Does Transparency and Open Culture Support Inclusion?

Eventida is transitioning from a SAAS and creative services business to a research and development lab studying inclusion. One of its research goals is to better understand how a culture of transparency and openness can impact diversity and inclusion. This article will explore existing knowledge, outline strategies for achieving the research goal, and explain how to get involved.

What We Know About Open Culture and Transparency

In the modern workplace, organizations are increasingly seeking to foster a more inclusive environment that encourages everyone to take part in decision-making processes. One way to do this is by promoting an open culture and transparency that allows for employees to have a voice and feel empowered to make meaningful contributions. However, too much transparency can be detrimental, and open culture also has its drawbacks.

Open Culture for Equity

Ideally, an open culture is one in which everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas, and to take part in decision-making processes. This can help create an environment in which all employees feel respected and valued, and have a sense of ownership over the decisions that are made. Open cultures also help foster collaboration and trust between employees, which can lead to more effective problem-solving and greater innovation.

“Some consider open source — with its emphasis on accessible source code — to be a subset of the broader open culture movement. The same is true for open organizational culture,” Red Hat states in Understanding open organizational culture, describing open culture as “a broader social and political movement focused on opening access to cultural artifacts and resources. Advocates, for example, will champion things like the use of Creative Commons licenses for making creative works more accessible, the digitization of texts so they’re accessible to new audiences and the visually impaired, the funding of institutions like the Internet Archive that democratize access to cultural artifacts, and legislation that curtails excessive copyright protections.”

Employees at all levels of an organization can benefit from working in an environment that supports an open organizational culture. They know that achievement matters more than title, so the best ideas win and the best projects succeed. They also use collective rather than hierarchical decision-making to inform their work.
Understanding open organizational culture, Red Hat

Transparency for Authenticity

Sarah Wilson, Chief People Officer at Rokt, believes that workplace transparency creates trust between employers and employees, leading to improved morale, decreased job-related stress, increased employee happiness, and better performance. Open communication and collaboration without fear is key to creating an inclusive culture. She writes that “at Rokt, culture philosophy is deeply rooted in complete transparency. Transparency is one of those often-used buzzwords that people like to use when trying to distinguish their company culture from others. However, its overuse should not subvert its importance.”

When implemented properly, workplace transparency creates trust between employers and employees.
Sarah Wilson, Building trust through transparency is the key to a people-first culture

Transparency can also help to reduce the feeling of being left out or excluded, as everyone is aware of what is happening at all times. Transparency can also help to prevent misunderstandings and conflicts, as all parties are aware of the facts and decisions that are being made.

When Transparency Becomes a Trap

Ethan Bernstein wrote about the downsides in the Harvard Business Review article, The Transparency Trap. “For all that transparency does to drive out wasteful practices and promote collaboration and shared learning, too much of it can trigger distortions of fact and counterproductive inhibitions. Unrehearsed, experimental behaviors sometimes cease altogether. Wide-open workspaces and copious real-time data on how individuals spend their time can leave employees feeling exposed and vulnerable.”

“Our sense of being “onstage” is growing,” Bernstein states, “… we spend more time acting, trying to control others’ impressions and avoid embarrassment — particularly at work. We cater to our audience, doing what’s expected,” and cites evidence from multiple studies. For example, in one of the world’s largest mobile phone factories, owned by a global contract manufacturer, the workers on one line were hiding process improvements they had made — not just from managers, but from their peers on other lines.

Some organizations have found the balance between privacy and transparency, reaping the benefits of both. According to Bernstein, these organizations consistently get the most innovative, productive, and thoughtful work from their employees. He identified four types of boundaries that create zones of privacy within open environments:

1. Boundaries Around Teams — even nominal team boundaries relieve the pressure of being onstage by keeping the audience small.
2. Boundaries Between Feedback and Evaluation — support inclusion by providing tools that separate data-informed feedback from the evaluation process, allowing employees to learn from their day-to-day actions without fear of exposing mistakes to management.
3. Boundaries Between Decision Rights and Improvement Rights — employees feel voiceless if they are not invited to contribute to improving systems, processes, roles, and tasks. Without an outlet to express their ideas, employees may withhold them or implement them without permission.
4. Boundaries Around Time — this type of boundary complements the other three, allowing employees more freedom to innovate and improve processes for a specified period of time.

When Open Culture is Inequitable

To understand the drawbacks of open culture, consider the open source technology movement. While it has many advantages, it also has disadvantages such as lack of support for learning, structural inequality, and difficulty building and maintaining a community. Moreover, it may not be suitable for larger codebases that are supported by full-time coders, as too many users opting for the free version can lead to the failure of the entire project.

It is “well known that open source has a diversity problem, and certain prominent figures have been accused of racism and sexism. Structural inequality may be less visible when individuals contribute to open source projects with relative anonymity, communicating only through emails or bulletin boards. But sometimes that anonymity begets feelings of disconnection, which can make the collaborative process less enjoyable, and less inclusive,” Peter Wayner reported in InfoWorld.

Open source culture values information sharing and community, but this presents a challenge in terms of commitment. Many developers are willing to share their code, but not necessarily to help others learn. Supporting the growth of other developers and contributors requires a major commitment.

Moreover, open source culture is about community, which requires time and resources to build and maintain. This gives larger companies an advantage over small businesses, as evidenced by their “community editions” of products released as open source. These are often used for marketing and to collect ideas and code for product improvement.

Many of the current open source licenses were crafted before the cloud, when users accessed software by downloading and running it on their desktops. Cloud companies have since figured out ways to freeload on the open source ethos while keeping their code changes proprietary.
7 Downsides of Open Source Culture by Peter Wayner, InfoWorld

Wayne concluded that open source works well for small projects, but can be difficult to maintain for larger codebases that require full-time coders, as too many users opting for the free version can cause the project to fail.

