Good post! Regarding casebashâs concern about tradeoffs: I think there are clear net benefits to many of these techniques, including matters of basic politeness (e.g. letting people know they are encouraged to bring partners of any gender to events, remembering an âotherâ option for gender on your forms) and sound business strategy (e.g. only listing actual requirements on your application form, defaulting to flexible hours when thatâs feasible). If presenting these as âstrategies for equity and inclusionâ means theyâre more likely to be adopted, thatâs a promising development.
Of course, not every organization will benefit from every suggestion, but I like these kinds of âtoolboxâ posts, which offer a set of options (of varying degrees of implementation complexity) for organizations that want to accomplish something. Almost anyone trying to hire for an EA org is likely to find at least one useful idea here.
(I will note that, while literally every decision a business could make has âtradeoffsâ, some of these ideas appear especially costly for certain kinds of organizationsâfor example, committing to hiring criteria ahead of time might be dangerous if an organization has a lot of work that needs doing and meets someone who is capable of doing A and B, but who applied for a position that does C and D. That said, smaller organizations with more flexible roles and processes can probably work around issues of this nature without much trouble.)
Good post! Regarding casebashâs concern about tradeoffs: I think there are clear net benefits to many of these techniques, including matters of basic politeness (e.g. letting people know they are encouraged to bring partners of any gender to events, remembering an âotherâ option for gender on your forms) and sound business strategy (e.g. only listing actual requirements on your application form, defaulting to flexible hours when thatâs feasible). If presenting these as âstrategies for equity and inclusionâ means theyâre more likely to be adopted, thatâs a promising development.
Of course, not every organization will benefit from every suggestion, but I like these kinds of âtoolboxâ posts, which offer a set of options (of varying degrees of implementation complexity) for organizations that want to accomplish something. Almost anyone trying to hire for an EA org is likely to find at least one useful idea here.
(I will note that, while literally every decision a business could make has âtradeoffsâ, some of these ideas appear especially costly for certain kinds of organizationsâfor example, committing to hiring criteria ahead of time might be dangerous if an organization has a lot of work that needs doing and meets someone who is capable of doing A and B, but who applied for a position that does C and D. That said, smaller organizations with more flexible roles and processes can probably work around issues of this nature without much trouble.)