Editorials: Using I-O Psychology to Advance DEI in the Workplace

What Is Industrial-Organizational Psychology?

How I-O Psychologists Help Organizations Advance Their DEI Efforts

Industrial-organizational psychology focuses on how people experience work and how the design of roles, systems, and environments shapes performance, well-being, and leadership over time. I-O psychologists study these dynamics using psychological research methods that are intended to help organizations function more intentionally and humanely. In business settings, they apply these scientific research methods, which include surveys, interviews, and performance data analysis, in order to examine the ways that people and systems operate. When applying research methods, the goal is to improve how leadership, work design, and people systems function together. In practice, this work integrates:

• Evaluation and diagnosis to understand how work is actually experienced
• Data synthesis so insight is clear, usable, and actionable
• Work design and role clarity to reduce friction and overload
• Leadership development across the employee and leadership lifecycle
• Behavioral and systems-level interventions that change patterns rather than describe them

Think of I-O psychology as a specialized field within organizational development (OD). It assesses human behavior in the context of organizational settings, so it examines how individual, group, and organizational dynamics intersect and work together to create a company’s overall organizational structure. Areas such as employee performance, organizational climate and culture, leadership, recruitment and hiring strategies, training and development, and workplace well-being are factors that influence a company’s organizational health. For example, if one area of organizational development needs assessment, such as a company’s DEI pipeline, then an I-O psychology practitioner or a DEI practitioner will step in and identify specific areas of improvement; these areas may include the company’s hiring processes, employee engagement, accountability metrics, or employee lifecycle.

Challenges With DEI

As societies become more and more diverse in the 21st century, the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has received considerable attention and is being intensely discussed in business and society (Einwiller et al., 2025). Although this is the case, DEI initiatives have been ineffective in bridging opportunity gaps and eliminating systemic barriers in organizations across all industries. With the Trump administration set in place, DEI has now become politicized in the sense that it has evolved into a contentious cultural and economic battleground where it has received not only media backlash but systemic pushback in public universities, government agencies, and organizations. Although more organizations across various industries have set DEI as one of their core values, structural inequality in the workplace continues to persist and reinforce unequal opportunity outcomes for those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. This phenomenon mostly impacts historically marginalized groups such as racial/ ethnic minorities, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals because they are statistically more likely to be underrepresented in high level and leadership positions across many industries compared to their White counterparts. There are many possible factors contributing to this problem, among which are unconscious bias, broken DEI pipelines, lack of initiative in reaching out to a diverse talent pool, attrition issues, and others.

Funneling The DEI Pipeline

Much of the backlash around DEI is rooted in fear and a lack of understanding. Engaging in critical DEI discourse causes discomfort, invites criticism, and discourages engagement. To make headway, it is crucial to include more people in these efforts because understanding the role that both advantaged and disadvantaged groups play in advancing DEI is essential in reducing resistance, fostering shared responsibility for systemic change, and preventing “zero-sum” thinking, where progress for one group is viewed as a loss for another (Harmata et al., 2024). Moreover, DEI practitioners and I-O psychologists also play a pivotal role in advancing DEI because they understand that in order to facilitate cultural and behavioral change in organizations, systemic change must take place; in other words, DEI must be embedded in organizational policy because it operates as both a macro (systemic) and micro (individual) concept. When executed effectively, DEI accomplishes the following:

 

1.      Reduces bias through evidence-based promotion and hiring: I-O psychologists reduce bias by conducting structured job analyses that define necessary skills (KSAOs) rather than relying on gut instinct. This helps in identifying and recruiting diverse candidates, reducing unfair hiring practices.

2.      Incorporates systemic assessment and data analytics to identify systematic barriers that adversely impact underrepresented groups: Instead of relying on symbolic gestures, I-O experts measure and analyze DEI metrics, such as adverse impact analyses, turnover rates for underrepresented groups, and employee engagement surveys to identify areas for improvement.

3.      Promotes inclusive leadership and culture: They foster inclusive environments that promote a sense of belonging and psychological safety, which in turn enhances creativity, innovation, and productivity.

