HR Exec Explains Why Revoking DEI Initiatives Actually Prevents The Most Qualified Candidates From Getting Hired
The uproar over DEI is a perfect example of people voting against their own best interests.
TetianaKtv | Shutterstock At this point, voting against your own best interests is an American tradition. Among the best examples is the uproar over Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, initiatives, and the rapid pace with which companies are getting rid of them.
Many have celebrated the rollback of DEI as a triumphant return to "hiring the most qualified person" rather than supposedly playing favorites, when in fact — despite what many politicians and pundits would have us all believe — fairness is the entire point of DEI initiatives in the first place.
Revoking DEI initiatives actually prevents the most qualified candidates from getting hired.
The keyword in DEI is "equity" — fairness and equality of opportunity. "Diversity" and "inclusion" have been cleverly seized upon by people with political axes to grind and turned into bogeymen to convince the public that minorities have too many rights or whatever. But "equity" is the actual point of DEI, and it applies to everyone.
It helps ensure, for example, that your state-school diploma doesn't hold you back from getting a job you're the best candidate for simply because the other guy went to Harvard and his dad knows the owner of the company. It's pretty basic stuff and applies even to the white guys who always seem to be crying about it the hardest.
Molly, a seasoned HR executive known online as @hr_explained, recently explained this in a video in which she pointedly addressed the foolishness of the DEI uproar.
"DEI … was never about hiring someone unqualified over someone who is qualified," Molly stressed. She then added something we all need to hear and take to heart: "If you thought that, or if your boss or your company thought that, I want to remind you that being misinformed is a choice. You can very easily look up 'what is DEI' on the device that you're viewing this video on."
The point of DEI is to eliminate favoritism — which is illegal — not create it.
Here is the basic gist: DEI initiatives are meant to address bias in organizations to ensure that procedures, such as hiring and pay in the case of employers, are fair and unimpeded by unintended discrimination. Whether they succeed at actually doing so is another question, and that's largely down to leadership. However, DEI initiatives at least provide a framework, which often includes training, for addressing these potential pitfalls.
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That is, of course, not at all what most people seem to think DEI is. As Molly put it, "DEI or DEI programs did not all of a sudden make it legal to hire someone because of the protected class they're in."
That bit of misinformation has proliferated in both traditional media and perhaps, especially on social media, but that doesn't make it true — nor does many people's perception that leveling the playing field adds up to discrimination, for that matter.
As Molly explained, DEI initiatives are simply about evaluating people on their merits and attempting to curb the biases that tend to obscure them. Unless you come from the Ivy League-educated cronyism circles that tend to run everything by default, you are up against these biases, too. And unless your definition of "most qualified" defaults to "not a minority" regardless of qualifications, your outrage over DEI makes no sense.
Those who insist the 'best candidate should be hired' are actually in favor of DEI initiatives whether they realize it or not.
"If you really believe this, I hate to break it to you, but you believe and support DEI," Molly pointedly said in response to a commenter who insisted hiring based on merit was both antithetical to and the remedy for DEI initiatives.
To illustrate this, Molly focused on the one kind of discrimination that every single one of us faces if we're lucky to live long enough: age discrimination. She posited an example of a highly qualified over-40 candidate being rejected for a "young go-getter" in their 20s or 30s.
"That means that the qualified person isn't getting the job because they're old," Molly said. "Which means that discrimination, bias, bigotry existed in the hiring process, which means that it's not fair or equitable. If that doesn't sound great to you, congratulations, you support DEI."
This very simple explanation certainly doesn't jibe with the demonizing hot takes about giving "preferential treatment" to minorities that many politicians and pundits have been spouting, does it?
If that's surprising to you, it might be time to consider why that is, then examine why you're celebrating the dismantling of programs that benefit you, too. Then take notice that the people you trusted to explain DEI are using their disinformation about it as a basis to dismantle worker protections of all kinds. In the immortal words of DJ Khaled, "congratulations, you played yourself." Good luck out there.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.