People and Culture Shared Interest Group

There has been something that I have been discussing and grappling a lot with in the past few weeks, and I wanted to put it out there for the community to discuss and or weigh in on.

Should we go an extra mile to create or enhance diversity in the workplace or in other aspects of life. For example, if we have two nearly equal candidates, with the non-diverse candidate ranking just a little higher than the diverse candidate, should we pick to diverse candidate anyway? How do we measure, the benefits of diversity against the opportunity cost of not picking what might be the best candidate for a position? 

Rinku

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Rinku Bhattacharya CMA,CPA
Valhalla NY
United States
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Dear Rinku, not everything can be measured in life - although we finance people very much would like that…If you ask me the choice is contextual. If you can go for diversity it's always better and the returns will come in the long run. 

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Gwen Van Berne CMA
Other
Rotterdam
Netherlands
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What an amazing perspective that everything cannot be measured in life, definitely agree with it. Also, I think if given a choice we choose the most deserving candidate irrespective of whether diverse or not, I think that's how equity under DE&I works, being fair & equal to everyone irrespective of their background, gender or race .

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Yukta Sharma
Analyst
Hyderabad
India
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-23-2024 01:46 PM
From: Gwen Van Berne
Subject: Opportunity Cost For Diversity

Dear Rinku, not everything can be measured in life - although we finance people very much would like that…If you ask me the choice is contextual. If you can go for diversity it's always better and the returns will come in the long run. 

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Gwen Van Berne CMA
Other
Rotterdam
Netherlands
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Rinku,

I think a critical question is, how are you measuring diversity?  To get to the long-term gains that Gwen discusses, organizations need to focus on diversity of thought, diversity of background, and diversity of experience.  Ultimately, when you take all of this into account, along with the resume, interview, references, etc, the best candidate will come out on top.

Best,

Rich

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Richard Brady CMA,CGFM
Falls Church VA
United States
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Hi Rinku,

Coming from a developing country that is in the stage of encouraging female diversity at workplaces, it is a norm to have established quotas for women to join the company. This is no way means that these quotas will exist forever - these quotas will just ensure that eventually, there are enough women in the workplace that no quota is needed to encourage more to come forward.

Similarly, it depends on what stage of diversity is your org in. If it is in the very initial stages, then taking an extra mile to encourage diversity is necessary, which may sometimes come at the cost of selecting a slightly less than best candidate for the position. However, if your org is at an advanced stage of diversity, then selecting the highest qualified candidate should be justified - as long as you are monitoring the diversity in your org and maintaining it at a healthy level

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Izz Ghanaa Ansari
Strategy Manager
Toronto, Canada
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