Let’s start with a basic assumption: companies desire to be places where employees want to be.
At a minimum, companies hope that employees stay around for a long time and give good effort to their work. On the other extreme, truly supportive companies aim to make their employees better people. And, in turn, helping the business to succeed.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to capture my thoughts around diversity, equity and inclusion. I believe firmly in the value of creating a representative, equitable and welcoming environment. It’s the right thing to do. And it makes for better companies.
In this post, I’ll focus on the concept of equity and how weaving that into the fabric of the organization is your cornerstone. There’s plenty to talk about beyond this. My reasoning for starting with equity is that it is the prerequisite to being able to foster meaningful diversity and inclusion.
In building companies, I fervently believe that equity is the most important value if you want to build a strong organization. But what exactly does that mean in practice?
Having systems that aim for equity means that you (or, ideally multiple people), will come to the same (or very similar) decisions on what to do.
Here’s an example:
After performance reviews are completed, it’s often the case that one manager may rate people very favorably (everyone is an over performer) while there’s quite a difference within their team while another manager is more conservative and distributes their ratings.
Everyone involved is getting the short end of the stick. The manager with under performers doesn’t meaningfully address issues. The other manager is likely punished for under performers (in the form of lower merit budget). Resentment builds. Problems fester.
So, you calibrate. You bring the managers together to talk through their ratings and to ensure they’re in alignment. (Ideally you do this before reviews are written in addition to doing so after). It may be difficult hashing things out loud. But it is important for making sure people are on the same plane.
A calibration is a step towards ensuring equity.
Let’s look at another:
I would often work with team members on compensation recommendations for new hires and adjustments for current employees. We would both review data about the individual, proxy colleagues and our internal guidelines and see how close or far off we were from each other.
Often, we would find ourselves coming to a very similar landing spot. (The goal is that you’re not going to get a ‘better’ offer from one person or another. We’re consistent).
The other aspect is creating systems that minimize subjectivity. This also means embracing rigidity.
Naturally, we like pulling levers to ‘get something done.’ But when those levers are pulled for some and not for others, you create imbalances.
To share a practical example, this may show up in how you give titles. If two people are doing the same work at the same level, a logical conclusion is that they should have the same title. (But, on more than one occasion, I had a manager say, “Can we keep them at the Software Engineer level (comp band) but give them a Senior Software Engineer title? The equitable answer is no).
Inequitable decisions also create organizational debt. (Or, people debt). These are things that meant making a compromise in the short term that will have repercussions in the long term. (And, unfortunately, these issues tend to persist since there’s always something ‘more urgent’).
If we have equitable systems, we know that the organization essentially has an operating ethos that will treat people fairly and objectively. Employees (prospective and current) can have greater confidence in the organization and feel a greater sense of belonging.
I would argue that Organizational (People) Debt is what sinks a business. It causes misaligned expectations, inconsistent decisions, haphazardly applied policy and creates situations that hinder transparency.
Solving for equity makes most things harder in the moment. It means mustering courage to tackle something now. **But in doing the right thing, you haven’t created debt.
Debt is rarely ever a good thing. Equity always is.
<aside> 🔌 For further reading, check out these a few excellent guides from M13. These echo the sentiments above while also putting things into actionable forms you can apply to your own organization:
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