Does Your Firm Suffer From OCD?
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Are you performing proactive statistical analyses of your employment decisions? If you don’t perform these analyses, is it because you are afraid of what those analyses might show? If so, your firm may suffer from Organizational OCD. You won’t find Organizational OCD in the DSM-IV, and it’s not an official medical diagnosis. But it’s a problem I see all too often.

OCD is an anxiety disorder in which a person has an unreasonable fear that she tries to manage through a ritualized activity to reduce the anxiety. In the case of proactive statistical analyses, the fear is that the analyses will be “bad” and show disparate patterns in gender, race, age, or other protected group definition. Some of the most common “rituals” to reduce the bad analysis anxiety include:

• denial: firms completely ignore the issue and pretend if they don’t acknowledge it, it’s not real;
• making up excuses: “we’re not big enough to have to worry about that”;
• false sense of safety based on past events: “we’ve never had a problem before, so we won’t have a problem in the future”;
• overconfidence: “we don’t need to do that because I know we’re doing things equitably”;
• financial justification: “we don’t have the time / money / resources to do that”;
• dismissal: firms downplay the importance of these analyses and discount the information they provide.

The most commonly used treatment method for OCD is exposure and response prevention (ERP). The idea behind ERP is that an individual is confronted with their fear and doesn’t engage in their escape response. This allows an individual to become used to the feared stimulus. While ERP causes some anxiety in the short term, symptoms are greatly reduced in the long term.

For those suffering from Organizational OCD, here’s an idea for your first exposure. It’s a thought experiment; it won’t create any real-life problems in terms of litigation or EEOC investigations. Remember – once you start thinking, don’t engage in any of the “rituals”!

Imagine that you’ve just reviewed the results of a (hiring / promotion / compensation / termination) analysis, and the results show significant disparities by gender / race / age / disability / etc. You’re confronted with the “bad analysis”. What do you do? You can’t pretend it doesn’t exist – the numbers are right in front of you. Now start to think about how to remedy the situation. What would you need to do to reduce the gender / race / age / disability / etc., disparities? It will take some time and resources (and likely some money) to get to equity, but can you afford not to? If you’re sued, it will cost you a lot more – the average cost of defending an employment practices lawsuit is $250,000, not including verdict or settlement amounts, lost productivity, and the effects of bad publicity. In most cases, you can fix the problem for a lot less than this. Not only will you be reducing your risk of employment practices litigation, you’ll be creating a better working environment and you’ll be a better employer. Productivity and morale will improve, and you’ll be better at attracting and retaining top talent. You’ll be a Proactive Employer.

Is the possibility of a “bad analysis” starting to sound less scary? But there’s no guarantee that your proactive analyses will reveal “bad” results – it could be the case that the analyses indicate no significant disparities. But there’s no way of knowing unless you start looking...Once you’ve gotten through this first exposure, the next step is to begin a conversation about actually performing some of these analyses. If you can have that conversation and begin planning to do these self-audits, you’re well on your way to overcoming Organizational OCD and becoming a Proactive Employer.