Social Relationships Create Social Reality: Employment Security
Another aspect of everyday life that makes social relationships creating social reality more concrete is the employment experience. For every good experience, there are a multitude of souls who work every day feeling undervalued, externalized, and/or exploited. Many believe that the best tactic is to ‘grin and bear it,’ deciding that adjustment is more rational than disruption. But a precious few of us believe that moving to a higher plane in employment security can unlock a treasure trove of human capabilities that will push organizations forward and, by extension, strengthen the economy as a whole.
There are numerous interconnected elements that define employment security, but two of the principal elements are occupational equity at the group level and the sense of belonging that one feels at the individual level. It is simply a historical fact that corporate culture in the U.S. was built around White/European ways of being and the assumed inferiority of non-White people. One of the legacies of the Civil Rights Movement was pushing against the underlying racist assumption that Black Americans and other racialized minorities had little or nothing to contribute to the business and civic worlds outside of menial labor. What we now know as DEI is part of a more elongated struggle for a nexus of employment defined by equal opportunity, full inclusion, and mutual respect.
The promise of occupational equity at the macro level and interracial belonging at the organizational level is a much larger pie of resources and a stronger table to uphold and stabilize the pie. Given the prosperity that has been generated to this point, how much more is possible when employees feel ennobled and honored by the organizations they serve and feel empowered to contribute their best work and ideas? Kiaspo has delivered and will continue to deliver meaningful insights on employment security through comprehensive studies sparked by the service dreams of our clients and through our branch services, where we curate geographically specific data on occupational equity and provide surveys-as-a-service on cultural climate. We love nothing more than providing the best in research services for those who serve.
