Intent does not equal impact. Time and again I see organizations with good intentions embark on an enthusiastic endeavor to increase diversity in their workplace.
Time and time again I also see their nonexistent to negative impacts, from failure to create lasting positive change to crash-and-burn disasters rife with unproductive conflict. Often it’s because they didn’t follow one or more of these five proven strategies for diversity and inclusion success – the “new school” way. The good news is it’s never too late to learn and regroup, and a new year presents ripe opportunity for fresh starts!
Strategy No. 5: Hire an Excellent Training Partner. If you’ve invested lots of money in training but seen low to no meaningful results, or you’ve received feedback that D&I training has led to confusion or increased problems, you may have selected a training partner that was inadequate, or not a good fit for your organization’s culture. Not all diversity training or trainers are high quality, especially now that D&I is more common and sought-after than ever before. Engaging an inadequate training partner wastes scarce resources, and undermines the credibility of D&I efforts. Ensure you’re set up for success before making a game-changing investment by asking: (1) Do we need training? Sometimes leadership coaching, systems change, or data collection is a more appropriate intervention, and a true D&I professional will help you figure this out. (2) Do we need it now? Training usually yields a higher ROI after proper assessment or other interventions. (3) Who do we already have internally with expertise in organizational development, adult learning, instructional design and facilitation? Ask potential internal and external training partners strategic questions to determine expertise and fit.
Strategy No. 4: Measure the Meaningful Impact of Training … and Reinforce It. If your D&I training got rave reviews, but you’ve seen no-to-low meaningful outcomes in your culture, systems, or leadership, you may not have set training up for success back in the workplace. Not creating a robust plan for implementation and systems change following D&I training wastes resources. It’s a false belief, even among some training professionals, that the effects of training can’t be measured. This belief undermines the credibility of D&I, and reflects poor stewardship of an organization’s trust and investment of budget, time and talent. Before investing in training, ensure you’re set up for success by asking: (1) What are the specific goals or learning objectives for the training? (2) What is our baseline? In other words, where are we now in relation to our training goals? (3) How will we know whether this training was a success? What metrics will we track, and how will we measure it?
Strategy No. 3: Identify and Measure Meaningful Goals. If you don’t have D&I goals, or your goals are only to start employee resource groups or recruit/hire/promote more people of color or women, stop what you’re doing and focus here. Launching D&I efforts with no clear goals, or old-school goals that are limited to focusing on numbers devoid of meaningful strategy is the best way to ensure D&I stalls, fizzles or disappears. You can’t produce meaningful, measurable business-critical results without meaningful goals, and if you’re not producing meaningful, measurable results, you’re wasting time and money. Meaningful D&I goals address a current, pressing problem or take your organization from good to great. Tackling D&I without them adds tasks and stress to leaders’ and employees’ already-overflowing plates (thus reducing buy-in), and damages the credibility of D&I efforts.
Approaching your D&I initiative like a checklist of best practices from elsewhere without a solid business imperative that’s relevant and urgent to your organization’s success is just as ineffective as approaching any other strategic priority that way. Your goals, challenges and needs may not be the same as your competitors’, or the rest of your industry. You must do adequate assessment and gap analysis before taking action to get better-than-OK results. Start by asking: (1) How will a successful D&I initiative alleviate our existing pain points? (2) How will a successful D&I initiative move us from good to great in critical areas we already care about? (3) How will a successful D&I initiative help us avoid potential future pain points?
Strategy #2: Address Your Culture’s Toxicity to Excellence, Change and Inclusiveness. If you have meaningful, business-critical D&I goals, but you’re seeing low to no desired change or experiencing poor employee engagement, your organization may be too toxic for D&I to take healthy root. Also, if you don’t assess employee engagement in any formal, consistent way, haven’t reviewed your data for over three years or don’t cut your (engagement, turnover, promotion, hiring) data by strategic demographic groups, you’re flying blind. Your training program will fall flat and your investment is wasted if your culture doesn’t support healthy change, equity, inclusion or general excellence. Your core issue might not be about diversity and inclusiveness at all, but rather lack of accountability or effective leadership, which are creating or exacerbating diversity issues
Strategy #1: “Do Diversity” for the Results (Not Just Because It’s the Right Thing to Do). “Rightness and “goodness” are beliefs based on certain values. One’s beliefs and values may be precious but they aren’t facts or universal truth. They may not provide value, results or profit, which are important to organizations. Also, not everyone shares the same values. Expecting that everyone does is naïve, and believing everyone should actually reduces diversity and silences those who challenge or raise questions. Doing diversity based on notions of rightness is also unsustainable, because initiatives based only on beliefs and values are often viewed as nice-to-haves that get cut when leadership priorities shift, or resources become scarce. Believing that doing diversity is right or good isn’t required for it to work. Just as one doesn’t need to believe in internal combustion or the laws of physics to drive a car, the principles of diversity and inclusiveness work regardless of the belief systems of those involved.
