If DEI Programs Aren’t Effective, What Is?

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Amid the backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the United States and elsewhere, leaders in both the public and private sectors are reevaluating their organizations' policies and goals. While many employers and employees still value and support DEI, a growing chorus argues that such programs run counter to meritocratic ideals. Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi of the Harvard Kennedy School think there's one principle everyone should be able to agree on -- fairness -- and argue for a data-driven approach to measuring it. They share their research on how to make workplace systems more fair and offer cases we can all learn from. They wrote the book Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the HBRidecast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Alison Beard.
0:29.2	In the United States and other parts of the world, there's a big debate happening right now over how public and private organizations should operate.
0:34.8	For a long time, many employers were trying to make their workplaces more diverse, equitable, and inclusive,
0:38.1	arguing that there was both a moral and a business case for initiatives like anti-biased training or gender quotas. Recently, though, there's been a rising
0:43.9	chorus of people saying that DEI programs and policies run counter to the idea of a meritocracy,
0:50.0	where the best get ahead, the rest fall behind, and the operation as a whole succeeds.
0:55.5	So who's right? Our guests today think we all need to look at these issues through a different lens.
1:01.1	They want leaders to focus on making work fair for everyone across levels and teams,
1:06.1	because their research shows that such efforts lead to organizations being both meritocratic and diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
1:14.4	In short, it's about doing everything smarter and better, not as part of any special program, but as an everyday practice.
1:21.7	Erosponet is a professor and Siri Chalazzi is a senior researcher, both at the Harvard Kennedy School.
1:27.1	They wrote the book, Make Work Fair, Data-driven Design for Real Results. and Siri Chalazi is a senior researcher, both at the Harvard Kennedy School.
1:31.6	They wrote the book, Make Work Fair, Data-driven Design for Real Results.
1:33.3	Thanks both of you for being here.
1:34.6	Thank you for having us.
1:36.1	Thanks for having us, Allison. It's a pleasure.
1:49.0	So this debate over meritocracy versus DEI, it isn't new, but it's a really hot one right now.
1:51.4	Why do you think that we're still having it?
1:54.8	I actually want to go back to this concept of meritocracy.
2:06.0	I had to look it up recently because I realize it's a word that I've been throwing around quite a bit without actually knowing how it's formally defined. So here's what the Miriam Webster dictionary has to say. It defines meritocracy as a system in which people advance and are given power according to their skills and talents.
2:12.1	I think it's an incredibly worthy ideal to strive for, but the evidence is overwhelmingly clear that we are not
2:20.7	living in a meritocracy today. Women and men get differently recognized and rewarded for
	...

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