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As we emerge from a year plagued by a coronavirus pandemic and stunted by an abrupt pause in nearly every facet of life—a year punctuated by ongoing racial and social unrest—now more than ever, higher education institutions and other organizations across the globe are recognizing the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). They are rethinking and reimagining ways to advance DEI on college campuses and in the workplace, and for many compelling reasons.
There is strong evidence that more attention to DEI in organizations can improve innovation and creativity, problem solving, employee engagement and trust, and financial performance. As well, decades of higher education research are quite clear: A diverse college campus has educational benefits, particularly when educators and professionals create optimal conditions for students to communicate across racial lines through curricular and cocurricular activities.
Importantly, diversity within and beyond institutions of higher education is a necessary prerequisite (and starting point) for a functioning society, for any type of serious progress in public policy, and for advancing equity and inclusion goals. The intentional efforts of businesses, colleges and universities, and other organizations to promote racial diversity should be lauded.
But problems arise when higher education institutions and other organizations strive to achieve compositional (numeric) diversity without opportunities to reflect on and examine their own histories, policies, and practices or to leverage expert support to guide and advance equity and inclusion. Simply increasing the numbers of non-white individuals without actively responding to structural impediments or developing equity and inclusion goals is grossly insufficient. Moreover, it has the potential to intensify rather than lessen campus and organizational climate issues and dissatisfaction among students and employees alike.
To be clear, organizations cannot simply tinker with the edges of a flawed system to give the illusion of progress while avoiding the real work required to address any toxicity and deep structural inequities within that system. To this point, Gartner found that only 40% of employees agree that their leadership team promotes an inclusive environment.
Today, in response to public pressures—including from financial sponsors and broad social movements—higher education institutions and businesses, including numerous sport organizations, are pushing beyond performative statements of solidarity and have attempted to ramp up their DEI efforts to change how they operate and serve their members. But DEI implementation is incredibly complex, multilayered, and at times unpredictable; it requires heavy lifting, and it can be emotionally taxing for all participants.
Some organizations have hired chief DEI officers, with job postings for these positions increasing by 35% over the past 2 years. These individuals can serve as change agents as they work to communicate effectively across leadership teams, to create key performance indicators and drive accountability, and to design effective DEI strategies and deliver results.
Well-trained and effective chief DEI officers understand that they must focus on reshaping the workplace to fit all members rather than trying to change some members to fit the workplace. They also understand that DEI must be front and center throughout an organization, rather than an additive factor or an afterthought.
Not surprisingly, there is no magic pill to successfully implement DEI initiatives overnight. This work requires equity-focused leaders, time and energy, effort and perseverance, collaboration and reflection, and resources. It requires data to shed light on individual and organizational behavior and to optimize decision making, including (but not limited to) retention issues, patterns in racial and gender bias, and so on.
Leadership teams in organizations that have set a shared goal of advancing DEI efforts can effectively implement DEI strategies in the following ways:
1. Assess organizational climate and culture. The first step in creating effective DEI strategies and goals is to collect data to establish a baseline understanding of the organization’s climate and culture. Some organizations may have these data readily available, but many will need to develop or adapt surveys in order to gain insight into how their members feel about their work and leadership. Developing a new survey is an ambitious and time-consuming undertaking, one that many leaders eschew. Nonetheless, surveys are valuable tools for strategic planning, benchmarking, and other performance reporting.
Survey data enable senior leadership to move beyond anecdotal evidence, to offer feedback and practical solutions that enhance members’ experiences. Without proper assessment, senior leaders are less likely to be fully aware of the types and magnitude of climate issues that members encounter.
Assessment data should be shared with senior leadership teams and other members of the organization. Doing so demonstrates transparency, which in turn leads to greater trust from leadership. Further, it enables members across levels, departments, and units to collectively strategize ways to optimize diverse environments for members and to provide direction for future inquiry and policy discussions.
2. Create a DEI team and incorporate DEI into the core strategic plan. Advancing DEI goals can be complex; a less challenging step is to create a DEI team. The team should include members across levels, departments, and units. These individuals should represent the diversity within the organization and should be rewarded for their voluntary participation.
The team should be primarily responsible for developing a comprehensive DEI strategy and goals while simultaneously seeking input, feedback, or guidance from other members in the workplace. It is important and necessary that all DEI goals are actionable, measurable, and data driven. Ultimately, the DEI strategy and goals should be incorporated into a core organizational strategic plan.
3. Hold senior-level and executive leaders accountable. Too often, organizations fail to advance DEI goals because they do not assign responsibility. It is imperative that senior and executive leaders are accountable for DEI outcomes to encourage top-down critical awareness and active participation in the ongoing process of change. This will remind members that DEI is not simply a concern of chief DEI officers or human resource managers.
Senior leaders should be held accountable by assessing DEI results applicable within their roles. For example, these results can come from concrete measures of equity within hiring, promotion, and retention outcomes by demographic group. After assessing select outcomes, leaders should determine how they will either build on desired outcomes or actively respond to potential problem areas.
4. Prioritize the full humanity of all people. Leaders must prioritize the full humanity of all members within an organization. Members need to be able to work with the respect and love of having their backgrounds—including their languages, literacies, cultures, and histories—understood and acknowledged.
Interactive sessions on marginalized groups and their histories, and what it means to exist as fully human, for example, would facilitate intergroup dialogue and foster cross-cultural understanding of the types of conscious and unconscious prejudices and discriminatory attitudes directed toward them. Trainings alone will not address this issue; rather, they must be seen as one phase of this critical work.
It is encouraging to witness organizations in this moment rethink and reinvent DEI implementation. We know, however, that an organization is only as good as its leaders—and equity-focused, well-resourced, and purpose-driven DEI leadership teams can drive measurable and sustainable changes.
Advancing DEI in the workplace or on campus cannot be reduced to an empty slogan or a phrase that fits on a bumper sticker. A serious commitment to DEI implementation has the potential to bring much-needed vitality and hope into organizations, but it is long overdue.
My next book is Organized Captivity: Control, Hyper-Surveillance, and Disposability of Black Athletes in the Corporate University.
