The Farmer and The Cowman Should Be Friends

Forty eight years ago, when ORC started what we now call our equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) practice in the U.S., it was really an equality practice, and the main focus was compliance under the new laws and regulations that were emerging from the U.S. federal government. Later, especially in the 1990s, as the concept of diversity as an organisational effectiveness strategy gained traction in the U.S. and as outside the U.S., voluntary actions by companies emerged as the dominant policy rather than government mandates, the compliance side of the house somehow fell out of favour. Some U.S. organisations decided to separate the diversity function from compliance in order to remove the ‘bad taste’ that affirmative action left in the mouths of some people and to promote diversity’s status as a business initiative. In organisations where diversity and compliance continued to reside in the same function, they were still often managed as separate activities with little coordination between the two. Compliance managers sometimes complained that they were not valued as highly as their diversity colleagues, were given lower job levels and titles, and generally treated as necessary, but not really core to the enterprise’s success.
Although some organisations in the U.S. have begun to reintegrate the two areas, for many compliance folks the feeling of second class citizenship and lack of integration remains. Nita Beecher, chair of ORC’s employment law and compliance networks, calls this the Farmer and The Cowman syndrome (referring to song lyrics from the musical Oklahoma). It’s becoming increasingly important for these two groups to work in close tandem, Nita argues, if for no other reason than that line managers are getting fed up with having to respond to two sets of requirements and reports that often don’t seem to mesh. More importantly, the legal context is changing around the world. Legislatures, regulatory agencies, and courts are recognizing new rights and imposing new duties in many countries. Companies are under increasing pressure to meet expectations of corporate responsibility, which include compliance with voluntary and mandated codes. Employees and advocacy groups are calling for more monitoring and accountability which, especially in global companies, raise complex legal questions about privacy. Diversity practitioners are going to need their compliance experts to help them make sense of all this and integrate it into their strategies, and the compliance experts need to work through their diversity partners to make the organisation-wide change necessary to meet the spirit as well as the letter of these new mandates. As the song says, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.
ORC will be exploring this topic further with our members over the coming months, and we’ll keep you updated on our findings and conclusions.