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[Split Thread] Diversity Equity and Inclusion and merit in employment etc

I'm saying that some people and organisations have a definition of "DEI" that is so far removed from the ideal that those people and organisations refuting it is not all that surprising.

In other words, ◊◊◊◊ implementation of DEI is ◊◊◊◊.
You can't have a ◊◊◊◊ implementation of DEI without a definition of DEI that distinguishes between ◊◊◊◊ and non ◊◊◊◊ implementations. Which definition you had ample opportunity to provide. Along with evidence that it makes money.

But here we are.
 
You can't have a ◊◊◊◊ implementation of DEI without a definition of DEI that distinguishes between ◊◊◊◊ and non ◊◊◊◊ implementations. Which definition you had ample opportunity to provide. Along with evidence that it makes money.
I haven't claimed that it makes money. That's the capitalist wet dream. I'm interested in making people and society a better place for everybody. Diversity means that nobody is excluded from opportunity. Equity means that everybody has access to the same opportunity. Inclusion means that everybody is represented, regardless of their circumstances and who they are.

Some people and organisations do not believe in these ideals.
 
You do a lot of poking! ;)

Poking is fun!

I would point out ('cause I'm a pointer not a poker) that McKinsey just kinda made up the "diversity is good for business" line to sell DEI trainings to businesses.

Entirely plausible, but far from the whole picture at hand, even if so. With that said, handwaving aside...
Oh, no problem. I'm sure if you paid enough money a consulting company could give you the report you want. :sneaky:

You do realize that the exact same can be said of the efforts to discredit McKinsey, if you're going to try to go there? Especially if we happened to live in a country where there are entrenched interests and groups of people with a strong history of actively working to disempower minorities and concentrate power and wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Oh, wait, we do happen to live in such a country. As noted, it's entirely plausible that McKinsey's work is flawed, but maybe consider what interests are being impacted by whatever thing is in question before jumping blindly to swallow something you think sounds nice.

And I don't mean the diversity of experience / skill which is obviously useful. But that diversity of skin color or sexual proclivities clearly has no bearing on merit.

More specifically, the removal of skin color and sexual proclivities from being improperly included as disqualifiers has merit, all on it's own. Frankly, that has been a decidedly positive effect produced by the rise of DEI. Further, if one's trying to market products to some demographic, it does tend to be rather helpful to include people from said demographic in the conversation.

If it were true that "DEI boosts the bottom line," how could companies possibly have been profitable before the DEI discrimnation was imposed?

That's a weird question. Easily. Boosting the bottom line is a rather different concept from being profitable, period. They're related, sure, but not at all the same thing.

How can Samsung or LG make so much $$$ with such a homogenous workforce? And where are all these new billion-dollar startups with DEI owners/founders?

Again, weird questions. It's to the point where it's hard to tell what strange confusion is required to produce them.

DEI is a luxury that already profitable companies engage in for public relations.

A lot of companies did rather obviously have PR motives for playing up DEI stuff. Duh. Most of them benefited from that PR move, too, by the look of it. Those that didn't seem to mostly be those with significant easily riled up right-wing customer bases.

Once that starts to cut into profit, DEI is on the chopping block.

Hmm? I'm reminded of an acquaintance I made a while ago. They were hired as a safety compliance inspector at a company to make sure that all the rules were being followed so that the company wouldn't have to pay any fines when visited. By their telling, they did an amazing job at that. So good that the inspection deemed that the company wouldn't need to be inspected for something like a decade. As a "reward," the company immediately fired him, because they wouldn't need to worry about inspections for quite a while.

DEI on the chopping block isn't really much different in fundamental concept. The "DEI" policies put into place don't necessarily need much maintenance, which limits the incentives to retain said professionals in the face of cost cutting initiatives, even if the leaders think that it's worthwhile to keep the policies.

They seem to be assuming causation when they observe a correlation. If diversity is a side effect of other factors which make a company successful, then efforts to produce diversity purely for the sake of diversity will not actually help performance.

Indeed, that first point there, if it is just resting on that alone, would be correlation = causation. Really, really obviously so, which immediately leads to the question of why presumably intelligent, business-savvy people would be convinced by it if that's actually all there is to it.

To poke at Forbes for a bit more of the surrounding stuff, as it also includes reference to McKinsey, though -

One More Time: Why Diversity Leads To Better Team Performance


Are there any studies which show that DEI measures actually improve the performance of a company? I don't think there are.

Directly for profits? That's obviously not an especially easy demand. DEI is fundamentally about more indirect benefits to the company, after all.

