1st Corey Smith – Head of Diversity and Inclusion – orth America LVMH
Coding is an important aspect to consider while evaluating findings more specifically qualitative answers in order to find any possible patterns also called similarities across different individuals’ statements. As it is possible to see from the coding conducted in the interview transcript of Corey Smith, he absolutely agrees that a fair and transparent Assessment creates more inclusion in the workplace and it reduces unconscious bias. Cosey also mentions that Cultural agility is something that needs to be considered, as the lack of cultural agility and communication creates lower respect levels and frustration from the employees towards Senior Management and in the worst cases, employees leave the job.
From Corey’s answer, I have outlined the following words as the most influential:
1- Fair Assessment
2-Transparent Assessment
3-Cultural Agility
2nd Charles Leung – Chief Executive Officer – Maison Fred Paris
Charles has also agreed that implementing fair and transparent evaluation tools is a good way to reduce workplace favouritsm and create a more inclusive workplace environment. Something interesting to be mentioned is also believed to be the “well-defined set of KPIs” to be shared clearly and transparently from the organisation and expecting everyone from CEO to Managerial levels to respect those and contribute by supervising each team member’s achievement.
From Charles’ answer I have outlined the following words considering being the most influential:
1-Fair Evaluation
2-Fair Appraisal
3-Fair Supervision
4-Organisational Culture
5-organizational Alignment
6-Clear and well-defined KPIs
3rd Jasmin Allen – Senior Vice President LVMH – North America
Jasmin has focused initially on the importance of raising awareness, stating facts, and coming up with concrete facts and examples to be linked to business objectives. She also mentions that businesses MUST use transparency and fairness in the evaluation of employees’ performance and consider reducing workplace favouritism as one of the most important goals for businesses that aim to create a more inclusive environment.
Moreover, Jasmin adds that leaders should regularly plan training, coaching, and mentoring their junior colleagues along with displaying a transparent performance evaluation by also celebrating and rewarding top performers and recovering unproductive situations.
From Jasmin’s answer, I have outlined these main words as the more influential:
1-Raise Awareness
2-Set Clear Objectives
3-Organisational Alignment
4-Transparent Evaluation
Summary:
As it is possible to see from the picture below, the most used words from the industry experts have been Fairness, Transparency, Culture, and Organisational Alignment.
- Fairness has been mentioned 3 times, in relation to fair assessment, fair supervision and fair appraisal
- Transparency has been mentioned 4 times, in relation to transparent assessment, transparent KPIs, transprent objectives and transparent evaluation.
- Culture has been mention 2 times, in relation to limited cultural agility and organisational culture
- Organisational alignment has been mentioned 2 times also, defined as the focus on reaching the same goals, involving HR and Maagement to create better work environment.
From the coding conducted, I will therefore evaluate the meaningfulness of these words in relation to my target group analysing their answers motored with the survey that I have been sharing online. It will be very important to notice in the next stage any validity of these considerations done by the industry experts and see what is the knowledge or opinion of the general population.
From the analysis of the survey findings, it is possible to evaluate the following considerations.
DEMOGRAPHICS:
The target group age interested is very young, 33.3% is aged between 18 and 24 years old and 36% is aged between 25 and 34 years old, and 30% is from 35years old ad above. The majority of the respondents were male accounting for 45% ad 41% Female, while the rest is other or prefer not to say.
In regards to employment status, 63% is considered being employed full time or part-time and another 20% self-employed, the not employed / student accounts for 16%.
This target group is well aware of what Diversity and Inclusion mean, account for 68.7% of the total answers, and only 26.7% is not sure.
In relation to their workplace environment, only 37% states that their organization is dedicated to D&I, while 33.3% are neutral and 23% Strongly disagree. Moreover, question 9 asks whether they are assessed using evaluation tools and 71% confirms, interestingly following question 10, only 35.9% agree with the statement “My job performance is evaluated fairly and transparently” while 28% is neutral and 24% Disagree.
This is an important aspect to consider as, from the 71% that are being assessed using performance evaluation tools, only 36% believe this assessment is done fairly and transparently. This also finds support in question 11 where 62% of the respondents state to have been considered differently by management for reasons that are not related to their ability to perform their job.
According to this, question 9 shows that 56% agree or strongly agree that transparency and fairness must be considered in relation to workplace inclusion. Furthermore, 57% agree that limited cultural agility could negatively influence workplace inclusivity, 20% are neutral and 23% disagree with the statement.
Question 14 shows that 75% believe that if effective and transparent performance evaluation tools were implemented in their organization it would make them feel more included and only 18% are not sure.
- According to literature, “People are socialized to relate to each other on the basis of race, class, and religion. As a result, a boss may unconsciously, or consciously, distance employees who don’t have the same skin colour, social class, or religion”; this has been confirmed from primary research on both Industry experts interviews and survey answers. Int his regard, Corey Smith states that managers might not aware that they do not provide the same feedback to every employee at the same level because of how cofortable they feel with certai individuals and also from the survey question nr 11, 62% of respondents believe to have been treated differently from their colleagues from reasons not related to their job performance.
- According to literature (Idvik, (2015) “Management must treat everyone fairly and evaluate them transparently”. In this regard, the words fairness and transparency have been used in total 7 times from the industry experts Corey Smith, Charles Leung and JAsmin Allen, interviews’ in relation to fair evaluation and assessment, fair supervision, fair appraisal. Moreover, from question nr 14 of the survey, 75% of respondents believe that if fair and trsparent evaluation tools are implemented in their organisation they would feel much more included.
Furthermore, question nr 9 of the survey shows that 56% of respondents Agree or Stronlgy Agree with the statement “Fariess and transprency in performance evaluation are essential factors to consider whe talking about workplace inclusivity”. - According to Corey Smith, a limited cultural agility has been considered being a big threat for inclusive environments as it does not allow managers to successfully engage and collaborate in a diverse environment, and this has been confirmed by the survey respondents of question nr 13 where 57% have stated that a limited cultural agility can negatively influence the wrokplace environment and only 23% disagree.
Another important factor to consider is that right now it is almost a trend for businesses to consider themselves inclusive companies and maybe also most of them use evaluation tools but this not necessary is always done fairly and transparently. According to the answers of 195 survey participants, 70% of their companies use evaluation tools but only 46% of them agree or strongly agree that their performance is being evaluated fairly and transparently.
While evaluating these findings I have been able to draw some important conclusions as mentioned above.
This project has successfully shown that Workplace Inclusivity is strongly related to performance evaluation and fair appraisal. So far there have been many studies and many interventions from big companies trying to create better workplace environments but most of the time this has been considered from employees a marketing strategy and in very few cases this has resulted in a real intervention. A big factor affecting a company’s ability to make this change has been found to be cultural agility, and this is related to all the levels of management and senior management to successfully collaborate with different talents in the organization and create a more inclusive environment. Inclusive environments as mentioned before also starts from the implementation of fair and transparent KPIs or performance evaluation tools