5 Ways To Address Social Equity on Projects

Bruce is the founder of ProjectManagementHacks.com, a resource for growing IT project managers.

  Organizational Culture  

Some readers might wonder how social justice issues relate to project management. Traditionally, these issues are not considered a central issue in projects. However, projects take place in the real world. We cannot achieve success in a project if the company goes under due to employee turnover, protests and boycotts.

I’m not suggesting that project managers become professional activists or politicians. Instead, I suggest we give more time and attention to discrimination and equity in our daily work. After all, there is compelling research from McKinsey & Co, a global consulting firm, that more diverse companies tend to have significant financial performance than less diverse teams.

Practical Ways To Address Equity
Depending on where you are in the project lifecycle, this menu of options can help you improve your efforts:

1. Project planning and business case development: As the project vision is developed, look for ways to include equity as a key project objective. For example, can you use the project as an opportunity to shine a spotlight on diverse project team members? Formally recognizing equity as a project objective can go a long way.

By the way, you might find senior executives are supportive of such goals in the workplace. Reuters reported in 2020 that many top CEOs now advocate social responsibility ahead of profits. Therefore, advancing social …

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