For example -

Most important outcomes of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs for employees worldwide in 2021

In 2021, 66 percent of global full-time employees admitted that fostering inclusion and a sense of belonging was the most valued outcome of Diversity, Equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at their workplace. Another effect of DEI programs, mentioned by 65 percent of the survey respondents, was that they contributed to fair compensation at work.

A more attractive and retentive company culture does have obvious benefits for employers, as a general matter. How that translates to profits is something that tends to be far harder to specifically quantify, though, it's widely understood to be decidedly positive. Separating the DEI part of the equation, specifically, even from the rest of the efforts made for that overall purpose rather seems like it would be inviting various accusations, either way, before getting to attempts to specifically quantify the effects on revenue.
 
Directly for profits? That's obviously not an especially easy demand. DEI is fundamentally about more indirect benefits to the company, after all.

For example -

Most important outcomes of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs for employees worldwide in 2021



A more attractive and retentive company culture does have obvious benefits for employers, as a general matter. How that translates to profits is something that tends to be far harder to specifically quantify, though, it's widely understood to be decidedly positive. Separating the DEI part of the equation, specifically, even from the rest of the efforts made for that overall purpose rather seems like it would be inviting various accusations, either way, before getting to attempts to specifically quantify the effects on revenue.
Keeping employees happy is good, but hiring/promoting/etc. based on race/sex/etc. is not. And you seem to acknowlege there is no causal nexus between DEI and increaed profits. After all, lack of racial diversity doesn't hurt TSMC in the slightest. And if DEI is so wonderful, why is it almost never viewed as a positive intervention for sport? The reason the Philadelphia 76ers are having a bad season is their lack of Asian and Hispanic players; right?
 
Keeping employees happy is good, but hiring/promoting/etc. based on race/sex/etc. is not. And you seem to acknowlege there is no causal nexus between DEI and increaed profits.

No easily quantifiable one that can be easily generalized across large numbers of businesses that will tend to have differing policies and differing business needs, not that there's none. To be clear, "keeping employees happy" is normally considered to have an obvious positive connection with a company's profitability and sustainability. It's certainly not the only factor in play and DEI is obviously not ever going to be the whole of that, though.

After all, lack of racial diversity doesn't hurt TSMC in the slightest. And if DEI is so wonderful, why is it almost never viewed as a positive intervention for sport? The reason the Philadelphia 76ers are having a bad season is their lack of Asian and Hispanic players; right?

Again, asking questions like this just makes me wonder what strange confusion you're operating under that leads you to think that they're meaningful.
 
I'm interested in making people and society a better place for everybody. Diversity means that nobody is excluded from opportunity. Equity means that everybody has access to the same opportunity. Inclusion means that everybody is represented, regardless of their circumstances and who they are.

Those are the classical meanings of those words. If DEI meant what you keep pretending it does, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But, for the umpteenth time, that is not what those words mean when organizations engage in "diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)." Again, for the umpteenth time, by "diversity" they mean that they give hiring preferences to certain perceived or actual historically marginalized groups (or, equivalently, they discriminate against everyone else); by "equity" they mean their stated goal is equality of outcomes for each group; and by "inclusion" they mean things like inventing microagressions, banning "uninclusive language," believing in the debunked concept of implicit bias, requiring ideological purity from employees, and holding mandatory diversity training sessions, which we now know actually create a hostile work environment.

Some people and organisations do not believe in these ideals.

No doubt. But they don't call it "DEI."
 
Keeping employees happy is good, but hiring/promoting/etc. based on race/sex/etc. is not. And you seem to acknowlege there is no causal nexus between DEI and increaed profits. After all, lack of racial diversity doesn't hurt TSMC in the slightest. And if DEI is so wonderful, why is it almost never viewed as a positive intervention for sport? The reason the Philadelphia 76ers are having a bad season is their lack of Asian and Hispanic players; right?
Sports is different. You have to look at the management team. Coaches, managers, back office, etc. The dudes on the court are the product.
 
You do a lot of poking! ;) I would point out ('cause I'm a pointer not a poker) that McKinsey just kinda made up the "diversity is good for business" line to sell DEI trainings to businesses. Try to find anyone replicating that. And I don't mean the diversity of experience / skill which is obviously useful. But that diversity of skin color or sexual proclivities clearly has no bearing on merit. If it were true that "DEI boosts the bottom line," how could companies possibly have been profitable before the DEI discrimnation was imposed? How can Samsung or LG make so much $$$ with such a homogenous workforce? And where are all these new billion-dollar startups with DEI owners/founders? DEI is a luxury that already profitable companies engage in for public relations. Once that starts to cut into profit, DEI is on the chopping block.
Absolute nonsense in the Real World.
 
