Good post! Regarding casebash’s 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 “other” 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 that’s feasible). If presenting these as “strategies for equity and inclusion” means they’re more likely to be adopted, that’s a promising development.
Of course, not every organization will benefit from every suggestion, but I like these kinds of “toolbox” 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 “tradeoffs”, some of these ideas appear especially costly for certain kinds of organizations—for 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 casebash’s 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 “other” 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 that’s feasible). If presenting these as “strategies for equity and inclusion” means they’re more likely to be adopted, that’s a promising development.
Of course, not every organization will benefit from every suggestion, but I like these kinds of “toolbox” 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 “tradeoffs”, some of these ideas appear especially costly for certain kinds of organizations—for 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.)