Diversity & Inclusion: Moving Forward

Whether your organization has already begun work in the space of diversity and inclusion or is just beginning the process, this section provides value tips to help you on your journey.

GET INSPIRED

Read:

  • Implementing Diversity by Marilyn Loden
  • Building on the Promise of Diversity: How We Can Move to the Next Level in Our Workplaces, Our Communities, and Our Society by R. Roosevelt Thomas
  • Readings for Diversity and Social Justice: An Anthology on Racism, Antisemitism, Sexism, Heterosexism, Ableism, and Classism by Beverly Daniel Tatum, Bobbie Harro, Warren J. Blumenfeld, Diane Raymond, Fred L. Pincus, Iris Marion Young, Stephanie M. Wildman, Adrienne D. Davis, Ronald Takaki, Michael Omi
  • Managing Diversity: Toward a Globally Inclusive Workplace by Michalle E. Mor Barak
  • Cultural Diversity: A Primer for the Human Services by Jerry V. Diller
  • Understanding Institutional Diversity by Elinor Ostrom
  • The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies by Scott E. Page

BE INTENTIONAL

Get started:

  1. Perform an Internal Assessment of state of diversity and inclusion.  Benchmark your current levels of workforce diversity, spend with minority owned businesses, amount of community investment, or other target areas of diversity and inclusion.
  2. Recruit ambassadors for internal diversity. Enroll change agents at multiple levels – including those with standing and influence. Be sure to truly engage people's ideas, energy and creativity in the challenge of assessing and enhancing your diversity and inclusion profile.
  3. Conduct Diversity Training.  Seek outside professionals who can bring objectivity and expertise when it comes to creating a safe environment for honest conversation to support a culture of inclusion.
  4. Form a Diversity Council. Two types of councils are most common: external and internal. Internal councils are comprised of senior executives within the company and, in the best cases, are led by the CEO. Sometimes they include members of employee-resource groups. External councils function like a board of directors, with prominent outsiders from corporate America, government, academia or the diversity industry.

INNOVATE

Take it to the next level:

  1. Define goals for diversity and inclusion.  The five key areas for goal setting are: Recruitment, Retention, Supplier, CEO Commitment,  and Community Partnerships.
  2. Develop a Mission Statement
  3. Empower ambassadors to innovate a comprehensive diversity action plan for integration into all operations. Bring in change agents at multiple levels – including those with standing and influence. It's not just about who's at the table, or in your company, it's very much about how you engage their differences.  This starts with leadership expressing an authentic desire to get feedback and ideas about business and employment practices, and goes to how you make decisions.  If one person is making all the key decisions at your company, you're probably losing out on the value of diverse perspectives.
  4. Develop your diversity and inclusion message and brand.  Just like your general market campaign, your message for diversity should be succinct, consistent and resonant with your target audience.  Seek an outside agency that specializes in diversity marketing to assist you with branding and building brand equity through marketing.
  5. Develop and implement a Diversity Communications Plan. Deliver your message of commitment to internal and external audiences. Communications best practices show that external communications play a vital role in providing internal audiences with validation/visibility of what the organization deems important. Audiences are able to recognize and reinforce the credibility of a company’s diversity reputation when they are aware of multicultural marketing efforts, workplace diversity, diversity in corporate leadership, success stories from diverse suppliers and meaningful community partnerships.  These relationships have tremendous value as communication channels to support a company’s brand, and they can provide inoculation against reputation damage during a crisis.

LEAD

  1. Measure your success.  With a targeted growth strategy based on numbers, it is easy to measure how far you have moved the needle in each area of focus, e.g. number of minorities in workforce, dollars spent with diverse suppliers.
  2. Reward achievement.  Recognize employees who have demonstrated an outstanding performance in hiring and dollar spend with minority-owned businesses.  It is also important to recognize suppliers who deliver exceptional value and perform excellent customer service.
  3. Evaluate your progress. Set new goals.
  4. Reinvest in D&I.  As with any business plan, strategy, money and human capital are what makes diversity and inclusion successful.