At a recent conference, a panel discussed the support they received from their senior team. When I asked whether they felt the support was genuine, one person said yes; the rest looked down and said they were unsure. It felt genuine, but it had yet to show up in any meaningful way.
So why can support feel real, yet fail to land?
Most organisations are trying to build support for EDI through values, leadership commitment, and visible initiatives. The assumption is that if people believe in equality, they will act on it.
But it does not work the way people expect.
It is easy to default to “good” and “bad” here. Good people support EDI and bad people do not. But by now, we know the world is not a Marvel film. Few of us are heroes or villains. Most of us are just trying to do our best.
Which is exactly why this question matters.
Why does empty EDI support feel genuine?
Our research in organisational justice helps answer that.
We surveyed over 700 people across three organisations. When we looked at personal values of equality, how people feel about equality when there is no one else around, responses were broadly similar. There was no significant difference between organisations.
However, when we asked about attitudes towards organisational approaches to equality, those attitudes were not aligned with personal values. Instead, they were strongly influenced by perceptions of fairness.
When people perceived their organisation as unfair, they held negative attitudes towards organisational equality approaches. When they perceived it as fair, they held positive attitudes.
So when leaders say they value equality, they are not lying. But for those values to translate into action, they need to believe the organisation itself is fair.
Curious to see where your organisation or team ranks with EDI?
Take our quick assessment to find out how effective at EDI your environment is.
Beyond leaders
Beyond leaders, perceptions of fairness are just as important. We see examples of how our perceptions of fairness undermine our personal beliefs, our response to others and our feelings about the workplace.
Research by Brown et al. (2000) found that women who believed they had been selected because of their gender performed worse than those who believed they had been selected on merit or at random. In a follow-up study in higher education, the same pattern emerged: students who believed they had benefited from affirmative action achieved lower grade point averages.
The issue here is not the intervention itself, but how it is perceived. Beliefs about fairness shape outcomes.
A study by Dover et al. (2016), involving 135 participants, found that organisations with diversity awards were more likely to be viewed as fair and respectful by white participants and some Latino participants. On the surface, that sounds positive.
However, those same participants were also more likely to dismiss or undermine individuals who raised claims of discrimination within those organisations.
In other words, in unfair environments, visible signals of “achievement” can reduce the likelihood that ongoing issues are taken seriously, as organisations are now perceived as “equal” and therefore complaints are assumed to be unfounded.
We see a similar pattern in research by Plaut et al. (2011). Across five studies, white participants were less supportive of multiculturalism than racial minority groups and were less likely to see it as inclusive. What is intended as an inclusive approach can, in some contexts, be experienced as unfair by dominant groups.
Across these studies, the consistent theme is that it is not the intervention itself that drives outcomes, but how fair it is perceived to be.
What does this mean in practice?
So if the issue is not belief, but perceived fairness, the question becomes: how fair does your organisation feel to the people within it?
By understanding perceptions of fairness in an organisation, we can make fairly solid predictions regarding where there is likely to be support and resistance to equality approaches. This can then be used to strengthen our strategy and initiatives, enabling us to design work that has a real chance of gaining traction rather than ending up in a frustrating situation for everyone involved.
What this gives you
This gives us something to work with.
It allows you to anticipate where equality work will gain traction and where it will be resisted.
It means you can design work that aligns with how the organisation is experienced, rather than how it is intended.
It reduces the risk of investing in initiatives that appear strong on paper but fail in practice.
Summary
EDI does not fail because people do not believe in equality.
It fails because those beliefs are not supported by a fair environment.
So before you design your next initiative, start by understanding how fairness is experienced in your organisation.
Recommended learning: Research Realities ‘how fairness improves organisational effectiveness’ https://thecobe.co.uk/research-realities/
As ever, we use Fairness, Inclusion and Equity (FIE) in our practice because we are clear about what each of those terms means and why they need to be applied in that order. We use EDI terminology here as it is more widely recognised.
