The diversity, fairness and inclusion (DEI) workplace brings us a secure and belonging environment that allows us to stand up for discrimination and discrimination in the workplace without fear.

With the united Nations "2030 Sustainable Development Goals" deadline approaching, and 2020 including the Chinese exclusion effect caused by the new crown pneumonia pandemic, the death of Floyd, Hong Kong anti-extradition, meToo movement global series and other indicator events catalyzed, several index technology companies around the world, including Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, etc., have successively sacrificed their DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Pluralism, Equity, Inclusion) policy and analysis report to illustrate its concerns and support for social justice.

Apple mentioned in its D&I (Diversity & Inclusion) statement that the number of Apple employees from URCs (Underrepresented Communities) increased by 64% in 2020, accounting for nearly 50% of Apple's U.S. employees; of which the number of non-white leaders increased by more than 50%.

In terms of gender equality, the number of female apple employees worldwide has also increased by more than 70% in just a few years.

Google also mentioned in the statement that the violent and racist mistreatment of Asian, black, Latino and multi-gender groups in 2020 has forced the world to face up to the fact that historical injustices continue to affect; and the heating up of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has brought a great burden to the main caregivers of the family, most of whom are women, and these problems deeply affect all people.

"These facts remind us that systemic obstacles are still too many, and we realize that as a global business, we have a responsibility to meet this moment and believe that we can contribute to changing the injustices caused by these structures." At the same time as the announcement, Google, like most of the world's top 500 companies, set up a CDO (Chief Diversity Officer) as a starting point to launch a series of diversified and inclusive innovations.

After conducting a series of 1,000-person surveys on the current development of women's workplaces in Taiwan in 2021 under the theme of "Diversified Leadership", women fans and in 2022 launched the "Truth or Tell the Truth in the Workplace Survey" again, holding a dialogue with 1,962 subjects to discuss the past, present and future of Taiwan's workplace environment.

More than 70% of participants believe that the workplace is not absolutely friendly to the LGBTQ community

"In order to address the structural inequities facing our society, companies must adopt a system-wide solution." —— Google

First of all, on the issue of gender alone, a considerable number of enterprises are still under arrest.

According to the results of the survey of women's fans, Taiwanese companies most often discriminate and prejudice against "gender (57.3%)", "age (50.9%)" and "physical appearance (41%)", and are easy to put into actions and words, so that the subjects actually feel and experience.

This is why more than 60% of respondents said they "have" or "are not sure" if they have personally experienced/observed a lack of DEI awareness in their workplaces, while less than 40% (36.9%) have expressed that their organizations have "not" experienced any discrimination or differential treatment.

It can be seen that some enterprises and organizations in Taiwan still have unfair, unfriendly and even illegal treatment for employees' innate pluralistic identities and states.

"I'm in the workplace... A little repulsive to my gay identity."

"Men have stereotypes about women and think that women are weak in the workplace."

"The workplace environment is not very friendly to the role of mother, and it is impossible to understand the difficulties."

"When faced with a meeting with a male elder in charge of a branch, you will need to hear or be sexually harassed by words."

"People suddenly spread pornography during work hours, and even share them, and when I don't click on the film to watch, I feel out of place." 」

"When I talk to a male manager or a few men in business, I still can't get rid of the stereotype that girls don't understand, especially if I'm not from a science class."

"During the meeting, the case expressed dissatisfaction with his gay son; the case would add that he felt that lesbianism was fine, which was very uncomfortable."

According to the qualitative response of the above respondents, it can also be seen that gender stereotypes and verbal sexual harassment in the invisible workplace are still frequent.

Even after the promotion and legalization of same-sex marriage, more than half (54.3 percent) of the subjects said they were "unsure" whether their workplace was friendly enough for the LGBTQ community.

In addition, nearly 20% (19.6%) of the subjects said that their workplaces were "not" friendly to the LGBTQ community, showing the distant distinction between reality and ideals, and still penetrating into professional life, making the multi-gender issues that seemed to be "solved" after affirmative legalization once again slapped by reality.

When there is mistreatment, only about 40% of people dare to respond to the competent unit

Further explore the situation that when the organization speaks out about unfairness, prejudice, differential treatment, and even sexual harassment, whether the subject is a "passive observation" or an "active experience" role, is he willing or not, dare to express his dissatisfaction or seek assistance to the supervisor or responsible unit?

According to the survey, among the 825 respondents who have experienced/observed unfair and illegal treatment such as discrimination, prejudice, differential treatment, sexual harassment, etc., more than 60% said that they "did not dare to express it to the competent or responsible unit", and there were three main reasons:

  1. Their supervisor or responder is himself a misbehavior (52.7%)
  2. Respondents were unsure how the supervisor or responsible authority would react and deal with it (46.2%)
  3. Fear of retaliation or exclusion (34.1%)

From the above, it can be seen that the majority of leaders and decision-makers in the workplace who demonstrate discrimination, gender inequality and harassment have the core of power in real time, and when the recipient of the response is most likely to be the perpetrator or the role of knowing and not reporting, the inequality is difficult to assert.

This state also reflects that the "implementation rate" of affirmative action channels within the organization is still relatively insufficient, and it is difficult for those who are really in need to trust their organization's ability or sincerity to help solve the problem when they encounter unfair situations in the workplace.

