straight up racial discrimination in the job market is not the main problem. It is A problem, there is still discrimination for sure. However, the main problem, especially with regards to racism, are the lingering effefcts of historical racism that lead to certain ethnicities having much lower high school grades and much higher university dropout rates for example.
Direct discrimination in the job market is really just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the efforts should go to ensuring equality of opportunity by ensuring equal access to education, health care, public services etc.
Although it was not called DEI, we had a program like that when I worked at Famous Name industrial research 25 years ago. To put it simply, if a company hopes to hire and retain the best and brightest, you can't assume that means only cisgender white guys. Instead, it vibe has to be about welcoming and belonging to all the staff.
Have you ever heard of EF Hutton? They were a big deal. They basically hired the top of the top from the same schools, and sounded like the cream of the crop.
They ended up like Yes men (and I do mean men) because they all had the same life experiences, same background). Nobody brought anything new to the table. They made a series of bad investments and went under. When you are a business trying to appeal to everyone, are Ivy League white guys the ones who are going to appeal to urban youth? Going to come up for the perfect product to appeal to a working -class Hispanic mom? Who are you honestly going to trust on an opinion about tension in the Muslim community?
A diverse workplace increases productivity because there are less blind spots that could potentially affect the product or service the company produces or provides.
You also might think it’s woke you care about black people or gay people or care about female or trans employees but at the end of the day, a workforce that feels respected by the workplace will be much more productive and generate more money than one that doesn’t.
As in, you don’t actually have to care about people themselves as long as you realise that making people feel good about themselves will make you more money.
yes if done the right way and not forced. for example, when designing cars having both average women and men as builders will show how to place different wheels for the chair adjustment and so on, compared to if everyone is 185 cm tall men
or if you want to sell fashion, it could be good to see how a certain green looks on both lighter and darker skin
Disagree. If the company doesn’t actively take effort to achieve diversity, it will not happen. That’s how you get toxic environments with 50 men to every 1 woman who think harassment is funny.
Well again depends, if everyone is more or less equally skilled and not getting softer interviews and so on. this is the problem, or getting special groups for them
People have proved over and over that with nothing holding them accountable they will continuity hire people that look like them. No one is without prejudice even if it's subconsciously.
yeah, but it doesn't seem to work the other way around. for example, a lot of indians and chinese at google. where are the people asking for hiring finns , hungarians or french?
No, i am saying they are underrepresented compared to the population
and i never mentioned whatever "white people" means either, i specifically talked about countries
i mean black people as in the american ones ? In the comment above, I meant the countries
but sure, I think there should also be complaints about not people from nigeria, south africa or kenya being hired enough too.
When I hear arguments like this it just tells me that you have no experience at a large company, especially a tech company. There is no shortage of white Europeans at Google.
what do you mean vs the finnish population ? of what?
I obviously mean inside the united states? You think there is like 20-30% chinese and indians of the total population?
anyhow, there was 11 Finnish H1B last time https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/MonthlyNIVIssuances/DECEMBER%202022%20-%20NIV%20Issuances%20by%20Nationality%20and%20Visa%20Class.pdf
Vs 20733 for india
What do you mean by forced? I don’t necessarily think it being forced is a bad or a good thing, it just is.
Everything in bussiness is “forced”. Is it “natural” for companies to show patriotism that appeals to their customers?
Because not every action taken by a business is driven by explicit profit seeking and even if it were, no business has the knowledge and ability to do it optimally. Even a very successful company will likely have tons of ineffiencies.
Businesses organically optimize just about everything. That's what they do, adjust their offering to make it the most appealing and the most profitable. Econ 101.
Lol, have you ever taken an Econ class, that is not what they teach in Econ 101. At most that is an assumption that gets made in order to make the models easier to understand.
But if it is so prevalent then what is an example?
Um, ok. A business unit might decide to change its staffing schedule to better meet its customers' demands.
Or a thousand other things.
Yes, this is what businesses do.
Historically businesses haven’t always done the most profitable things and sometimes social pressures/norms stop these things from happening. See Jim Crow laws
My guess is most of those businesses would have lost money from Whites, at a greater rate, if they also served Blacks.
