Humanity at Work

Diversity, Inclusion and Wellbeing in an Increasingly Distributed Workforce

Anjali Bindra Patel

• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Year: 2020
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781636760285
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

PART ONE

The “Whats” of Diversity, Inclusion, and Wellbeing

Chapter One

What is Diversity?

“Diversity: the art of thinking independently together.”

– Malcolm Forbes3

It’s 2003. Imagine you’re a guy named Hasan Minhaj, a senior in high school in Davis, California. You’re not the most popular guy, and you’re not the best ballplayer, but you have insane email skills, and you’re good at math. The highlight of this new school year? Two words. Bethany Reed. She just moved from Nebraska and is in your AP Calculus class.4

You start messaging each other online. You become friends. You start studying at her house. Her parents like you: they always ask you how you’re doing, they offer you brownies, and they regularly invite you to stay for dinner.

One day, Bethany shows up at your house to study. You’re frazzled because your Indian background means that your home life doesn’t fit a typical American household’s mold. There are no brownies in the oven- there are fresh samosas in the fryer. No one is watching Friends on tv —your parents are watching a Bollywood movie on ZeeTv. The daily chitchat? It’s in Hindi.

After a few minutes of studying in your fully Indian house, Bethany looks up from her book. She says, “You know what? This is really nice. We should do this more often!” The anxiety you had been holding onto all evening starts melting.

As the spring quarter rolls around at school, Mr. Pendleton, your calculus teacher, dares the entire class to go to prom. “There’s more to life than math. Live a little!” he advises.

The bell rings, and you hear the pitter-patter of Bethany’s footsteps. “Listen,” she says. “You’ve made my school year so memorable—will you go to prom with me?”

You know that prom is not a word used in your household. Unsure of how to broach the topic, you get home and just hit it directly. “Dad, I want to go to prom,” you announce.

“Oh really, Hasan?” your dad says, “You want to go to prom? Main tumhaara munh tod doonga!” he screams. (This roughly translates to “I’m going to break your mouth.”) Mentioning the word “prom” can be enough to set off a firestorm in an Indian household, but openly declaring your intention to go? Not a common or advisable approach.

Despite the parental shut down, you decide you’ll do whatever it takes to make it to prom. The night of the dance, you put on your JC Penney suit, sneak out your bedroom window, and bike to Bethany’s house, corsage in hand.

You’ve been to her house a million times, but this time is different. You take things in. You are about to go to prom with Bethany Reed. You ring the bell. Her mom answers. She opens the door, but she has a look of concern on her face. You look over her shoulder to see another guy putting a corsage on Bethany’s wrist.

What is happening?

“Oh my gosh, honey,” Bethany’s mom said. “Did Bethany not tell you? Aw, sweetie, we love you. We love that you come over and study. But tonight’s one of those nights where… well, we have a lot of family back at home in Nebraska… and we’re gonna be taking a lot of photos tonight… so we don’t think you will be a good fit…I’m so sorry…”

This was how political commentator and TV Host Hasan Minhaj shared his experience with senior prom in his 2017 Netflix special called Homecoming King. Still, what he felt that night is not unique: every single one of us, at some point, has been celebrated for adding a new dimension to an existing environment or has been shunned because of it.5

So, what is diversity? Ask different people, and you’ll hear different responses, but one way to look at diversity is having or being composed of different elements. In other words, diversity is a range of different things. It’s variety.

I wince when people look at me and call me a “diverse” person. A person isn’t diverse. A team can be diverse. A community can be diverse. An organization can be diverse. My brown skin, taken alone as one individual, is not diverse. Diverse from what? From whom?

“Diversity is a relational concept,” says Global Strategist Sarah Saska. “It shows up in the composition of teams and organizations and is measured based on a collective whole. In this way, diversity refers to differences within a given setting. While a person is not diverse, they may bring a diverse range of experiences, from appearance to thought, likes or dislikes, and identity. Diversity of identity may relate to socialized and visible race, gender identity, religion, nationality, body shape or size, age, or sexual orientation, to name a few.”6

Consider what diversity means to you. You’re right if you think about things like gender or race. Other types of traits that make for a diverse team include age, sexual orientation, and physical abilities. These are examples of inherent diversities.

There are other types of diversity as well, the ones acquired by experience: cross-cultural experiences, political beliefs, parental status, military backgrounds, and education are just a few. Diversity is a workforce of individuals with varying genders, religions, races, ages, ethnicities, physical abilities, sexual orientation, education, and other attributes in a work context. It’s about the differences between people within your teams, company, and ecosystem.

What does diversity look and feel like? Diversity is variety. Diversity is discomfort. Diversity is tolerance. Diversity is opportunity.

Diversity matters, especially in our workforces, because it broadens our perspective, and it exposes us to views that are less explored in a homogenous society.

Going back to Hasan’s story, let’s assume for a minute that things had gone differently and that, despite Bethany’s parents’ reluctance, they allowed Hasan and Bethany to go to prom together. Would that have been any better in the long run?

When Hasan talks about his prom story on stage, he reflects: “I’d eaten off their plates. I’d kissed their daughter. I didn’t know that people could be bigoted even as they were smiling at you.”

Hasan’s story depicts the effect of a lack of diversity. Whether it’s based on cultural, racial, gender, education, or other characteristics, diversity is important because it helps eliminate negative stereotypes and personal biases about different groups of people. It helps us recognize and appreciate the many ways of being that are different from our own.

There’s a saying that diversity is being asked to the party, and inclusion is being asked to dance. Diversity, then, is being let inside.

In Hasan’s case, he never made it past the front door.

Breaking down Diversity: The Pieces Versus the Puzzle

You can use two somewhat opposing perspectives from which to view diversity. One approach emphasizes specific identifiers like ethnicity, race, gender, disability, and sexual orientation. If a person is a puzzle, the identifiers are the pieces.

The second approach is more of an intersectionality approach, which takes the identifiers into account, but sees people through a wider lens. If a person is a puzzle, then intersectionality looks at the completed puzzle. This intersectionality bleeds heavily into the concept of inclusion, and we’ll dive deeper into this idea in the next chapter.

For now, let’s look at some of the traditional diversity identifiers, which include but aren’t limited to thi...

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• The “Whats” of Diversity, Inclusion, and Wellbeing
• The “Whys” of Diversity, Inclusion, and Wellbeing
• The “Hows”of Diversity, Inclusion, and Wellbeing
• Conclusion: where do we go from here?
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• APPENDIX