Women fans DEI Workplace Thousand People Survey | companies encourage respect, but more than 60% still allow inappropriate gender/age jokes to occur

"The top quartile of companies with gender diversity in management teams has a 25% higher profitability than the bottom quarter, while the top quartile has a 36% higher profitability than the bottom quarter." —— Mckinsey Report 

According to STATISTICS FROM UN Women, since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the pace of development of affirmative action has become more and more slow, and due to the transformation of the spatial structure of the workplace and family, it has directly impacted the achievements of affirmative action groups that have been promoted for decades, and there has even been a crisis of regression in some areas.

Anita Bhatia, executive director of UN Women, said that it is impossible to ignore the efforts that women will need to put into the "balance between family and career" after the COVID-19 epidemic, which will be more than double that of the past, especially the data supporting the fact that more than 866,000 women have withdrawn from the labor market in the United States in less than a year after the outbreak of the epidemic.

Compared with the 200,000 men, the gap is almost four times greater, which is the result of the transformation of the division of labor in family life and the workplace.

In response to this question, Women's fans, Women's FanWomany, launched the "Truth or Tell the Truth in the Workplace Survey" on the eve of Women's Day in 2022, taking on the mission derived from the international labor movement on Women's Day and extending its attention to women's right to work to a diverse group that transcends the gender quadrant.

When we talk about "diversity, fairness and inclusion" (DEI) in the workplace, it is not just a matter of gender, but the common hope of all mankind - may our lives be bright in our work, and may our work be able to contain our true appearance in life.

Is our workplace "diverse", fair and inclusive?

According to the "Workplace Truth or Tell Us Survey" for women's fans, more than 30% of respondents believe that it is "rare" to express themselves safely in the current work environment, and nearly 9% of the respondents believe that they are "completely unable" to express their true selves in their workplaces.

This phenomenon is even more serious in the question of "whether to disclose your true identity status".

More than 50% of the participants believed that they "could roughly" confide their complete identity status in their workplace, including marital status, gender identity, singleness or not, family relationships, academic background, etc., but nearly 30% of the respondents said that they "rarely" or even "completely" could not" safely express their true identity in their workplace.

Among them, up to 94% of the participants believe that age difference and single discrimination are the main reasons for their insecurity and incompatibility.

In addition, the current workplace culture of Taiwanese companies is also quite unfriendly for "introverts", according to qualitative surveys, about 30% of those mention "unable to integrate into tuankang activities", "excluded by colleagues", "always feel that they can't interject", "high-level bullying and smearing", and "want to change but can't do anything".

Some participants also said that traditional enterprises are still quite conservative and bureaucratic, and they are extremely repulsive to the transformation of innovative systems and management methods, so it is still quite difficult to improve the current situation in the workplace in the short term.

The workplace encourages respect among "colleagues", but the "organization itself" lacks the spirit of DEI

In 2020, California, home to tech companies, passed a law that would explicitly stipulate that all public companies in the region should include employees of underrepresented groups as part of the board of directors by the end of 2021 to speak out for minorities within the company.

This is a mandatory norm that sets a threshold for enterprises to implement the policy of "pluralism, fairness and inclusion".

In contrast, in Taiwan, when discussing whether the workplace has the spirit of "pluralism, fairness and inclusion", about 50% (50.4%) of the respondents said that the organization will still encourage mutual respect and tolerance among colleagues, but more than 60% (63.8%) of the subjects said that the organization "may" or "completely allow" age, gender, religion, race and other jokes to occur in the workplace.

Another half (49.5 percent) of respondents said their organizations "rarely" or "completely" encouraged partners to express their opinions and influence decisions, showing a disregard for employees' opinions in Taiwan's workplace environment and a lack of awareness of "diversity, fairness, and inclusion".

At the same time, through the data, it can be seen that nearly 80% of the subjects who have a high sense of belonging to the organization and feel that they are accepted are "completely" or "roughly" able to express their actual views with enough security, and vice versa.

It means that when a workplace can give workers more flexible expression space and truly accept multiple opinions, it will help to enhance the centripetal force within the organization, and its employees' sense of belonging to the organization will also increase.

"Lack of diversity" has led to a reduction in workplace security and belonging

"If a business wants to enjoy all the benefits of a diverse workplace, we need more than just a woman, or a diverse person, or an LGBTQ partner. Diversity is based on real numbers, and it's about creating an environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging and believes that we can all do our best." — Rachel Thomas, Chairman and Co-Founder of Lean In

In terms of enterprises, only 17.3% of the 1,962 subjects said that their organizations have implemented relevant policies for DEI and D&I, and the remaining uncertain and unimplemented enterprises accounted for more than 80% (82.5%).

