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Four Diversity And Inclusion Disruptors In The Future Of Work

Forbes Coaches Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Bernard Coleman

The future of work is a hot topic as experts weigh in and try to predict the global trends that we can expect to see in the coming years. As we enter a new era where conventions of the past may not neatly align with what we are currently accustomed to, organizations should think deeply about the evolution of the workforce, particularly through the lens of diversity and inclusion.

Below are the four trends on the horizon regarding diversity, inclusion and equity that organizations and diversity and inclusion (D&I) practitioners alike should prepare for.

1. Artificial Intelligence 

There is a looming giant, and it's called artificial intelligence (AI). Its rapid adoption simultaneously boasts potential and peril —potential as AI is poised to be a transformational tool that will revolutionize how we approach problems, as computers essentially learn and adjust much like human beings to perform tasks of varying complexity. According to one forecastcognitive and AI spending will grow to $52.2 billion by 2021

However, AI won't be the utopian panacea it purports to be if the implicit bias that humans exhibit becomes imbued in the algorithms and analytics that AI relies on, as it has already shown to. To put it simply, flawed input creates flawed output.

The homogenous sameness that creates AI could stymie and jeopardize all the marvels of AI. The future of work’s number one dependency is whether D&I will be at front and center for AI. The success of AI is incumbent on a diverse array of inputs, across all lines of difference (age, gender, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomics, etc.) to be effective. Without representation, AI will solve problems yet simultaneously create them. D&I is the salve.

2. Employees Rising 

The days of marches or protests relegated to the public domain are no more. It has shifted from “pitchforks to podcasts” as employees have brought their activism in-house, leaving employers grappling with how to respond. Further, social media and the broad reach of these platforms act as an accelerant of sorts. Once isolated, campaigns or movements are amplified, better organized and far more effective than what we’ve ever witnessed.

Employees taking greater stands against what they perceive as injustice expect their employers to do the same, and those lines are further blurred as the landscape of social and/or philanthropic causes make for plentiful ways to engage. 

Employers need to learn how to channel and catalyze those passions to greater employee engagement that benefit not only the organization but also society as a whole. According to Gallup, ”Companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings per share.” Effective employee engagement through the lens of diversity, inclusion and equity helps organizations channel their employees' passions so that they can become champions and change agents. By leveraging the energies of employee resource or business resource groups, the corporate social responsibility function, and clearly defining the employee value proposition, organizations can create powerful employee engagement channels that benefit not only the organization but also society as a whole.

3. Distributed Workforce

The distributed workforce is a new reality and requires a new mentality in thinking about how teams function, interact and collaborate. Over 60% of GitHub's staff, for example, is outside of its San Francisco headquarters, yet many organizations still have policies that greatly limit employees from working at satellite spaces or working from home.

A distributed workforce is an operational reality that just makes sense on multiple levels: fewer leases and real estate, less furniture and equipment overall, and decreased overhead. Also, with the advent of video conferencing, high-speed internet and real-time messaging, collaboration is made easy, and the human connection is still present.

From a diversity, inclusion and equity perspective, underrepresented folks sometimes face invisible barriers that prevent them from achieving greater success at work. For instance, if you’re a caregiver of an aging parent and you can’t relocate to a company's headquarters, with a distributed workforce, you can stay local, meet your parent's caregiving obligations and still be a productive employee from afar. Or if the cost of living is too great where a company is headquartered, the option of remote work lifts the artificial geographical talent market constraints on recruitment efforts.

4. Demographic Changes

If organizations want to be ready for the economy of the future, they need to embrace and recognize the needs of different customers, different required talents and the varied marketing to reach those audiences. Ignoring demographic changes amount to organizational irrelevance. Think Blockbuster or Kodak: They didn’t see Netflix or digital photography coming. Better yet, they didn’t appreciate the outsized impact that each would have on the transformation of the industry. Organizations that fail to appreciate and adapt to the changes in demography may face a similar fate.

In his 2005 book, The World is Flat, author and columnist Thomas Friedman wrote about the changing world when he said: “Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse — non-Western, non-white — group of individuals. In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part.”

If organizations don’t understand or appreciate the human rainbow, it will be to their detriment. Again, it's through the prism of D&I that can organizations adequately prepare.

The future of work presents challenges unlike we’ve ever seen, and it requires more collective intention, proactivity and, most importantly, more varied inputs to ensure the future is better than the past.

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