Greetings everybody and welcome to week 3 of the assessment module. Last week we talked about how to build assessments and what to assess. In those assessments, we are really talking about an instrument that can survey a mass amount of people where even a sample of the information gathered can give you an idea of what the climate is or what your return on investment may be. But this week I'm going to talk about an assessment that is not well suited for massive groups but it's specifically designed to deal with sensitive issues like allegations of systemic discrimination. The knock on surveys is that they may not contain the right questions or leave an information gap that may leave you exposed or the issue unresolved. Let's talk about how I address these types of systemic complaints and I would do so by talking about the craziest case I ever had. I had a complaint where two members got into a fight, a literal fight at work where one employee said, "Let's take it outside," and the other employee absolutely fed up with this guy, got up and strangled him. No one died. Everyone is okay. But when the intervention team assembled, we wondered what could have happened for this meeting to have gone so badly. The answer? They were arguing over who to hire. As we dug deeper, we found out that the argument wasn't just rooted in this particular hiring decision, but was about hiring decisions that occurred over the years. We discovered that the fed-up guy and others have felt like whenever they had made decisions over the years about who to hire, year after year, the power players of the department always found a way to weed out the minority candidates. They always found a flaw such as an off-the-record source that claimed that there was some scandal associated with the person or something crazy like that, and regardless of the reason, it felt like certain folks were never selected. While there is never an excuse for physical violence, we took the allegations of systemic discrimination seriously. After we took action against the combatants, we had to address the allegations that a pattern of discrimination could be found deeply seated in the department's processes, culture, or cycle. To address it, we had to, one, create an assessment that gave reporters enough anonymity to feel comfortable with sharing their stories with us. Two, we had to invite 100 percent of the persons in the department affected and disaffected alike to participate, to make sure that the information we collected was generalizable to the true feelings of the department. Three, we wanted to provide a report that was both quantitative and qualitative in that some of the questions could be asked in survey form, while other parts of the report needed to be verbalized. I needed to hear about the actual experiences, feelings, frustrations, and expressions of the participants. Now, we did it this way for a lot of reasons, but one major reason is this. Hypothetically speaking, if we ask the question, during the last 20 years, do you believe that minority candidates were discriminated against? We found out that 55 out of 60 say yes, even if you look at the hiring process and find no prima facie or legal case for discrimination. The perceptions of those interview are so powerful by themselves that you can't ignore that. Because in addition to knowing how a majority of the people feel, you now can ask the follow-up questions to determine why they feel that way, something that a survey question really cannot do. You can probe for more details, have them set the scenes to their story, and then fill it with their experiences so that you have a better idea of why they feel the way that they do. While your general counsel may have concerns about collecting information this way, let them know that by doing this, they now know what people may actually say if they're ever put on the stand, and at least by doing this, there's a chance that you can address it before you have a major lawsuit on your hands. This approach, what I call an ethnographic assessment, is very effective because it gives you a chance to walk in the shoes of those interviewed, go through these events with them. But unlike other investigations, it's not judgmental and that it's not about finding fault who was right or wrong but discovering the truth for each member of the group. That's powerful stuff. If I had to describe my role in the assessment, it would be as an observer where I do face-to-face interviews or direct observation of the group and action, document the cultural similarities and differences between employee narratives. That way I can see or it can help me understand why one group perceives their workplace the way that they do or behave in the way that they do versus the other groups. To do an ethnographic assessment, I offer these suggestions. One is that it's essential that you clearly isolate the specific problem and scope of the assessments so that you do not become a receptacle for everything that ever went wrong in the department. If this is about hiring decisions, don't start wandering into issues related to benefits. You need to narrow your questions to specific issues, topics, or experiences. After I collect demographic data such as rank, years on the job, and other necessary classifications such as race and sex, if those things are at issue, I then ask broad questions about those things at issues such as, in your tenure, have you witness acts of discrimination? Or since moving into the department, have you ever been a part of any employment decisions where you or someone you knew believed that the decision was made based on race or sex? Next, despite my legally sounding example of a question I just did, remember that this is not a deposition. You are not trying to adjudicate complaint, you are trying to see holistically, meaning by capturing the narratives of the past and present, the detailed account of a given community to comprehensively understand their circumstances, which leads to my third point. Please understand that by uncovering these experiences, this may be very traumatic for someone. You have to be very careful that you are asking these questions in a trauma-informed way. Instead of saying, Oh, why didn't you say this, or, why didn't you quit or reported if you felt that way? You have to imagine how it may sound judgmental to the interviewee and they may shut down. Remember, as an ethnographer, you want to see it through their eyes and ask them what they saw, what they felt, and why they felt that way and you need to do that without judgment or critique of their actions or inactions. Once all of that information is collected, you can now put together a report that is broken down into themes. While you may predict what these themes might be from your scope, you may find that what was described as a problem with race was really a problem about not having enough process or rules around hiring, or while people describe a hostile working environment, you may find that the hostility usually flares up when hiring decisions were made or some other thing. By assessing issues this way, you can now make more responsive recommendations. Instead of resolving the most current issue, you are responding to the issues that accumulated over time that have impacted the culture and the rules of how things get done in the department. Now you can help them see how things could be done and recommend ways to improve their culture. Now, here's a final point. While this is one way to assess systemic issues, realized that once you've uncovered it, it's like removing a scab and it's going to hurt those involved. In addition to taking a trauma-informed approach, be sure to process the information and make your recommendations as expeditiously as possible. While people are waiting for your responses, tensions will be high. Once you have your report done, make sure you release it with the department leadership present so that a public recognition of the report is made for anyone that wants to see it or be included. I hope you felt included in this week's class, check in next week for our final assessment.
