Awareness of, and interest in, diversity and inclusion (D&I) has grown dramatically over the past decade. Organisations are investing in D&I-focused initiatives at unprecedented rates, with three in four describing it is a value or priority.
It is easy to see why. Clearly, there is a moral and ethical element to this; building a diverse and inclusive working environment is simply the right thing to do.
Beyond this, there are numerous practical reasons for focusing on diversity. Numerous reports and studies have highlighted the benefits of D&I; to give just one example, Gartner found:
- Organisations that are able to enact sustainable D&I strategies can achieve a 20% increase in organisational inclusion
- This corresponds to a 6.2% increase in on-the-job effort, a 5% increase in employees’ intent to stay with the organisation, and a nearly 3% increase in individual performance
Dr. Reinhard Schiebeler, guest on season 2, episode 9 of our podcast series “Morgan Latif Presents”, understands the importance of D&I, having held leadership roles in companies including Philip Morris and Glatfelter. An expert in operational excellence and building powerful leadership teams, he explains:
“When you put together your team, they should be a very diverse team. This is what I strongly believe in and for that, you need different skills, different knowledge, experience, but even behaviour.
“For success, it’s vital that they have common values. They need to trust and to pay respect to each other. Mutual respect is a fundamental thing, which you need to implement in a company.”
Yet despite the extensive research and endless campaigning from business leaders like Dr. Schiebeler, too many businesses are still falling short on D&I. PwC’s Global Diversity & Inclusion Survey warned that 79% of leadership engagement on D&I remains at the basic or emerging levels, while just 26% of organisations have D&I goals for leaders. Only 17% have a C-suite diversity role, and nearly 30% still have no D&I leader.
Practical Steps to Boost Your Diversity & Inclusion
Clearly, there is still much work to be done. With that in mind, we have compiled the following actionable guidance to help organisations step up and lead the way on D&I.
1. Test for Biased Technology
Today, hiring managers and HR leaders can lean on a vast array of tools to support them in attracting and retaining talent. Theoretically, this technology should make it simpler for us to build diverse teams, mitigating the issue of unconscious bias. After all, machines have no agenda; surely they can be trusted to ignore human prejudice and focus only on what actually matters?
However, there is an obvious problem here: technology is built by humans. Those same unconscious prejudices can be deeply embedded within the tools we use day in, day out, and the consequences can be highly damaging.
This is far from a theoretical concern; there are numerous high-profile cases in which technology has apparently displayed bias toward, or against, a specific group of people. Examples include:
- Twitter investigating after users discovered its picture-cropping algorithm sometimes prefers white faces to black ones
- A ProPublica report that claimed an algorithm used across the US to predict future criminals was more likely to view black parole candidates as high-risk
- A landmark study from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology revealing the majority of facial recognition algorithms have poorer performance on non-white faces
- Amazon ditching its AI recruiting tool after learning that it favoured male candidates and penalised CVs that included the word “women’s”
Any organisation that relies on technology as part of its talent acquisition and management functions must be prepared to scrutinise its tools for signs of bias.
Additionally, they should take steps to communicate their actions to employees and candidates. As we will demonstrate throughout this article, effective communication often holds the key to improving diversity and inclusion, yet it is an area in which many organisations fall short.
2. Involve Managers to Get Buy-in
D&I is nothing new. Workplace equality has been enshrined in law across European states for decades.
During that time, countless organisations have implemented substantial change management programmes aimed at improving diversity and inclusion. Yet many have failed to deliver the expected results, with PwC finding that just 2% of European D&I initiatives ever reach full maturity across four key dimensions:
- Understanding the facts of today
- Building an inspirational strategy
- Developing leadership engagement
- Creating sustainable movement
No doubt, the overwhelming majority of diversity and inclusion programmes start with the right intentions. So why do so many come up short?
One key reason is a lack of buy-in from managers and other key front-line figures. Initiatives are often designed by experts before being deployed to managers, yet the defined approach may not be compatible with the reality of “how things work” within an organisation. If managers are essentially forced to add new tasks and layers of complexity to their already busy workloads, the strategy is unlikely to gain the necessary support and moment.
