Widespread movements for racial justice and gender equality have created a dramatic shift in public awareness and set a higher bar for corporate accountability. The message to employers is pretty straightforward: Do better, or face the consequences.
by Indy Li, Christie Zwahlen
November 22, 2021
Before the death of George Floyd and the ascendancy of the Black Lives Matter movement, corporate America rarely made a peep about racial injustice, let alone the murder of unarmed Black people by law enforcement. As the public conversation deepened in its critique of systemic racism, “neutral” corporations were pressured not only to take a stance, but also to prove they were acting on their stated principles.
Since then, reports contradicting corporate America’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion have surfaced, particularly in Silicon Valley, where Black tech workers are speaking out. Google, long heralded as one of the best companies to work for, has been accused of “silencing marginalized voices” like that of Timnit Gebru, former co-leader of Google’s Ethical AI Team who was reportedly fired for publishing an academic paper on the challenges of identifying racial and gender biases within massive data sets intended for use by AI.
Accounts like these highlight the delta between corporate America’s public commitment to social justice and its internal posture toward historically marginalized groups and the issues that affect them. Seeking out and hiring diverse talent is a must, but it’s only the first step in the process, as many articles of late have noted. To move beyond shallow promises and toward a truly inclusive culture, it needs to be understood that the real work happens after someone is onboarded. Here, too, a great many articles provide excellent suggestions for programmatic and policy changes to consider.
What’s currently missing from the public discourse is a framework by which the effectiveness of DEI initiatives at transforming a company’s culture — from one that tokenizes marginalized people to one that is truly inclusive and positions people for success — can be measured. Organizational justice, an approach to management that centers on fairness and transparency, provides an empirical means of assessing this by measuring the fairness of decision-making practices, from hiring and firing to promotions and pay raises. It provides a useful framework for uncovering biases and prejudices without needing to ask questions with potentially retaliatory consequences, such as: “Is your company culture racist, sexist or homophobic?”
Concealing discrimination: The hocus pocus of diversity theater
In order to close the racial wealth gap, activists and DEI experts say that companies need to ensure promotion opportunities for employees from marginalized groups. Per a recent McKinsey & Co. report, Black employees make up 14 percent of all employees but represent only 7 percent of managers and 4-5 percent of VPs and senior VPs. Creating the conditions for these promotions requires expanded access to development opportunities normally exclusive to white men.
But there’s a huge caveat. Even if L&D opportunities are expanded and tuition reimbursement programs are reformed, there will remain the underlying issue of company culture. Although it draws from culture at large, company culture is not some free-wheeling freight train for which executives bear no responsibility. On the contrary, leaders bear direct responsibility for how policies and practices are interpreted and followed across the organization. Unfortunately, even well-meaning organizations end up engaging in diversity theater, wherein surface-level changes and social media campaigns distract from and obscure injustices occurring internally. But, as the public becomes more discerning, these optical illusions are losing their power to conceal.
Perhaps said best in “Diversity at Work: The Practice of Inclusion”: “Diversity is about counting heads; inclusion is about making heads count.” To this point, organizational justice evaluates whether diverse employees actually feel valued and included without needing to ask them questions that invoke fear of retaliation. By steering clear of “hot-button” issues and focusing instead on abstract categories like belonging, trust and fairness, organizational justice can provide a more accurate and unbiased picture of company culture.
One of the oft-cited ways for organizations to increase equity and inclusivity is through coaching, training and L&D initiatives that equip people of color with the tools needed to ascend the corporate ladder. But this is only effective if the workplace environment is fair to POC. The process of inclusion requires ongoing thoughtfulness, decisiveness and attention to detail. Simply stated, creating or maintaining an inclusive climate requires intentionality. But even if our intentions are clear, what specific things should we be watching for? What indicators can we use to assess our effectiveness at moving beyond diversity theater toward a truly inclusive environment? The answer can be found in organizational justice.
It all starts with fairness: A primer on organizational justice
Drawing from concepts and themes of equity theory, organizational justice refers to perceptions of transparency and fairness in the workplace. Writing in “Handbook of Organizational Justice,” Jerald Greenberg explains that, “Understanding matters of fairness and justice (terms that tend to be used interchangeably) requires an understanding of what people perceive to be fair.” Thus, simply modifying a policy or program based on a theoretical best practice doesn’t actually make it fair or just. The proof comes from how employees and others impacted perceive its relative fairness. So, what makes an organization just?
According to an in-depth meta-analysis by Jason Colquitt et al, organizational justice can be broken down into three main components: distributive justice, procedural justice and interactional justice.
- Distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of outcomes (pay, promotion, performance evaluations, etc.).
- Procedural justice refers to the perceived fairness of processes used to formulate outcomes, such as pay, promotion, etc.