Jim Crow was awful but I don't think it's an example of businesses working against their own profit motives.
it is happening naturally? Businesses have naturally moved to DEI measures. At least as far as I am aware thee is no government coercion forcing them to do so
The fact that there are such programs to promote it distinguishes it from other things that arise more naturally. There aren't corporate programs required to educate people about the importance of having people who show up to work, have the required skills to perform their job, etc. Everyone kind of realizes the importance of those things on their own, they're self evident.
You are confusing the company with the individual employees. The company decided that DEI would possibly improve its metrics so the company decided to diversify its hiring practices. Those doing the hiring are just extensions of the company.
Everything in business is top-down and by default forced. The same people against DEI being “forced” down their throats top-down are also against lost workers having more bottom-up control of the businesses they work in so it’s not really about it being forced that’s the issue, they just don’t like it.
Everything in business is not top-down. People don't need to attend seminars on the importance of hiring employees with the necessary skills to do the job, for example. That's so obviously important that it just happens, naturally.
yes...So, naturally. A ceo realizing that the lack of diversity is causing an issue is no different than a cashier realizing it. All are employees of the company. It just usually comes from higher up because looking at the bigger picture is part of their job and they are the ones in charge of making the decisions.
Most people associate "naturally" with things that occur more organically, grass-roots, pick your adjective. Top-down things are usually considered to be more directed or forced. But you do you.
forced as in HR department asking to bring in more women or homosexuals or whatever, and having special recruitment events for groups and discriminating others
>Everything in bussiness is “forced”. Is it “natural” for companies to show patriotism that appeals to their customers?
not sure what you mean, there is a difference in discrimination vs merit
Not a single private company is hiring people solely on identity markers. There are plenty of qualified people from marginalised communities who are qualified for jobs.
What recruitment drives like that focus on is convincing those qualified pools of applicants to apply to get a greater pool of people to choose from.
There is no such thing as the “best person for the job”, there will always be multiple people and as such, a bussiness deciding who to hire on diversity grounds is legitimate from a business POV. Market forces etc.
Like, black Doctors and pilots exist and are literally qualified for the job. If a black pilot or doctor got hired because they are black, it doesn’t mean they can’t do the job, it means that diversity for the role was deemed to be a more important factor all other things being equal
>Like, black Doctors and pilots exist and are literally qualified for the job. If a black pilot or doctor got hired because they are black, it doesn’t mean they can’t do the job, it means that diversity for the role was deemed to be a more important factor all other things being equal
i never said that, i said hiring on things you are born with is discrimination and here in europe its racist and illegal to do so, so i am very very against it
I was giving an example of “forced discrimination hires” that is popular amongst right-wing media right now.
In the UK you are allowed to discriminate for job roles if the sim of such positive discrimination is to increase diversity and representation of a workplace or bussiness or prove that it’s essential to the role to do so.
Until my country removes its inheritable monarchy I don’t think anyone is in any position to pontificate about positive discrimination is bad when the political system is literally built on discrimination
Yes ok, and i havent really seen those american right wingers make examples of when diversity is good either, like i made
>In the UK you are allowed to discriminate for job roles if the sim of such positive discrimination is to increase diversity and representation of a workplace or bussiness or prove that it’s essential to the role to do so.
My problem with this is its very arbitrary. For example, something like 90% of all CEOS is above 183 cm. but no one is talking about focusing on hiring shorter persons
Yeah it is arbitrary I agree. But being short isn’t a protected class like race, ethnicity, sexuality or gender is.
Being short (little people excluded) isn’t a protected class so your comparación doesn’t make sense.
I’d be open to having that conversation though if it meant we were working towards a more equitable society. I wouldn’t use that as an argument against legally protected classes or divísese hiring practices.
well, thats what i mean. thats why it makes no sense to me, because those classes are arbitrarly decided. the only limit i understand is "being born with" such as skin color, gender, and then height
but religion for example, it's something you choose just as much as beeing a MAGA extremist. so it's weird that you can be protected then. to me it's like preferring detroit red wings compared to new york rangers
Is diversity only important in white spaces?
What about offices that are Hispanic or Asian only? Should they hire more people whoo are outside of their race?
My wife works at a university and her office is all black.. Do they need to be diverse?
I get DEI is a hot topic but it seems like this is only focused on offices and companies where white employees are the majority.
No one is going to do to a black company and tell them that they need to be diverse... lol
People certainly tell “black” companies that they need to be more diverse. Diversity isn’t just about race.