4.      Addresses workplace bias: Professionals in this field address implicit biases, microaggressions, and systemic inequalities, ensuring policies are equitable across all levels of the organization.

5.      Encourages shared responsibility and enhances psychological safety: Effective DEI requires systemic change, which cannot happen without the support of those who hold power in the current structure. Including them ensures they are active allies rather than passive or active roadblocks. Moreover, those who hold power or come from an advantaged group have the responsibility of amplifying marginalized voices because this not only builds trust, empathy, and psychological safety, but it also ensures that overlooked perspectives will be brought to the table, which will ultimately lead to more innovative business solutions.

 

Organizational leaders who are committed to DEI will generate pragmatic solutions to maintaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment, such as educating its staff, listening and communicating effectively, encouraging employees to be their full authentic selves, helping employees use their voice, and nurturing everyone’s creative input. These aforementioned strategies present themselves as concrete goals that lead to small improvements overtime and a gradual, positive shift in an organization’s work environment. If DEI research can be applied in an organizational setting, then this will test how well organizational leaders can use this research to address and tackle their DEI related organizational challenges. Research that can successfully be applied in any business means that organizations can use that research to answer questions about their organizational policies and work culture, and use whatever information they have gathered to redefine their vision, mission, and values.

References

Einwiller, S. A., Wolfgruber, D., & Leitner, A. K. (2025). Addressing backlash? Corporate DEI communication and user complaints on social media. Journal of Marketing Communications, 31(5), 556–574. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527266.2025.2471954

Harmata, R., Argote, N., Romain, R., & Feitosa, J. (2024). Igniting progress: SIOP’s role in advocating DEI policy change. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 17(4), 516–519. https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2024.55

---

The Power of Privilege and the Role of Empathy in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI):
Using Power and Privilege for Good

Defining and Recognizing Privilege

The systemic and structural inequalities that US society produces play a role in shaping organizational cultures and workplace bureaucracies. Let’s examine one system of privilege that reinforces structural inequality: White privilege. White privilege can best be understood as an ideology that normalizes the White identity and grants White people the privilege to create a culture where their ideas, customs, and beliefs operate as the standard by which all other racial groups are compared. The advantages that Whiteness yields for White people make it an asset that only White people have exclusive rights to, so therefore, they can leverage it for their own benefits. In this sense, Whiteness can be compared to property in that it is reified and has value, so Whiteness as a property allows for the systemic maintenance of White privilege (DeCuir-Gunby, & Gunby, 2016).

Defining Whiteness in the Context of Privilege

Whiteness is an ideology and a powerful social construct that creates a set of values and norms in which inequitable social/economic relations are structured and reproduced through notions of race, class, gender, and nation. In other words, Whiteness is a dominant cultural space that has enormous political and economic significance, and its role is to keep others on the margin. This is how White advantage is reproduced. White privilege is so pervasive and insidious that it not only affects people’s thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and worldviews, but it also influences how they navigate through social and professional spaces. When looking at Whiteness in professional spaces, it is no secret that it influences workplace norms regarding HR policies, recruiting and hiring practices, leadership representation, career advancement opportunities, equal pay, and so on.

Like the larger society we live in, racial inequality in the workplace creates different outcomes for White people and people of color, and even though blatant discrimination appears to be declining in American workplaces, more ambiguous manifestations of prejudice continue to persist (Offermann et al., 2014). For example, social acceptance can create causal uncertainty, with members of minority groups interpreting positive feedback from a majority group member as causally ambiguous and potentially disingenuous (Offermann et al., 2014). These types of situations can represent ambiguous exchanges with racial overtones where subtle discrimination is seen as a case-by-case occurrence. Thus, looking at discrimination from an attributional perspective would be helpful in examining individual differences in perceptions of subtle discrimination (Offermann et al., 2014).

