OptIn or Burn Out: The Value of Opt-In Policies for Marginalized Employees

Abstract

In recent years, organizations have begun to implement more diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. These initiatives are implemented with the goals of increasing representation, reducing inequities, and improving the experiences of marginalized people. To date, organizations—and organizational scholars—have focused their attention on assessing how effective these initiatives are. Yet, in this chapter, we contend that how these initiatives are implemented requires scrutiny. Extant research indicates that organizational leaders will oftentimes turn to their marginalized employees to develop, implement, and/or facilitate these initiatives. We advance this research to offer a potential explanation for this pattern: organizational leaders believe that marginalized people—simply by virtue of their identity—have the most experience and know-how to take on these tasks. We then summarize how this decision-making pattern can generate negative (albeit unintended) consequences for marginalized people. Next, we propose a strategy for mitigating these consequences—while simultaneously increasing non-marginalized employees’ desire to participate. Specifically, we propose that organizations can create an opt-in incentivized infrastructure, where employees can opt into participating in the initiative, rather than being voluntold or implicitly pressured to participate.