- What are your hopes and goals connected to our work in diversity, equity and inclusion?
- How do you see yourself contributing to the strategic DE&I management plan?
- What concrete actions would you like to take to achieve your hopes and goals?
DE&I Recruitment and Sourcing
DE&I recruitment means companies recruit individuals with a collective mixture of differences and similarities that include individual characteristics, values and beliefs, and experiences and backgrounds.
DE&I Recruitment and Sourcing Questions to Consider
- Does your organization have established goals on DE&I and recruiting? If so, are these goals internally driven or mandated by law?
- What organizations/agencies can the organization partner with to find a diverse pool of candidates?
- Have job descriptions for open positions been updated recently? Are they still accurate reflections of the skills needed to perform the job effectively?
- Have the hiring goals for this job group been communicated to the hiring manager, checked for understanding, and agreed upon to increase the likelihood of a good hire?
- Is there a current job description for this position and clear-cut performance standards that can fairly evaluate any new hire without bias?
- Where should the organization advertise to attract a diverse pool of well-qualified applicants for this position?
- What policies and benefits are in place in the organization that would attract diverse candidates (e.g., flexible hours, job-sharing, etc.)?
- What training has the organization provided to hiring managers to ensure that the best candidate is selected?
- Has the organization reviewed its onboarding process to make certain that new hires receive the right information and a welcome that will secure a partnership with the organization?
- How will human resources follow up with the hiring manager and the new employee to make sure the new partnership is working?
DE&I Recruitment and Sourcing Action Steps
- Assemble your DE&I champions (including senior leaders, upon whom you’ll depend for support) and brainstorm the following questions:
- Obtain support from the CEO and executive team and include DE&I recruitment as a commitment in the company’s business objectives. Assess the organization’s needs and opportunities.
- Develop a policy related to DE&I that includes the organization’s recruitment and retention plan to enhance DE&I.
- Provide training for management regarding the company’s diversity initiative, including the business case for DE&I.
- Put the right tactics to work. Get everyone engaged, get involved in diverse communities and integrate with mainstream recruiting tactics. Attend career fairs and affinity receptions.
- Allocate the money needed for DE&I recruitment.
- Borrow best practices from other recruiting campaigns.
Employee Retention
Retention is often framed as a key economic driver for DE&I efforts because it costs an organization a significant dollar amount when an existing employee must be replaced. Diverse, equitable and inclusive organizational climates, however, reduce turnover and increase retention.
Employee Retention Questions to Consider
- What is our organization’s current turnover rate? How does this number compare with those of our chief competitors?
- How much does it cost our organization to replace a single employee?
- Who typically leaves our organization? Are there marked differences among turnover rates for men versus women? White people versus people of color? People with disabilities versus those without? Baby Boomers versus Generation X or Generation Y staff?
- Does our organization conduct exhaustive exit interviews to find out why employees are voluntarily leaving? If so, what do these interviews tell you about why employees leave?
- Is there any reason to suspect that those who feel excluded, unfairly treated or discriminated against would refrain from stating their true motivations during an exit interview? If so, what measures could be put into place to collect more accurate data?
Employee Retention Action Step
- Communicate efforts to increase retention and reduce turnover in financial as well as numerical terms to tie these efforts toward business goals.
Training and Development
Training and development includes activities designed and implemented to ensure that all employees are equipped to create a work environment that is diverse, equitable and inclusive.
Training and Development Questions to Consider
- What knowledge, skills and abilities (e.g., communication, empathy) must your organization’s employees possess to effectively contribute to a diverse and inclusive workplace?
- What additional knowledge, skills and abilities (e.g., issue identification, group dynamics) must your organization’s managers possess to effectively recruit a diverse team and manage staff in an equitable inclusive way?
- What additional knowledge, skills and abilities (e.g., visioning, cross-cultural competence) must your organization’s leaders possess to role model DE&I, ensure that your organization’s clients or customers are treated with respect, and chart the correct path for your organization’s future?
- Which learning methods would be the most appropriate to employ, given the competencies you wish to support?
- How can your organization frame training and development related to DE&I so that it is, if at all possible, an ongoing activity and not restricted to isolated experiences in a classroom?
- Who must you engage to lead DE&I training and development initiatives within your organization?
Training and Development-Related Action Steps
- If there is no one internal to your organization with the competencies to guide the DE&I learning of others, consider partnering with a well-regarded consultant to help guide your training and development efforts.
