Moving beyond a DEI Strategy on a shelf

In 2020, there was a renewed conversation about DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion) strategy with the events of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and others. It prompted an emphasis we'd never seen before—public accountability. 

As a leader, you made a commitment to your employees and customers following those events to create more representation within your organization. Your company's DEI strategy went up on your site, social media, and to your investors—ready for the world to see.  

But moving from PowerPoint to reality can be difficult without the right support. Today, over two years after you made that promise, how much progress have you made on your DEI Strategy? There’s no time like the present to reactivate it if you’re stuck and get it off the shelf.

First off, what is a DEI strategy?

Workforce DEI strategies didn't start in 2020, and it's not the first time organizations have tried to prioritize DEI. Most companies have had several related strategies since the 1960s, like anti-bias training and EEO-1 reporting. Employment Information Reports, or EEO–1, are filled annually by companies with over 100 employees to share the demographic breakdown of their staff by race and gender.

Ultimately, at the heart of every DEI strategy, the intention is to create more representation within an organization — across race, gender, ethnicity, etc. However, to meet DEI goals, your company needs to create an actionable roadmap toward becoming more inclusive. 

While the strategy might be "create more representation within an organization," it should also include OKRs for different leaders and how the company will support and incentivize them in their DEI work. It's not just one person's job. 

Let’s be honest, there are few best practices because traditionally EEOC-1 was established as compliance and progress was rarely shared outside of HR departments. 

During our conversations with hundreds of HR and DEI leaders managing DEI strategies within their organizations, they shared the good, bad, and inspiring about this work. With so many companies trying to figure this out, we wanted to share insights on foundations that should be in place to help guide your strategy into action.  

How can you implement your DEI Strategy?

A DEI strategy's success depends on how well the organization supports and incentivizes the work. Often, implementation of a DEI Strategy comes through initiatives. Some examples of initiatives and discussions that you see within DEI strategies may be things like: 

• Continuous training on management and inclusive communication

• How do you want to source and grow new talent

• Creating a sense of community through employee-led groups

• Leading a listening tour to foster trust and a sense of belonging

• Go through a process of alignment with leadership to get buy-in and support for the DEI strategy

In 2020, it became almost expected to share your company's perspective on DEI. To make progress on DEI in organizations, it is not just about the goals to increase representation but an emphasis on growth of representation into leadership. It's more than checking a box. 

These goals were measurable – real numbers next to strategies with time-bound milestones. This created accountability. At this point, over 89 percent of U.S. companies have DEI strategies, but nearly all are struggling to activate them. 

Why is your DEI Strategy not working? 

Understanding where you are is important versus reacting to external pressures without much data. Everyone's at a different point in the DEI journey, and here are some areas that serve as important pieces of your foundation when attempting to activate your DEI strategy. 

1. Understand where you are

Here's a familiar story: a company's CEO made a public pledge for gender parity by 2030. However, after the fact, the people analytics leader does the math and finds out that they have to hire (and retain!) 97 percent of women to achieve this... at a construction company. 

That's not realistic or achievable given the industry’s current demographics. It's important to understand where you are as a baseline with important context that comes from internal and external benchmarks. 

2. Get buy-in before the strategy

Here's where the buy-in from leadership comes in. DEI responsibilities can't just fall on one person, but it does take a whole lot of alignment up, down, and out. How can you encourage your leaders to incentivize the behaviors you want in your teams, like nurturing team members from underrepresented backgrounds into leadership positions? 

Meanwhile, your more junior employees across the company want to understand the progress that's happening. Are you able to keep them in the loop through regular reporting? Similarly, are there opportunities to keep your Shareholders and Investors up to date? How are others above you, beside you, and outside of your organization helping you to achieve this strategy along the way?

3. Don't just check a box

While 75 percent of companies have created a DEI department, it's often one person with an overwhelming spreadsheet that is not set up to process workflows and data. On average, an overworked DEI leader often leaves within 24 months on the job. They don't have the resources to follow your company's milestones, initiatives, and process data. 

Once you have a DEI strategy, are the proper resources allocated so that strategy can be executed? Are there owners of the recommendations and action items?

Empower your DEI leadership with Illoominus

With Illoominus, we empower companies and those in charge of DEI to activate and measure progress towards DEI strategies with data. Most DEI technology today is focused on hiring but fails to tell the whole story. 

With Illoominus, we bring all of your inclusion data into one place to help you understand what's happening in DEI across the employee journey, like who you are sourcing, hiring, retaining, and promoting. And importantly, how do different groups feel about being at the organization? By bringing all the pieces of the inclusion puzzle together, you can understand where to focus efforts that will have the most impact.

We help you have a data-driven DEI strategy at your fingertips. We're helping to light the way to a more inclusive working world, and we'd like to show you around. You can request a demo today.