I spend a lot of my time reading and talking about age and employment, specifically within tech. So diversity and inclusion policies and practices are common topics, and I thought I knew my way around them. But until a few months ago, I had not noticed the term equity sitting in the diversity and inclusion vocabulary.
I first encountered equity when a group was forming to fight against ageism in the workplace, and its grassroots members were choosing a name. After much discussion and voting, the winner was Age Equity Alliance. This had me scratching my head. Wasn’t equity too vague to have impact? Only then, and a little research later, did I realize equity is a mainstream concept in hiring and HR. And of course, as so often happens, from that moment on, I saw equity everywhere.
According to Merriam Webster, equity in this context is defined as: “freedom from bias or favoritism.” Applied to employment, it means equal opportunity for full advancement. A common graphic explanation involves three kids trying to look over a fence at a baseball game, each standing on a box. The tall guy towers over the fence. The shorter one can see, but just barely. And the shortest kid can’t see at all. The solution for everyone to see: The tallest doesn’t need a box at all, the middle guy needs one box, and the shortest needs two boxes.
Equity is not the same as equality. The three kids described above had equality–they each had one box. But to have equity, the boxes needed to be redistributed.
What does equity look like in the workplace? Age equity, for example, may mean that a company would on one hand retain the experienced employee with institutional knowledge and leadership skills, while also providing support with new technologies so that knowledge can be shared easily. Employees in other age groups would bring different skills to the table–and together, the range of skills makes the company stronger.
A side note: The word equity is commonly used in startups and tech companies to mean a portion of ownership. This is why I initially had trouble with equity applied to ageism. The equity you gain through stock options? Well, we’re not talking about that when we talk about age equity.
A further side note: There is also something called Equity Theory, which is related but not quite the same. It was developed by John Stacey Adams in 1963 and posits that employees will be most highly motivated and produce the best work when they believe the rewards for their work are fair. This isn’t just about compensation, but also about expectations and how work is evaluated. While not the same as equity in terms of diversity, it actually arrives at a similar conclusion: Fairness benefits both the employee and employer.
In the last months, as the conversation around racial diversity in the workplace has become front and center, I have noticed lots of language around equity. It’s the third leg of the stool: diversity aims for a workplace where all types of people are well represented; inclusion happens when they all feel welcome; and equity is provided when all groups are offered equal opportunity.
I believe language is important, and refining it is often a precursor to real change. So my hope is that the refinement of this vocabulary is a step in the right direction.