OPINION
across functions and departments. When ensuring that work is fair for everyone is viewed as a silo, we cannot make the systemic changes that are required to see measurable results. Levelling the playing field is part of every single person’s job. No matter your job description or function, you are a “fairness officer.” This doesn’t mean that you need to take on additional responsibilities; rather, you make fairness happen when you make it your business and improve how you are doing your job. Much like we cannot delegate financial or people decisions to the finance or HR department alone, we cannot justify delegating workplace equality to DEI experts. This is not to say that DEI professionals don’t have an important role to play in embedding fairness. In an ideal world, a company’s DEI team would be a resource coordinating knowledge- sharing and skill-building for the rest of the organisation. With their subject-matter expertise, DEI professionals are uniquely positioned to spot areas of improvement, guide teams in redesigning their work practices and galvanise culture change. This requires not only adequate resources but also leadership backing – things that have been too often missing in recent years. Even the best-supported DEI teams can only do so much; unless all employees are striving to make their work fairer, we won’t truly succeed in embedding fairness into our organisations.
They also reacted less favourably to underrepresented group members who claimed discrimination. Women themselves have been shown to perceive organisations to be fairer when they offer diversity training, even when evidence showed that existing hiring practices disadvantaged women. The window-dressing effect can make it harder for us to detect and tackle real discrimination. The evidence to date says that we cannot simply train ourselves out of bias, nor can we train our way to fairness through random programmes. For real results, we need an embedded strategy and part of this involves offering context-specific and timely training that equips people with the right tools. Myth 3: Fairness is the responsibility of DEI professionals alone Even though most companies have corporate communications or PR departments that specialise in conveying information, most of us need to regularly write emails, create slide show presentations and speak up in meetings. Everyone needs at least a base level of communication skills for an organisation to function – and the same holds true for fairness. While experts such as DEI practitioners or specialist external consultants can be a valuable resource, true progress requires all of us to have the skills to do our work in fairer ways. The key operative word here is “all.” Many of us have bought into the fallacy that a few dedicated DEI professionals can “fix” unfairness for a whole workplace of hundreds or thousands of individuals. However, as Julie Coffman, the chief diversity officer at consulting firm Bain & Co, reminds us, “The actual job of delivering real progress on DEI outcomes does not reside in a central chief diversity officer or small DEI team alone.” Decisions affecting whom to hire, promote, advance and develop in an organisation are made by numerous people
This is an excerpt from Make Work Fair: Data-Driven Design for Real Results by Iris Bohnet and Siri Chilazi, published by Harper Business Books. Bohnet is a Swiss behavioural economist, as well as being the Albert Pratt professor of business and government at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, where she is also the academic dean. Her work focuses primarily on issues of gender, trust and social preferences. Chilazi is a senior researcher at the Women and Public Policy programme at the Kennedy School whose life’s work is to advance gender equality in the workplace
Ambition • ISSUE 3 • 2025 37
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