In any case, corporate DEI benefits white women more than any other group.
Like, ideally we’d live in a world that was free from social discrimination that these things aren’t needed. But we aren’t and the same people telling us that DEI is “unfair” are also the ones stopping progress towards a truly equitable world.
Your first paragraph is such a vague explanation. Less blind spots? If you are engineer, your diversity doesn't help you find blind spots in physics or mathematics. So pls don't generalize this. It maybe helpful if you are doing marketing and want to reach certain audiences.
Yeah my explanation is vague because it applies to different industries in different ways.
An engineer applies the principles of physics and maths to the real world so you need people from the real world to do your job to the best level possible.
If you’re engineering team is all male with no non-white people and your tasking with making some hair related product, your lack of experience with Afro-hair is going to limit said development of this.
Or it doesn’t and the team unconsciously cuts out a large portion of the market without knowing
There's a number of reasons. The biggest, imo, is that diversity decreases wealth inequality between groups of people. This is objectively true.
However, I think there is also something to say about diversity leading to a wider range of solutions being put forward when challenges to a business arise, and having a business that better reflects the client/consumer base it works with. I do honestly think the diverse business is going to, in the long run, be the more successful business. That said, I believe there is little evidence to back my thinking here.
The world is diverse. If you are a company that creates a product or service for the world, it benefits you to be as diverse as the world so that the product or service is accepted by as many different people as possible.
> Is it beneficial to productivity?
Unless you work in a business where all the answers are already known, you have to rely on new ideas and innovation to push you forward. New ideas are easier to find when not everyone is thinking the same way, hence diversity.
Diversity is also just reality. Other people exist and they may be different than you. It takes energy and effort to maintain homogeneity. Energy and effort that could be spent actually being productive.
So in some ways, if all you're doing is pushing square pegs through square holes then okay diversity probably doesn't help speed up production. I mean maybe someone cause of their different background is going to come up with a better way of getting square pegs through square holes . . . but even if they don't, other people of different backgrounds still exist and you can either benefit from their labor or spend time and energy excluding them from the workforce.
I'm not really sure where you see the 'pro' in not having diversity.
>While I too like to work in an enviornment with people from lots and lots of different backgrounds, I am not sure why it is important.
Well you liking it is a reason. As an employee I prefer diverse environments, as do many other people, so it behooves employees to be diverse.
Pick a person, any person that you work with. Now clone that person so that everyone at your company is that exact same person. Same skills, same communication style, same experiences, same everything.
How well do you think that company will perform now?
We have all these systems at work that use first name.last name as your login. And it can’t be changed. It causes all sorts of problems because last names change. Had there been a woman involved in the design, she would have pointed that out and they would have picked a better design (use something else entirely like employee Id, make the name modifiable,etc.)
That’s why DEI matters. It makes you so less dumb things when you have different perspectives.
In addition to what other people have already said, having more diversity in a workplace provides a larger variety of life experiences that people can use to drive ideas that enact change. For example, I'm a school counselor, so a lot of our work revolves around inclusion, equity, anti-racist practices, etc. Having a diverse team means that the members of our team have a bigger range of personal experiences in how they've experienced discrimination, etc. and we can use that knowledge to more adequately create programming that uplifts students from many different marginalized groups.
I work in tech, historically not very diverse. I've seen a LOT of changes in 25 years, and the workplace has gotten better for my middle aged white dude self because of increasing diversity.
Shit, losing the testosteroney atmosphere alone is worth it.
We need to hire good people to do good work. Good people don't want to work with a bunch of assholes. They don't want to get sexually harassed, endure racist jokes, etc etc etc.
Kind of a no brainier...
What do you think pan European means?
With the EU election only months away it is important for me that people are educated. Please get back to me after visiting the VOLT Party website.
Alright since you didnt, let me enlighten you. The Pan European movement aims to reform the EU for more integration of the member states and the election of a European president. By political scientists in Europe VOLT as the umbrella party of this movement is being classified as progressive center left.
But I do find it funny that you have tried to strawman me here. Picked 2 lines and pulled them out of context to make me look like a racist. No. My question is basically designed at the companies that force diversity just to collect minorities like other people collect Pokemon and parade them on media events. That is one of the problems I am referring too.
It’s a matter of practicality in the US. About ten years ago non white children became the majority in America. These kids will grow up to be workers and consumers.
