Demonstrate Your Commitment to DEI through Transparency, Accountability, & Sustainability
How to Demonstrate Your Commitment to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)
Living in the eye of this perfect storm of social, political and environmental stressors, organizations are disoriented and wondering how they show good faith on their commitment to justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. Although companies may be feeling the squeeze now, like never before, it is important to remember that this societal epiphany on structural racism is not new to the victims and targets of it. It is a generational reality of lived trauma that has shaped the experience of People of Color in the U.S. and ALL countries shaped by the legacy of colonialism. And because of that reality, organizations must realize that their employees of color and all of their ERGs are watching and have expectations that organizational efforts will be more than just a corporate statement of support for BLM, more than just a town hall meeting, or a token workshop. Ultimately this must be more than just a trend. An essential aspect of showing a good faith commitment are demonstrations of transparency, accountability, and sustainability.
Create Transparency
Being transparent is an organizational cultural value that is considered in all communication within the organization. Leadership must communicate both DEI aspirations and areas of development, focus, and opportunity to improve. This lets the employees know that leadership has a deep understanding and awareness about the work needed to truly be walking the talk of DEI.
Internally, developing a workplace where transparency is the standard practice, fosters an environment of trust and opens the door for building a healthy feedback culture. When direct reports feel that managers trust and respect them to be transparent, they have a sense of psychological safety and will follow the modeling of transparency. When both giving and receiving feedback is seen as a value, it becomes the norm. But transparency must be afforded to everyone — not just certain people. Often those who are underrepresented are left outside the loop; for inclusion to work, everyone must be a part.
Foster an Environment Amenable to Education & Expression
Focusing on diversity within your business involves creating a climate that encourages everyone to have a unique voice and be a part of the team. It also means that your organization is a safe space where questions can be asked and answered respectfully. Creating a psychologically safe environment requires making space for people to make mistakes, learn and recover. Promoting cultural humility will help employees learn from each other in low-risk ways.
Additionally, education must occur through deliberate ongoing efforts, by providing resources to increase knowledge and skills that can be reinforced through dialogue.
Require Accountability
Dominant groups, by nature of their privilege, are not accustomed to their behavior being scrutinized, so being asked to change even slightly can feel like a big imposition. Building racial stamina is needed for dominant groups to not become stuck in the space of their intentions, but to understand how certain words and actions negatively impact people regardless of their positive intentions. This requires that we all take responsibility for the negative impacts of our intent. When accountability is lacking, we can move on, but we never move forward. The same issues and conversations continue to resurface in different ways. DEI recognizes that making mistakes is part of the learning process and therefore redemption needs to be applied to everyone-so people must take accountability for their actions and work to make it right. Accountability at this level will fortify relationships across difference.
Organizations must also integrate accountability into their DEI efforts through measurement. By placing a DEI lens on core HR data systems like recruitment, payroll, performance management and professional development, organizations can uncover patterns of systemic bias within institutional systems and practices, ultimately allowing the focus of resources on hotspots. Additionally, instituting two-way feedback systems of employee sentiment, and following up on it, is a clear way to demonstrate commitment and accountability to DEI.
Take Action to Support Sustainable Change
Ultimately DEI is not a program or a department but a cultural shift, one that involves building the same shared assumptions and group norms around inclusion. Therefore, any DEI efforts seeking long-term organizational change must involve ongoing action. This action starts with being intentional about learning, measuring change and interrogating organizational assumptions about everything — from how we define leadership, career paths and the very nature of how we do our jobs. COVID forced some of the quickest changes ever seen in how work gets done and overturned many of the established assumptions. The current social climate requires that we also question some of the dominant cultural norms, and ask whether those are the best way to attract, retain, develop and promote talent. This is a long-term commitment to a continual process of growth as we wrestle with these issues daily. Remember that we can’t undo hundreds of years of bias with a few workshops.
Engage the Right Tools to Measure Progress
A key element in successful DEI efforts is having the proper tools to evaluate progress, which creates accountability and sustainability. Technology is a valuable vehicle for integrating measurement into your processes. Eskalera has created a proprietary Inclusion Index ™ to help organizations identify the areas of strength to model and reproduce, and the opportunities for improvement. Remember, any measurement is better than no measurement and as you go through your DEI journey, the goal of integrating more measurement should be expanded.
After seeing how traditional diversity efforts were not producing any real changes, Eskalera’s founders were driven to develop holistic solutions that go beyond just identifying the problem-to providing tools to also solve the problem, by teaching companies how to do inclusion. We know that DEI requires intentionality but it has a high return on investment, resulting in better outcomes for businesses. For organizations that are serious about improving their DEI, Eskalera can support you — helping to develop skills across your entire organization, and driving systemic and sustainable change. Contact us today to learn how Eskalera can help you move culture forward!
~ Dr. T
Originally published at https://eskalera.com on October 29, 2020.
