Challenge Toxic Traditions With Underrepresented Minority Bonuses

This series was written as a collaboration between Learn to Scale, an organization specializing in employee retention and engagement, and Drafted, the leader in optimizing company networks to leverage referrals. Please note: some perspectives may not reflect each organization's particular beliefs when it comes to referrals but in the spirit of transparency and accountability both parties feel it’s appropriate to share all view points.

Learn to Scale and Drafted have teamed up to help talent acquisition and HR professionals be more nuanced in how they develop their referral programs. With thousands of referrals flowing through the Drafted platform every month, the Drafted team has real data on how referral programs influence diverse hiring practices. Learn to Scale has over a decade of experience engaging and retaining talent, especially with hires from nontraditional educational backgrounds in smaller organizations. Together, a power duo for DEI.

Let's talk about referral programs for hiring: effective or racist?

Drafted and Learn to Scale have joined forces to do something about inequality by promoting an overlooked framework to build a more inclusive and equitable workplace: Preferences, Traditions, and Requirements (PTR). We have Dr. R Roosevelt Thomas Jr. to thank for this framework and shame on the internet for not picking it up and sharing it. It’s so practical: Preferences are biased choices by individuals, Traditions are entrenched biased choices by an organization, and Requirements are the only thing that should matter when hiring people. Apply this test to your organization and you can start silencing the noise that prevents diverse voices from joining your team.

In part one, we explored Preferences in the context of referral programs. Head here to read how Talent Acquisition Tina developed an innovative referral program designed to source diverse talent. In part two, we are going to use the second prong of PTR to address Traditions and how underrepresented minority (URM) bonuses can help do that.

Let’s get traditional.

Traditions are powerful tools for business but often are left to the unconscious mind. It's good business sense to replicate what works, but if what works reaffirms institutional racism, well, that's not great. 

We'll start taking a step back from your numbers and assumptions by dialing up your sensitivity to your subconscious traditions. Have you ever answered questions like this 👇:

At first glance, these questions are excellent analytic avenues to inform how you can recruit great talent. You can probably find data points to answer these questions and that’s where most people stop. But, take each question and go one level deeper 🔽:

Still pretty egalitarian, right? Well, let's get even deep and peek inside your subconscious ⏬:

👆Hint: the answer to number 3 is probably white men. It's uncomfortable but it's true. Traditions have this power to bury psychological-yet-discriminatory reasons underneath what on the surface look like compelling data models. Relying just "numbers" that could be dated or constructed with with intentional bias is a dangerous game to play. Take an outside look at your hiring practices and don't be afraid to ask tough questions. The PTR model challenges you to take a step back from the numbers to examine these assumptions from a human behavioral aspect so you can design conscious interventions. Once you know it’s there, it’s hard to un-know it.

Under Represented Minority Bonuses

Under Represented Minority (URM) bonuses are sometimes a touchy topic but can be a tactic to intercept subconscious defaults. Set up a system to build a new tradition that has more equality and intentional diversity measures on autopilot. A URM bonus assumes that there is a diversity problem and the organization wants to incentivize behavior to address and change it. People tend to think of URM bonuses in extremes - you can't put a bounty on a certain profile of a person! However, it does not have to be that explicit. Set up a sliding scale for candidates with more diverse backgrounds i.e. if a candidate ticks a certain number of boxes with any number of determined criteria the higher the referral bonus for employees.

This is a practical and a political decision. Affirmative action,  reparations,  reverse discrimination...these are loaded topics and there’s real risk to do it in a way that makes people less-than, tokenized, and marginalized. However, doing it right is more than morals: organizations with diversity make more money. 

Get everyone involved in solving your diversity problem. Leveraging your whole organization to participate and provide feedback on your URM program increases the likelihood that you do it right, rather than stumble into a public relations disaster. To get you started, here’s some best practices to follow when planning a URM bonus model:

1) Use modern definitions and continually revise

Language shapes thought. In the identity and inclusion space, definitions are hard to agree on and nuance keeps being added as culture shifts. Queer used to be pejorative but now embodies pride and is used as a socially acceptable term when describing sexuality. When preparing public-facing terms, you want the terms to capture people who self-identify as that term, not what you label them. 