Reflected in the question "If the company has misbehaved, whether to trust the company to handle it impartially", nearly 40% of the respondents expressed "general trust (39.6%)", but 43.5% said "not trusting", "completely distrustful" and "not sure whether they can be trusted", which led to the occurrence of the company's mistreatment, only 39.6% of the subjects said they would respond to the competent unit, while the remaining more than 60% said they did not dare to react to the supervisor or the responsible unit.

Age, gender, and physical appearance are among the most highly regarded DEI issues

Echoing the above-mentioned taiwanese enterprises' general lack of diversified awareness of gender, age, body shape and appearance, more than 60% of the 1,962 respondents were most concerned about the "diversity and inclusion issues" The top three were age (70.4%), gender (68.4%) and physical appearance (64.3%).

Among them, especially the age issue is the most touching to the test takers, and quite a few of the testees are in the qualitative feedback, and invariably mention that the workplace is quite unfriendly to people with age differences and single people.

Whether the old bully the young, the young ignore the elders, the debate between married and unmarried, and the gap between having children and not having children, are the main sources of problems to reduce diversity and inclusiveness in the workplace.

"No one cares about working moms."

"I often feel the difference between being married and unmarried."

"I don't know much about the popularity of young people in the 80s and 90s."

"Everyone gets married and has children, shows off their children to each other, and always feels different."

"My colleagues are on average 10 years older than me, and there is a generation gap, and it feels very uncomfortable when they are looked down upon by old birds."

In the final analysis, the lack of re-education and promotion of the sense of pluralism, fairness and inclusion in the workplace will not only lead to mutual hostility and contradiction among colleagues, but also affect the attitude of the management to deal with related inequalities.

According to the women's fan survey, 36.8% of the respondents heard the concept of "pluralism, fairness and inclusion (DEI)" for the first time; the rest of the respondents who heard the concept of "pluralism, fairness and inclusion (DEI)", only 13.8% of them were through the advocacy of the company organization, indicating that the company organization still has considerable room for progress in the implementation of pluralistic inclusion.

Ironically, however, more than 95% of respondents (96%) pointed out that whether enterprises and organizations have diversity, fairness and inclusion is the main reason for their decision to join; and nearly 80% of these respondents believe that a workplace environment with diversity and inclusion will give them a truly fair opportunity for development.

In the case that the respondent's company is generally unable to achieve this ideal, it can be speculated that the vast majority of job seekers have to give up the expectation of "ignoring their real needs" and "pursuing the real ideal workplace", and instead use other more specific aspects such as salary and conditions to judge and choose the company to provide its own working environment and prospects, so that the values of DEI, environmental/social governance (ESG), corporate culture, and corporate social responsibility have been ignored for a long time.

A less diverse workplace environment will also affect the future development of a company

"Diversity, equity, and inclusion are about making everyone and every organization on the planet more successful." —— Microsoft

At this point, some people will ask how the implementation of the DEI policy is related to the growth of the enterprise itself, and we want to respond with tesla's enterprise DEI code announced in 2020:

  1. Our DEI policy will provide "transparency" in the outcomes of our business operations, and it will advance our goal setting, measure our progress, identify our journey to improvement, and celebrate success together.
  2. The DEI policy will strengthen the accountability of the organization, whether it is the team or individual progress, the results will be included in our business operations.
  3. It is our mission that DEI policies help organizations focus on identifying sustainable solutions to problems by understanding the root causes and reimagining "diversity" projects, while embedding the principles of equity and inclusion in the design process.
  4. Finally, the DEI policy will facilitate the sharing of knowledge among teams and will also help individuals to learn professionally and develop equally.

At the same time, Microsoft's final announcement in its DEI statement echoed Tesla's approach, mentioning: "Different perspectives will help companies achieve more success." (Different perspectives help us all to achieve more)", and this is the main reason why women fans have been committed to promoting D&I and DEI issues in Taiwan.

In contrast, of the 1,962 subjects in the "Truth or Tell the Truth survey in the workplace" of women's fans, only 48% believe that organizations can provide people with different backgrounds the same chance of success, that is to say, there are still more than 50% of people who are not sure or even do not think that organizations can "fairly" provide the same development conditions and opportunities for people from different backgrounds.

In addition to reflecting the unequal treatment of different groups of employees within the enterprise, the lack of diversified workplace environment will also affect the development of the enterprise itself.

Ultimately, promoting pluralism, fairness and inclusion in life, the workplace, and society at every moment where people are located will be the greatest symbol of the leap forward of human civilization.

Replace vicious competition with fair competition, replace the crusade with respect and tolerance, smooth the cruelty of war with love and peace, feel the pain of others with empathy, disintegrate the world's armed forces in a non-violent way, replace our race with all mankind, and view the individual with pluralism.

In this way, we can let different individuals grow in groups at the same time, create organic petri dishes, so that people of different backgrounds can strive to chase what they want, present their complete identity, express them in their familiar language, and call with sincere desire, so that our world, society, workplace, and even family can truly minimize the harm caused by incomprehension and maximize the growth brought about by pluralism, fairness and inclusion.