4 Tips to Strengthen Your Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Strategy
Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) are essential to the healthy functioning of workplaces - no matter your industry, size, or country. The world of work has spent decades incorporating these important principles into the everyday rhythm of business, but there is still much work to be done.
As leaders, our job is to create spaces where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. The healthiest workplaces make DEIB a central part of their strategy and develop equitable programs, policies, and practices that are holistic enough to apply to all their people while allowing for flexibility to address the nuances of each individual.
While getting your DEIB strategy right can seem daunting, one thing is clear: Focusing on these efforts is better for your people because they create a sense of psychological safety and better for your business because they positively impact your bottom line. Lean in wholeheartedly to create a workplace culture where everyone, regardless of their characteristics, can do their best work and feel fulfilled in what they do.
So, how can you dive into DEIB?
Make Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging a Priority
This might sound simple, but it’s the most important step. Before you do anything else, you need to codify DEIB as a long-term strategic priority for your organization. Along with this, you’ll need to define concrete, measurable goals, assign dedicated resources to bring your strategy to life, and continually report on progress to your entire organization.
As a senior management team, aligning on key messages, mindsets and behaviors is essential. Beyond that, clarifying what behaviors need to be modeled and holding each other to account demonstrates DEIB as a priority.
Recruit and Retain Diverse Talent
Your organization should reflect the diversity of our world. One of the best ways to do this is by embedding diversity into your talent strategy and ensuring it is central to the entire employee experience lifecycle, from their first day to their first promotion to when they move on to their next career adventure. Interview panels should be made up of people with a variety of roles, tenures, and demographic characteristics. By creating a hiring process that includes a variety of types of people, you’ll begin to hire stronger candidates who are culture adds, not just culture fits.
Train Employees on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Best Practices
DEIB is a continuous learning process. We all have a role to play in unlearning harmful – oftentimes unconscious – behaviors and incorporating positive, inclusive practices in their place. This commitment to learning needs to start from the top and be modeled by leaders at all levels of your organization, without exception. From your CEO to your newest intern, everyone should make developing DEIB competencies a priority. Establishing formal and informal programming, from trainings to lunch and learns to DEIB-focused events and panel discussions, there are no shortage of ways for you to weave these learning moments into your organization’s culture.
Establish Employee Resource Groups to Foster Inclusion
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are a great way to cultivate an inclusive culture. These spaces, which are organized around specific identities and also welcome allies, provide an opportunity to celebrate, educate, and inspire people around various diversity and equity-related topics. These groups also provide empowering leadership opportunities for people in your organization, which will help them achieve career aspirations, gain visibility with executive stakeholders, and hone their leadership skills.
Offer Inclusive Benefits
One of the key tenets of DEIB is that programs, policies, and practices can’t always be one-size-fits-all. Evaluate your benefits offerings and align them with the needs of your people. Do you offer flexible work arrangements that will support working parents or caregivers? Do you provide mental health resources to help employees who are struggling? Are there a variety of healthcare options to facilitate gender-affirming care or provide access to trauma-informed treatment? Ask your people what they need, and take steps to provide those benefits. While not everything can be implemented, choosing those with the greatest impact will show your people you truly care about DEIB.
Learn More
I have worked with countless leaders and organizations to define and refine their DEIB strategies. Schedule a call with me to learn how I can help you. Hear how other organizations have created integrated DEIB strategies in high-functioning, high-trust workplaces in my book, Make Work Healthy.