Recently I attended a presentation by Professor Frank Dobbin from Harvard at Rotman School of Management. The amazing take away, based on decades of corporate findings on increasing diversity, is that courses to train away implicit bias and policies to prevent biased decisions don’t work. The very things that corporations have been using to improve diversity at the management levels really aren’t all that effective. And mandatory training has the worst effect. Interestingly, the Google engineer who wrote the memo on why women were not suited for tech jobs, did so after attending a diversity training course. I wonder if it was mandatory?
The reason that training and policies don’t work is that people like job autonomy and dislike thought control. And as valuable as awareness about unconscious bias is, this makes perfect sense. So what does work? Several things, as it turns out. Mentoring for women works well; having the support and guidance of senior people. My friend Betty Ann Heggie recognized this early on and started a wonderful mentoring program for women through the Edwards School of Business in Saskatchewan. I was involved in helping create a program for women in commercial real estate through Toronto CREW in 2004 – a program that is still running today and getting great reviews from both mentors and mentees. The reason mentoring for women works well is because men have their own mentors already; for young men, getting mentors happens automatically.
What else works? Engagement. Getting men involved in solving the problem of gender quality and increasing diversity. In a previous blog entitled “Holding Women Back Holds the Economy Back” I mentioned that Deloitte India started a program called “Men as Champions”. It makes male employees responsible for actively driving interventions, as well as checking to ensure that they align with the company’s gender diversity agenda. Deloitte has realized what works – men owning the issue of gender inequality, and working to solve it.
The third thing found to work is work/life balance integration, but not in the way you may think. The key aspect is having the organization signal that having a life outside of work is okay. Amazingly, research shows that it doesn’t matter how many people attend seminars on this topic: the important thing is that the organization holds them. Showing employees that their life outside of work matters to the organization helps them by updating the image of the ideal worker.
The image of the ideal worker is someone who is completely devoted and available to the job; devotion that comes ahead of family, personal needs; even health. In my book Understanding Gender at Work, I write about a junior lawyer who ended up with a concussion after fainting due to long working hours. I devote an entire chapter, Thrive, to well-being. I completely agree with Adrianna Huffington, who wrote the book Thrive, that well-being must be included as a necessary element of true success.
While organizations are updating the image of the ideal worker to better suit reality, they are also creating an environment at work that supports psychological and physical well-being. What a wonderful way to help us move closer to gender equity.