- Begin with the end in mind: Create solid, measurable learning objectives based on knowledge, skills and abilities before making any decisions on methodology, timeframe or design. Ensure that all activities map directly back to the learning objectives that are specific to your organization, your workforce and your customer base.
Onboarding
This is one of the first opportunities to make a new employee to an organization or location feel welcome and comfortable sooner rather than later.
Onboarding Action Steps
- Ensure that all individuals who may have first contact with a new employee are sufficiently coached on how to articulate the organization’s mission, vision, values and philosophy with regard to DE&I.
- As part of your relocation assistance package, consider working with a relocation service that can also assist the employee’s spouse in his or her own job search, a housing search and other basic services for new residents.
- Create a robust schedule for each employee’s first day on the job, including a meeting with his or her manager, HR, required paperwork (payroll, benefits, etc.), a briefing on all aspects of the employee’s job description, a celebratory lunch with the new manager (which could also include key team members), an appointment with IT or other groups to receive necessary resources (laptop, safety equipment, etc.), and an end-of-day check-in to ensure that the new employee is starting his or her job on a positive note.
- If including a peer sponsor or “buddy” program as part of your onboarding initiative, create a checklist for that individual that might include who to introduce the new employee to and a tour that includes supply closets, rest rooms, places to eat, etc.
- If your organization sponsors affinity groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or culture, encourage them to create peer sponsor programs for new members as well.
Communication
DE&I communication should include a strong commitment by the organization to a diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce and to serving a diverse customer base; specific information that pertains to the roll-out of the organization's strategic DE&I management plan; and information from the employee base that honestly reflects the experiences of all staff in the organization.
Communication-Related Questions to Consider
- What communication vehicles currently exist at your organization? How effective are they? How might they be used to support your strategic DE&I management plan?
- What communication gaps currently exist at your organization? What steps would be necessary to close these?
- Does your organization currently experience a healthy level of employee-to-organization communication? If so, is this information currently filtered with a DE&I lens? If not, why not—and how can this be addressed?
- What positively differentiates your organization from your competitors regarding DE&I? How can these differentiators be included in your organizational communication?
Communication-Related Action Steps
- Keep DE&I in mind when crafting any kind of corporate communication. Ensure that messages that do not support your organization’s DE&I efforts are excised or edited before they are sent to employees.
- If allowed within the context of your organization’s communication policies, consider a form of branding when crafting your DE&I communication plan. While DE&I efforts should never be reduced to a single catchphrase, a well-chosen and recognizable slogan or logo will reinforce and strengthen the message if used judiciously.
- When building your organization’s DE&I management plan, include a communications plan that could include any or all of the following: a webpage devoted to your organization’s commitment to DE&I, brochures, slide presentations that managers can use when briefing staff about DE&I at your organization and visual media (posters, etc.) that includes your DE&I mission statement.
- Communicate with integrity. If a poster on the wall proclaims a commitment to DE&I with little to no action to back it up, the message will not ring true, and could eventually do more harm than good. If necessary, an open and honest message that frames the organization’s DE&I issues as challenges that can be met and overcome would be more appreciated by staff than a relentlessly cheery sentiment that “everything’s just fine.”
Marketing, Advertising and Branding
Many organizations have discovered that the diversity of their staff and the equitability and inclusiveness of their work environment can be used as differentiators in the marketplace and can become a competitive advantage.
Marketing, Advertising and Branding Questions to Consider
- What does your organization currently execute with regard to marketing, advertising and branding? Do these efforts actively reflect the values of DE&I?
- Do the messages in your marketing, advertising and branding efforts contain any subtle cultural biases? For instance, are the people (representing both employees and customers) in your advertising uniformly white, affluent, heterosexual, able-bodied or conventionally attractive? Does your marketing consistently assume an individualist or achievement-based cultural framework?
- Does your organization currently participate in any form of niche marketing? If so, is it effective? Why or why not? If not, could your organization benefit from targeting specific communities?
Marketing, Advertising and Branding Action Step
- Provide a “seat at the table” for someone focused on DE&I during all marketing, advertising and branding discussions, whether or not the content of the messages is specifically focused on DE&I. This will ensure that no messages are communicated that overtly or subtly circumvent your organization’s diversity value.
Leveraging Employee Diversity
This refers to building and then making use of a workforce that is more diverse and more equitable and inclusive than it was before plan implementation began.
Leveraging Employee Diversity Questions to Consider
- Even if your organization appears to be diverse in terms of total numbers, are there teams, disciplines or levels within your organization that consist of one homogeneous “type” based on race, gender, age, nationality or discipline?
