Facing The Enemies of DEI and the Humanization of the Workplace

The dehumanization of people and hatred is a big issue today. In the extreme, it enables a man to acquire weapons, drive to a shopping area in Buffalo, New York, and murder innocent people in cold blood. In a less physically violent way, it feeds much of the apathy and antipathy people have towards the suffering of their fellow humans and their outright resistance to addressing the causes of the suffering of others.

This hate often fuels resistance to your DEI efforts. Responses to one of my recent ERG PowerTalk posts on Facebook exemplify this. In the episode that aired a few weeks ago, my guest, Maureen “Mo” Berkner Boyt, spoke about her smartphone app designed to supplement diversity and inclusion training and help users internalize behaving in a more inclusive and caring way towards their work colleagues. Here are just a few samples of the negative comments left on the podcast’s Facebook page by people who heard about her work and did not care for any attempts that might succeed in making them more inclusive or caring. (Please note that I purposely left misspellings and grammar errors in these quotes):

“Really sick of this kind of crap classes being mandatory. The ruin of education.” - Chris Flick Morse of Orlando, Florida

"Diversity and inclusion coordinator, one of the most worthless jobs." - Billy Fowler of Houston, Texas

“Instead of all the drama in the workplace, just go to work and do your job. Park all your drama and BS at the front door.” - Kevin Colovos of Washington DC

“Stop the mind control; nobody wants your programming, we're not all equal; focus on merit instead of skin color and gender...” -?Malek Reza Sahami

“Losing the battle on diversity training? Maybe because people DONT CARE!” -?Bonnie Sutcliffe-Wilson

"Diversity training is sanctioned racism." -?Jimmy Bujosa

"Diversity and Equity = Marxism. I hope you lose the battle Comrads." -?David Shaken

"I do practice a form of diversity. I have firearms in multiple calibers. I would be happy to show you the working end." -?Jim Fredlan (This comment was reported as a threat to Facebook and may be removed at some time from the page. I did, however, screen-capture the comment and the commentator's profile before reporting it to Facebook to ensure I have a record).

These are just a few excerpts from comments I found on the ERG PowerTalk podcast's Facebook page. Click here to see more of these shocking comments [about 100 at last count]. I encourage you to check out the Facebook profiles of the commentators. Who knows? Perhaps, you may even know some of these people.

These harsh comments, some very hateful, come from people around the country. Some may work in your company. And believe me, they do not care for you or your work. In fact, they are actively undermining the progress you are trying to make in your organization. They covertly fight your efforts to create a more equitable and inclusive workplace and ultimately hurt your retention, productivity, and profits. As managers or?even co-workers in an organization, they can be considered one of the biggest underlying drivers of the Great Resignation, especially among your employees from underrepresented groups.

So in this week’s episode of ERG PowerTalk, our guest Ervin (Earl) Cobb, author of Why It’s So Hard, will discuss how ERGs can help corporate leaders develop genuine human-centric relationships with their people and work toward disarming this negativity. It’s a timely topic. At best, these leaders can help you drive people toward better, more inclusive behavior; at worse, they can eliminate the irredeemable bad apples. A few of the questions we will explore in this episode include:

• The forces that are making it increasingly harder for leaders and colleagues to be people persons
• The role leaders who are people-persons can play?in supporting diverse, equitable, and inclusive environments.
• How ERGs can help their leaders and organization become more people-friendly.

The episode is loaded with insights, and advice Earl has curated from his research on this topic. But before we put any of this advice to work, we need to remain aware that even if our organization has silenced the voices of hate and fear, these voices are still there whispering. They are actively lurking in the dark. "How come I don't hear them" some may ask. And the answer is simple. Few people would send an email to a colleague or put a post on your business bulletin board containing the comments on the Facebook page I referenced earlier. Yet study after study shows that at least half of the people in the United States hold these views. It is logical to assume that some of them work in your company. Do you know who they are? Are you working to engage them in creating a better future for everyone? Are you helping to weed out destructive people who stubbornly stick to these negative ways and display behaviors that hurt your organization?

We need to address these challenges head-on instead of making believe they don’t exist. Buffalo, NY, is our most recent reminder that making believe they are not there will not make them go away. You can listen to this and other show episodes now on any device on your favorite podcast platform by clicking here.