Over the last week, the guide has surged to become the 5th-most-accessed book on Project Gutenberg, an open source repository of free and public domain ebooks. It is also the fifth most popular ebook on the site over the last 30 days, having been accessed nearly 60,000 times over the last month (just behind Romeo and Juliet).
Direct link to the book (without the backref):
The flaw in your argument is the false equivalency between minorities (people the DEI programs are there to support) and “inefficient workers”.
Are straight white dudes exempt from ever being considered inefficient? That’s silly.
DEI goes beyond hiring. If you have a sizeable office but no comfortable and private area for new mothers to pump breast milk that’s being inequitable to them. Same for maternity and paternity leave policies. These are not about giving advantage to minorities.
That’s fair, but those don’t decrease efficiency consistently enough to be a viable method for simpe sabotage. There are better ways to decrease efficiency in ways people won’t notice. Everyone notices DEI because it’s so divisive.
No, I didn’t say minorities, you’re assuming that. I was pointing out the part in the text which says, “fight fascists by creating bureaucracy”. There are lots of articles already which point out that DEI is for all identities, not just POC.
The plain and simple truth is that DEI often increases, not decreases, efficiency and productivity. It does this by creating accommodations for efficient workers who would, without them, not be able to work, such as in the new mothers example. It also increases efficiency by combating existing institutional racism and allowing for good, efficient workers who would otherwise be hedged out of the system, to have a chance to participate. A good friend of mine has pointed out that their company is not, under any circumstances, going to let go of their DEI policies because it’s lead the best and most efficient departments they’ve ever had.
I didn’t say POC anywhere in my comment.
These identities are minority identities. Women, POC, LGBT+ communities are all considered minorities. There are legitimate reasons for DEI, including increasing efficiency in workplaces, which doesn’t line up here, because in this doc the increase in bureaucracy is for the purpose of decreasing efficiency.
Some studies I’d like to cite regarding my claim on Diversity practices increasing efficiency:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30765101/
Results: Most of the sixteen reviews matching inclusion criteria demonstrated positive associations between diversity, quality and financial performance. Healthcare studies showed patients generally fare better when care was provided by more diverse teams. Professional skills-focused studies generally find improvements to innovation, team communications and improved risk assessment. Financial performance also improved with increased diversity. A diversity-friendly environment was often identified as a key to avoiding frictions that come with change.
https://dinastipub.org/DIJDBM/article/download/2986/1924/12080 (This one is a PDF) CONCLUSION This study shows that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives have a significant positive impact on employee performance.
I also found this article from Harvard that explored practices that don’t increase efficiency, however, when they don’t work, the reason is usually unconscious bias and racism:
https://hbr.org/2024/06/research-the-most-common-dei-practices-actually-undermine-diversity “These methods often exacerbate existing biases and fail to address systemic barriers, perpetuating organizational inequities. For example, diversity and harassment training programs frequently focus on blame, legal consequences, and unconscious bias. Employees are often told they are biased, and managers are informed that they will be held accountable if employees are accused of discrimination. This is counterproductive because employees tend to react with resistance and anger to these messages, inadvertently increasing discriminatory behavior.”
The reason I am including this is that even if the end goal was to decrease efficiency, it would have to be the goal of management, not the regulatory bodies, because management are the ones choosing these methods, and if it were management’s goal to decrease efficiency, they would be able to do this without DEI requirements.
My overarching point here is, while I understand your skepticism on DEI practices, there are much simpler and cheaper ways to perform the methods in the original post, making DEI an extremely unlikely culprit.