Last month’s Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions may have ripple effects beyond education and into the corporate workplace.
“At a minimum, it is going to impact the racial diversity of hiring pipelines for years to come,” said Kieran Snyder, CEO of workplace language guidance startup Textio.
The ruling makes race-based admissions policies illegal at U.S. colleges and universities.
“A decrease in diversity at academic institutions puts an increased burden on employers to hire and develop candidates from underrepresented and underestimated groups,” said Mikaela Kiner, CEO of Seattle-based HR firm Reverb.
Last year nearly 70 companies, including Apple and Google, signed an amicus brief related to the Supreme Court case supporting affirmative action in higher education.
“[DEI] efforts depend on university admissions programs that lead to graduates educated in racially and ethnically diverse environments,” noted the brief.
The ruling does not affect existing laws that prohibit employers from making hiring decisions based on race. But many companies have placed more investment and emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives following the death of George Floyd in 2020, Kiner said.
Kiner pointed to research showing that diversity and inclusion help companies attract more job seekers, and lead to increased innovation, productivity, and profits.
Lori Castillo Martinez, chief equality officer at Salesforce, tweeted that the ruling was a “setback for equality.”
Legal experts say the ruling could force companies to scale back corporate DEI efforts to ensure they are in compliance with the law. That could add to a reported decrease in emphasis on DEI and social justice issues for some companies in recent years.
Amazon said it remains committed to helping students from underrepresented groups pursue careers at the company, according to spokesperson August Aldebot-Green. The Seattle tech giant always investigates potential impact of any legal decision on its programs and adjusts as necessary to comply with law, Aldebot-Green said.
Crystal Farh, a University of Washington professor who studies the impact of diversity on team performance, said moving beyond “surface-level cues” — one’s race or social identity, for example — could be a step forward in helping identify differences in thought, experience, and perspectives, or what she describes as “cognitive diversity.”
“Policies that focus on one’s racial identity are in some ways a ‘shortcut’ approach to getting to those deep-level differences that are so valuable for innovation,” she said. “But as we all know, shortcuts do not always work, and surface-level differences are not always indicative of deep-level differences.”
Farh said policies that ditch surface-level differences may lower representation, which can leave individuals with underrepresented social identities more threatened and isolated.
“It is a complex issue,” Farh said. “If organizations indeed move away from considering race in hiring decisions, it is my hope that they come up with an effective a system for detecting true signals of underlying quality.”
Prem Kumar, CEO of Seattle recruiting software startup Humanly, said hiring managers are starting to focus more on skills, versus educational credentials and experience requirements. He encouraged leaders to identify critical skills to operate their companies, and figure out what schools are prioritizing those traits.
Navigating the current landscape will require many companies to recruit from educational institutions that nurture diverse talent, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities, said O. David Jackson, assistant dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the Seattle University Albers School of Business and Economics.
Jackson, a former HR director at Microsoft, advised leaders to ensure diverse talent can thrive once joining a company.
“Building an enduring organizational culture is one of the truest cornerstones of business leadership,” he said.
Snyder, whose startup helps companies reduce bias in hiring, said building a racially diverse workplace is a “fundamental business issue.”
“If your customer base is rapidly diversifying but your own team’s diversity isn’t keeping pace, it’s impossible to serve the needs of your customers,” she said. “Companies that can’t appropriately serve the needs of their diversifying customer base will fail.”
