3 Reasons Your Current D&I Initiatives Won’t Work
Arshiya and I had the opportunity to conduct workshops for Austin Startup Week and the She+ Geeks Out Summit this week. In both Austin and Boston, we shared our approach to measuring inclusion and discussed why companies should shift their focus from diversity to inclusion.
As we see it, there are three primary reasons that current D&I efforts aren’t working.
1. MOTIVATION
Think about it. Is Diversity & Inclusion a core element of your business strategy? Is it built into your mission and values? Or are you leveraging it as a PR strategy and talking about it only when it is convenient?
A lot of what we see is reactive; they’re knee-jerk campaigns in response to a scandal. We have Gucci who puts out a racist sweater, apologizes, and then shortly after announces that they’ve hired their first every global head of D&I. And I’m sure we can all remember the incident at a Starbucks that led to them closing down stores for an afternoon of unconscious bias training.
These examples are what we refer to as performative D&I and it’s not enough. Instead, if we want to benefit from Diversity & Inclusion, we need to be proactive, intentional and consistent.
2. MISALIGNMENT
Within an organization, there are several misalignments that get in the way of true progress.
To start, there’s a misalignment in how business leaders think about Diversity & Inclusion, and what they actually do about it.
Your CEO may want to prioritize initiatives focused on retention and revenue, HR may want to focus on pay equity and creating a better benefits package, meanwhile entry level employees just want a bit more flexibility and access to growth opportunities within the company. There’s this discrepancy between leadership’s perception of what needs to be done and the actual needs of employees.
Even in instances where a company hires a D&I leader to help prioritize internally, there’s a misalignment in the impact that they are charged with creating and the resources, support and power they are provided. Russell Reynolds recently surveyed 243 D&I leaders from companies within the S&P 500 and found that only 35% of them felt they even had the employee demographic data they need to support their work.
These misalignments cause confusion and limit the impact that is possible. With mixed messages, inconsistent priorities and minimal resources, it’s hard for HR and D&I leaders to know where to focus. So they find themselves throwing shit at a wall and hoping the outcomes show some sign of progress.
3. METRICS
On top of all of this, we’re focused on the wrong metrics. We’re investing in the wrong piece of the puzzle. We’re setting goals and defining our success based on the equivalent of vanity metrics, rather than signals of true inclusion and employee satisfaction.
As an example, consider what happens when a company (go ahead and just pick any Silicon Valley tech company) decides they want to embrace diversity. In this story, they specifically want to improve their representation of Black employees. So what do they do? They go to an HBCU and recruit a bunch of young, Black graduates. As intended, the company’s diversity numbers go up.
But when these individuals start their new jobs, they’re an “only” on their team, their leadership doesn’t look anything like them, maybe they face microaggressions from peers, and they can’t help but feel as if they don’t belong. Without an inclusive culture, these employees are going to leave. And understandably so.
When they leave, this plan to increase representation is going to backfire. Your retention rates will go down. Your operational effectiveness decreases while you rehire and train for those roles. And maybe these former employees share their experience on social media and Glassdoor, making it even more difficult to attract top talent and possibly even impacting your reputation among customers.
When we focus on diversity metrics alone, we ignore the complexity of work culture and the experiences of our employees.
This isn’t to to say that you shouldn’t implement hiring goals and policies around representation in your workforce. But, without a concerted effort to ensure your culture is inclusive, your organization isn’t able to truly create, support and benefit from a diverse team.
You may now be wondering, what metrics do I track then? How do I measure inclusion?
You can find these answers and more in our latest ebook. Download the resource and learn more about our approach to measuring inclusion.