- Interactional justice refers to the perceived fairness of how people are treated, which can be broken down further into two questions: 1) Are people treated with dignity and respect? 2) Was information conveyed as to why things happened in a certain way.
Distributive justice has been proven to most accurately predict personal outcomes like job satisfaction, whereas procedural justice is a better predictor of system-related outcomes like organizational commitment. Interpersonal justice, on the other hand, best predicts how an employee will react to their supervisor or authority figure. See the aforementioned meta-analysis for more details.
Taken together, all three components combine to serve as a universal predictor of individual employee and organization-wide outcomes, such as increased trust, job performance, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Furthermore, organizational justice has been shown to detract from negative outcomes, such as counterproductive work behaviors, turnover and burnout.
How organizational justice can help dismantle diversity theater
The inequities experienced by people from marginalized backgrounds have created a deep and painful divide in the U.S. and beyond. Healing these wounds begins by acknowledging the depth and breadth of the underlying trauma and then working to intentionally prevent its recurrence. Unfortunately, privilege creates blind spots that make it difficult to see the world objectively.
Often, the privileges we enjoy are “invisible” in that whoever has been deemed “normal” benefits from tacit approval that never gets interrogated. Because of this, people in positions of power often discount the negative experiences of others as simply complaints or excuses. This amounts to gaslighting and engenders retraumatization.
Particularly as it relates to one’s own privilege, people often engage in denial and distancing (e.g., “Sure, some white people are privileged, but I grew up working class, so that’s irrelevant for me”). In the workplace this could manifest as something like, “Sure, some women of color are discriminated against, but Jane gets paid less than me because I’m better at the job than she is.”
Organizational justice can diminish the power of these claims by providing an objective measure of perceived fairness. Regardless of their race, gender, class or sexuality, how fair was the process for determining person X’s pay or promotion? Universal measures like these can assess whether an organization is walking the walk or just pretending to for its social media followers.
Measuring what matters
Creating an equitable and inclusive environment requires intentionality, consistency and honesty from the top-down to the bottom-up, and data is one of the best ways to get an honest self-assessment. Without data, brand narratives and social media campaigns (which can obscure the truth about an organization’s inner workings) end up ruling the day and delaying true progress.
Thankfully, rigorous academic research on organizational justice has provided us with key questions that can be used to assess fairness at the distributive, procedural and interactional levels. We recommend using Colquitt’s supervisor-based questions taken from Chapter 8 of “The Oxford Handbook of Justice in the Workplace” as part of an employee’s quarterly assessment process.
Distributive justice questions
The questions below refer to the outcomes you receive from your supervisor, such as pay, rewards, evaluations, promotions, assignments, etc. To what extent:
- Do those outcomes reflect the effort you have put into your work?
- Are those outcomes appropriate for the work you have completed?
- Do those outcomes reflect what you have contributed to your work?
- Are those outcomes justified, given your performance?
Procedural justice questions
The questions below refer to the procedures your supervisor uses to make decisions about pay, rewards, evaluations, promotions, assignments, etc. To what extent:
- Are you able to express your views during those procedures?
- Can you influence the decisions arrived at by those procedures?
- Are those procedures applied consistently?
- Are those procedures free of bias?
- Are those procedures based on accurate information?
- Are you able to appeal the decisions arrived at by those procedures?
- Do those procedures uphold ethical and moral standards?
Interpersonal justice questions
The questions below refer to the interactions you have with your supervisor as decision-making procedures (about pay, rewards, evaluations, promotions, assignments, etc.) are implemented. To what extent:
- Do they treat you in a polite manner?
- Do they treat you with dignity?
- Do they treat you with respect?
- Do they refrain from improper remarks or comments?
The stakes are high, and the time for action was yesterday
According to the U.S. Labor Department, from September 2020 to September 2021, 23.5 million Americans quit their jobs. What has come to be known as The Great Resignation is affecting all industries from hospitality to high-tech. The pandemic has provided space and time for people to examine and reprioritize their lives. The cultural shift from office-based to remote work has transformed the way we interact with our colleagues, supervisors, friends and family. Many are unwilling to relinquish their newfound flexibility or rekindle their relationship with rush-hour traffic, and others are fed up with low wages and/or lousy benefits.
At the same time, widespread movements for racial justice and gender equality have created a dramatic shift in public awareness and set a higher bar for corporate accountability. The message to employers is pretty straightforward: Do better, or face the consequences.
Employers can no longer take for granted a pliable or obedient workforce motivated to please by a paycheck alone. To compete for the best talent, organizations must appeal to people’s sense of purpose, both personal and professional. In short, today’s workforce has higher standards for their employers than ever before. Is your organization ready for the challenge?