Ask people from a target demographic how they like to be addressed. Offer training to employees on how to navigate the language around identity i.e. diversity and inclusion training. Invest time learning about diversity, equity, and inclusion thought leadership. Consider it market research: candidates are a market and you want to speak their language.

2) Keep a rigorous interview process

Meeting one certain demographic criteria shouldn't automatically put a candidate to the front of the pack if they are not qualified. That is just silly. Superficial markers, i.e. protected classes, are not a prerequisite for the intellectual diversity you intend to foster. Bringing people from diverse backgrounds to contribute to a business is why intentionally diverse companies are the most successful but if you are only focused on ticking boxes you will miss the mark.

When a URM bonus is described and evaluated, it should focus on the true requirement: the intellectual diversity. The superficial markers - skin color, nationality, educational background, etc. - should always be seen as just a marker whereas the interview process is the true test for the diversity you seek. A URM bonus with a weak interview process won’t guarantee the results you want: diverse experiences and innovative thought.

3) Don’t collect people

“I have Asian friends, so I can’t be racist” is a pretty good sign that someone might be racist. Associating with diverse groups does not confer authority to you on their experience and value. An organization that institutes URM bonuses needs to be wary of slipping into this mindset, especially when there are early positive results. You should celebrate diversity but be careful of tokenizing people in that spirit - we are all humans, not trophies.

Setting a target percentage of hired candidates that fit certain demographic criteria is practical but you can’t hang up the victory banner when that target has been hit. This is not a set it and forget it, one and done type deal. There’s always an evolution in the workforce, so use your diversity metrics as starting points for conversations, not as finish lines. Calibrating your URM bonuses to these conversations is a great way to stay aligned with what the organization needs and to ensure that what started as a good tradition doesn’t start to sour.

4) Shut up and let them talk

To empower your organization to pursue URM talent, the voices of these demographics need to be heard and respected. Allyship is complicated and requires deft emotional intelligence, but the best way to promote allyship is to curate space for diverse thoughts to be heard. Get out of the way. Non-majority perspectives need less noise from the establishment so they can earn their authentic authority.

When creating referral and recruitment marketing materials, don’t script the messaging. In fact, work with your under-represented minority employee resource group to create the positioning to draw in people just like them. What matters to you might not matter to them.

Conclusion

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a place where mistakes will happen. It's tricky and makes people touchy. Identity, parity, legacy, language...these are all messy things that are hard and most organizations avoid it because it is hard. But if you’ve read this far, you know that the hard thing is the right thing.

If you would like help unearthing traditions, do your research or have a third party to challenge assumptions from an outside perspective. There are marvelous organizations, individuals, and resources dedicated to diversity and inclusion that can help ask the touchy questions, “Why are you doing THAT like THAT?”

There is nothing wrong with encouraging employees to make diverse referrals by providing incentives. Frankly, saying employee referrals is bad for diversity and inclusion is a cop out for not doing the work to make your organization intentionally diverse. Some traditions that have been passed down are in some cases designed to be intentionally racist, classist, or sexist - there is nothing wrong with dismantling those systems for a better workforce. According to Forbes, referrals are the leading source of the best candidates for 88% of employers with the highest ROI - it just makes sense to marry your diversity and inclusion initiatives to your employee referral program.

About Learn to Scale

Learn to Scale was founded with the belief that talent development programs like an engaging on-boarding, a career path that motivates you, and a well-trained great manager should be every employee’s experience, no matter the size of the organization. Companies that want to retain their best talent can partner with Learn to Scale to get the value of an in-house Learning and Development Team at a fraction of the cost of even one regrettable turnover. Learn more‍

About Drafted

At Drafted, we believe that your company network is your single biggest competitive advantage when it comes to hiring. Our mission is to make it easy for you to leverage your network in the hiring process to find the best candidates. Your network is already powerful, it’s just too much work to make it a priority over the day-to-day of recruiting. Companies that use Drafted see their employee referral numbers go up by 2x, their time to hire drop by 30% and their overall hiring efficiency increase significantly within just a few months. Learn More