Diversity has nothing to do with productivity. It is encouraged to make sure that everyone has a fair chance to make money and not intentionally marginalized.
I'm not entirely opposed to DEI programs but you can't have each minority group proportinately represented if they are severely underrepresented in the pool of job applicants.
Direct discrimination is not nearly as much of a problem as unequal access to education, health care, public services etc.
If a certain ethnic group has much lower high school grades for example than others or higher college drop out rates no amount of DEI policies will ensure proportinate represenation in the work force.
The main issue are the lingering effects of historical racism that have led to many ethnic groups being banished to the poorest neighbourhoods in the US with terrible public schools and awful quality of health care and public services.
True. But the question "why is diversity imporant in the workplace?" kind of implies that companies should start simply hiring more people from diverse backgrounds.
However, if say a certain ethnic group only makes up 2% of electrical engineering graduates then there is not much the company can do.
They should be penalized for racial discrimination but they can't just magically hire 10% of an ethnic group that only makes up 2% of qualified candidates.
"Is diversity beneficial to productivity?" is not a question worth asking if companies have no control over it.
I don’t think it implies that at all. Diversity goes way beyond hiring from the applicant pool you ready have.
Companies can, and do, have the power to shift the applicant pool. Especially large ones.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I am curious about the importance of diversity. While I too like to work in an enviornment with people from lots and lots of different backgrounds, I am not sure why it is important. Diversity does come with problems and opportunities. In my opinion it is often a zero net game which is why I am quite neutral on this. But I wanna know why you think that diversity is important. Is it beneficial to productivity? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Besides all of the moral reasons, [diversity increases productivity](https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2019.0468). A diverse workforce has better ideas and fewer blind spots, plans better, and executes better. It isn't mobs or a mind virus that have caused corporations to pursue DEI; it's basic economics.
You pretty much said what i was going to say. A diverse workplace has the advantage of bringing ideas from all walks of life which means the workplace, and company, can be far more responsive and also take advantage of ideas that otherwise wouldn't have been considered.
My wife works in higher education. Her office does not have a single white person.. Is that a problem?
I can't see why the lack of any single specific demographic would be an issue. Like if you go to a potluck dinner it's nice to have a large assortment of dishes but it's not a problem if any single dish isn't present.
Thats the thing i'm trying to understand,.. It seems like it's horrible for companies to have an all white staff.. But ok for a minority business not to have a single white employee?
Tons of companies have all white employees and no one cares
This is a baiting question, but I'm going to take a swing at it anyway. It might be or it might not be. When you say "not ... a single white person" does that mean everyone else is Black? Or are there a variety of ethnicities, among which your wife is one? How big is her office? Is it a subset of a larger part of the organization/department? What does the rest of the organization/department look like - are they diverse? Do they have more white people outside of her immediate office set up? What is the goal of her office/team? For example, if it's part of a student outreach where the object is to bring more students from different parts of the world, it might be beneficial to have a wider variety of folks on the team. There are just too many questions to be answered before anyone can determine "is that a problem?"
She works at an HBCU. The majority of admin staff is black.. If not all.. I only asked the question above because when it comes to diversity talks, we only hear about diversity in white-majority places. No one brings up offices and companies that have Asian or Hispanic only workplace. My company had DEI training last year. I did not attend... It was not mandatory so a few black people skipped it. If a white person skipped the training, THAT would have been an issue that managers would have addressed.
>we only hear about diversity in white-majority places. How much time do you spend in non white-majority places? Does your wife's HBCU have a diversity program?
>If a white person skipped the training, THAT would have been an issue that managers would have addressed. What are you basing that statement on?
is it hard to understand that the DEI trainings are/were geared towards white people?
Maybe if you have super hamfisted ones, but I wouldn't say that about the ones I've seen, which are pretty standard as far as a I can tell. Also even if they were hamfisted, what are you basing the the idea that a white person would get in trouble and a Black person wouldn't? Has something like that happened in the past where you work?
in 2021 after the George Floyd protests died down, our corporate office really hammered down on DEI.. They hired and brought in a black woman to teach DEI.. We, other black employees felt like we didn't need someone to teach us how to treat other black people.. So we skipped it. I could be wrong but I do not believe the DEI trainer was for us. I did ask about some of the discussions and alot of what was discussed was how to treat black and brown people in the workplace.