Turning Privilege Into Progress

Moreover, if organizations are able to provide a comprehensive education plan in which all organizational leaders and employees can learn about concepts like microaggressions, microaffirmations, stereotype threat, imposter syndrome, psychological safety, and psychological capital, then gaining this kind of exposure can prepare organizational leaders to develop strategies to combat overt and covert discrimination. The learning process is the first step to teach self-awareness of thoughts, feelings, and actions. After awareness comes change. To create a workplace culture of inclusivity and solidarity, battling subtle discrimination will take more than rules, laws, and regulations; it will likely require value and attitude changes (Offermann et al., 2014). For example, encouraging empathy is an important value for instilling a sense of responsibility and accountability. In other words, empathy means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel (Terry, 2021). Empathy will open people’s minds and hearts and make them more receptive to listen, learn, and become change agents. When organizational leaders can practice empathy, they will be able to lead by example, act as advocates for systemic, equitable change, and motivate others to get involved in creating change.

Reference

DeCuir-Gunby, J. T., & Gunby, N. W. (2016). Racial microaggressions in the workplace. Urban Education, 51(4), 390–414. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085916628610

Offermann, L. R., Basford, T. E., Graebner, R., Jaffer, S., De Graaf, S. B., & Kaminsky, S. E. (2014). See no evil: Color blindness and perceptions of subtle racial discrimination in the workplace. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 20(4), 499–507. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037237

Terry, P. E. (2021). Crossing the empathy chasm: Unpacking a knapsack full of unearned advantage. American Journal of Health Promotion, 35(5), 604–608. https://doi.org/10.1177/08901171211011266

 

A Philosophical Stance:
What is Your DEI Philosophy and How Does It Intersect With Social Justice and Systemic Change?

As a philosophical approach, the aim of critical theory is to diagnose the problems of modern society and identify the nature of social change needed to produce just and democratic societies (Bechara & Van de Ven, 2011). If critical theory can be introduced to organizations, then it can provide a theoretical framework on how to look at current organizational systems and challenge hegemonic power structures that limit equal opportunity. Thus, incorporating critical theory into the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion can be very helpful when examining an organization’s workplace, identifying specific flaws that are contributing to a broken DEI pipeline, and creating solutions that will lead to long-term, positive changes. Critical theory and DEI are very similar in their ideological perspective; they both maintain hope that knowledge can lead to emancipation and progress (Bechara & Van de Ven, 2011). By disseminating knowledge to organizational leaders who want to learn about DEI, the hope is that they will use that knowledge to incorporate DEI into their organizational policies and make DEI a part of their mission, vision, and values.

This is where pragmatism comes into play, which is another philosophical approach that can advance organizational leaders’ understanding of how DEI can drive organizational success, if implemented effectively. Pragmatism emphasizes the relationship between knowledge and action, in which knowledge is “truthful” to the extent that it is successful in guiding action (Bechara & Van de Ven, 2011). In other words, pragmatism is about practice or taking action. The success of an organization starts with what organizational leaders value, and if DEI is a prioritized value, then it will represent an organization’s overall workplace culture. Organizational leaders who are committed to DEI will generate pragmatic solutions to maintaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment, such as educating its staff, listening and communicating effectively, encouraging employees to be their full authentic selves, helping employees use their voice, and nurturing everyone’s creative input. These outcomes would be great examples of a successful DEI pipeline. Having organizational leaders stimulate conversation around DEI is a participant frame of reference that requires an open-minded attitude because having the willingness to learn will encourage engagement and learning with others (Bechara & Van de Ven, 2011). This engagement can lead to self-reflection because not being aware of one’s own privilege can unintentionally create barriers for marginalized groups – barriers that can become a hindrance to their educational or career success.

Reference

Bechara, J. P., & Van de Ven, A. H. (2011). Philosophy of science underlying engaged scholarship. In A. Van de Ven (Ed.), Engaged scholarship: A guide for organizational and social research (pp. 36-70). Oxford.

 

Using DEI as a Tool for Success: Cultivating a Culture of Belonging

DEI work helps us understand the nature of bias and it provides us with the tools and resources to combat bias in order to create more equitable work environments. DEI work also addresses concepts and issues that may seem foreign to individuals outside of the DEI spaces. For example, DEI practitioners would often use terms such as microaggressions, microaffirmations, stereotype threat, imposter syndrome, psychological safety, and psychological agency. However, these terms may not always be easily recognizable or understandable to organizational leaders across different industry sectors, so how can they be conceptualized in an easily digestible way? The first practical strategy is to educate your audience, which are the organizational leaders who want to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into their business pipeline.

