I’ve seen enough now to convince me. The more the bureaucrats strive to promote political correctness, equality and diversity, the more divisive the business community becomes. That is what I call the paradox of PC.
Take EEDA’s ‘Regional Economic Strategy’ document. The very first illustration shows two men and two women. One of the women is black and there’s also someone of indeterminate gender wearing an ethnic mask.
Don’t think I’m criticising the document, it contains a brave, yet achievable vision for our Region. What does bother me though, is the efforts made to visually demonstrate equality and diversity. It looks PC and so is assumed to be PC. Job done, issue addressed, fairness assured.
The problem is the way that political correctness is assessed. As employers we are expected to have written policies on equality, diversity and the like. We are encouraged quite rightly to be fair and not to discriminate. To provide a record of our willingness to include, we are encouraged to provide optional ‘tick box’ forms that allow those we deal with to categorise themselves by race, gender and more. Why can’t we simply take it as read that they are all just people?
The moment you add a label, you create an opportunity for prejudice, stigma and discrimination. Make sure your workforce contains the right proportion of people with disabilities and no one will criticise you for turning the rest of them away; however capable they are of doing the job.
Of course some labels are harder to attach. One in four of us will endure a spell of mental illness during our lives; that’s a statistical fact. This suggests that if you are an employer, you already have people in your workforce who are, have been or will be, supported by drugs like Prozac. Or perhaps they’ll have a breakdown, or claim that you as their boss have created a stressful environment that is making them ill.
Mental illness is itself a misnomer. To define the illness you must first define normality. The brain is such a complex organ that unlike a broken leg, a mental health problem is only diagnosed when a cluster of symptoms or behaviours move along the spectrum and slip out of the commonly accepted ‘normal range’.
History teaches us however, that some of the most innovative, creative and groundbreaking people were, by today’s standards, mentally ill. I’ve met Trevor Baylis, inventor of the clockwork radio. His house sits on an island on the Thames with only a footbridge connecting it to the bank. Yet on his patio sits a car. Why, when there’s nowhere to drive it?
I’m not suggesting for a moment that Baylis is mad, certainly not by my definition, but what about yours? He clearly thinks differently and that is arguably is what prompted him to leap off his sofa and create that clockwork radio. He was watching a TV documentary about the challenges of spreading positive health messages in rural Africa. He saw the opportunity; most others simply switched channels or made a cup of tea.
My point is that because we are all being so good and politically correct, we can feel good about ourselves whilst only scratching the surface of social need. It’s not a coincidence that in the UK today we have more people living on incapacity benefit because of mental illness than are out there living on jobseekers allowance. Employers need to do much more than dress the windows of employment strategy; they need to start changing the goods on the shelves.
Of course it’s not easy. People with a learning difficulty may need to be shown the task time and time again before they can complete it unaided. People recovering from long term mental ill health may challenge your patience with apparent idiosyncrasies, but the rewards for the employer can be huge.
For the person aspiring to be taken seriously enough to be given a job, the job no one else wants can be the opportunity of a lifetime. For the company stuck in a rut, employing people who find conformity difficult, can unlock hidden potential and spark innovation. Of course these people may not look different enough for your company literature to illustrate your inclusive and diverse workforce, but who really cares. What matters is both you and they are given the opportunity to widen your perspectives and become more receptive to change.