- How diverse are the people in your recruiting function? Are you able to source qualified applicants from a wide variety of backgrounds?
- Is innovation a necessary differentiator for your organization? If so, how diverse is your organization at the top- and middle-manager levels?
Leveraging Employee Diversity Action Step
- If your recruiting team is small or otherwise not as diverse as you’d like it to be, consider using your organization’s employee affinity or networking groups to assist you in recruiting to specific markets.
Strategic Alliances and Partnerships
These are formal relationships between two or more parties who remain independent while working together to achieve a specific goal or to enhance an element of the DE&I strategy.
Strategic Alliance and Partnership Questions to Consider
- What resources do you need that are not available within the organization?
- Who has access to these resources?
- How many different organizations do the same thing? What are their unique selling points? What are their differences?
- Can we afford the relationship? Do we want to?
- What is our organization’s policy regarding strategic alliances?
- Do I have the authority to sign agreements? If not, who must sign?
Corporate Social Responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and DE&I can be thought of as overlapping circles; the two functions share many of the same goals, and oftentimes one activity or effort will meet the needs of both functions.
Corporate Social Responsibility Questions to Consider
- What are your organization’s key business objectives? How might CSR efforts and activities benefit your organization’s business?
- What communities are you specifically hoping to attract, source and recruit as a result of your strategic management DE&I plan? How might CSR efforts help to promote your organization within these important target groups?
- What CSR activities are currently underway in your organization? How might your diversity and inclusion efforts benefit from already existing CSR efforts?
Corporate Social Responsibility Action Steps
- When looking to partner with external organizations as part of your DE&I recruiting initiatives, also consider partnering with groups that are closely aligned with diverse communities (e.g., job training in urban communities, AIDS service organizations, etc.).
- Not all partnerships require an exchange of funds; consider putting your business to work for others. For instance, a consulting firm might offer pro bono consulting to a charitable group, or a manufacturing company might provide free supplies to local charities.
- Find ways to get your employees involved. For instance, writing a check to support breast cancer research is helpful, but supporting your employees in a “Walk for the Cure” event in your local area allows all staff to feel involved in your CSR efforts, which will likely increase retention in the organization.
Customer/Member Experience
This is the experience internal and external customers have when they enter a place of business or interact with employees, products or services. The goal of the strategic DE&I management plan is to ensure that customers perceive your place of business as inclusive of their needs and as the type of establishment with which they want to do business.
Customer or Experience-Related Questions to Consider
- What are the demographics of your marketplace? Of your customer base? Do you understand the unique needs of each of these market groups?
- Do a broad range of customers feel equally welcome and respected in your establishment?
- To what degree do diverse customers and potential customers see themselves represented in your workforce and management staff?
- How comfortable and skilled are employees in serving customers they perceive as different from themselves (e.g., language, culture, age, race and ethnicity, and disability)?
- Are employees more suspicious or resentful of a category of customers (e.g., based on age, ethnicity, nationality, language, religious attire)? If so, how does this affect the customer’s experience?
- What barriers exist that undermine your service delivery (e.g., stereotypes about customers, lack of tools or knowledge)?
- Have you considered the DE&I implications in your customer satisfaction measurement process?
- How are customers’ diverse needs being met (e.g., product preferences, language, religious accommodations, access for individuals with disabilities)?
Customer Experience Action Steps
- Understand your customer. Use market research, community partners and employee resource groups to learn about the needs of diverse customers.
- Assess your current level of customer/member service and inclusion. Conduct a DE&I audit of your current customer/member experience. Use the results to help create an action plan for future change.
- Create a basic comfort level. Demonstrate respect: Use your knowledge of diverse markets to offer culturally relevant products and services. Ensure employees represent the diversity of the marketplace. Treat each customer and potential customer with respect.
- Lower language barriers. Communicate in ways your customer can understand. Translate critical information, use bilingual staff, teach basic phrases in other languages to staff, make a multilingual dictionary or picture guide available, use visual displays and provide information in writing. When necessary, use professional interpreters or translators.
- Support your staff. Provide staff with the education, training, resources and systemic processes they need to deliver an equitable and inclusive customer experience.
Supplier/Vendor Diversity
An integral part of any organization's DE&I program is to ensure that it promotes DE&I outside of the company by doing business with a variety of suppliers and vendors.