When asked whether organizations can provide people with the same opportunities for success from different backgrounds, only 48% believe that their organizations can give them fair opportunities for self-practice, representing more than 50% of them, who are not sure or even believe that organizations can fairly provide the same promotion and growth conditions for people from different backgrounds.

Taiwan has been passing the Gender Equality Work Law for more than 20 years since 2002, and at a time when we all think that the workplace environment is more friendly to diverse ethnic groups than in the past, reality is like a mirror, and when you play with your past experience, you find that the "status quo" that we are accustomed to is actually hiding loopholes that are too big for you to ignore.

Just like we all think that Taiwan is equal enough, the concept is stable and mature enough, but looking back, it is not the case, we are still on the road to the ideal environment, and we have an unshirkable responsibility.

How do we create a workplace environment where you and I feel "safe"?

Since the "status quo" is frustrating, what can we do to truly achieve our ideal workplace environment of security, belonging, and diversity?

According to the qualitative statistics of the "Workplace Truth or Truth Survey" for women fans, the answers of 1,962 testees to the question of "The Most Secure Workplace Conditions" can be divided into three major elements:

• Inclusiveness: For different individuals in the workplace, adopting clear principles of fairness and replacing preconceptions and distrust with understanding, listening and tolerance are fundamental to a safe workplace.
• Transparency: Create an open and transparent environment where partners understand that there will be no "black box" within the company, and trust can be accumulated.
• Honesty: Honesty is encouraged to accept improvements and questions from partners about the company's policies and goals, and will not settle accounts after the fall.

First, the workplace needs to be inclusive enough to create a real and protected environment where employees can reveal their personalities and ideas.

Netflix Founder and CEO Reed. In his book Rule Zero, Reed Hastings repeatedly emphasized that the premise of having efficient talent is that all aspects of the company's operation can closely follow the principles of "honesty" and "transparency".

The biggest prerequisite for practicing honesty and transparency is that organizations must create a safe environment that is "honest."

This also echoes the second condition that the test takers believe is necessary for the second "safe workplace", that is, "employees can raise doubts about the company's policies and goals".

Nearly half (49.5%) of the respondents in the first paragraph of the kickback said that their organizations "rarely" or "completely" encouraged partners to express their opinions and influence decisions, so it can be seen that one of the biggest problems in Taiwan's workplace environment is that it lies in one-liners, in arbitrariness, in the lack of empathy, in vicious competition, and in the fact that few people believe that the so-called "common good" is created by every pluralistic and independent individual in the organization.

Nearly 80 percent of the subjects said they didn't care if their partners were diverse in their workplaces

Regarding the "ideal working environment", many people regard it as "difficult to reach", for example, once upon a time, the post-90s young people changed from a contributor to a "social animal" for their position in the company.

For example, once upon a time, in the pursuit of an ideal work environment, we were forced to retreat because of outdated thinking and unshakable organizational principles, and throughout, many seemingly inclusive and beneficial policies were reduced to a kind of welfare.

Paradoxically, encouraging honesty and harmony and diversity and inclusion should never be a welfare, but should be the basic space for every hard-working individual and challenging soul.

Once you have this space, it is equivalent to removing the ceiling of revenue, the pattern of the enterprise, and the established vision of what is successful and excellent.

Eventually, the question returned to "the three things I would most like to be able to disclose publicly in an ideal work environment," with nearly 800 of the 1,962 respondents giving the closest answer, which was the same for "multiple genders, identities, illnesses, religions, ages, feelings, emotional states, and life choices."

To do this, to make the surrounding workplace workers feel "well received", according to the subject's qualitative answers, there are four essentials:

1. Substantive rewards: appropriate salary increases and bonuses at the time of actual contribution.
2. Growth thinking: When making mistakes, personality is still basically respected and there is room for growth.
3. Peer interaction: friendship, mutual respect between colleagues, and sometimes active invitations.
4. Verbal recognition: The approval of the supervisor or superior can actually realize that their efforts are valuable.

Echoing the corporate DEI report released by Micron Technology in December 2021, it said: "The company will gradually implement the diversity of team members, promote equality in compensation and benefits, strengthen the culture of inclusion, and create an equal voice for all."

If we care about the synonyms of diversity, fairness and inclusion, and care about the prospects of the enterprise, then at this time, we will replace the desire with action, and incorporate the ideal working environment into one of our criteria for choosing a workplace.