Diversity plus inclusiveness gets superior results, as shown by multiple studies including from hard sciences like mathematics and economics. Doing diversity right isn’t about helping “them” (women, people of color, LGBT, people with disabilities, etc.). It’s not about doing the right thing, making others think you’re good people or keeping up with your competitors. Doing diversity right is about getting superior results in whatever critical, strategic priorities you already have. It’s about solving an urgent problem or going from good to great. That’s it. Diversity plus inclusiveness is an excellence multiplier. Don’t treat it as anything less by not implementing these five proven strategies to produce results that matter!
Susana Rinderle is president of Susana Rinderle Consulting and a trainer, coach, speaker, author and diversity & inclusion expert. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.
Great, a diverse workplace can be a successful one. In order to have a diverse workplace, hire employees that would embrace it.
https://www.intelifi.com/technology/emerge
Yes, Lena having clarity about expectations with regards to culture — and communicating them and holding people accountable — is key. Too many leaders and organizations are overly timid about this. If an employee is neither willing nor able to support the objectives and goals of the organization (after an opportunity to learn and adjust), they aren’t a fit to work there.
Thank you for this post. I especially appreciate your focus on resistance in the enterprise to inclusiveness, excellence and change. This is the major reason women and people of color often leave organizations.
A few questions for an enterprise to ask:
1. Where’s your diversity? If the only person of color in leadership is in the diversity office, you have a problem. (In some ways, this is similar to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That’s where most Black people get stuck – whether the Dems or the GOP are in power. Look at the current occupant – a surgeon with no housing experience.)
2. What are your unspoken expectation of candidates bringing diversity to the enterprise? Too often African Americans and other people of color face higher expectations than their White (especially White male) colleagues. We’ll know when we have full equality when a company hires as many mediocre Black women as mediocre White men… That said, the flip side is challenging too: I’ve been criticized by White male peers for working too hard on a job. Really.
3. Hiring is one thing, retention another. What are you doing to ensure successful retention? Lots to be said here, but a key element is gathering info to assess work and role satisfaction — including thorough exit interviews.
Thanks again for your post.
Hello! Thank you so much for your feedback and additions. I have an entire list of questions for orgs to ask to assess their toxicity to excellence, if you’re interested. Your question #2 is one I hadn’t thought of, and it’s really important! Women and people of color often have to work twice as hard to be seen as half as good, and we often burn out because we’re asked to be on every task force and special project requiring a “diverse” perspective. I had not heard of a woman/person of color being criticized for working too had, fascinating! Thank you.
Hi there. I’d love to have a copy of your list of questions referenced above. If you don’t mind sharing, I can be reached at Carla.lario@dph.ga.gov. Thanks!
Sure Carla! I will email you. Meanwhile, you can access it on my website susanarinderle.com (the list is contained in the free guide “5 Proven Strategies to Guarantee Your Diversity Initiative Produces Results” that you can download once you sign up for my e-news).
Oh, I’d love to see them! As well, you’re spot on about the many extras women and people of color are expected to bring to an organization and to their movement up the career ladder. I wish these kinds of unspoken but quite real responsibilities were externalized to better assess them and the folks who bring them (and, of course, with an aim to make them specific to the position, not the person holding it — and remunerated, too).
BTW – an article on how the diversity and inclusion positions can be a dead end (unless, of course, the role reports directly to the CEO/top dog) would be great to read. Curiously, you never see White men covet that position as a way into the C-suite. Just sayin.
As for the working too hard — I thought it was unusual, too, until I saw of list of challenges Black women face in the workforce — and it was on there! I didn’t feel so alone.
Again, thanks for your work. I look forward to reading more of it.
Angela
Hi Angela! Thank you for the additional feedback, as well as the article suggestion. I just put that idea into my queue — I don’t recall having seen a piece on that, and I can certainly speak to it (having been there myself.)
Is the list of challenges Black women face on the Internet, or do you have it handy? I’d love to report it on my social media feeds. I say amen to anything that makes us feel less alone!
Regarding the list of questions to asses toxicity — you can access it on my website susanarinderle.com (the list is contained in the free guide “5 Proven Strategies to Guarantee Your Diversity Initiative Produces Results” that you can download once you sign up for my e-news). I can also email you if you provide me with your email address.
Cheers!
Susana