A new year is a new start, and a prime opportunity to reflect on initiatives in place and to course correct. Blindly following the same path when situations change is never a good idea, and 2024 was certainly a year of change. January marks a prime time for you to review your diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) plans for the year ahead to ensure you are set up for success.
In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive (DE&I) environment is more crucial than ever. In this article, I outline five key steps you can take to reinvigorate your DE&I strategy and set yourself up for continued growth.
By implementing these strategies, you will not only create a more inclusive workplace but also drive innovation, enhance employee engagement, and position your organisation for success. Let's dive into these actionable steps and explore how you can make a meaningful impact on your DE&I efforts:
1. Get more for your money
In tough financial times, spending on functions that aren’t seen as making money is inevitably reduced. While there is much evidence that companies with strong DE&I strategies outperform those who just pay lip service, it can be very difficult to show the direct correlation between the two, which often sees spending on DE&I become one of the first things to be cut.
Therefore, it’s vital we shift tactics to ensure every penny spent, is spent well, on initiatives that effectively deliver measurable impact and make a real difference. Running the same unconscious bias training you always have, will do nothing to shift the dial. You need to shop around for the best return on investment and must not be afraid to demand more from your providers.
2. Ensure your efforts are data driven
Diversity, equity and inclusion has long been politicised, but never more so than in 2024. The so called ‘war on woke’ has seen people and organisations push back on anything that would see marginalised groups receive equitable treatment.
You need to be prepared to continue to receive these challenges in 2025, and the best way to do that is to have your evidence ready to go. Your priorities will be different to other organisations and that is only right and proper.
To know whether you are moving in the right direction for you, you need to understand the data. What is the make-up of your organisation? Does it reflect the communities you serve? Are marginalised voices involved in your decision making? Where are you overperforming? What are your growth areas? Are the goals you have previously set realistic?
Gathering this data will help you to know your starting point, as well as where you need to invest your efforts to make effective change.
3. Take an outcome-based approach
With the gathered data in hand, you know where you are, and it’s time to decide where you want to be. What do you want the outcome of your DE&I efforts to be?
It’s important to note that an outcome-based approach is not the same as having a quota. Saying ‘We want 50% of our staff to be women’ says nothing about why you want this, or what those women will be doing. If anything, it opens you up to accusations of tokenism, and unfairness.
Instead, every initiative you run should have a dedicated goal informed by data attached to it. For example, if your data shows you are attracting a gender-balanced applicant pool, yet only 20% of new hires are women, your goal may well be to more accurately reflect the gender balance of the communities your serve. To do this you may choose to take several steps, including inclusive recruitment training to ensure employees are able to challenge behaviours, process review and re-design to ensure you aren’t unintentionally putting groups at a disadvantage, and better recording information around gender, including non-binary and genderfluid identities.
What is important is that you have a goal identified, and a way of measuring progress against that goal, so you can show the success of your initiative or reassess if your actions are not moving you closer to your goal.
4. Commit to real change
To get the most out of your DE&I efforts you need to be brave. The days of dipping your toes into the water are long past. If you want your organisation to make progress on its DE&I journey, you need to understand that you may not like some of what you find out, that the steps you need to take may feel uncomfortable at first, and that your culture is going to change.
The running joke of British people sweeping their issues under the rug, keeping a stiff upper lip and powering through with a smile is there for a reason. It can be difficult to face up to things we have previously ignored. To make real progress you need to be committed to overcoming this discomfort and really learning from it, allowing your culture to evolve authentically.
5. Work with specialists
No one person (or organisation) has all the answers, and there has been a reduction on specific DE&I roles in many organisations over the past few years. While it would be easy to assume this is a case of companies stepping away from DE&I, it is in fact often a change in approach to be more intentional and effective. One example of this is Zoom, which has moved to a more collaborative approach to work with “established and well-regarded DEI firms” who specialise in the tech sector. Working with specialists allows organisations to do what they do best while learning from experienced DE&I practitioners and putting their lessons into practice.
By following these five recommendations and embracing real change while committing to outcome-based and data-driven solutions, organisations can give fresh impetus to their DE&I strategies. It’s a New Year’s Resolution that you won’t regret keeping.
How can progress be made in DE&I at a time when budgets are at risk of being cut? Sign-up to our webinar, ‘Maintaining and boosting equity, diversity and inclusion in times of financial constraint’ or click here to find out more about our DE&I solutions.