It stands to reason, therefore, that managers – who are often the people responsible for communicating and implementing D&I programmes on the ground – should be involved in the design process. This way, practical concerns can be identified upfront and rectified before they can derail the entire strategy.
3. Build a Leadership Team With Shared Values
Strong leadership is critical to the successful delivery of any ambitious change management programme, and D&I is no exception. As Dr. Reinhard Schiebeler tells us:
“If leadership remains poor you will not be successful, even if you apply the best tools, methods and processes. So, when you want to transform companies, you always need to start with leadership first, starting with the top level.”
Most organisations want to believe that their leadership teams share the same values, and use those values to work toward shared goals. But in reality, this is not always the case. Individuals may pay lip service to key values, but fail to live by them during times of stress or crisis. Or they may simply disagree with those values from the outset.
Building a leadership team around shared values requires effort and commitment; as with the previous point, it rarely works if those values are agreed upon and imposed from above, or drafted in isolation by a small subset of your leadership team. Instead, take the following steps:
- Reflect as individuals: Every leadership will already have a set of unspoken values. Leaders should be given the opportunity to reflect on and define those values as individuals, while also considering other values that would be relevant and meaningful to their organisation.
- Organise the results: Next, the team should come together to share the values they have drawn up. No ideas should be rejected at this stage. Sharing these values may prompt wider conversations that, in turn, result in more potential values. The results should be categorised, with duplicates removed, then placed in an agreed order of priority.
- Draw up a shortlist together: All remaining values should be discussed as a group and used to draw up a shortlist on which everyone agrees.
4. Measure Performance
As with any other initiative, it is impossible to understand whether a D&I programme has been successful unless clear goals are defined in advance and performance toward those goals is tracked over time.
However, there are some key challenges with assessing the effectiveness of diversity and inclusion policies and initiatives. When it comes to measuring performance, consider the following:
- Are your numbers meaningful? To give a simple example, an organisation may be aiming for a 50:50 split of male to female board members. At face value, this appears an enviable goal, and one that more accurately reflects the makeup of society than a board made up entirely of middle-aged white men. However, if those female board members are not listened to, they will be unable to make an impact – so in reality, their organisation will not be any more diverse or inclusive than it was before their appointments. In this case, more subjective metrics may be required to gain a true understanding of performance.
- Are your goals specific? Imagine an organisation aiming to deliver a 50:50 gender split – this time across the whole workforce, not just the board. That organisation may achieve its target. But if the majority of female employees are in traditionally female-dominated functions, such as marketing and HR, while functions like finance and IT remain overwhelmingly male, then in reality little positive change has been achieved. Instead, targets should be aimed at specific areas of the business to ensure meaningful diversity.
- Are your targets achievable? In some sectors, there is a severe shortage of diverse – that is, non-white, non-male – candidates. This issue has been highlighted by many organisations, including Facebook. It may sound like a poor excuse, but there is little that employers can do to address this problem in the short term. While there is nothing wrong with setting ambitious targets, they must at least be rooted in reality.
5. Communicate Your Efforts to Build Advocacy
Presumably, no organisation would want its D&I programme to be kept a secret. Diversity and inclusion are seen as overwhelmingly positive, so it makes sense for employers to be completely transparent about their approach and the results they aim to deliver.
However, many organisations are falling down on the seemingly simple act of communicating their D&I plans. Indeed, one survey found that only 42% of employees feel their organisation regularly makes available information on the diversity of leadership teams and the wider workforce.
This appears to be an issue of perception. Business leaders (63%) are far more likely to believe they are regularly communicating this key information. Furthermore, while just 10% of leaders say they are not communicating frequently with employees on D&I, this proportion climbs to:
- 17% among employees
- 17% among drivers of D&I programmes
- 19% among HR professionals
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to discussing diversity and inclusion. However, it is clear that organisations must work harder to regularly communicate the goals and impact of their D&I strategies, in a format that resonates with their workforce.
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