Diversity and Inclusion Tips for HR
inclusion a priority requires the active involvement and long-term commitment of all employees, from entry-level employees to C-suite executives. That’s because when someone who isn’t a top executive is handed the job of transforming the company’s culture toward greater inclusion, he or she will lack the power and authority that this fundamental, systemic change requires. As a result, any initiative that’s launched without active C-suite endorsement and allocation of resources risks stalling out long before reaching its goal.
Why Delegating D&I Backfires
A friend of mine provides a case in point: Rose Owen, as I’ll call her, was asked to lead the global gender equality initiative at her biotech company while simultaneously keeping up with her job as senior director of global recruiting. In addition to this halfhearted approach, the leaders at her organization accorded the initiative so little significance that they never articulated a formal gender inclusion policy and strategy. No C-suite support was offered, other than a vague platitude about the “importance” of gender equality.
“Important in what sense?” Rose might have asked them. “And important to whom?”
Despite these limitations, Rose was expected to launch a gender equality initiative entirely alone. The impossibility of this task was only indirectly acknowledged by top leaders when they encouraged her to “draft volunteers” for her project team. Needless to say, the company’s gender equality effort did not succeed.
How to Make D&I a Priority
So how does D&I become a priority? How can employees avoid the same fate as Rose?
Certainly, the “how” is a mystery to most, even though many companies understand diversity and inclusion’s domino effect. It begins with the realization that a company’s ability to thrive requires becoming competitive within a diverse global economy. The next domino to fall is the subsequent realization that becoming competitive requires a level of employee engagement that diversity and inclusion inherently nurture. The final falling domino is the further realization that a diverse and inclusive company culture enables enhanced innovation, which leads to greater profitability.
Turning these realizations into an inclusive culture may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. It simply involves taking one doable and time-bound step after another:
Step 1: The first step toward inclusion is assessing the current company culture.
Step 2: Follow this evaluation by drafting and widely communicating a D&I strategy along with a step-by-step working plan to move the company forward.
Step 3: Acknowledge and publicly celebrate significant milestones that reinforce the company’s D&I mission and how it has succeeded in being culturally transformative for the organization.
Step 4: To ensure that these milestones or benchmarks are reached in a timely manner, and that they remain a priority, C-suite leaders should provide consistent encouragement and direction, while also keeping an eye on accountability measures that were put in place before the journey began. Doing so shows employees at all levels that a leader (and preferably more than one) at the top level of the organization cares about the program and expects to see real progress.
Step 5: Underscore leadership’s commitment with an investment of resources to support the initiative, including dedicated staffing and an allocated budget. The person appointed to lead the program should report to a member of the C-suite. While corporations are moving toward flattening their traditional hierarchies, a hierarchical legacy still remains, which makes reporting to top leadership a significant measure of a program’s corporate importance.
To truly succeed, inclusion also needs to become a priority for each individual at every level of the company, so this same sequence of steps applies for individuals: assessment, planning, time-bound and doable steps, benchmarking (milestone acknowledgment and celebration), and accountability.
Deloitte: A Successful Case Study
Deloitte, the international accounting and professional services firm, has been particularly successful at weaving a vital culture of diversity and inclusion into every level of its organization. The launch of the Deloitte University Leadership Center for Inclusion featured attendance by the company’s chairman, president, and former chairman—a virtual trifecta of C-suite representation—which sent a clear message about how significant their senior leadership believed D&I to be.
The company’s inclusive leadership center fulfills a number of interrelated goals at once. Acknowledging that, as a service firm, their employees need to offer superior performance, the company has chosen to “enhance careers and fuel business growth” with an environment that guides, teaches, and mentors leaders at every level.
For Christie Smith, managing partner of Deloitte’s Center for Inclusion, one of the center’s main missions is to fundamentally redefine what inclusion looks like in the workplace. “This is not just about programs or initiatives,” she adds, “it is the leadership issue of our time.”
The reason inclusion is a leadership issue is because the only way to truly embed inclusive best practices within a company’s culture is by making it a central aspect of the leadership role, for every leader at every level. Without informed buy-in and active participation from everyone in a position to model behavior, shape the way work is carried out, and teach collaborative, non-biased approaches to teamwork, inclusion will be forever marginalized.
Simple Steps Lead to Complex Change
Taken as a whole, there are far more companies like Rose Owen’s biotech firm than Christie Smith’s Deloitte. So where does the average company begin?
The answer lies in understanding the fundamental core of diversity and inclusion: we are all human beings and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. It’s essential for organizations to remember that, as human beings, we respond best and feel most empowered to perform optimally when we feel seen and valued for who we truly are, when our uniqueness is viewed as an asset rather than a disqualifying difference.
When an organization can inculcate this heartfelt mindset in its employees and overall culture—that we are all human beings deserving of respect—D&I initiatives will have a built-in forward momentum, helping diversity and inclusion to fall into place over time.