3 Ways To Reimagine Meaningfully Diverse Hiring and Staffing in Entertainment
By Jesse Turk, Senior Consultant & Facilitator
The entertainment industry has gone through multiple inclusion reckonings in the past decade. From movements to scandals to strikes, studios, networks, agencies, and productions have all had to grapple with a status quo that serves a privileged few while navigating a risk-averse industry. While many in the industry publicly agreed with the principles of inclusion and equity, which allows for new, original voices to break through, taking action to bring those principles to life has stalled in the face of complex realities including–budgets, lack of time, too many cooks in the kitchen, nepotism, and the list goes on…
So when does real change happen? Historically, the fear of public shame and embarrassment has been the strongest impetus for a shift. Nobody wants to be called out. Reporting on studios and networks illuminating their lack of diverse representation, especially in production, has led to diverse hiring mandates. And that was a good start. However, the problem with solutions that stop at racial and gender representation is that they are often performative. This reads as, ‘If we can fix the optics, we’ve fixed the problem.’
Research and popular trends show that millennial and Gen Z audiences have a strong and vocal aversion to performative, check-the-box DEI solutions. With so many different kinds of celebrated projects portraying lesser-heard voices and perspectives in innovative ways like “Sex Education,” the reimagined “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” “The Bear,” and “Ramy,” to name a few, authentic inclusion in hiring and staffing has never been more essential for success.
How, then, do we move from a performative, box-checking mentality to truly inclusive hiring and staffing practices that create these kinds of groundbreaking shows in entertainment? Here are a few tips to start the conversation:
Move From Culture Fit To Culture Add
Historically, those in charge of hiring or staffing have evaluated candidates based on who would fit best into the culture of the workplace, writer’s room, or set. The challenge with this approach is that it often leads to homogeneity. What if the culture of our workplace is not the best it could be? What if instead of looking for someone to fit the current culture, we looked for someone who could add something new to improve it? This mindset requires cultural humility, which is the practice of remembering that our own perspective is not the central reference point for others, but rather just one of many. In practice, this might mean changing what a hiring manager, executive, showrunner, or producer looks for in an interview or a work sample. It may mean looking for a new indicator of talent that is unique to the project. Perhaps this means reaching out to candidates beyond usual connections and sources for referrals or using bias mitigation techniques in interview processes. Perhaps this means not boxing creatives into a “type” based on one or two previous credits before meeting them. It takes a little creativity, but this is entertainment after all.
Expand What Diversity Means
Diversity in an office, a writer’s room or on a set is often understood as diversity of gender and race/ethnicity. This makes sense as these identities are often the most visible, but this definition of diversity can be limited and fall into the trap of performativity and even tokenism. ‘If we can show our diversity in a picture, we can’t get in trouble.’ If we move away from risk aversion towards a focus on impact, we can expand our understanding of diversity to include other types of identities that can also add to the culture of our workplaces. Just because a diversity of many types of identities can’t be easily tabulated or photographed, doesn’t mean they don’t count or add depth to the authenticity of inclusion on a project or at a company. It’s essential that those in charge of hiring are aligned on a common understanding of how expansive and intersectional diversity can be for their contexts. Consider the recent epic historical drama “Shōgun.” The show’s creative team and executives didn’t just ensure the normal visual indicators of diversity across its writing and directing roster when staffing but also reimagined the original source material to center the perspectives of Japanese characters and historical contexts. In developing this way, creative leaders organically hired and staffed designers, craftspeople, coaches, consultants, and, of course, performers, whose lived experiences would naturally enrich this approach. These lived experiences not only had to do with gender and race, but age, education, first languages, lineage, and more. As a result, the show has been lauded as not only engrossing and entertaining, but refreshingly nuanced and authentic in its portrayal of ancient Japanese culture, power dynamics, and the effects of colonialism.
Ground in the Why of Your Project
There are many who might boil DEI down to a quota, which can limit a more holistic approach to impact (not to mention being reductive and in many cases, unlawful). Instead, consider why you may need differentiated perspectives in the first place. Are there new audiences you might tap into? Is there a nuance to the subject matter that might benefit from alternative perspectives? Is there a values-driven approach to ensuring consistently diverse teams? Identify the untapped opportunity. Not every project needs to have socially aware significance, but every project can benefit from a variety of perspectives. When we add inclusivity as a metric of success, suddenly authentic inclusion in hiring is no longer just a nice-to-have. There are already examples of creatives and executives putting these principles into practice across the industry with success, but they are often the exception rather than the accepted rule. It is essential that hiring practices move away from the idea of finding the person or people to check that inclusion box and move towards ensuring projects are created, bought, developed, staffed, produced, and released with inclusion in mind from start to finish. Change of any kind can feel risky, but in this case, it has been shown to be a prudent business decision both in entertainment and other industries, such as advertising, where inclusive marketing has been proven to boost engagement, as well as in alignment with the values of many leaders in the industry.
Curious for more? Join us for a lively conversation on representation in Hollywood on Thursday, April 25 at 10am PT/1pm ET!
Will you be the one to deepen the conversation? We can help with that! ReadySet offers a wide array of entertainment industry specific offerings that span consulting, strategy, learning and development, programmatic initiatives, and more. We are proud of our entertainment partnerships and the impact they have on the industry and its audiences.