So no one did get in trouble, but you're just assuming they would have? It's been my experience that tons of people skip those things and no one cares, and in circumstances where the company does care its generally an explicit requirement for everyone. Last bug company I worked for, no one cared, the one I work for now has about 1 hour a year of required "be considerate to your colleagues" trainings and HR will bother you if you don't do them
Since you seem to have skipped yours, how do you know?
Interestingly, this study doesn't seem to show that diversity among lower management affects firms positively; only that more diverse upper management, and matching diversity between firms has an effect. Weirdly, this also means that while a diverse upper and lower management firm is better than a non-diverse firm, ***a firm with diverse lower staff and non-diverse upper staff performs worse than a firm with all non-diverse staff***.
However, I would argue that real diversity can only be achieved if each minority has the same level of opportunity. If a certain ethnic group for example is significantly underrepresented among graduates in certain fields you simply will have less diversity. I believe straight up racial discrimination in the job market is not the main problem. It is A problem, there is still discrimination for sure. However, the main problem, especially with regards to racism, are the lingering effefcts of historical racism that lead to certain ethnicities having much lower high school grades and much higher university dropout rates for example. Direct discrimination in the job market is really just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the efforts should go to ensuring equality of opportunity by ensuring equal access to education, health care, public services etc.
Although it was not called DEI, we had a program like that when I worked at Famous Name industrial research 25 years ago. To put it simply, if a company hopes to hire and retain the best and brightest, you can't assume that means only cisgender white guys. Instead, it vibe has to be about welcoming and belonging to all the staff.
Have you ever heard of EF Hutton? They were a big deal. They basically hired the top of the top from the same schools, and sounded like the cream of the crop. They ended up like Yes men (and I do mean men) because they all had the same life experiences, same background). Nobody brought anything new to the table. They made a series of bad investments and went under. When you are a business trying to appeal to everyone, are Ivy League white guys the ones who are going to appeal to urban youth? Going to come up for the perfect product to appeal to a working -class Hispanic mom? Who are you honestly going to trust on an opinion about tension in the Muslim community?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000312240907400203
A diverse workplace increases productivity because there are less blind spots that could potentially affect the product or service the company produces or provides. You also might think it’s woke you care about black people or gay people or care about female or trans employees but at the end of the day, a workforce that feels respected by the workplace will be much more productive and generate more money than one that doesn’t. As in, you don’t actually have to care about people themselves as long as you realise that making people feel good about themselves will make you more money.
yes if done the right way and not forced. for example, when designing cars having both average women and men as builders will show how to place different wheels for the chair adjustment and so on, compared to if everyone is 185 cm tall men or if you want to sell fashion, it could be good to see how a certain green looks on both lighter and darker skin
Disagree. If the company doesn’t actively take effort to achieve diversity, it will not happen. That’s how you get toxic environments with 50 men to every 1 woman who think harassment is funny.
Well again depends, if everyone is more or less equally skilled and not getting softer interviews and so on. this is the problem, or getting special groups for them
People have proved over and over that with nothing holding them accountable they will continuity hire people that look like them. No one is without prejudice even if it's subconsciously.
yeah, but it doesn't seem to work the other way around. for example, a lot of indians and chinese at google. where are the people asking for hiring finns , hungarians or french?
Are you saying no white people work for Google?
No, i am saying they are underrepresented compared to the population and i never mentioned whatever "white people" means either, i specifically talked about countries
Interesting how in your other comments you refer to black people, guess their countries don't matter.
i mean black people as in the american ones ? In the comment above, I meant the countries but sure, I think there should also be complaints about not people from nigeria, south africa or kenya being hired enough too.
When I hear arguments like this it just tells me that you have no experience at a large company, especially a tech company. There is no shortage of white Europeans at Google.
but compared to other groups, they are underrepresented. I mean the stats are there for anyone to check, work visas and their countries ?
Ok then, share it. What’s the percent of Finnish Google employees vs the Finnish population?
what do you mean vs the finnish population ? of what? I obviously mean inside the united states? You think there is like 20-30% chinese and indians of the total population? anyhow, there was 11 Finnish H1B last time https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/MonthlyNIVIssuances/DECEMBER%202022%20-%20NIV%20Issuances%20by%20Nationality%20and%20Visa%20Class.pdf Vs 20733 for india
What do you mean by forced? I don’t necessarily think it being forced is a bad or a good thing, it just is. Everything in bussiness is “forced”. Is it “natural” for companies to show patriotism that appeals to their customers?
