What’s Your Company’s DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) Identity?
As a DEI consultant I have worked with large and small companies and organizations. I have decided to summarize 7 institutional identities that I have come across in my line of work. Read below and let me know which identity fits your company. I am thinking of turning this into a book chapter and would love some case studies for each identity.
1. The Egg Shell- The Egg Shell company’s characterization stems from powerful leaders who are not fully brought into your DEI programming or initiatives. They use surface level language and concepts to talk about diversity but have not done enough to show there is progress being made towards change. Employees are afraid to challenge their mindset and behavior because they feel there will be repercussions due to a lack of actual progress. Therefore, the DEI team and HR is walking around on eggshells because they are scared to have authentic conversations around diversity with leadership. In this case entry-mid level employees, and a few senior level employees (usually women, POC, LGBTQ, Disabled etc.) are doing their best to encompass DEI into ERG’s etc to make the workplace feel somewhat inclusively safe for everyone else. They are working to build a case for DEI in the company to present to leadership because they are not fully understanding or brought into the true meaning of DEI and what it looks like in practice.
2. The Dysfunctional Utopia- The Dysfunctional Utopia is a company that is making a lot of progress in some areas and really struggling in others. The institutional blind spots are alive and real! Usually this occurs because teams are working departmentally to begin their own DEI programming, policies, and practices and some teams could truly give a damn about DEI. This company usually has a bunch of ERG’s working to address DEI for their identity groups, but no direction from leadership because they are clueless on what to do and not humble enough to ask for guidance. There could also be some serious issues among the executive and leadership teams about doing DEI well. Here is where you will see a majority of very White, Powerful, Christian, and heterosexual people in powerful positions like the Board of Directors, the C-Suite etc have disagreements on how to do DEI and no willingness to admit that they need guidance. They would rather not deal with it and just leave it up to the employees to figure out.
3. The Always Growing- This has got to be one of the most frustrating companies to work in, because everytime someone makes a mistake the response is “we are always learning and growing in the DEI Space.” The actual truth is that they are always doing intervention to address issues of discrimination, harassment, EEO complaints etc. This is the kind of company that wants to believe they are making progress because people are speaking up. Your DEI is limited to awareness of issues but no practice to change these issues.
4. The Well Intentioned- This is where we see companies putting in an effort to make change. The problem is….. Wait for it……. They do not include or in many cases attempt to include but do not listen to the voices of diverse populations who face the issues. This company is usually also run by homogenous groups trying to be innovative regarding DEI and this results in an epic fail. Then their default is to say that DEI doesn’t work. You damn right it doesn’t work, because your homogeneity should not have defined, planned, or implemented it in the first place. The initiative/program/daily operation was set up for failure from the jump. The populations you intended to hurt, you ending up harming even more than before through disappointment and and it shows in your metrics. People are leaving, you’re not finding the candidates you intended to recruit, and you start to realize just how inequitable you have been treating people. The results are usually that people are feeling more discouraged then before and morale is low and this usually leads to #6, the oppressive institute.
5. The Oppressive Institute- In this case the leadership team is generally made up of white men and even women who are in the baby boomer, generation X category and think diversity is reverse discrimination. Sidenote: Reverse discrimination is not a thing, discrimination is just plain old discrimination that happens in different forms to different identities. If you reverse discrimination it does not exists and I am sure there is not a single oppressed and marginalized population in the world who wouldn’t want that shit to happen. Now back to the matter. Here is where you’ve tried different surface level DEI programs, and initiatives, and recruited unqualified people to lead the charge and didn’t give them the support they needed to be successful so the process failed, and you blame them! Therefore, the company has decided that DEI is a waste of time and they are not doing anything wrong in the first place. They start to create mission statements, values, etc around DEI but no actual action is happening. They have buried the idea of progressing but they want people to believe they are doing well.
6. The Ass Backwards Enterprise- This is the company that believes training is going to solve all of their problems and “we all just need to talk about it.” No policies, no assessments, no deep dives to the bottom of the iceberg, just make staff attend unconscious bias training, pay equity workshops, and learn about microaggressions and everything should be fine. Newsflash people need tools, extrinsic rewards, etc to help motivate them to do DEI. Stop starting with failing solutions and do some assessment and strategic planning.
7. The Power House- This is the institute that has DEI together. FYI I haven’t fully met one yet. I have worked with companies that are getting here, where they trust and empower the voices of their employees and actual makelong term realistic plans around candidate acquisition, talent development, external community involvement, programming, training, and DEI metrics to track success. They are not just placing visible diversities on their media and marketing, they mean what they say and it shows in practice. There is no such thing yet as a DEI Utopia but some companies are getting much closer than others and they are working in the range of The Power House.
Share your stories in the comment section and let me know what you think and have experienced.
