Welcome to the Party: What Makes DEI Effective (and What Doesn’t).

When Verna Myers, the current VP of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix, said that “Diversity is being invited to the party. Inclusion is being asked to dance. Belonging is dancing like no one's watching.”, she was right on the money. 

However, her metaphor is useful for more than just inviting interesting images into our heads. It succinctly suggests something everyone (in theory) agrees with: C-level professionals (aka the party planners) have to actively leverage their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy  throughout their organization if they want their organization (party) to be successful.

Most Organizations Fly in the Face of Science When it Comes to DEI (and It Costs them Money)

Unfortunately, most organizations’ efforts to ensure everyone can enjoy and enhance the party - that is, feel welcome, encouraged, and valued - is often skin-deep. That is to say, their efforts to actualize their DEI  strategies often starts and stops at the acronym’s first letter.

You’re not likely to find an organization in recent times who disagrees that a diverse talent pool is an asset. However, it’s much harder to find an organization who matches that zeal for diversity during the talent acquisition process with equal fervor to retain and nurture that talent.  

A dearth of clear, institutional commitment, difficulty accessing vital knowledge and tools, and a lack of clear guidance and support from supervisors during onboarding are all factors contributing to growing disillusionment and demoralization by employees across all industries. In fact, a study by McKinsey suggest that as many as half of all workers - regardless of sex, age, gender, or race - experience significant barriers to feeling included in the workplace. 

It is curious that many organizations would allow so many employees to have this kind of discouraging and demoralizing experience at work - least of all because it makes little business sense. Studies show that having great gender and ethnic diversity on executive teams makes an organization more likely to have above-average profitability. Additionally, employees at companies who self-report their workplace culture as being diverse and inclusive are 45% more likely to report their firm’s market share grew over the previous year, and 70% likelier to report the firm captured a new market.

Death by a Thousand Cuts: How Most C-Levels Kneecap Their DEI Strategies

So what gives? Why do so many companies have such lackluster DEI strategies? The initial answer to this question is two-fold. 

On a tactical level, part of it is a problem of newness. While lots of companies have only recently begun recognizing the importance of DEI, many don’t fully grasp the scope of what incorporating DEI into their organization entails. As a result, the work of both strategizing and executing DEI goals is often passed to either exhausted, employee-led volunteer resource-groups or to anemic, understaffed DEI teams. 

On a strategic level, there exists another set of confounding variables. A lack of collective buy-in from C-level teams all but ensures difficulty for any DEI advocate within that organization to get proper resources and support. Scarce explicit commitment from leadership often goes hand-in-hand with a lack of clear goals for how DEI will be utilized to bolster current growth strategies. 

Even if clear goals related to DEI are set by committed leaders, there is often little in the way of real accountability measures that can actually compel those leaders to promote and encourage the achievement of those goals. 

All that to say - the effectiveness of any diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy to positively influence an organizations’ goals starts and ends with the C-suite. 

Want Your DEI Strategy to Stop Bleeding Resources, Energy, and Time Without a Clear ROI? Stop Siloing it Under HR.

“Okay…” you say, “but why is that? Why aren’t C-suite executives doing everything they can to ensure the success of their organizations’ DEI strategies if that’s what industrial psychologists and labor scientists say is needed for them to run the best organization?” 

The reason for this is simple yet unfortunately controversial: many DEI practitioners and HR professionals incorrectly hypothesize there is a disconnect between who needs to identify and who needs to apply the shifts that sustain a culture of continuous improvement as it relates to DEI.

Rather than view DEI as an integral component to each business unit achieving their goals, most executives view it as a function of HR. As a thing to be done and then counted as completed. As a result, DEI practitioners often have to spend as much time politicking overloaded and uncommitted CHROs to advocate for them as they do actually doing DEI-related work. Make no mistake: this is a grave blunder that the majority of organizations make.

DEI practitioners are in a unique position to help define key DEI objectives, associate them with specific impacts, and mitigate the issues of resource and time allocation that plague most organizations’ current DEI efforts. However, in order to do that, DEI practitioners need to be set up for success. That means being permitted to embed themselves within the culture of an organization, being gladly invited to attend, observe, and probe executive and managerial meetings. and encouraged to holistically and incisively analyze exit data, attrition themes, and talent management practices. 

By having that time to build rapport across the organization, DEI practitioners will be able to present their recommendations to senior leadership who will be able to fully appreciate their impact and leverage them to maximize their teams’ capabilities and capacity for innovation . 

DEI Needs to be Treated as a Philosophy, Not a Policy, if it’s Going to Generate Positive ROI

This isn’t all to say that DEI needs to be the driver of every team within an organization. Quite the contrary.

Instead, businesses should understand that, when DEI is treated as a philosophy that is being valued and implemented at all levels to aid the organization’s growth (rather than being viewed as a set of policies that can be “completed”), they’re showcasing their commitment to their employees’ success better than any public statement can. 

And, at a time where talk is cheap and employees are quitting their jobs at record pace, it’s really not the best time for organizations to try and get away with cutting corners when it comes to making their employees feel welcomed at the party.

With that in mind, I’d love to know in the comments: how welcoming is your organization’s party, or how inclusive and equitable do you feel your organization treats its employees?