Skip to content Skip to content Skip to content
  • About PBC
  • About Hogan
  • Blog
  • About PBC
  • About Hogan
  • Blog
Cart(0)
  • Our Services
  • Assessments
  • Certifications
  • Resources
  • Events
  • Contact Us
  • Get Certified
  • Our Services
  • Assessments
  • Certifications
  • Resources
  • Events
  • Contact Us
  • Get Certified
All Services
Selection
Development
Teams
Organisation
Coaching
Research
Cancel
Our Services
All Services
Selection
Development
Teams
Organisation
Coaching
Research
  • Our Services
  • Assessments
  • Certifications
  • Resources
  • Events
  • Contact Us
  • Get Certified
  • Our Services
  • Assessments
  • Certifications
  • Resources
  • Events
  • Contact Us
  • Get Certified
Cart(0)
  • About PBC
  • About Hogan
  • Blog
  • About PBC
  • About Hogan
  • Blog
BLOG

The Easy Way to Increase Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Your Organisation

Diversity, equity, and inclusion. If you work in human resources, or a related field, youโ€™ve heard these terms before and, odds are, you have some idea of what they mean. But just so that we are all on the same page, Iโ€™ll use the following,ย heavily borrowed, definitions for diversity, equity, and inclusion:

  • Diversityย includes all the ways in which people differ from each other. Though this is often limited to race, ethnicity, and gender, it more broadly includes age, nationality, religion, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, education level, marital status, language, and physical appearance. Diversity also includes differences in ideas, perspectives, and values.
  • Equityย concerns fair treatment, access, and opportunity for all people. Equity is about providing recognition, promotion, and compensation that is consistent with oneโ€™s work and qualifications. No one should be provided special treatment or privileges based on anything but performance.
  • Inclusionย concerns creating working environments where everyone feels welcomed, respected, supported, and valued. Inclusive environments embrace diversity.

There are at least three reasons organisations should care about diversity, equity, and inclusion. The first is moral. Basic standards of human decency tell us that all people are of value and have something to contribute to society. Moreover, all people โ€“ regardless of background โ€“ deserve to be treated fairly, sharing equally in the benefits and burdens of society.

The second reason to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion is legal.ย Title VIIย of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex, and national origin. The act also established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which further expanded Title VII to include discrimination based on age, gender, and disability. Ultimately, organisations found to be in violation of the laws are subject to legal ramifications including fines.

The third reason to care about diversity, equity, and inclusion is to do better business. Solving business problems like growing market share, understanding clients for different markets, and ensuring your advertising isnโ€™t off-putting to certain groups is easier and more efficient with people from a diverse set of backgrounds. In 2015, Bud Light added the tag line โ€œThe perfect beer for removing โ€˜noโ€™ from your vocabulary for the nightโ€ to their label. The advertising wasย immediately criticised. One cannot help but think that if the marketing team had included just one woman, they would have immediately realised this was a really bad idea.

The good news is that many organisations today get it. In 2005, fewer than 20% of the Fortune 500 had officers/programs for diversity and inclusion. In 2016, that number was closer to 60% and is poised to climb even higher. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are good for the organisation and they are here to stay. But many organisations still struggle to increase their diversity and inclusion. The purpose of this essay is to make the scientific case for the use of personality assessments as a direct way to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion.ย 

 

Making Personnel Decisions

When it comes time to hire someone, or to promote someone to a higher role, there are lots of valid ways organisations can go about doing this. Obvious options include asking for referrals, looking at resumes, and conducting an interview. All these methods, to various degrees, are valid predictors of workplace performance. Unfortunately, all these methods are also heavily subject to bias. Referrals practically guarantee that you will reduce diversity (i.e., people tend to only refer people with whom they are familiar, andย we tend to be most familiar with people who are similar to us). While resumes may appear to be unbiased, they frequently include opportunities for implicit bias to occur. For example, some names may reflect ethnicity (e.g., John Logan vs. Juan Lopez) and even educational experiences may be a better reflection of parental socioeconomic status than ability to perform on the job. And, of course, interviews areย full of opportunitiesย forย biasย to creep in. The data are clear, with classic methods of making personnel decisions, you get increased workplace performance, but also increased bias. Ultimately, this reduces diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The good news is that it is easy to eliminate bias from personnel decisions: just make decisions at random. That is, if you decide to hire or promote people on a completely random basis (i.e., rolling dice, drawing names out of hat), it is guaranteed that you will not be making biased decisions. Unfortunately, it is also guaranteed that you will not be making the most effective decisions in terms of your organisationโ€™s long-term performance.