Those are the classical meanings of those words. If DEI meant what you keep pretending it does, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But, for the umpteenth time, that is not what those words mean when organizations engage in "diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)." Again, for the umpteenth time, by "diversity" they mean that they give hiring preferences to certain perceived or actual historically marginalized groups (or, equivalently, they discriminate against everyone else); by "equity" they mean their stated goal is equality of outcomes for each group; and by "inclusion" they mean things like inventing microagressions, banning "uninclusive language," believing in the debunked concept of implicit bias, requiring ideological purity from employees, and holding mandatory diversity training sessions, which we now know actually create a hostile work environment.
Again, for the umpteenth time, the people who are doing that and calling it "DEI" are full of ◊◊◊◊. What are we arguing about again?
No doubt. But they don't call it "DEI."
According to you, they do.
 
Again, for the umpteenth time, the people who are doing that and calling it "DEI" are full of ◊◊◊◊.
Of course they are. Because DEI is full of ◊◊◊◊.

Again, DEI is not, and has never been, anti discrimination. It is and has always been an effort to produce discrimination intended to correct perceived historical injustices. You can’t no true Scotsman your way around that.
 
Of course they are. Because DEI is full of ◊◊◊◊.

Again, DEI is not, and has never been, anti discrimination. It is and has always been an effort to produce discrimination intended to correct perceived historical injustices. You can’t no true Scotsman your way around that.
Like I said, full of ◊◊◊◊.
 
Again, for the umpteenth time, the people who are doing that and calling it "DEI" are full of ◊◊◊◊. What are we arguing about again?

According to you, they do.
We’re arguing about your failure to admit that that is what DEI is.
 
DEI is indeed all those things.
An opinion that may be shared with the likeminded, but seemingly not by all by a long shot. To take from a LinkedIn link -

Diversity in the workplace matters to applicants and employees​


Businesses are not only more successful when they embrace DEI initiatives, they also are more attractive to top talent and more likely to retain them. This is especially true for millennial and Gen Z workers.


  • Employers that posted about diversity saw 26% more applications from women than employers who posted less.
  • In a LinkedIn study, companies with a DEI team were 22% more likely to be seen as “an industry-leading company with high-caliber talent” and 12% more likely to be seen as an “inclusive workplace for people of diverse backgrounds.”
  • 76% of employees and job seekers said diversity was important when considering job offers.
  • 60% of employees want to hear business leaders speak up on diversity issues.
  • 80% of survey respondents said they want to work for a company that values DEI issues.
 
Of course they are. Because DEI is full of ◊◊◊◊.

Again, DEI is not, and has never been, anti discrimination. It is and has always been an effort to produce discrimination intended to correct perceived historical injustices. You can’t no true Scotsman your way around that.
"Perceived"? LMAO
 
Your "DEI" is all those things. And your insistence that your ridiculous definition is all that there can be.
OK. Between this forum and SGU, I've backed up "my" definition of DEI with two Biden executive orders instituting DEI throughout the federal government, a peer-reviewed paper, and several online articles. You havre yet to provide any evidence that there is something called DEI that does what you say it does anywhere other than in your mind.
 
"Perceived"? LMAO
Yes, perceived. Whether that perception is correct or not is a separate matter. I'm not disputing any particular perception (and certainly some perceptions of oppression are correct), but it is still perception that this is based on. I'm not sure why that's controversial.
 
Are you ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ serious? If you don't know, how can you disagree with me? And how can you not know, when I've explained it over and over again, including just a few posts up.
You're becoming incoherent. In fact, I've already said what I think DEI does, and you summarily dismissed it. You appear to think I think DEI does something different from that. The link you posted does not explain what you think I say it does, it explains what you say it does, which, yes, you have indeed explained over and over again. Because I think it does something different from that, I disagree with you.
 
You're becoming incoherent. In fact, I've already said what I think DEI does, and you summarily dismissed it. You appear to think I think DEI does something different from that. The link you posted does not explain what you think I say it does, it explains what you say it does, which, yes, you have indeed explained over and over again. Because I think it does something different from that, I disagree with you.
Relax. Obviously I misread your question. I understand what you think the kind of DEI that you believe exists somewhere does, or is, or tries to do. There is no reason for me to reiterate it. It is just an attempt at misdirection to hopefully avoid having to defend your position.
 
