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Your Results
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Well done! Keep up the great work.
Your organization is in the top scoring percentile of diverse and inclusive places to work. You’re already doing many of the right things. Your organization likely has a formalized DEI Council, leadership buy-in on the importance of inclusivity, and several successful diversity programs.
The most important focus for organizations at this stage is sustaining a positive culture over an extended period of time.
Best-in-Class DEI Programs
Here are some of the key programs that organizations at the very cutting edge of diversity equity and inclusion have in place to ensure they can sustain their culture:
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Pay Parity and transparency - I.e. the practice of allowing company’s employee compensation figures to be visible.
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Performance evaluation audits that look for bias in evaluation processes
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Gender neutral parental programs like equal time off for maternity and paternity leave, etc.
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Operational audits to ensure compliance with DEI goals and metrics.
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Recruitment policies include diverse candidate pools and blind resume screening process.
The Most Common Issues with DEI Initiatives
Despite best intentions, buy-in, and budget, organizations can sometimes hit a wall with their DEI initiatives. We know that getting to where you are now took hard work and commitment - and we want to ensure that your success continous. Being aware of the most common reasons for failure can can help you to be prepared. Below are the most common issues we see mature organizations face with their DEI programs:
One-off & Piecemeal
Programs which are not tied to company strategy. Often implemented as a knee-jerk response, these initiatives are overly focused on the currently growing minority demographic and accomplish little more than virtue signaling.
Top-Down & Overly Centralized
These initiatives are focused on governance and reporting. Often they appear to be well-managed, but they are so high-level that they fail to impact employees on the ground.
Broad Scope & Generic
“One size fits all” training and coaching that never results in real change. These programs are often reactive to external social issues and misaligned to the real issues present within the organization.
No Support for Operational Leaders
Usually overlapping with top-down generic programs, these initiatives have lofty goals and support from upper leadership. They lack clear guidance for the middle management who actually impact the day-to-day reality of an employee. Thus having inconsistent results.
No Measurable ROI
DEI programs often measure surface-level diversity stats, leading to the perception that they lack tangible business value. This makes it impossible to prove long-term impact and impacts budget allocation for future initiatives.
Elements of a Comprehensive DEI Strategy
Ensuring that your organization does not face these issues requires an end-to-end strategy. A combination of initiatives that put fast and continuous improvement as keystone for achieving your organization’s goals. Below are the elements of a comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion program. You are likely running many or all of these programs already - this can act as a checklist to evaluate your organization yearly an ensure that there a continuous focus on improvement.
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RECRUITMENT: Establish, and reevaluate yearly, a diversity-focused recruiting plan. Including the use of hiring technology to increase fairness.
MENTORING: Develop a mentoring program, paying close attention to the need for top-down sponsorship and diversity across age, sexual orientation, race, religion, gender, and other various identities.
TRAINING: Facilitate awareness and buy-in via unconscious bias, anti-racism, and inclusion training.
POLICIES: Review and fine-tune your discrimination and harassment policies. Reevaluate yearly at minimum.
ESCALATION: Have a system in place for escalating harassment or retaliation issues and ensure employees are well-informed of the resources available to them.
NETWORKING: Foster diversified business networks and cross-company networking by establishing Employee Resources Groups (ERGs).
SAFETY: Create a safe space for race and diversity conversations. This often starts as a facilitated process when an experienced expert.
OPERATIONAL: Appoint on-the-ground leaders as your Internal Champions of Diversity & Inclusion. These champions for change should be empowered to make decisions and take action.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT: Inspire culture change via top-down support and executive sponsorship for diversity resolution and inclusion values. Successful DEI programs require flexibility, adaptability, resilience, and persistence.
Want to share this with your team? Download the infographic!
The most difficult part of a comprehensive strategy is knowing how and when to implement each of these elements. Lean DEI can help! We specialize in the Right-Sized Solutions at the Right-Time. Give us a call at 281-845-8800 or email Consult@LeanDEI.com
