The Foundations of Diversity and Inclusion for Startups

The vision for WEDS (We Empower Diverse Startups) is to create an alliance of startups that pledge to employ D&I best practice and strive to constantly improve upon this and respond to developments in this area by sharing their lessons learned within the network.

To take the first step on this journey, we will be holding a series of workshops to share knowledge and co-create resources, all specific to startups, so that organisations are empowered to take a DIY approach.

We have created a set of “Foundations of D&I in Startups” which we think describe the pillars of diversity and inclusion in startup life. We will align our workshops with these topics and work through them one by one, looping back around when we get to the end, so each topic will be reviewed and improved regularly.

From experience, this type of activity tends to work best when there’s visibility on what’s coming up in future so next steps are clear!

With this in mind, we’ll also be using a repeatable format for the workshops so everyone can get used to the structure and know what to expect (which we’ll iterate on as we go, based on your feedback and a bit of trial and error!).

Typical workshop agenda:

• Speakers share what they tried and what worked and didn’t in the foundational area
• We all break into groups, with speakers and facilitators on hand to help, to co-create: a list of resources, a step-by-step guide to following best practice (we expect there’ll be levels here like “basic”, “better”, “best”) and templates/examples for any specific artefacts we’ve identified (e.g. example job spec template)
• Regroup to share findings and discuss challenges with speakers on hand for Q&A
• WEDS team take the raw output and produce a “resource pack”

What next?

Think we missed something out for our Foundations? We’d love to hear from you! Please comment below or engage in the discussion on Twitter.