Net Diversity at Work

It's well accepted that diversity is the key to corporate success. We all can agree to it. Unfortunately in business, the road to hell is really paved with great intentions. The problem with diversity has everything to do with its definition.  In a politically correct (PC) world, diversity focuses on characteristics like ethnicity, color, gender and religion. Yet, looking at diversity from this perspective isn't enough. In fact, under many circumstances, defining diversity in this way results in low net diversity.
In a country like Japan where most citizens are of a tightly homogeneous background, bringing people of a different color or ethnic background will in fact improve net diversity. But in a country like the US where people of different color, religious affiliation and gender grew up in the same area, attended the same schools and admired the same music, it is very difficult to improve net diversity by grouping superficially different people who think and act similarly. In other words, corporate human resource (HR) departments in diverse communities must look beyond the surface if their goal is to create the most prosperous environment for a business and its stakeholders.
Let's say that HR fills the corporate bus with a superficially diverse group formed by identical perpetual-optimists. HR reaches a perfect mix in all regulatory diversity metrics. Gender, race, color and religion are all accounted for and well balanced. PC at its best. Yet, since emotional profile diversity isn't part of their diversity metric, the company ends up with all the people in the bus feeling and thinking the same. With no realists on board to ruin the pleasure, the proverbial corporate trip will sure feel happy and exciting. Unfortunately without a healthy dosage of realism, the day-dreaming bunch will soon end up in LA-LA land; literally. They will travel far and fast but will arrive to nowhere soon. As the bus dives into the Great Canyon, we will hear nothing more than their chants of happiness fade as they accelerate towards the bottom.

On the other hand, fill the bus with a superficially diverse bunch of highly structured people and there will be no end to the complaining. After analyzing and debating every possible thing that could go wrong the bus will remain safely static. Next, fill the bus with a superficially diverse group of natural leaders and you will do no better.
These illustrations reflect the reality that a company's success is closely tied to net diversity and that net diversity is more than skin deep. Instead of looking at applicant superficial traits, HR departments should be blind to them. Instead, it is paramount to look at the emotional profile of each individual. Thankfully, emotional profiling has been around HR departments for many years now. First look at the position to be filled and then define the ideal emotional profile. Every job description best matches a unique emotional personality profile. Accounting tasks requires highly structured people who are adept at tightly following pre-established rules and work best under highly predictable, read repetitive, environments. Operational tasks demand people who love accomplishing. Emotional diversity is even needed within a marketing department. Idea generation is best dealt with by natural optimists who enjoy the trip rather than the arrival while marketing production requires a profile similar to those in many operational positions. Repeat finding the best candidate with the right personality match over and over and the company will end up high performing net diversity. In the end, this should be the real goal.
Unfortunately, many of today's HR departments become too concerned with hiring too many members of a given color or gender. Unfortunately, the sad reality of this attitude is that they are no longer being religion, color or gender blind. They are becoming biased. To bias something means to apply an unequal weight over a section of that something. This applies as much to physics as to social issues.

Yet the worst part of developing this bias is that HR departments end up subsequently exposing the company to unnecessary performance risk. By forcing an employee onto a job for which they are not a natural match, professional underperformance will result in apathy, a lack of engagement and finally low employee morale. A job requiring meticulous attention to detail and a high tolerance for repetition will be poorly done by a flexible, imaginative and charismatic worker. In fact, the employee will soon hate the job. No matter how well intended everyone is, the company and the employee lose when PC biases exist.
Get instead someone who naturally feels an adrenaline rush every time each fraction of a task is finished, one of those structured people who never breaks and never lets you down, and everything changes. The company gets super productivity while employee satisfaction is maximized. Everyone wins even in situations where the racial balance is off target, for example.
Despite the absence of the Kumbaya feeling that materializes when all PC metrics are in order, HR departments everywhere need to recognize that net diversity trumps superficial diversity. Closely follow standard PC metrics and HR will build an unhappy and underperforming organization.
I thus suggest not to stress too much about the usual PC metrics. By remaining blind to superficial diversity, by applying random selection of color, ethnicity, gender, etc., net diversity can be achieved. Let's consider that a roulette wheel that lands nine consecutive times on black is not necessarily biased. This is because true randomness has no memory of what just happened. Statistically, it is perfectly acceptable for black to occur nine times in a row within a real random environment. Likewise, it is possible that a randomly operating HR department may hire nine women in a row. In a random environment, the trend periodically migrates away from the mean. While such pattern of similar hires may be a three standard deviation event, the trend will sure revert to the long term mean based on company size and employee pool availability. Statistically, any deviation from accepted PC diversity should be solved in a random selection system over the long term without needing to apply any weight or bias to the system.

Former General Electric CEO, Jack Welch recognized that a company's future success is highly dependent on the performance of its HR department. Think of it. All corporate success stories first pass through HR. So, thanks to an ever more competitive environment, the responsibility of all hiring managers has never been greater. If we then consider the massive burden that superficial PC diversity metrics place on their shoulders, it is no wonder that most companies underperform when compared to industry leaders. Therefore, it is time to realize that in an already diverse society like that of the US, emotional diversity will result in the superior king of net diversity needed by employees and employers.