Not directly but they do create an open and fair working environment for all.
Once you leave room for discrimination and bullying, everyone suffers because it makes company culture harder.
And it's not just about "quotas". That's an extreme-right talking point. Diversity done properly doesn't involve quotas. Those are just a way for companies that don't actually care about it to have an easy 'fix' to get their numbers to look ok but it's not actual diversity.
I'm part of a diversity team myself as a side role. In Europe luckily.
> And it's not just about "quotas". That's an extreme-right talking point. Diversity done properly doesn't involve quotas
At Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Meta, diversity programs were implemented as soft quotas. All this talk about "diversity done properly" is just so much noise when approximately all the largest companies aren't doing it that way.
Soft quotas are not great but at my work (also a huge multinational but headquartered in Europe) we just use stats as a guide. Obviously if a country has 30% people of a certain ethnicity and in your employ it's 2% you're doing something wrong. We use that to measure hoe effective we are at combating bias and prejudice, what works and what doesn't. I wonder if that's sometimes regarded as a 'soft quota' but it shouldn't be.
We don't fix this with hiring targets. We hit the root cause with training for HR and management (and also some for all employees in the yearly mandatory training package). Recognising hidden bias, challenging people to bconsider their reactions.
And then measure the performance with stats, but not just force them. That's lazy and only fixes the problem on paper. Window dressing. Diversity is more than the hiring process anyway, a huge part is discrimination on the work floor. Often not by managers but co-workers, so we give management skills to deal with that.
Maybe in US big tech this is common but those are all pretty immoral companies anyway. See how quickly they pivoted to sucking up to Trump. The world is much bigger than the US and big tech.
> Do you apply this to everything? Like say, a sports team?
No, at work where we have tens of thousands of people.
Sport is a voluntary thing, people just join it when they want (I guess, I'm not into sports, not watching nor playing).
> Anything impressive to show for it? Because it really seems like all this focus on diversity is your downfall not your strength.
Yes we have great quality of life. It's not all about money.
In fact I asked to move to a country where the wage levels are much lower, to have a better quality of life. Here around the Mediterranean the weather is better, people enjoy life more and take it slower. There's much more things to do in my free time that I enjoy. When I'm back in Holland I hate it, people are so materialistic. Always talking about their new car, how big their TV is lol. I don't even own any car or motor and my TV is tiny but I'm much happier here.
Also diversity is just a thing we do, we're not all about that. I am because I voluntarily spend part of my work time on it (LGBTIQ in particular). For most people in the company it's a message here or there, one little training per year and maybe a talk from one of us at the town hall meetings which are optional.
There's other similar programs in the company about sustainability and ethics.
They are merit based. Especially with DEI. It just aims to remove the common human bias to trust people more when they are more like us. With training and hiding names/photos during CV preselection. So it is only based on merit.
Once you leave room for discrimination and bullying, everyone suffers because it makes company culture harder.
And it's not just about "quotas". That's an extreme-right talking point. Diversity done properly doesn't involve quotas. Those are just a way for companies that don't actually care about it to have an easy 'fix' to get their numbers to look ok but it's not actual diversity.
I'm part of a diversity team myself as a side role. In Europe luckily.