In order to optimize diversity in the workplace, your organization must hold space for inclusion. Diversity of experience, ethnicity, race, culture, gender, ability, and sexual orientation is important to how the workplace looks. However, inclusion is important to how your workplace feels. Inclusion in your organization’s workplace should feel like everyone can bring their individualized experiences to work and feel as if they belong. Your colleagues should feel as if their different experiences do not become a hindrance to their growth because they do not align with, and/or appear like, the dominant group’s experiences. And, they should feel supported in creating the same breakthrough ideas needed to help your organization evolve. When we think of diversity vs. inclusion, they are not separate from each other; they have to be partnered to meaningfully and authentically show up in your organization. In other words, it’s not lip service, but follow-through. It’s investing in building an understanding of your diverse talent pool and receiving coaching on how to create an inclusive work culture. Otherwise, the surface work that your organization might be doing in regards to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), will become more of a fruitless check box exercise that will ultimately lead to burnout, in your efforts, and a lack of tangible results. Virtually stifling any chance at making long-range DEIB metrics and milestones quarter after quarter, or year after year.
Operationalizing diversity with inclusion
Operationalizing diversity with inclusion means committing to, on all levels, holding hiring managers, HR, senior leadership, and the organization, at large, accountable for exemplifying DEIB efforts. From my experience, I see a lot of organizations pushing for a diverse workplace but not considering the depths of their diverse employees’ stories beyond how those employees might be inadvertently (or overtly) expected to assimilate to the lived experiences of the dominant group.
You first must consider where the power lies in your organization. If the power lies in a particular group, and the only way for your employees to reach promotion or get involved in your organization fully is through assimilation to that particular group’s experiences; you have not created a diverse and inclusive workplace. For example, in corporate spaces I’ve noticed management and senior members of staff assuming that playing golf is the general way to network for all. But, if someone grew up without access to golf, can’t play due to ability, or has never played golf; then, they would be essentially left out of the predominant access to network, share ideas, and get noticed by key stakeholders in your organization that allows them to be recognized for future growth opportunities.
This is where coaching and partnering with DEIB experts come in. Before hiring new members of staff, hiring managers should be partnered with DEIB experts so they understand diverse voices and experiences before hiring someone and assuming their experiences align with the dominant norm. Create processes and systems by which managers are tasked with showing what their talent composition looks like. And, once they are hired, these processes should be able to show how their employees are able to get involved with networking, growth, and advancement opportunities.
Include metrics in leadership’s performance reviews at your organization. Allow DEIB metrics to drive those reviews to ensure leaders are receiving ongoing monthly, or even quarterly, coaching and feedback from experts. Hold your leadership team accountable when concerns arise and allow DEIB experts to guide them to seek more understanding in their team. Particularly, around allowing managers and staff to grow, learn, minimize implicit bias, and evolve together in a shared and welcomed workplace.
The importance of self reflection
In order to authentically operationalize diversity with inclusion, your organization should emphasize the value of self reflection on all levels. When an employee in your organization brings up words like “white privilege” or “male privilege”, to inform their experiences with the dominant group; all members of your organization should know what they mean. There are many ways to learn about this type of language and your organization should take a keen interest in:
- Engaging experts that can help you learn and understand what particular language around identity and experience means through continuous and ongoing education and training.
- Create employee networks, book clubs, and include in company wide communication, language and definitions around identity and experiences to inform all members of staff.
- Have a clear understanding of what diversity, inclusion, belonging, and social justice means, more generally; and define those concepts more specifically to your organization’s mission and values.
If your leadership and senior staff do not come from a place of awareness, understanding, and empathy; then your employees from marginalized groups will continue observing this behavior and suffer in silence. Until, one day, they leave the organization. I’ve personally experienced bringing implicit bias to the attention of executive leadership and being told that elevating my concerns would make me look bad. I was essentially left to either suffer in silence or change my situation by resigning.