Can we just be done with "businesses are more succesful with DEI" nonsense. Nonreplicable flimflam.

You simply not liking something doesn't make it wrong. So far, your choice of arguments against have demonstrated that your words don't rely much on understanding or reality so much as grasping at straws to reinforce preferred narratives. There certainly are fair criticisms that can be raised about DEI programs and arguments related to them, some of which have and are being raised. I haven't seen much of value in what you've chosen to write, though, including when it comes to the relevance of DEI programs on efforts to attract and retain employees. For yet another easy example of why I'm not seeing much value -

Yeah. When it uses an alphabet soup to promote inclusivity, though it is actually excluding those not mentioned in the soup, it's not anti-discrimination.
The operative thing actually in question had been "perceived historical injustices" there. Your response was entirely irrelevant to that. Ziggurat's response, on the other hand, was entirely relevant.

Yes, perceived. Whether that perception is correct or not is a separate matter. I'm not disputing any particular perception (and certainly some perceptions of oppression are correct), but it is still perception that this is based on. I'm not sure why that's controversial.

To poke at that - what would likely be the root of the controversy there is a perception that significant and well documented wrongs are being downplayed by that choice of terminology. There's likely also an additional perception that it's being done by those who have benefited in some way from those wrongs and have been pointedly opposing actions intended to undo the damage done. Whether that perception is correct or not, an emotional reaction is unsurprising under the circumstances, I think.
 
Relax. Obviously I misread your question. I understand what you think the kind of DEI that you believe exists somewhere does, or is, or tries to do. There is no reason for me to reiterate it. It is just an attempt at misdirection to hopefully avoid having to defend your position.
What is there to defend? My position is literally the dictionary definitions of those words.
 
Again, for the umpteenth time, the people who are doing that and calling it "DEI" are full of ◊◊◊◊. What are we arguing about again?
Okay, I'll bite.

What is actual DEI? Please explain it so that we can all understand where you're coming from, and why that doesn't apply to the "◊◊◊◊ implementations" that you insist are not DEI.
 
Okay, I'll bite.

What is actual DEI? Please explain it so that we can all understand where you're coming from, and why that doesn't apply to the "◊◊◊◊ implementations" that you insist are not DEI.
*rolleyes*
I haven't claimed that it makes money. That's the capitalist wet dream. I'm interested in making people and society a better place for everybody. Diversity means that nobody is excluded from opportunity. Equity means that everybody has access to the same opportunity. Inclusion means that everybody is represented, regardless of their circumstances and who they are.

Some people and organisations do not believe in these ideals.
 
*rolleyes*
So... DEI training would consist of... "don't exclude anyone from consideration for any opportunity" and "consider everyone equally for every opportunity" and "make sure you have at one of every possible kind of person from every walk of life represented in every job"?

I'm going to push back on your very, very wishes-and-fairies representation.

Diversity means that nobody is excluded from opportunity.
Therefore overweight males should be given the opportunity to work as runway models for female clothing designers. And Danny Devito should be given the opportunity to plan the role of Ms. Congeniality. And a 5'0", 95lb female should be given the opportunity to be a firefighter. Seems totally reasonable.

Equity means that everybody has access to the same opportunity.
Therefore the person who just graduated high school should have access the the same opportunity to perform neurosurgery as the person who has an MD in that specialty. And the person with a degree in fine art and no math beyond high school algebra should have access to the same opportunity to do your taxes.

Inclusion means that everybody is represented, regardless of their circumstances and who they are.
Therefore con-artists should be represented in the running of charitable endeavors, and child sex offenders should be represented in daycare centers, and meth-heads should be represented in pharmacy management...

Okay, I've poked fun at you enough. My point is that your clever little bit of condescension is devoid of meaning. You didn't actually explain what DEI is in any meaningful way. All you did was tell us what the letters stand for - something that we already know. So how about you try again? You've been quite insistent that the various policies and practices that have been presented as being counterproductive aren't "real DEI". But you seem rather silent on presenting policies that you think qualify as "real DEI".
 
*rolleyes*
You're making the mistake of assuming that a compound word or phrase in English is a concatenation of the meanings of its constituent words when taken separately.

You're also making the mistake of assuming that people always choose nice names because they're doing nice things, rather than because they want to be perceived as doing nice things when they're not.

DEI programs in the US are largely comprised of progressive sociopolitical woo. As people have been trying to tell you.
 
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