Given the trajectory of the open source movement, we may see Open Culture gradually becoming the domain of larger enterprises and, to some extent, government agencies. However, small businesses make up the majority of businesses in the United States, accounting for 46.4% of all US employees, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy. While we can expect to see greater equity in many workspaces, it is important to acknowledge the unique challenges small businesses and nonprofit organizations face.

One Cannot Exist Without the Other

Open culture and transparency are essential for creating an inclusive workplace. When organizations foster an open culture, employees feel respected and empowered to have a say in decision-making. Transparency builds trust and understanding between employees and management, reducing feelings of exclusion. By combining open culture and transparency, organizations can create an environment that supports inclusion and encourages participation from all.

About the Research Project

This project is long-term and progress will be made public, transparent, and authentic. Data from multiple sources must be included and trends across different sectors and customer types shall be analyzed. It is essential that data be anonymized and analyzed objectively to prevent the creation of false correlations or narratives.

The Hypothesis / Working Theory

The hypothesis is that best practices for open culture and transparency vary depending on the business model or, for nonprofits, the community they serve. The stage of an organization is also important; different strategies apply to startups, fast-growing companies, and well-established, older companies.

The goal of this project is to gather data, experiment with boundary-setting, and share retrospectives. This includes:

• Anonymized data collection from job applications, contractor vetting, and team surveys.
• Internal impact measurement through hires and contracts, external impact measurement through marketing activities, and tracking metrics such as event and audience diversity.
• Stakeholder sentiment measurement on strategies and tactics adopted by management, correlated with industry and job category.
• Analysis of the data for trends across different sectors and customer types.
• Publishing insights and personal stories from leaders and employees.

The accumulated effort shall help to create a more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to create a truly inclusive open source and transparent culture. By openly sharing the data and experiences, we can gain valuable knowledge and perspective on how to best move forward.

Ways Eventida Will Test: Stepping Onstage

When we paused services in order to strategize better ways for Eventida to achieve its mission of making the world more accessible and inclusive, we updated all our web presences with a graphic, titled “Intermission,” along with a new, bold multi-colored scheme hinting at what is to come.

Our original brand colors were dark grey and lime green, which is one of the worst colors to use for accessibility. In my article, “3 Reasons Brands Need to Update their Color Rules ASAP,” I discussed our process for identifying an accessible brand scheme.

In theatre, during an intermission, the stage is transformed for the next act. The curtains are drawn, giving the audience a chance to take a break, get refreshments, and more. We wanted to convey that we had paused the business until we were ready to unveil the new Eventida. Now the curtain is lifting, and the storytelling has begun.

Company leaders must be open and transparent, allowing for the free exchange of information and ideas. And they must openly make mistakes — and own those mistakes — so employees can feel safe to do the same. Understanding open organizational culture, Red Hat

Eventida and its partners will engage in various forms of storytelling and information sharing, such as:

• Examining the lessons learned from building and supporting an accessible and sustainable SAAS (software as a service) solution.
• Investigating the challenge of boundary setting, when attempts to be open and transparent to the public are overridden by stakeholders due to fears of public perception and judgment.
• Exploring how individuals with chronic illness can remain a vital part of the workforce, such as through co-leadership roles.
• Identifying causes of burnout, testing existing resources for accessibility, and whether the wellness industry has an inclusion problem.
• Discussing information pollution and the various coping strategies people have adopted to manage information overload.
• Providing book reviews that are better described as thought-starters for book clubs and individuals, some with exercises and worksheets included.

The topics discussed are not limited to open culture and transparency. We aim to explore how openly sharing impacts an organization’s culture and sense of inclusion for its employees and customers. For instance, if a manager openly discusses their mental health condition, could this lead to their input being disregarded and seen as irrational?

In other words, where is the line between “open” and “too much information”?

Backstage: A Research & Development Ecosystem

Eventida will not only share stories on stage, but also evaluate different inclusion strategies through their research and development process. It s designed as an ecosystem of knowledge and creativity that fosters collaboration among all participants.

Eventida’s R&D process is committed to finding solutions for the most urgent needs in work and learning settings, as well as improving existing approaches to inclusion. This comprehensive approach guarantees that everyone can benefit from the research outcomes, and creates meaningful and effective narratives that can be used to empower the audience in advocating for inclusion. Through this process, Eventida aims to provide a unique experience for all participants, both in the audience, on stage, and backstage.

Technology gives us unprecedented access to information previously beyond our paygrade. The more we know, the more we realise what we were not being told before.
Transparency and a Culture of Candour [8 Trends]

How to Get Involved

This project is just beginning and Eventida aims to support research participants and partners in the coming months and years. We need partners who are non-profit and for-profit startups; fast-growing organizations already practicing open culture and/or transparency; and organizations seeking to transition. We also need research organizations that provide technology solutions for research, professional service providers with data scientists, designers, and analysts, and universities with existing research projects whose goals align.

We will work with these partners and clients to:

• Set up advanced sensing and tracking technologies to make behavior highly visible in real-time, for events, research, and teamwork purposes.
• Determine how the information should be used by individuals, their teams, their supervisors, and when the data should be anonymized.
• Design events, interactive exercises, and workflows that fosters a sense of safety, trust, balanced power dynamics, and collaboration.
• Establish zones of privacy to enable just the right amount of transparency alongside safe spaces for innovation and productivity.

To get started, visit Eventida.com.

Posted as part of a series #NewEventida

ICYMI, earlier posts in this series:

• New Publication for Inclusive Events, SAAS and Products
• 3 Reasons Brands Need to Update Color Rules ASAP
• Does Transparency and Open Culture Support Inclusion? (you are here)