If any business prides itself on fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment, then leaders are going to need to ask themselves critical questions such as, what can be done to create a welcoming work environment for female employees and racial, ethnic, and sexual minority employees? Does the organization have leadership that is well equipped to work with people from diverse backgrounds? Does the organization provide educational tools and resources that are effective in addressing the unique needs of female employees and racial and sexual minority employees? What does culture fit encompass? What competitive advantage does the organization have that helps attract and retain diverse talent and leadership? Does the organization’s vision, mission, and values align with diversity, equity, and inclusion work? Stimulating these kinds of questions can get organizational leaders to think about what they can do to successfully integrate diversity and inclusion strategies into their workplace culture.

The next helpful step is to set up workshops where people can learn what microaggressions, microaffirmations, stereotype threat, imposter syndrome, psychological safety, and psychological capital are. Providing definitions and specific examples for these terms can help guide leaders in their diversity and inclusion business plan. The more adequate resources organizations have, the more equipped organizational leaders will be in identifying certain behaviors that go against diversity and inclusion efforts and implementing policies that will protect those who are most vulnerable to any kind of intentional or unintentional discrimination. All in all, diversity, equity, and inclusion is a practice that is both micro and macro, meaning that it needs to be embedded in organizational policies so individuals can then normalize behaviors that will encourage the betterment of everyone.

References

Lalitha, D. J., S, M. V., Mahalakshmi, D. K., Nithyasri, Dr. M., & Ayyanar, Dr. G. (2025). An         empirical study on the influence of factors and challenges on organizational performance through DEI practices in manufacturing companies. Lex Localis-Journal of Local Self-    Government, 23(S6), 4201–4211. https://doi.org/10.52152/myc9bg92

Wickham, M. D., Fiedler, T., & Donnelly, T. I. (2025). Addressing the diversity paradox: A resource‐based view of DEI best practices. Sustainable Development, 33(4), 6260–6275. https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.3467

 

Defining Inclusive Leadership: Your Competitive Advantage in a Changing Workforce

 We define inclusive leadership as someone who is aware of differences in life experiences as they pertain to race, gender, sexuality, national origin, political and religious affiliation, educational level, and socioeconomic status. It is essential for achieving organizational success because it enhances team performance by ensuring that all team members are treated fairly and respectfully, are valued for their work, and feel confident and inspired.

They understand that psychological safety is correlated to how well others adapt to change, so they communicate and teach in a way that gets everyone on board with new ideas and new ways of doing things.

Inclusive leaders who understand and respect different identities, life experiences, and worldviews are also aware of positive and negative social biases that come with belonging to a particular demographic group. With that said, inclusive leaders can recognize that biases and preferences do indeed lead to different outcomes in accessing opportunity, so they aim to bridge opportunity gaps by leading holistically or investing in the collaborative development of everyone. They can successfully manage heterogenous groups because what they bring to the table is an authentic leadership style where they can rule out nepotism and discrimination, and respect the uniqueness of all individuals in an empathic, bias-free way. Hence, when employees work with inclusive leaders, they will feel valued for their input and will feel empowered to make major contributions in their place of work.

Moreover, inclusive leaders can inspire employees to participate in whatever business initiatives that they set in motion because inclusive leaders are able to adapt quickly to diverse scenarios and alternate perspectives with an open, nonjudgmental mind to bring on the best results possible. When teamwork is executed effectively, this leads to teams performing better and more collaboratively, and making overall better decisions. With businesses increasingly optimizing their diversity and inclusion activities, inclusive leadership is more relevant now than ever. The kind of skills, competencies, and characteristics that inclusive leaders possess include the following:

• Commitment
  • Personal values are the driving forces that influence a leader’s leadership style. Thus, knowing what your personal values are is crucial to understanding your leadership style, as they serve as the foundation of it.
  • Personal values: Individual conviction that inclusion is a desirable goal. Your business case beliefs will determine which direction you will go in when incorporating diversity and inclusion into an organization’s business pipeline.
  • Business case beliefs: Commercial value of diversity and inclusion with respect to talent, innovation, customers, and new market growth

