Equity versus Equality
Similar words, similar meanings. Not exactly. Unfortunately, some organizations think that as long as they are providing equal employment opportunity, they don’t see the need to have a DEI initiative. They don’t see any distinction. Let’s look at why this may be misguided thinking.
Equity, the E in DEI, is about providing access to opportunity and access to advancement. It's looking at what individual needs are. While equity and equality are often confused, equity goes beyond equality and establishing a level playing field. How do organization get to be equal opportunity employers? By providing equity to people. There's a fine line between these terms, but the distinction is important.
Explaining equality as providing a level playing field, translates to everyone getting the same exact resources regardless of their individual circumstances and their individual needs. It's one-size-fits-all. Equality would be giving everyone in the band a guitar, even if some played woodwinds.
Equity, however, looks at individual considerations. It's recognizing and assessing what different circumstances and needs are before you provide resources to individuals. Equity, in contrast, is giving everyone an instrument—the type of instrument they played, strings, percussion, brass, woodwinds or keyboards.
Consider the company establishing a management principle to treat everyone with fairness and respect. They didn't say to treat everyone equally because not everyone nor every set of circumstances is equal—one size does not fit all. To them, people included not only their employees but clients, service providers and members of the community. They consider different employee circumstances, for example tenure, when making employee decisions.
Individual needs are considered when making a reasonable accommodation. For example, a hospital provides language translation to people whose first language is not English to assure an equitable environment. If a company provides closed captioning to make webinars accessible to hearing-impaired individuals, must they give participants who don’t need it something else to level the playing field?
Allocation of training and resources exemplifies equity. Employees placed in new roles being impacted by new technology receive specialized training in the skill. That doesn’t require offering it to everyone in the organization because everyone may not need it. Organizations encounter this all the time with upskilling and reskilling.
These distinctions may seem slight, but they are important when discussing equality versus equity, because equity is such an important piece of DEI.
Equity is eliminating barriers. It’s guaranteeing fair and respectful treatment to everyone, and for employees it’s providing access to opportunity and advancement.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion work together to power retention, performance, innovation, as well as customer and stakeholder impact.