But there is still one more alternative, one way that you can increase both long-term performance and increase your organisationโ€™s diversity, equity, and inclusion: scientifically validated personality assessments. Decades of research on personality assessment (broadly speaking) show effectively zero differences in scores due to race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, language, physical appearance, education level, or disability. (There are age differences, but these reflect maturity and are not biased against older adults.) At Hogan, we gather personality data from millions of people โ€“ from virtually every ethnic background โ€“ all over the world on an annual basis. Our own data show no meaningful differences in test scores as a function of group status. As just one example, the figures below show average scores on our three core assessments โ€“ theย HPI,ย theย HDS, and theย MVPIย โ€“ for different U.S. racial categories. The scores are so close that they are virtually identical.

But with personality assessments, you donโ€™tย justย get diversity, equity, and inclusion. As already mentioned, you can do that simply by choosing people at random. With scientifically-validated personality assessments, you also get a track record of predicting workplace performance. Yes, you can have your cake and eat it too.

 

TL; DR

The point here is simple: If all personal decisions were made using scientifically-validated personality assessments, unfair discrimination in the workplace would cease to exist. Personality assessments lead to increased productivity and engagement, as well as increased diversity, equity and inclusion. If you are serious about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in your organisation, using scientifically-validated personality assessments is an easy way to do that.

 

References

This article originally appeared onย Hogan Assessments.

TOPIC AREA

DATE POSTED

October 27, 2023

SHARE ON YOUR SOCIALS

Latest blog posts

Loading...

The Dark Side of Creativity: How Imagination Derails Performance

Predicting Athletic Performance with Personality Assessment

PBC Webinar – Measuring What Matters: A Smarter Way to Lead Safer Workplaces

Webinar: Customising the Hogan 360: Why, When and How

Enabling the SES Performance Leadership Framework through leveraging the Hogan 360 in Development

Questions?

Weโ€™re here
to help.

Contact Us

Get certified
today

Gain comprehensive training on how to use Hoganโ€™s personality assessments

Get Certified Now

Related Articles

The Dark Side of Creativity: How Imagination Derails Performance

Most of us have encountered a leader who uses meetings as personal brainstorming time. Everyone leaves feeling confused or uncertain…
Read More

Predicting Athletic Performance with Personality Assessment

Can personality predict the success of professional athletes? Whether helping NBA teams predict rookie-year performance or NFL teams perfect their…
Read More

PBC Webinar – Measuring What Matters: A Smarter Way to Lead Safer Workplaces

๐Ÿ“…30 October 2025 ๐Ÿ•‘10:00-11:00 AM (AEDT) | 12:00-1:00 PM (NZDT) Join Dr. Xander Van Lill and Andrew Morris on 30…
Read More
View All

Stay connected

Copyright 2024 Peter Berry Consultancy.

Sydney

Level 8/201 Miller Street,
North Sydney, NSW 2060 Australia

Phone: +61 2 8918 0888

Peter Berry Consultancy wishes to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians the Cammeraygal and their Country on which we work today.

See map

Melbourne

Suite 303, 430 Little Collins Street, Melbourne, VIC, 3000 Australia

Phone: +61 3 8629 5100

Peter Berry Consultancy wishes to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians the Boon Wurrung and Woiwurrung (Wurundjeri) peoples of the Kulin Nation and their Country on which we work today.

See map

Auckland

11 Britomart Place, Auckland CBD,
Auckland 1010, New Zealand

Phone: +64 9 941 9790

See map

Ireland

Suite 301, 53 Merrion Square South, Dublin 2, D02 PR63, Ireland

Phone: +353 1 578 3607

See map
  • TERMS & CONDITIONS
  • PRIVACY POLICY – AU
  • PRIVACY POLICY โ€“ NZ
  • COOKIES POLICY
  • EU COMPLIANCE
  • TERMS & CONDITIONS
  • PRIVACY POLICY – AU
  • PRIVACY POLICY โ€“ NZ
  • COOKIES POLICY
  • EU COMPLIANCE
  • TERMS & CONDITIONS
  • PRIVACY POLICY – AU
  • PRIVACY POLICY โ€“ NZ
  • COOKIES POLICY
  • EU COMPLIANCE
  • TERMS & CONDITIONS
  • PRIVACY POLICY – AU
  • PRIVACY POLICY โ€“ NZ
  • COOKIES POLICY
  • EU COMPLIANCE
Peter Berry Consultancy
Manage Consent

PBC uses cookies. Learn more about our policies by clicking the links below.

Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage {vendor_count} vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}