• Cognizance of Bias
  • Leaders who know how to self-regulate can sustain safe and fair environments that have low drama and high productivity.
  • Self-regulation is essential in maintaining a fair and productive work environment because situations such as ethical dilemmas, interpersonal conflicts, and organizational crises call for appropriate emotional responses.
    • Self-regulation: The ability and tendency to recognize and address personal biases and their impacts
  • Fair play is an integral part of running a business because it influences people’s work behavior and shapes the overall workplace culture.
    • Fair play: An awareness of the components of fairness: outcomes, processes, and communication

• Curiosity
  • Leaders who are open and authentic can build professional relationships that are based on trust, honesty, communication, and respect.
  • Open-minded leadership leads to greater creative input because leaders will be able to see new pathways and patterns that will lead them down the road to success.
    • Openness: The willingness to listen to diverse ideas and experiences and integrate them into decision making
  • Taking others’ point of view into perspective is a skill that helps reduce egocentric thinking and improve the ability to seek out much-needed information.
    • Perspective taking: The desire and ability to understand other people’s points of view in a respectful way

• Cultural Intelligence
  • Successful diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace come with having the drive to lead with a mission.
    • Drive: Championing the benefits of becoming culturally competent
  • A leader who champions diversity and inclusion in the workplace is a leader who is knowledgeable.
    • Knowledge: An awareness of the differences and similarities between cultures
  • Being able to optimize diversity and leverage the power of inclusion involves knowing how to adapt to change.
    • Adaptability: Being capable of adjusting appropriately in cross-cultural situations

• Collaboration
  • Empowering others to achieve their greatest potentials will give people enough psychological safety to feel confident in their ability to contribute to a greater cause and create change.
    • Empowerment: The ability to ensure that others feel sufficiently able and comfortable to contribute independently
  • Dynamic teaming requires diversity and inclusion because being aware of both diversity and inclusion builds recognition and helps organizations consider situations on a deeper level than just a business strategy.
  • Teaming is essential to an organization’s ability to respond to opportunities and to improve internal processes.
    • Teaming: The ability to assemble and manage a diverse and cohesive team
    • Voice: Adapting styles and processes to ensure that every team member has a voice

• Courage
  • A leader who strives to create an inclusive environment must take a humble approach.
    • Humility: Awareness of personal strengths and weaknesses
  • A brave leader is a leader who is not afraid to break the status quo, transcend barriers, and inspire change for the betterment of everyone.
    • Bravery: Being an agent for change and the positive impact diversity and inclusion can have
  • A leader who is being faced with a precarious situation must possess a level of resilience and perseverance in order to achieve the goals that they set in motion, regardless of how many curve balls are being thrown at them.
    • Coping with uncertainty: The strength to support diversity and inclusion work for extended periods of time regardless of the outcome

Why Do We Need Inclusive Leadership?

Inclusive leaders are needed to set the tone for driving organizational change because if a business does not have an inclusive environment that embraces differences and creates a workspace where everyone can bring their true selves to work, then their DEI initiatives will fail. Treating diversity like a quota is also an ineffective method for fostering an inclusive workplace culture because diversity is not a numbers game. Diversity, equity, and inclusion ought to intersect because managing diversity is a complex goal, which can mean anything from ensuring equal employment opportunity compliance, to instituting cultural sensitivity training programs, to focusing on the recruitment and retention of racial and sexual minorities and women. Ultimately, if equity and inclusion are left out of the equation, then the benefits of having a diverse workforce will be rendered ineffective. An equitable and inclusive culture is one in which all people, regardless of their background and demographic makeup, feel welcome. Thus, it is imperative to position diversity, equity, and inclusion at the core of your company culture because these three factors can create high-performing, trusting, collaborative teams in which every member feels valued and contributes to the success of the group.