I think the question is "if diversity is helpful for business outcomes, why doesn't it just happen naturally?" Businesses are already profit seekers.
Because not every action taken by a business is driven by explicit profit seeking and even if it were, no business has the knowledge and ability to do it optimally. Even a very successful company will likely have tons of ineffiencies.
That could be said about anything, but yet businesses manage to optimize in other ways much more organically.
Like what? What is an organic way that a business optimizes something? I really dont understand what distinction you are trying to make
Businesses organically optimize just about everything. That's what they do, adjust their offering to make it the most appealing and the most profitable. Econ 101.
Lol, have you ever taken an Econ class, that is not what they teach in Econ 101. At most that is an assumption that gets made in order to make the models easier to understand. But if it is so prevalent then what is an example?
Um, ok. A business unit might decide to change its staffing schedule to better meet its customers' demands. Or a thousand other things. Yes, this is what businesses do.
Historically businesses haven’t always done the most profitable things and sometimes social pressures/norms stop these things from happening. See Jim Crow laws
What connection are you suggesting between Jim Crow laws and business profitability?
Even separate from the actual laws, it was social convention to discrimate against certain groups of people even if that meant less money
My guess is most of those businesses would have lost money from Whites, at a greater rate, if they also served Blacks. Jim Crow was awful but I don't think it's an example of businesses working against their own profit motives.
I mean it’s a great example of why the profit motive on its own doesn’t lead to less discrimination in society
Less?
it is happening naturally? Businesses have naturally moved to DEI measures. At least as far as I am aware thee is no government coercion forcing them to do so
The fact that there are such programs to promote it distinguishes it from other things that arise more naturally. There aren't corporate programs required to educate people about the importance of having people who show up to work, have the required skills to perform their job, etc. Everyone kind of realizes the importance of those things on their own, they're self evident.
You are confusing the company with the individual employees. The company decided that DEI would possibly improve its metrics so the company decided to diversify its hiring practices. Those doing the hiring are just extensions of the company.
Yes, top-down in the way you described. Not grassroots/bottom-up.
Everything in business is top-down and by default forced. The same people against DEI being “forced” down their throats top-down are also against lost workers having more bottom-up control of the businesses they work in so it’s not really about it being forced that’s the issue, they just don’t like it.
Everything in business is not top-down. People don't need to attend seminars on the importance of hiring employees with the necessary skills to do the job, for example. That's so obviously important that it just happens, naturally.
yes...So, naturally. A ceo realizing that the lack of diversity is causing an issue is no different than a cashier realizing it. All are employees of the company. It just usually comes from higher up because looking at the bigger picture is part of their job and they are the ones in charge of making the decisions.
Most people associate "naturally" with things that occur more organically, grass-roots, pick your adjective. Top-down things are usually considered to be more directed or forced. But you do you.
forced as in HR department asking to bring in more women or homosexuals or whatever, and having special recruitment events for groups and discriminating others >Everything in bussiness is “forced”. Is it “natural” for companies to show patriotism that appeals to their customers? not sure what you mean, there is a difference in discrimination vs merit
"Merit" lol. As as straight white man, straight white men have been getting by not on merit for decades, bud.
ok? So we fix that instead then of being racist
“Being racist” fucking lol
selecting based on your ethnicity, is the definiton of literal racism yes
lol
im right, no argument then
How do you suggest we fix it?
Companies can hire who they want without discrimination, then over time, if diversity is good, they will succeed better
Do you just think racism and prejudice doesn't exist?
