Ethics, Lazy Management, and Flawed Thinking - "Diversity Fatigue", short-sightedness vs. flexibility, and "tinkering round the (management) edges"

This is a post in my Ethics, Lazy Management, and Flawed Thinking series - see https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2019/11/ethics-lazy-management-and-flawed.html.

I've decided to group a few issues together with brief comments. Unfortunately, I don't have time or energy to address these properly.

Diversity Fatigue
I can relate to this reported problem of "diversity fatigue" - even as a member of several minority groups with a passion for human rights, trying to stay up to date with inclusion and diversity issues can be as challenging - or more - as any profession's expectations of continuing professional development.

That leads to a few points:

(a) approaching inclusion and diversity from the perspective of management needs to be treated as accounting, workplace skills, human resources, and all other skills in the workplace are. Professionals may be as necessary as they are in other areas, and those professionals will need to be supported in their continuing development - but there is a need for more consultation with minority groups that is not present in other areas, as members of minority groups are the experts with lived experience, and, as experts, need to be treated with just as much respect as any other;
(b) managers cannot rely on their management skills to make them experts in inclusion and diversity;
(c) this is an area of competition between businesses, and the businesses that continue to respond and adapt to the ever-more accurate field of inclusion and diversity (new developments do not add "new" minorities/issues, they recognise the groups/issues that were always there and were being overlooked/ignored/inadequately addressed) more effectively will outcompete their rivals for diversity of thinking and creativity. 

Short-sightedness vs. flexibility / allowing for difference
There was a time in my life when I travelled 2 hours each way, to and from work.

To stay alive (and I work in a profession with too much experience of people falling asleep while driving), I would have a power nap after work, before I drove home. This was something unusual, and therefore inherently threatening to some people in the workplace, so I copped a lot of criticism.

However, I rated my safety above their minor discomfort, and thus continued it.

One of the other things about naps, is that they can give people a boost to their productivity. There are some guides around this (e.g., don't nap for too long), but, above all else, the min issue is, in my opinion, accepting the reality that people are all different, and thus any management needs to have the flexibility to allow people to best adapt for their personal differences. This is a particular problem if a manager has only experience of "coping"/doing things in one way (e.g., just push harder / "push through"), possibly not realising how much that has harmed their own productivity (guilt and fear in relation to perceptions of possible laziness are a major block to efficient productivity), they are unlikely to recognise that such flexibility as allowing people to nap is better for their business.

Thus, in this era of inadequate / poor sleep, this article has been published on this topic.

Sham actions / "lip service" / "tinkering round the (management) edges"
This abstract reports that evidence questions whether workplace wellness programmes actually have any benefit.

And that is a lead in to the concept of tinkering round the (management) edges, rather than addressing the issue.

It is a very human reaction to, when faced by an overwhelming or apparently insoluble problem, choose to find and focus on something that can be done and feels within one's capabilities, rather than necessarily chasing after the true cause(s) and solution(s).

Let me illustrate that flaw with a few examples.

Our response to declining housing affordability and growing risks of homelessness, particularly for the elderly, has been to look at market approaches - first home buyer grants, tinkering with supply and demand, etc.

NOTHING has been done about increasingly unrealistic expectations around house size, the basic and inherently flawed view that housing is a way to build wealth instead of having a place to live securely, and the flow on impacts from that, such as pressure to maintain housing value, which is an inherent tension against reducing housing costs so that more people can afford to buy houses.

If we had, as a society, given up the stupid idea of feeling like we're one of the rich elites by having a flashier and higher value house (not a home, a big, flashy palace that is bad for the environment financial security, and needs lots of housework), we could have introduced measures like allowing tiny homes and investing in social housing. We might even have found a way to work with the house building industry to ensure this is done more sustainably!

I'll come back to climate shortly (on that,I'm looking forward to the new green cement, and a house built out of concrete to last for centuries, as houses used to be built, is going to be one of the best ways to reduce environmental impact - which, of course, means people have to stop redecorating/renovating in order to make money), but I'll finish this topic by pointing out that all politicians who have rental properties have a conflict of interest when discussing ways to improve housing affordability.

Think about that: they need renters, and reducing the number of renters means they might have to do things like lower rents or treat renters decently, so there are financial incentives in their favour if they only put on a façade of addressing housing unaffordability, rather than genuinely doing so.

Taking that last comment further, there can be a focus on counting problems (e.g., wage gaps) to delay doing anything, rather than to gather data to enable better change. I came across this most clearly in the 80s, when white male managers refused to provide additional female toilets in buildings on the excuse that they didn't know how many extra to provide, rather than acknowledging a known problem and making an effort to address it.

Another example (and I am doing a full post on this sort of problem when I can) is nominal catering for TGD issues - programmes/policies/pronouncements about everything (pay, etc) except the issues that do the most to actively kill TGD people: misgendering and deadnaming. That way, it is possible for companies to say "buy hey, we're treating them the same as others" - which  ignores differentiated bullying.

The final example of sham responses rather than taking real action is . . . climate change.