How to Be an Inclusive Leader and Sustain an Effective DEI Pipeline

If any business prides itself on fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment, then leaders are going to need to ask themselves critical questions such as, what can I do to create a welcoming work environment for female and racial, ethnic, and sexual minority employees? Do I have leadership that is well equipped to work with people from diverse backgrounds? Do I have tools and resources that are effective in addressing the unique needs of female and racial, ethnic, and sexual minority employees? What does culture fit encompass? What competitive advantage do I have that helps attract and retain diverse talent and diverse leadership? Do my values align with diversity, equity, and inclusion work? Stimulating these kinds of questions scan help organizational leaders start to think about what they can do to successfully make diversity, equity, and inclusion work a part of their business pipeline. Being an inclusive leader is a commitment that involves:

• Identifying your personal biases
• Declaring your commitment to inclusion and taking imperfect action
• Leading with humility and showing vulnerability
• Seeking out diverse perspectives
• Creating a safe environment for effective collaboration

Employees want leaders who will listen to them, respect them, validate them, and recognize them for their work because when they feel that their place of work invests in them, this will increase their psychological safety and psychological capital. Hence, employee satisfaction and employee productivity increases, creative input increases, and business productivity increases, which will maximize business revenue. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a practice that is both micro and macro, meaning that it needs to be embedded in organizational policies so individuals can then normalize behaviors that’ll encourage the betterment of everyone.

References

Sharma, L., Agarwal, P., Joshi, B. P., Kumar, N., & Tiwari, S. (2023). A study of impact of inclusive leadership on innovative behaviors and diversity at Workplace. Environment and Social Psychology, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.54517/esp.v9i1.1721

Yadav, N., & Tanwar, S. (2024). Exploring the enablers of organisational inclusion: An interpretive structural modelling approach. IMIB Journal of Innovation and Management. https://doi.org/10.1177/ijim.241245850

Why Working with Marginalized Communities Is Important in Advancing DEI Research: Ethical DEI Research

For future research, to enhance the study of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace, researchers should focus on enhancing and maintaining diversity in research participation. Having a large research sample that reflects the racial, gender, ethnic, cultural, political, and socioeconomic diversity of US society will help researchers provide robust research that can be generalized to the larger population. Moreover, if researchers are able to select and recruit diverse participants, especially minority participants, who come from diverse professional and educational backgrounds, then they will be able to provide research that can highlight the diverse range of thoughts and perspectives on how each participant defines discrimination in the workplace, how well they think their place of work promotes diversity, equity and inclusion, and how well they think their industry promotes diversity and inclusion.

It is also important to keep in mind that when selecting a diverse sample size for research, researchers must do all that they can to minimize conflicts of interest and make sure that the study is ethically acceptable by having an independent review panel review the study to check for any potentially biased or unethical procedures. Informed consent is another requirement for ethical research. Participants should accurately be informed of the purpose, methods, risks, benefits, and alternatives to the research, they should understand the information being presented to them, including how it relates to their own situation, and they should have the freedom to make a voluntary decision about whether to participate. Building trust with participants is paramount to successful research, so researchers should be open and transparent about confidentiality. Having participants sign consent forms and confidentiality forms can help them gain trust in knowing that their information will be protected.

When working with individuals from marginalized populations, it is especially important for researchers to practice transparency, since it is crucial for furthering scholarly knowledge. Research transparency can be broken down into three categories and these categories include: transparency about the research process (including data analysis); transparency about research ethics and researcher positionality; and transparency with regard to sharing primary source data (Lake et al., 2019). Transparency is also important because it signifies that a research study is robust and can be used for future references. When researchers are able to explain their project’s design by providing clear and extensive details about the project’s conceptualization, implementation and data analysis, as well as explaining how they came to their conclusions (Lake et al., 2019), this will tell that the research study is effective enough to be applied in a real-world setting. Hence, if DEI research can be applied in an organizational setting, then this will test how well organizational leaders can use this research to address and tackle DEI related organizational challenges. Research that can successfully be applied in any business means that organizations can use that research to answer questions about their products and services or policies and procedures and use whatever information they have gathered to make important business decisions.

Reference

Lake, M., Majic, S., & Maxwell, R. (2019). Research on vulnerable and marginalized populations. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3333511