A Data-Driven Approach to Advancing Meritocracy
Instead of simply relying on best practices, employers should adopt a talent management strategy that addresses bias and inequity while ensuring efficient, fair, and merit-based decisions.
Chris Gash
Many organizations’ efforts to foster meritocracy may, paradoxically, deepen inequities. In this excerpt from Emilio J. Castilla’s new book, The Meritocracy Paradox, he discusses a strategic talent analytics approach that can help organizations identify and eliminate bias and inefficiencies in hiring, promotion, and rewards decisions. Systematically collecting and analyzing data on demographics, hiring processes, and outcomes can help give everyone an equal opportunity to compete and succeed.
Building meritocratic and equitable organizations is a complex yet critical endeavor, as many corporate leaders have come to realize. It requires effective talent management systems to attract, develop, and retain qualified and motivated individuals — key drivers of organizational success. In my book, The Meritocracy Paradox, I caution that certain organizational efforts to foster meritocracy and excellence in organizations may paradoxically deepen inequities and unfairness. And I have presented evidence of three key findings — along with their related warnings — that highlight what I call the meritocracy paradox.
The first warning is that simply having organizational processes in place to hire, evaluate, and promote the best does not automatically guarantee fairness. In fact, any talent management process can be subject to bias and inefficiencies, and there is a risk that, rather than fostering excellence and opportunity for all, people-based management systems may actually reinforce or create advantages for certain groups over others.
The second warning is that emphasizing meritocracy — whether implicitly or explicitly — as the foundation of hiring, promotion, and reward practices may backfire on women, racial minorities, immigrants, and other historically disadvantaged groups. When individuals believe their organization is meritocratic, they may be less likely to recognize and correct for biases in their decision-making. This can lead to unfair treatment of certain individuals or groups and, inadvertently, exclude candidates whose skills and talents merit inclusion.
The third warning is that there is no universal agreement on what merit actually is. Even managers and executives with similar training and experience within the same organization often hold differing views. This lack of consensus on what constitutes merit or talent can ultimately derail efforts to build a truly meritocratic organization.
The encouraging news is that fostering true meritocracy in the workplace does not entail an extravagant amount of time or resources but rather a strategic and intentional focus on debiasing and improving talent management processes.
Taking action is essential. But pressure to act often leads companies to implement generic solutions — such as diversity and implicit bias training, blind selection and hiring, tweaks to job posting language, and the use of AI recruitment tools, all of which have been shown to have limited effectiveness — without first diagnosing the organization’s specific challenges or needs.
References
1. For example, see J.B. Fuller and M. Raman, “Dismissed by Degrees: How Degree Inflation Is Undermining U.S. Competitiveness and Hurting America’s Middle Class,” PDF file (Accenture, Grads of Life, and Harvard Business School, 2017), www.hbs.edu; and R.C. Booth, “Stop Requiring College Degrees for Jobs That Don’t Need Them,” Vox, March 19, 2023, www.vox.com.
2. For more information about employers that are proactively advancing and developing workers, visit the American Opportunity Index website, www.americanopportunityindex.org.
3. For example, see N. Lewis, “Technology Can Be Used to Achieve Pay Equity,” SHRM, June 19, 2023, www.shrm.org.
4. Y. Slan, “Viewpoint: A Reflection on Juneteenth, Transparency in Diversity Reporting,” SHRM, June 16, 2023, www.shrm.org.
5. Some employees seem to feel comfortable sharing their demographic information in certain companies and organizations worldwide. As of December 2024, for instance, Salesforce was committed to DEI and regularly releasing data on its workforce demographics, encouraging employees to disclose their race, ethnicity, gender, and other demographic details. Similarly, Airbnb has implemented Project Lighthouse to collect data on discrimination and bias experienced by its users while also collecting demographic information from employees to inform its DEI initiatives. Microsoft and Target follow similar practices, encouraging employees to share demographic data. Target encourages employees to share their demographic information to help inform its diversity and inclusion initiatives and to track progress over time. However, as workplace policies, privacy concerns, and legal regulations continue to evolve worldwide, companies may continue to adapt their approaches to demographic data collection and DEI transparency.
6. See D. Habtemariam, “3 Must-Dos for Collecting Employee Demographic Data Beyond Race and Gender,” Senior Executive, April 21, 2022, https://seniorexecutive.com; B. Melloy, “What Demographic Question Should You Ask in Surveys?” Culture Amp, updated July 7, 2020, www.cultureamp.com; and K. Magoon, M.-J. Robinson, A. Kissling, et al., “Best Practice for Demographic Data Collection & Reporting: Evaluator’s Guide,” PDF file (Boston: Public Consulting Group, August 2022), www.publicconsultinggroup.com.
7. “2024 Gender Pay Gap Report,” PDF file (Boston: Payscale, March 2024), 5, www.payscale.com.
8. Google offers a similar example. As reported on its re:Work site, the company identified a gender disparity in one of its promotion cycles: Junior female software engineers were being promoted at a lower rate than their male peers. Google’s People Analytics team discovered that the issue was rooted in differing self-nomination rates. Since engineers at Google can self-nominate for promotion when they feel ready, the data revealed that men were doing so more frequently than equally qualified women. To address this problem, a senior leader shared the findings with employees and encouraged all engineers to self-nominate when they felt prepared. After this simple intervention, Google reported that the gender gap in promotion rates was eliminated.