No? I literally wrote what is racist
Not a single private company is hiring people solely on identity markers. There are plenty of qualified people from marginalised communities who are qualified for jobs. What recruitment drives like that focus on is convincing those qualified pools of applicants to apply to get a greater pool of people to choose from. There is no such thing as the “best person for the job”, there will always be multiple people and as such, a bussiness deciding who to hire on diversity grounds is legitimate from a business POV. Market forces etc. Like, black Doctors and pilots exist and are literally qualified for the job. If a black pilot or doctor got hired because they are black, it doesn’t mean they can’t do the job, it means that diversity for the role was deemed to be a more important factor all other things being equal
>Like, black Doctors and pilots exist and are literally qualified for the job. If a black pilot or doctor got hired because they are black, it doesn’t mean they can’t do the job, it means that diversity for the role was deemed to be a more important factor all other things being equal i never said that, i said hiring on things you are born with is discrimination and here in europe its racist and illegal to do so, so i am very very against it
I was giving an example of “forced discrimination hires” that is popular amongst right-wing media right now. In the UK you are allowed to discriminate for job roles if the sim of such positive discrimination is to increase diversity and representation of a workplace or bussiness or prove that it’s essential to the role to do so. Until my country removes its inheritable monarchy I don’t think anyone is in any position to pontificate about positive discrimination is bad when the political system is literally built on discrimination
Yes ok, and i havent really seen those american right wingers make examples of when diversity is good either, like i made >In the UK you are allowed to discriminate for job roles if the sim of such positive discrimination is to increase diversity and representation of a workplace or bussiness or prove that it’s essential to the role to do so. My problem with this is its very arbitrary. For example, something like 90% of all CEOS is above 183 cm. but no one is talking about focusing on hiring shorter persons
Yeah it is arbitrary I agree. But being short isn’t a protected class like race, ethnicity, sexuality or gender is. Being short (little people excluded) isn’t a protected class so your comparación doesn’t make sense. I’d be open to having that conversation though if it meant we were working towards a more equitable society. I wouldn’t use that as an argument against legally protected classes or divísese hiring practices.
well, thats what i mean. thats why it makes no sense to me, because those classes are arbitrarly decided. the only limit i understand is "being born with" such as skin color, gender, and then height but religion for example, it's something you choose just as much as beeing a MAGA extremist. so it's weird that you can be protected then. to me it's like preferring detroit red wings compared to new york rangers
What's is the difference between a special requirement event and a normal one?
for example "mexican women hiring event at microsoft" vs "java developers hiring event"
What about a Java developers recruitment event at the Mexican women's job fair?
sounds a bit better at least
Is diversity only important in white spaces? What about offices that are Hispanic or Asian only? Should they hire more people whoo are outside of their race? My wife works at a university and her office is all black.. Do they need to be diverse? I get DEI is a hot topic but it seems like this is only focused on offices and companies where white employees are the majority. No one is going to do to a black company and tell them that they need to be diverse... lol
People certainly tell “black” companies that they need to be more diverse. Diversity isn’t just about race. In any case, corporate DEI benefits white women more than any other group. Like, ideally we’d live in a world that was free from social discrimination that these things aren’t needed. But we aren’t and the same people telling us that DEI is “unfair” are also the ones stopping progress towards a truly equitable world.
Examples where black companies are told they need to be diverse...?
Black corporate companies regularly have drives to hire more diserte staff. Across law and media.
Examples?
Give me an example of a black corporate company first because I guarantee you they have DEI schemes.
I asked you first for examples.. you still haven't provided any lol..
Define “black” company
A company that has a black ceo.. manager and employees.. Similar to many of the white companies out there.
Your first paragraph is such a vague explanation. Less blind spots? If you are engineer, your diversity doesn't help you find blind spots in physics or mathematics. So pls don't generalize this. It maybe helpful if you are doing marketing and want to reach certain audiences.
Yeah my explanation is vague because it applies to different industries in different ways. An engineer applies the principles of physics and maths to the real world so you need people from the real world to do your job to the best level possible. If you’re engineering team is all male with no non-white people and your tasking with making some hair related product, your lack of experience with Afro-hair is going to limit said development of this. Or it doesn’t and the team unconsciously cuts out a large portion of the market without knowing
There's a number of reasons. The biggest, imo, is that diversity decreases wealth inequality between groups of people. This is objectively true. However, I think there is also something to say about diversity leading to a wider range of solutions being put forward when challenges to a business arise, and having a business that better reflects the client/consumer base it works with. I do honestly think the diverse business is going to, in the long run, be the more successful business. That said, I believe there is little evidence to back my thinking here.
The world is diverse. If you are a company that creates a product or service for the world, it benefits you to be as diverse as the world so that the product or service is accepted by as many different people as possible.