Supplier and Vendor DE&I Action Steps
- Define the scope. Like any business objective, the mission statement of the supplier DE&I initiative must define what it is, why it is important and how it will impact the organization. The business case for supplier DE&I needs to be clear. To make a true commitment to supplier DE&I, the organization should consider all suppliers of goods and services that the organization purchases. This includes everything from raw materials and IT suppliers to legal services and janitorial supplies. To help define the scope, the organization should decide the following as it begins its development of a supplier diversity initiative: What percentage of total purchases does the organization want to make from underrepresented suppliers? How many new minority/women/disabled-owned suppliers does the organization want to partner with each year?
- Link the program to organizational goals. The purpose of a supplier DE&I program should be communicated to management, purchasing, other appropriate staff and existing suppliers so all stakeholders understand how the program is expected to contribute to the company’s success. Specific, measurable goals must be established, and the responsible internal staff and suppliers held accountable for achieving them.
- Select qualified suppliers. Once the organization understands the role of supplier DE&I and is committed to making it successful, the organization must find and start contracting with minority/women/disability-owned business enterprise (M/W/DBE) suppliers. To do this, each organization must develop specific criteria for determining what constitutes a DE&I supplier. The procurement department must proactively seek out companies that meet their criteria and start doing business with them. It is also important to help current suppliers understand and comply with the new supplier DE&I program.
- Manage the program. This involves the coordination of multiple parties in the organization, including procurement, contracts, program managers and senior leadership. Relationships must be continuously formed with new suppliers and reinforced with existing suppliers. Organizations can support and foster supplier DE&I efforts by:
- Attending business opportunity fairs in local communities.
- Participating in minority, disability and women-focused business professional organizations.
- Creating a business directory to connect M/W/DBEs with individual customer users.
- Outlining roles of supplier DE&I program management.
- Offering business consulting services.
- Providing favorable financial terms.
- Recognizing and rewarding participating M/W/DBE suppliers.
- Hosting trade fairs for M/W/DBEs and procurement.
- Conducting site visits for M/W/DBEs, including detailed interviews covering operations and management.
- Conducting seminars for M/W/DBEs to learn how to do business with your company.
- Providing technical and managerial assistance to M/W/DBEs.
- Emphasizing the importance of second tier M/W/DBEs.
Measurement and Accountability
This refers to the tools used to determine if DE&I efforts have achieved the desired results, and if not, who will be responsible for correcting the methodology so those desired results can be achieved.
Measurement and Accountability Questions to Consider
- What sorts of measurements are currently being taken? Do you have historical data (with regard to representation, recruitment, turnover and employee engagement) that you can factor into your plan?
- What new sourcing initiatives have been implemented since the launch of your strategic DE&I management plan? How many candidates have been identified from these new sources? How many hires?
- Has retention increased, stayed the same or decreased since the launch of your plan?
- Who leaves the organization after a short period of time (1-2 years)? How do the turnover rates of women, people of color and people with disabilities compare to those of the general population?
- What do the exit interviews tell you about the organization’s culture organization?
- Does your organization support any affinity groups based on race, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, disability or culture? If so, would it be possible for you to track attitudes about inclusion from these specific groups that can be tracked over time?
- How many people in your organization have undergone skills-based DE&I training? How have these numbers changed since the launch of your strategic DE&I management plan? How did participants evaluate the training? Six to 12 months later, do participants still see value in the training?
- Have any major policy changes been instituted since the launch of your plan (e.g., telecommuting options, domestic partner benefits, disability accommodations)? How many staff members have taken advantage of these new policies and programs? Have the programs had a significant impact on employee satisfaction and job performance?
- What strategic alliances or partnerships have been instituted as a result of your strategic DE&I management plan? What specific outcomes have been realized because of these relationships?
- What are your customers/members saying about your organization since the launch of your plan? How does their feedback compare with the feedback you received pre-launch?
- How has your strategic DE&I management plan directly impacted the key business objectives of your organization?
Measurement and Accountability-Related Action Steps
- With input from your CEO, C-suite leaders and professional DE&I practitioners, create a comprehensive list of what you can/should measure in your organization, how to track and/or create metrics, and how these numbers will be communicated.
- Create target goals that are ambitious yet still within the realm of reality. If reporting under-performing goals will be seriously detrimental to the future of your plan, create “goal corridors,” which are ranges of numbers from the least ambitious to most ambitious. Goal corridors will allow you to consistently report success, but with a degree of integrity by capturing the differences between barely successful, moderately successful, and very successful.
