6.
Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity
The subjects of workplace diversity, inclusion, and equity are massive—often highly debated—issues in the workplace. And while we want to touch on each, we’re not going to pretend you came here to learn about their core constructs, history, or progressive influences in our day-to-day work lives. Those are topics more effectively covered by other resources.
What we want to focus on is how the virtual workplace can create unintentional blind spots for deterring the work of diversity, inclusion, and equity. However, with the proper focus, you can serve to help the virtual workplace become more diverse, more inclusive, and more equitable. But it’s going to take some insight and savvy to get us there.
Let’s Level Set, Shall We?
It helps to start with what we mean by diversity, inclusion, and equity. Diversity in the work environment promotes acceptance, respect, and teamwork despite differences in race, age, gender, native language, political beliefs, religion, sexual orientation, or communication styles among employees. Inclusion is the action or state of effectively including everyone employed within a group or structure. And equity is about the quality of being fair and impartial with all employees equally. The exciting thing is that, assuming someone is comfortable with technology utilization and adoption, the virtual workplace often levels the playing field when it comes to issues of diversity, and highlights the power technology can play with inclusion and equity.
Diversity in the Virtual Workplace
As a virtual manager, managing virtual employees, do you know what your needs are? In a classic stationary workplace, when it comes to diversity, it’s not too difficult to address and build a workforce that resembles the community where it resides. But in a virtual environment, the template that allows for a more casual “community of reflection” is a bit more complicated.
The virtual workplace allows your candidate pool to be global in nature. This allows you to dramatically increase candidate pipelines, experiences, and backgrounds (assuming you play a role in hiring your team), which then allows for diversity in your candidate screenings. There are a few tools you can use to assist this, such as:
• Pre-hire assessments. These are tests or questionnaires that candidates complete as part of their application process. Pre-hire assessments are often considered effective ways to determine which applicants are the most qualified for a specific job based on their strengths and preferences. They often help increase workplace diversity because personality scores do not significantly differ for any category of minority group members. However, it’s important to refrain from asking about a candidate’s personal background, age, race, gender, or ethnicity to avoid creating any unnecessary bias. In fact, we’d suggest that you apply a “blind hiring” process to ensure you’re not creating unnecessary bias.
• Blind hiring. Usually aided by a technology tool, blind hiring is a technique that makes a candidate anonymous from a recruiter or hiring manager so that unconscious or conscious bias about the candidate can be averted. Similar to the pre-hire assessment model, this allows the candidate to be reviewed with their core skills and experiences as the primary focus.
Inclusion and Equity in the Virtual Workplace
It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, or your race, age, gender, native language, political beliefs, religion, sexual orientation, disability status, or communication styles—the virtual workplace isn’t driven by knowing or needing those details. In fact, technology is growing so fast that most gaps caused by diversity attributes (such as a disability, native language, or communication styles) can be effectively supported or narrowed by a wide variety of technological designs. Often known as D&I technologies, these solutions use software and hardware to aid companies and employees with translation tools, disability and different-ability modifications to traditional software and hardware, and communication influencers to help support regional language and cultural nuances. These are powerful tools that can help the modern company grow their virtual landscape into a global workforce.
The note here for managers of virtual employees is knowing that the virtual workplace affords a wealth of advantages to help level the playing field for employees of all types and experiences. And while they’re not magic, D&I technologies create a way to address issues such as workplace inclusion and equity with a fresh set of tools and approaches.
We’re reminded of the great Martin Luther King Jr. quote, “Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve.” It’s a nice parallel allegory to how virtual employment can allow everyone to be great, because it allows anyone to work—no matter where, no matter how, no matter when.
But how does this happen? Magically? Nope. Just like the very technology virtual workers benefit from, the process of allowing for increased diversity, inclusion, and equity is done using a wealth of design and some well-crafted purpose.
Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Flourish Under Virtual Employment
As stated by Meir Shemla (2018), associate professor for the department of organisation and personnel management at Rotterdam School of Management:
Diversity gives you access to a greater range of talent, not just the talent that belongs to a particular worldview or ethnicity or some other restricting definition. It helps provide insight into the needs and motivations of all of your client or customer base, rather than just a small part of it. And, potentially, as McKinsey & Co and a host of other highly credible researchers have shown, it makes your organization more effective, more successful, more profitable.
Just as diverse talent isn’t held to a specific worldview or ethnicity, neither is it held to the often noninclusive shackles of the stationary workplace. In the virtual workplace, work is more often evaluated and valued for what is expected and what is completed, not for how someone dresses in an interview or gets along in a cubicle setting. This is not to say that those facets of employment are lost on the virtual workplace—because they’re not—but it does mean that the landscape of what diversity can offer and represents is both more amenable in the virtual workplace, while also being less prohibitive.
Say, for example, your stationary workplace doesn’t include the best options for private places to pray or doesn’t offer disability access to all parts of the building. In a virtual workplace, that’s no longer an issue. These needs are accommodated virtually through access to one’s own home or home office offerings. This is true too for populations like newly expecting or parents with babies and young children. While not every stationary workplace offers convenient or effective places for needs such as pumping, nursing, or general childcare, the virtual workplace is often a far more effective environment to meet these needs without needing permission, accommodation, or exceptions.
Your Role As a Virtual Manager
As a virtual manager, your role is to make these opportunities known and available to your virtual teams. While not always necessary, give your team permission to live the lives they need to live virtually. Even if your company doesn’t offer formal benefits such as childcare subsidies or flexible schedules, tell your team that you’re open to their needs and want to create a more inclusive and equitable workplace experience.
Let your team know you’re willing to accommodate cultural and religious holidays, gender-reassignment needs, and diversity-friendly (but virtual office appropriate) apparel choices. The opportunities to learn more about how to best support all your employees are dramatically enhanced in the virtual workplace, so take full advantage.
A Few More Thoughts
Become a virtual leader for diversity and inclusion. Take diversity management classes, read more on the subject, and engage with your employees more openly about their needs and experiences.
Create a culture of inclusion. Create space for everyone to feel welcome in your virtual workplace. This starts in the outreach and application phase, continuing into the onboarding and training phase and your actions in the day-to-day as the manager.
Communicate the value of diversity and inclusion. Make these topics core values within your management to express, learn, and grow. And make these values part of what you expect from your virtual teams as well.
Celebrate diversity and inclusion. Beyond the culture and open communication, don’t lose sight of all the ways you can celebrate diversity and increase inclusivity on your team where appropriate or necessary. Don’t only look for ways to celebrate those on your team, but see how the technologies you leverage make for a more diverse and inclusive environment for everyone.
Signing Off
We are not just in an exciting time for virtual management and employment, we’re also experiencing how virtual workplaces can offer more enhanced diversity, inclusion, and equity as a cultural norm. It’s no secret that inclusive environments with diverse teams are more creative, accomplished, and have more open and effective communication. And as a virtual manager, you have to ask yourself how to create even more opportunities for these advantages to flourish under your leadership. And for that we are excited for you, and for all of us.