what quantitative value does diversity bring?
I am legitimately curious... as someone who fits in a diversity category, I tend to laugh when it gets brought up so often at events. Always just figured its a marketing buzzword at this point but i have never felt that me being diverse impacted my value to the company at all. After all, it doesnt impact effort, educational standing or mental capacity. So I want to understand its quantative value more. Is its only quantative benefit for recruiting purposes?
Hiring diverse people brings diverse backgrounds and points of view. The key impact for me is being able to make better decisions (and products) because the company will have fewer blind spots. As an analogy, consider a group of rich white engineers, equipped with their $3000 laptops and high speed internet, building a features that should work and appeal to people in rural India.
Again.. it’s an anecdote and that’s qualitative. That does not mean that those rich white engineers couldn’t devise a plan to better serve the people in rural India.. Especially they had more experience and a better education than an Indian from the area (assuming that Indian has less experience, education or work reputation) The fact they are white has nothing to do with the problem that you presented
Those rich white engineers built WhatsApp and sold it to Facebook. With the help of more rich white engineers, WhatsApp is growing in popularity in rural India. Source: me
Employees from diverse backgrounds don’t get too close to each other so they 1. Don’t hire more like themselves 2. Don’t abuse the system. For ex, if all of them are from same state in India, they can communicate using native language and can manipulate while hiring and travel coz all of them have same motives
Potentially could add millions to a company's bottom line, take Cheetos for example: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/a-janitor-invented-flamin-hot-cheetos-and-became-a-pepsico-exec.html
Good article but it still doesn’t answer the question of “is there quantitative backing for the value of diversity” From the article, the janitor benefited from learning in an economically challenged life. But.. this reads like an exception to the rule rather than the standard. The part where it provides value to his life is in this sentence: “The former janitor realizes that his life would probably look very different today had he not called up Enrico” His ignorance led to him taking initiative, but other than that, I would hypothesis that his educational background was a quantitative hinderance to his life up to that point.
Don’t get me wrong.. being poor creates a drive in you that most people will never obtain.. and that impacts the “effort”.. but being poor isn’t a diversity category we measure against
Have you considered doing some research on google instead of coming to blind asking for comprehensive research results. If you're not going to accept our generalized answers without the numbers at least go look for some studies like https://www.cloverpop.com/hacking-diversity-with-inclusive-decision-making-white-paper?utm_campaign=Forbes&utm_source=Forbes&utm_medium=Forbes%20Hacking%20Diversity%20White%20Paper
This is what I wanted.. just in a conversational format.. And the other goal was to actually present the idea of why is diversity valued? Is it like a religious belief system that can’t be questioned at this point? It is to get everyone to discuss in a good environment. But up until this post.. it was selling like a religion with very little substance.
Ita because we've all either done the research or been through a training based on research so it's rare we actually go out and retain it. Because of part of my role I have studies internally saved I use for slides but I cant share those
It's a way of overcoming unconscious bias. It makes much more money than aiming only at "what you know" by broadening/stretching the base of experience. People build things for people like them. e.g., a. Team of 25 -27 year old women from Manhatten or 40 year old men from Bulgaria or an all LGBT group of tech majors. Mixing the above teams up results in a far broader range of goods and services for a company to sell. Diversity in color /culture / gender identity/ age etc. Etc. (if that isn't obvious) is what the benefits come from.
While I can’t get on board with unconscious bias, I can get on board with products built for those that have the life experience to give the solution to a problem not commonly seen by others.. and that is a good argument
Easy answer... None unless it is diversity of thought.
OP, the problem with answering your question is that this is a taboo subject for researchers who would establish such quantitative parameters. There is some research I am aware of in Law about juries with two “non-white-males” (so either females or people of color) reaching better verdicts (as defined by their verdicts being overturned less), but on the whole the subject of diversity is not studied well. Why? Well, many people have strong feeling and US in particular has a bad history with eugenics. It is difficult to develop an area of science where your study effectively has to prove that diversity is beneficial in all respects or else your career is in jeopardy. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as I said with eugenics the most minute indications of genetic inheritance of a trait were blown out of proportions by people who wanted to reaffirm their own biases. In general we are very tribal and it is dangerous for science to feed our stereotypes (most in our society are unequipped to deal with confidence intervals)
Oh I understand the studies are completely flawed and thank you for your thoughtful answer.. I understand finding an honest study would be highly unlikely due to the career consequences.. But people in this thread have provided interesting discussions. I definitely think there is an inherent advantage to diversity in presenting problems to solve.. I just do not think that diversity (as we commonly define it) provides any advantage in presenting solutions to those problems. Thus, in task-oriented roles, it provides no value when controlling for experience, known job performance and education That is what I would like to see in a study. I see a 30 year old Indian engineer from Stanford having the same value as a 30 year old white engineer from Stanford (assuming work experience is similar) But it’s an interesting conversation nonetheless
Progressives prefer to not have quantifiable or measurable performance or success. See: diversity, central banking, fiscal stimulus, etc.
I get that diversity tends to be tied with progressive ideology but I think we have a legitimate question that can be answered without political bias
It doesn't impact YOUR value. People of diverse background and cultures allow you to see issues or solutions from different perspectives, that's the main selling point outside company culture (better talent, retention, etc)
This. But it does lower the hiring bar a little.
And I’m seriously not wanting to be a jackass.. I understand the qualitative reasoning.. just are there statistics to show its quantitative impact? And to play devil’s advocate.. having different backgrounds (other than educational backgrounds and possibly locational differences) shouldn’t inherently provide different or better solutions. Also, there is no guarantee that you are getting better talent by promoting diversity. Now, I think it provides a path to more avenues of talent, but it shouldn’t be assumed that it provides better talent. You did bring up a point that intrigues me and that is retention. I could definitely see it impacting retention and that’s where the quantitive reasoning comes in. Especially those that have the value of wanting to work with diverse people But I’m still searching as to why the money is spent in promoting diversity if it doesn’t impact an individual’s value to the company.