Section 3 summarizes the second half of our research results connected to Talent Cloud’s main performance objective on improving fit-to-team. Section 2 looked at broad practices for getting to a great hire that was a strong fit-to-team. In Section 3, we’re honing in on the diversity and inclusion components of the concept of “fit-to-team”, exploring issues such as cultural coding and systemic bias in process design, rethinking the existing GC default settings, and changing the choice architecture that shapes how managers assign value in staffing. It gathers all our thinking on diversity and inclusion into one location for easy reference.
There is one significant research limitation that we need to note up front: we‘re relying on qualitative data and manager-based reporting. Because of the privacy requirements associated with the IT system, we haven’t had controls in place to collect quantitative Employment Equity data from applicants. (See the summary of our quest to secure server space in a Protected B environment.) Talent Cloud is in the final steps of the certification and authorization process that would allow a larger experiment to be conducted on the platform to confirm (or disprove) the theory. Such an experiment would include a statistically valid sample size and quantitative data collection. But until then, the ideas here should be seen as signals and indicators based on qualitative research and small scale testing, validated against external research and theory.
The results are promising and point to a new direction in the theory for those looking for options to advance inclusion and diversity in hiring. But they are far from definitive. It’s best to think of them as the start of a path that is heading in a different direction than the theory directions that have previously been applied in government hiring. But it is only the start of exploring this new path forward. Whether or not the path is viable, and where it will lead, are still unknown.
List of Experiments and Interventions
- Accessible by Choice and by Design
- Skills Instead of Experience, and the Significance of this Choice
- Indigenous Talent Portal
- Case Study: Changing the Defaults on Essential Education
- Applicant Story: Getting through the Door
- Building Towards #FreeToBeMe: LGBTQ2+ on Talent Cloud
- Why Not Use Anonymized Recruitment?
Talent Cloud has designed a model that attempts to optimize fit-to-team by taking into account human factors like team culture, work environment and management leadership style. But we can’t talk about optimizing the hiring outcome and strengthening the “culture fit” in a staffing process without ensuring that our model includes corresponding checks and balances against bias against equity-seeking groups. A staffing model that produces a fast process and a strong hire must not create these outcomes at the expense of advancing diversity and inclusion. The model can’t become a vehicle for a “like hires like” solution. And correspondingly, we can’t promote meaningful diversity and inclusion in government staffing without considering the many ways in which culture, operating context, and individual values shape hiring decisions. If we want deep level change, we need to look into the interlocking machinery of process, policy, common practices, history and human behaviour.
To reach a different outcome, we have to apply a different approach. Talent Cloud is a project in pursuit of two significant different outcomes - namely, faster staffing and an optimization engine that produces a strong fit-to-team. To do this in a socially responsible way, we need to design differently, so that the platform is experientially inclusive for all groups, particularly marginalized and equity-seeking groups. We also need to make sure that the actual hiring outcomes, not just the “packaging” on the platform, advance meaningful diversity and inclusion. There must be ethical balance amongst the project’s three performance objectives in the pursuit of results.
At the heart of Talent Cloud’s diversity and inclusion approach is a very simple principle: when people change what is valued in a system, they change who is valued, and that leads to different results. Our theory is that when a system is designed to recognize and value a greater diversity of human experiences and life paths in the acquisition of skills and experience, managers in that system will find value in the competencies of a greater diversity of applicants during screening, assessment, and final hiring decisions. And that will lead, in time, to a more diverse, inclusive public service.
Changing the outcomes that a system produces requires more than well meaning words of commitment to inclusion. It requires a fundamental change in the choice architecture of the value structure at key decision points in the system. It also requires a recognition that the fundamental design of any staffing model is culturally coded. Making these changes can be very difficult, especially if some elements of the existing choice architecture are seen to be too entrenched, too complex or too foundational to be adapted. Because there’s nothing more culturally coded than something that people believe can’t be changed - something that is taken for granted as immovable to the extent that people forget it was socially constructed to begin with, in an earlier time.
We’re deeply grateful to everyone who was brave enough to share their experiences and thoughts with us during the research for this component of the project, even when the storytelling was deeply personal and hard to share. That kind of courage places on our team a burden to honour the stories through action of our own. So here is the theory and work we give back as our first step in this direction.
“Building a viable solution requires more than just inclusive designs. It also requires structural change.”
