A world of Special Needs

With the world today being obsessed about celebrating numerous numbers of “days”, like “Women day”, “Children Day”, “Autism Day”, “Mothers’ Day” … and so many other “Days” .. etc … Are organizations really respecting those diversities or are they actually over-doing it from an internal branding perspective? Is the work community true to the values behind diversity or are we just creating more victims in the community?

The myths behind gender diversity

Organizations today, in the majority, brag about the percentage of females to males in terms of work placements, aiming to give females a chance to share the workplace with the majority (males), but are they doing it correctly?

The biggest problem about treating minorities at the workplace and enabling them is the process of fair  and objective evaluation .. It is absolutely wrong, and un-beneficial to the females or the community to hire females for a job, just because they are “females”, then look only for the percentage filled and publish that all over the news and social media .. Jobs need to be always filled for competency over any other factor, while community support and supporting minorities is another area of corporate social responsibility that has nothing to do with job placements… We should always recruit based on competencies and leave the diversity thing aside for other activities .. There is a job to do and we should be looking for who is the best person to do the job, regardless if they were males, females, or any other source of diversity .. But it is actually the great buzz that the word “Diversity” creates that forces organizations to go this way, without solid belief in the values behind the diversity in reality ..

To reflect on this fake organizational belief in diversity today, .. Here are two facts to debate ….

1. Diversity is beyond gender ..

Have your organizations really considered diversity? How many people with disabilities work in your organization? Did you get an early answer?

Many organizational hypocrites will immediately defend this by speaking about percentages, and say that percentage of people with disabilities are low and they are not exposed to the job adverts .. And this is all very untrue ..

According to the national bureau of census in the United States, almost 1 out of 5 people (Yes, that is 20% of the population) is having one of the disabilities identified .. Furthermore, the report showed that “41% of those age 21 to 64 with any disability were employed, compared with 79% of those with no disability. Along with the lower likelihood of having a job came the higher likelihood of experiencing persistent poverty; that is, continuous poverty over a 24-month period”.

So now let’s look back into the diversity celebrations that are ongoing all across organizations, focusing on the gender thing .. How much is the percentage of people with disabilities do you hire? (If any!!)…

Of course the hypocrites will come back and say that the jobs are not suitable and require a lot of skills …etc, neglecting that almost 60% of support staff need simple desk jobs that only require people to spend time and focus on a computer the majority of time .. so at least every organization bragging about diversity today should have 10% of office-based staff from this segment .. Isn’t that true? If you truly believe in diversity?

2. The Male / Female equation

The second point to challenge organizations bragging about diversity is the actual care for females in the community, and not only the care to hire them and benefit from their presence in the workplace .. Let us take a practical example …

If an organization employs males .. don’t those males have families to go back to? They have wives, mothers, daughters ..etc that they need to take care of? Shouldn’t they be given time to be emotionally and physically present with the females in their lives and ensure that they support them in every way?

So you braggers about diversity, part of that is actually ensuring you have good work policies that allow males to go home on time, and not over work, and also spend enough paternity with their wives when they need, and allow them to take family quality time, equal to the time you would brag about allowing for mothers at the workplace .. isn’t that relative? Don’t fathers have to take care of their daughters and attend their school events? Take care of their newly born children? Take care of their wives after delivery and give them proper support? Isn’t that part of the bigger picture of female support?

Creating Silos

The world is built on diversity, and not equality .. It is based on competitive survival but in the same time the ability to live together in hierarchy .. The attempt to treat diversity from one side and not from the holistic view is not good enough to treat the root cause, .. in fact, it will only create more silos in the world .. Silos that we don’t need at all ..

Organizations that truly care about the diversity on a holistic level should enable this on community and societal level, and stop the brag about organizational level ..

Hire the most competent staff, regardless of any discriminatory factor, whether gender or disability, as long as they are the best to do the job, .. empower employees to support their loved ones, whether males or females, be true to the value of solid families, friends and relationships to the greater community .. Be true to values you write on your websites and publish in your annual assemblies .. Be logic, not subjective .. Be deep, not shallow .. Be better, not more .. … Be true to the world ..

Written by:

Engagement Expert, International Speaker & Pragmatic researcher