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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DEI is a gaslighting cult along the lines of Q-Anon or Scientology, not a management tool or some type of mechanism for social justice. Just ignore it.

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+1. Cult is absolutely right. As a federal employee suffering through a deluge of DEI initiatives under this administration, it is stunning to watch. I'm so tempted to raise my hand at one of these ridiculous meetings and ask for evidence or data in support the outlandish statements our diversity officers routinely make, but it would be professional suicide to do so.[/quote]

This is absurd. I would in financial services. [b]There is a ton of data that shows that diverse portfolio management teams do better than than their all white male counterparts.[/b]

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Companies would diversify naturally if it truly benefited them financially. Except if doesn’t.  It’s a red flag if a company is promoting based on skin color instead of talent.  
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The idea that diverse teams do better always reeks of manipulated cherry picked data and forced memes than anything factual. It may go back to a single study by one consulting firm. In the real word this obviously makes no sense. There are enormously successful portfolios that are effectively all white, or all Asian or whatever because those countries are white or Asian or whatever. But we all know DEI is really about getting the right quota of blacks. It's not about South Asians or East Asians or even Latinos. [/quote]

I don’t think anyone said they always do better. There definitely is evidence that interviewers can have inherent biases so they subconsciously seek out people who are like themselves. And groupthink is definitely a thing, especially in non diverse teams. However, none of this is a given and it depends on how you define diversity. Look at the UK government in recent years. Very diverse in terms of skin colour and gender - black, brown, women, etc. but also completely incompetent. If you look at their diversity closer, they all went to private schools, especially Eton, then Oxford. Ironically, a white person who went to a state school and was raised by a single parent in public housing would be diverse in that case.

Many years ago, I joined the graduate recruitment program of another country’s foreign service. It was hard to get into - about 38 positions with 10,000 applicants. The group ended up being incredibly diverse - an ICU nurse who had retrained in finance, a motorbike courier who had studied an accounting degree at night school, a poet, etc. The level of diversity was amazing in terms of academic and professional experience and life experience. There was also a range of ethnic backgrounds and half were women. If it had been a box ticking exercise, I suspect they would have ended up with a cadre of 24 year olds of various colours who had all completed a masters in international relations. True diversity can be amazing. [/quote]

Can you say which country this was?  This sounds very diverse.  And you are right ethnically diverse 24 year olds who all got the same degree in the same elite universities is not diverse; no matter whom we are dealing with at my agency's UK counterpart, they went to Oxbridge.[/quote]

It was in Australia. Of course, it's one thing to get diversity into your recruitment and quite another to reconfigure your work practices and environment to ensure those diverse candidates can thrive.  When I joined, women occupied about 10% of senior management and ambassador positions whereas that is now 40%.

Interesting point about your UK counterparts.  I have a number of friends who went to Oxbridge who ended up in government agencies. Some went to selective state schools and some went to privates. They all graduated about 30 years ago when there were almost no tuition fees so many graduates weren't compelled to seek out high paying jobs to pay down massive student debt. This could be why you see so many in the public sector.  Oxbridge has definitely improved on the diversity front as about 70% of students now come from the state school system.  Of course the remaining 30% are from private schools which only account for 7% of the student population so they are definitely still overrepresented.  One interesting way you get some diversity in the UK workforce is through recruitment of graduates from a wide range of disciplines.  I worked in an investment bank with colleagues who had completed undergraduate degrees in things like archaeology, paleontology and languages and then joined the bank as graduates.  That was quite common then, not sure if it has changed with the times.[/quote]

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