03 Feb Tokenism Isn’t Helping Diversity, Here’s What Will

Fostering diversity is not the same as tokenism

Around the world, there has been a rampant focus on diversity. For good reason. As I explain in my article, diversity and inclusion are crucial for team and company performance. Diversity of perspectives boosts product quality and team collaboration.

Tokenism on the other hand, is a company’s symbolic attempt to push forward employees of minority groups in their recruitment and promotional strategies. Especially in the spheres of programming and female leadership.

Avoiding tokenism

As an employer branding professional, I’ve been in those meetings. “Hmm, we’re going to need more diversity and representation in the promotional pictures we use. Let’s take more across the office. Who shall we choose? Let’s ask the intern and the woman in…what department is she in again? Oh yeah, here I found her! Perfect.”

The purpose of employer branding is to distinguish your organization from the rest as a top employer, to attract and retain talent. A big chunk of my work is highlighting employees’ “what’s in it for me?” about joining my company and showing the world what it’s like to work within our offices. Nowadays, it’s not just about free fruit, flexible working hours, and standing desks — it’s about culture.

Fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion is a becoming a trend throughout recruitment marketing and processes. Organizations are allocating serious budget toward campaigns, tools, testimonials, and partnerships to show their commitment, without much work being done internally.

I’m lucky to be working somewhere where leadership truly cares about their people and focuses on pushing programs and partnerships to support everyone in the company.

Even though I work alongside an international team in an environment that encourages people to voice their opinions and challenge existing processes, I’m still part of a group of young professionals that feels there is still much to do when it comes to diversity and inclusion.

There’s still much to do for inclusion and diversity

In between the Friday night chats over beer, we chat hard about the struggles we face and values we try to champion every day in a workforce still plagued by bottlenecks that have been issues much before we joined the job market.

What does diversity really mean nowadays? It’s such a subjective and culture-bound term that you know you should say and champion, but it’s also frightening as it has the potential to open a can of worms you or your peers may not be ready to face.

In the corporate world, does D&I mean having more minorities in the office? Does it mean having fewer minorities complaining to human resources? It has a blurry meaning with the potential to offend and turn a conversation rogue, especially in recruitment and employer branding.

Corporations nowadays are doing anything to appear more tolerant, inclusive, and empowering. Churning out artificial ads and symbolic diversity programs to compete with competitors.

The problem with our approach to diversity and inclusion

In my opinion, with diversity and inclusion, you believe there’s a winning recipe to achieve it. I think you reckon it’s important to showcase it in your workplace. The only issue is that it is a concept still unclear to you or your employees, or how it actually pertains to your mission as an organization. It seems to have morphed into another product to develop and package nicely for your users.

You’re placing more women and people with disabilities on your career site and hiring campaigns to recruit more diversity, but you’re not putting forth opportunities for advancement for those already in, or entering the company. You’re celebrating pride month by switching your logo to one with a shiny rainbow background, but you haven’t taken part in a LGBTQ affinity group to listen to the issues your employees are facing internally. You’re promoting pictures helping local minority communities, but your job descriptions still call for a university degree from a prestigious university.

These strategies act as fluff and don’t truly reflect a commitment to diversity and inclusion, they are tokenism.

The solution

So what’s the solution? Re-think your strategy.

Instead of appointing minority poster children for your career site and campaigns, take time to understand what minority groups are facing. Organize meetings, encourage internal clubs and initiatives to give under-represented groups a voice, and run surveys and focus groups to truly get the full picture on D&I within your company. Every group has its own set of unique perspectives to tap into.

Acceptance, diversity, and inclusion are not optional or checkboxes to ticks on a to-do list. D&I as a topic should be met with curiosity, willingness to hear bitter realities and consequent reflection on what employees are saying. Be ready to question whether you’re perpetuating these issues with your own unconscious biases.

As a woman, I want to see more advancement opportunities and female peers hired in leadership positions. As a young professional, I need more diversity of thought to grow and develop within my position as I acknowledge the drive, innovation, and expertise diversity brings to an organization and its teams.

It’s crucial to understand that diversity is not about showing off numbers or statistics or about seeing more under-represented groups in an office, it’s about grasping its impact on employees — fostering a culture of empowerment, safety, and advancement for future talent.

Change should be holistic, it shouldn’t stop after hitting the first couple of milestones such as hiring five new female engineers or appointing an African-American CFO. The shift should continue until variables such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and physical challenges no longer act as a glass ceiling.

If you’re a manager or executive, there are many tough questions you should ask yourself:

• Are you empowering marginalized communities?
• Are you educating leaders and people managers about unconscious biases?
• Are your leaders abusing their power and privilege to speak for those in lower-level positions?
• Are you holding leadership accountable?
• Are you truly taking steps to understand why D&I matters in your organization and how it impacts employees?

Conclusion

As a leader, please don’t overwhelm your friendly diverse employee with the burden of speak for their entire group or come up with one-size-fits-all initiatives to support their people. Instead, take it upon yourself to assess the current situation and act upon it with solid solutions.

As a company, please don’t let business needs and pressure be prioritized over its people. It may seem positive in the short-run, but in the long-run it’s unsustainable to put diversity and inclusion on the back burner.

As an employer branding specialist, help make diversity and inclusion come alive. Promote constructive partnerships and initiatives rather than pandered content featuring token employees — that’s what I call false advertising.

As an HR professional, reduce the number of bullet points in job descriptions to avoid diminishing the pool of talented applicants (do they really need a master’s or relevant job experience could be enough?). Advise hiring managers to be more intentional in determining what they think they want vs what they actually need. Research shows that typically, women feel they need to meet 100% of the criteria in a job description while men typically apply after meeting about 60%.

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