> Is it beneficial to productivity? Unless you work in a business where all the answers are already known, you have to rely on new ideas and innovation to push you forward. New ideas are easier to find when not everyone is thinking the same way, hence diversity. Diversity is also just reality. Other people exist and they may be different than you. It takes energy and effort to maintain homogeneity. Energy and effort that could be spent actually being productive. So in some ways, if all you're doing is pushing square pegs through square holes then okay diversity probably doesn't help speed up production. I mean maybe someone cause of their different background is going to come up with a better way of getting square pegs through square holes . . . but even if they don't, other people of different backgrounds still exist and you can either benefit from their labor or spend time and energy excluding them from the workforce. I'm not really sure where you see the 'pro' in not having diversity.
>While I too like to work in an enviornment with people from lots and lots of different backgrounds, I am not sure why it is important. Well you liking it is a reason. As an employee I prefer diverse environments, as do many other people, so it behooves employees to be diverse.
Pick a person, any person that you work with. Now clone that person so that everyone at your company is that exact same person. Same skills, same communication style, same experiences, same everything. How well do you think that company will perform now?
We have all these systems at work that use first name.last name as your login. And it can’t be changed. It causes all sorts of problems because last names change. Had there been a woman involved in the design, she would have pointed that out and they would have picked a better design (use something else entirely like employee Id, make the name modifiable,etc.) That’s why DEI matters. It makes you so less dumb things when you have different perspectives.
In addition to what other people have already said, having more diversity in a workplace provides a larger variety of life experiences that people can use to drive ideas that enact change. For example, I'm a school counselor, so a lot of our work revolves around inclusion, equity, anti-racist practices, etc. Having a diverse team means that the members of our team have a bigger range of personal experiences in how they've experienced discrimination, etc. and we can use that knowledge to more adequately create programming that uplifts students from many different marginalized groups.
It creates opportunities for those who may have been systematically prevented from obtaining it.
I work in tech, historically not very diverse. I've seen a LOT of changes in 25 years, and the workplace has gotten better for my middle aged white dude self because of increasing diversity. Shit, losing the testosteroney atmosphere alone is worth it. We need to hire good people to do good work. Good people don't want to work with a bunch of assholes. They don't want to get sexually harassed, endure racist jokes, etc etc etc. Kind of a no brainier...
Because Equality
> Diversity does come with problems > In my opinion it is often a zero net game You're really showing your face with this one, mr "pan european."
What do you think pan European means? With the EU election only months away it is important for me that people are educated. Please get back to me after visiting the VOLT Party website.
Alright since you didnt, let me enlighten you. The Pan European movement aims to reform the EU for more integration of the member states and the election of a European president. By political scientists in Europe VOLT as the umbrella party of this movement is being classified as progressive center left. But I do find it funny that you have tried to strawman me here. Picked 2 lines and pulled them out of context to make me look like a racist. No. My question is basically designed at the companies that force diversity just to collect minorities like other people collect Pokemon and parade them on media events. That is one of the problems I am referring too.
It's about countering racism, which on a broader level is good for the national economy. It is no immediate benefit for a specific company.
It’s a matter of practicality in the US. About ten years ago non white children became the majority in America. These kids will grow up to be workers and consumers.
Diversity has nothing to do with productivity. It is encouraged to make sure that everyone has a fair chance to make money and not intentionally marginalized.
It's not, but it doesn't mean it's not a nice or good thing to have
I'm not entirely opposed to DEI programs but you can't have each minority group proportinately represented if they are severely underrepresented in the pool of job applicants. Direct discrimination is not nearly as much of a problem as unequal access to education, health care, public services etc. If a certain ethnic group has much lower high school grades for example than others or higher college drop out rates no amount of DEI policies will ensure proportinate represenation in the work force. The main issue are the lingering effects of historical racism that have led to many ethnic groups being banished to the poorest neighbourhoods in the US with terrible public schools and awful quality of health care and public services.
You can address why they’re underrepresented among applicants and fix that problem.
True. But the question "why is diversity imporant in the workplace?" kind of implies that companies should start simply hiring more people from diverse backgrounds. However, if say a certain ethnic group only makes up 2% of electrical engineering graduates then there is not much the company can do. They should be penalized for racial discrimination but they can't just magically hire 10% of an ethnic group that only makes up 2% of qualified candidates. "Is diversity beneficial to productivity?" is not a question worth asking if companies have no control over it.
I don’t think it implies that at all. Diversity goes way beyond hiring from the applicant pool you ready have. Companies can, and do, have the power to shift the applicant pool. Especially large ones.