DEI - are businesses doing enough?

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion should run like a golden thread through an organisation, from recruitment and hiring, systems and processes, supervision and appraisal to succession planning. DEI is everybody's business, not just the DEI specialist's. However, for everyone to fully commit to this work and recognise the value DEI brings more work needs to be done at the individual level to explore the impact of biases and in what ways we can all discriminate. We need to expand our thinking around DEI if we are to encourage everyone to take it more seriously and to take responsibility. The Six Stages Diversity Framework supports organisations and HR with assessments and sets action plans in this area. Assessment of an organisation's starting point enables action planning with clear goals that involve everyone within the organisation.

DEI policies aren't just a nice to have, they are crucial for business success. But embracing DEI can feel uncomfortable as it means facing up to previous inequalities. Glassdoor data shows corporate focus on DEI surged in 2020 and 2021 but stalled in 2022 when just 48% of UK employees said their company had a DEI policy. But employees continue to care deeply about DEI initiatives, as well as the progress employers are making, or not. And continued labour shortages have made it easier for workers to demand more when it comes to social justice. Without embedded DEI policies, employers will struggle to attract and retain talent. For example, 62% of workers said they would turn down a role if they thought the company didn't support DEI initiatives. But without leadership buy-in, these policies will ultimately fail.

Many HR colleagues are made responsible for DEI without being trained or upskilled in it. They are HR experts, not necessarily DEI experts. This lack of investment encourages DEI initiatives to fail. DEI is everyone’s responsibility. It shouldn’t just sit with HR. Both HRs and managers need to be educated to genuinely understand the issues at stake for the organisation’s culture and business. Otherwise, we are left with performative gestures such as turning a logo rainbow for Pride month, putting up a black square to support Black Lives Matter or having employees take up the ‘Embrace Equity’ pose for this year’s International Women’s Day. Empty gestures are reputationally damaging if they are not backed up by action.

For DEI to be valued, leadership have to be a part of embracing change across the whole organisation. If it's just left to HR or a small DEI department, you will never see the value coming to the fore. With the talent challenges many businesses face, strategic embedded DEI creates sticky cultures that increase retention and attraction. But it takes time, and in my experience, companies tend to gain traction in one area of inclusion while the other lags behind, as they shout about the progress they've made. Businesses aren't doing enough, and some are using it as a marketing campaign but then not doing the hard work. And businesses need to address behaviours, role model examples and give management both the capability and capacity for these challenging conversations and to create protected spaces so everyone can learn.

How do you motivate staff teams to do anything if it doesn't immediately impact them, their workloads and their progress? If organisations are only tick-boxing diversity, equality and inclusion, it is extremely obvious and it reflects in the culture of the companies. Companies have to be committed to their staff becoming fluent in gender, race, culture, religion, women's issues and disability. We teach kids to get fluent with all different aspects of diversity by delivering inclusive books to their classrooms, we train teachers to have conversations about these topics, making sure they know the correct terms, are up-to-date with latest developments and that they're making sure the classroom is welcoming to all. That's what's needed in business. Incentivise DEI, find solutions from a diverse team and make it everybody's responsibility.

We find that when the Senior Leadership team sponsors the DEI initiative, rather than the HR team, or sponsors a specific ERG (employee resource group), this accelerates their learning and their perspective on the importance of DEI. It is not something that can be 'done' to employees, it has to be lived and breathed in an organisation. Often it is the fear of saying something clumsy or offending people that makes leaders avoid the arena, so ensuring they are equipped with all the knowledge and information that they need is vital. And that can't happen in a one-day workshop but needs to be an embedded programme over at least six months, which truly opens people's eyes and changes their mindset.