It’s less important about the intention behind the behaviors, language, and/or lack of awareness displayed throughout your organization. It is more important whether it is creating a negative impact on some of your employees. Training senior management and leadership can only go so far without having consistent and continuous accountability measures in place.
That’s another reason why it can be very beneficial for your organization to source third party DEIB experts and consultants. They can educate your leadership, support both your leaders and staff to find a common ground of understanding, and help to frame your organization’s short and long term DEIB goals.
There is no diversity without inclusion
There is no diversity vs. inclusion; you can’t aim for one without the other. Having a diverse workforce without creating an inclusive culture leads to an overall lack of diversity. Diverse talent will continue to feel uncomfortable and without a sense of belonging, because they were always made to feel that they must act in accordance to the dominant norm.
It is so important to continue to assess your talent composition, and consider how it is distributed across the organization from top to bottom. I have witnessed that a lot of organizations have a diverse talent composition at the bottom, but once you reach higher levels in management, the talent pool traditionally gets less and less diverse. This is an example of diversity without inclusion. Since the death of George Floyd, many organizations have made gradual shifts toward improving the diverse representation at the executive level. Your organization can reverse engineer your homogenous talent composition by creating sponsorship opportunities with aspiring diverse leaders, and creating advancement opportunities through coaching and mentorship. Your organization can encourage more diverse employee groups; so young talent can mingle with senior managers of their same background and learn from their experiences. Also, consider your organization’s hiring processes. Assess, when a new opportunity for advancement does arise, whether hiring managers consistently look outside the organization for that talent and who they are scouting. Hiring managers within your organization should be encouraged to consider and be held accountable to see whether they have considered the following:
Is there any available talent within the organization who are ready to be promoted to the next level?
What is stopping them from this leadership position? And how can I help them successfully grow towards / in this role?
Do we have an upskilling process to get internal candidates on track for company promotions?
Hiring managers and senior leaders should also consider how their current team of diverse talent is being showcased. If the team is truly inclusive, then everyone will feel like they have a voice and can bring their full selves to the workplace. Encourage regular meetings between your leaders and staff to ensure leaders are listening to their staff’s work perspectives and their understanding of the business on a regular basis. Hold leaders accountable when consistent problems arise when their staff feel unheard and ignored.
There is no change without discomfort
The pursuit of DEIB work means that your organization is not going to get it right all the time and sometimes conversations will be uncomfortable. Prioritizing comfort over impact is how your organization will fail at this work. Your organization’s goal is not to solve global systemic oppression because that would be a lofty goal. It is also not to make everyone comfortable all the time. It is only through change and discomfort that we can learn. For example, if you are working out and exercising daily, exercising can be uncomfortable sometimes. Who am I kidding? Beginning a new exercise regimen IS uncomfortable. But after a while, it will get easier and you will likely see physical, mental, and physiological results. It is the same for DEIB. The more you engage, commit, and do the work, creating a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace that prioritizes belonging, the more it will be incrementally reflected in your workplace. The more conditioned you will become in engaging in the work and remaining committed through the challenges.
Your organization may want to start keeping a DEIB score card. You can assess where your organization started, the goals it accomplished and future goals for the year, and demonstrate how your organization has threaded DEIB into every aspect of your organization. This allows you to make adjustments in a particular time period and adjust your goals based on the changing dynamics within your organization, as you go along. It can also continue to hold your organization accountable for the work it has set up to do. Scorecards can also be a great way to reduce lofty goals and provide a clear and attainable path forward, while also showing DEIB progress over time. Burnout and fatigue usually come as of a result of only one part of your organization being tasked with doing all of this work. I’ve also noticed fatigue when organizations do not have a clear plan of action and tangible metrics to reflect back on their DEIB work.
Push through the discomfort. When you do, it may seem easier for your organization to reach breakthroughs where your DEIB can be measured, acknowledged, practiced, and will continue to evolve in an authentic way for all.
