A few years ago at a company picnic, I joined a handful of colleagues in picking up boxes of sandwiches and soft drinks through the park. All of us had signed up for this craft a few days in advance, back at the office. And we all, it turned out, were women.
The gender imbalance of the picnic team felt representative of a greater dynamic I had seen playing throughout my career. When a request for volunteers came out, women often turned out to be the ones who shook up their schedules.
Out of sheer curiosity, I asked a few male employees why they had not helped carry items for the picnic or responded to some other recent calls for volunteers. None of them had anything against the idea of helping theory, they said. They had just thought, I’m too busy.
I’m too busy. It’s a seemingly innocent thought that could have major repercussions for equality in the workplace, as a new report from the Nonprofit Center for Talent Innovation shows.
Researchers from the nonprofit think tank asked white, straight, cisgender men with white-collar jobs in the U.S. about their perceptions of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace. Only 10% of respondents thought that DEI was not important at all; the most common reason these men gave for not participating in such efforts was that they ‘did not benefit me.’
Many more white men thought that DEI was at least something important (48%), and 42% thought it was very important. Yet even in the latter group, called “True Believers” by the researchers, only 56% said they actively support DEI on their jobs. The most common reason both groups gave for not being involved? “I’m too busy.”
The report emerged from a nationwide survey of more than 2,000 men in February 2020, including focus groups with more than 500 participants and one-on-one interviews with 40 people.
“I do not want bias to exist, but I am more focused on realizing what I and my team are being asked to achieve.” one white man in senior management told researchers.
“The ability to just do regular work is so hard that there is rarely interest or time to work on ‘higher order’ tasks that promote a healthy culture,” said another respondent.
According to the researchers, the honesty with white men points to their lack of time on an underlying issue in how many companies treat diversity and inclusion.
It is “still seen as a kind of outdoor school,” says Julia Taylor Kennedy, lead researcher on the project and executive vice president at the Center for Talent Innovation. “It is not positioned as a core competency to advance companies as careers of individual leaders.”
And if white men, who continue to have a disproportionate number of senior-level positions, believe they’re too busy to help with something as important as equality in the workplace, it’s no wonder not much progress is being made.
How to get white men on board
In order to get white men, who continue to hold a disproportionate amount of positions at senior level, truly on board with DEI, the report states that companies need to show themselves that building different, inclusive teams is not something that takes time away from their ‘real’ job, and is instead a fundamental part of their jobs, as essential as hitting sales targets or recruiting new clients.
Companies can demonstrate the weight that DEI efforts carry through any number of practices, from binding compensation to the ability of leaders to recruit, retain and promote people of color to give weight to inclusive leadership behavior in performance management.
Kennedy says senior executives can serve as role models in changing the perception that DEI support has no personal benefit for white men. During city halls and other internal events, she says, they should include “what they learned from teams that were different, how it helped them to have brands about seen before, or what they learned as leaders through women or men of color. to sponsor. ” They would take advantage of opportunities to talk about individual teams as leaders who are very involved in DEI efforts, the better to signal to the organization as a whole that people who support DEI are noticed.
The goal is to create an environment where it is clear that DEI is a core value – one that no one who cares about their professional success could claim to be too busy to support.
However, there is one thing that is absolutely fine to be too busy for: changing the minds of the 10% of white men who have no concern at all about diversity. “Not all men will join the movement,” the report notes.
If an employee is discriminated against when others are bullied, they should be held accountable. Otherwise, Kennedy says, “you can expend a lot of energy to change their minds” – and research suggests that a hard sell on variety can actually confirm bias instead of reducing it.
The unspoken part of the knee reaction I’m too busy is, I’m too busy to help anyone elsemeaning, My main responsibility is to myself. Privileged people are often brought up to think so. Rather than trying to persuade others to be more selfless, a more effective workplace equality route can be for companies to look at what behaviors they are encouraging, and thereby change their practices.
