3 ways you can help prevent fatigue and burnout in your DEIB team

CNBC reports, six Black women in executive-level DEIB roles across Hollywood have all left their jobs in the last few weeks.?

Those six women are:

• Karen Horne, SVP of North America DEI at Warner Bros. Discovery
• Terra Potts, EVP of worldwide marketing at Warner
• Jeanell English, EVP of Impact and Inclusion at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences
• Vernā Myers, Head of Inclusion at Netflix
• LaTondra Newton, CDO and SVP at Disney?
• Joanna Abeyie, creative diversity director at the BBC?

And per Variety , more are to come.?

What’s pushing these women out of the same roles that many of them have called the most meaningful of their career??

A mix of issues:

• A lack of financial support, especially as the economy cools and DEIB initiatives are first to be cut
• A lack of internal backing for their work, as some companies, Warner included, move away from a centralized DEIB focus to try a segmentized, localized one
• A more risk-averse approach to DEIB internally —?more on this in the on our radar section, where we summarize WSJ reporting on the risk to corporate diversity programs after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action?
• And general exhaustion. Some women are leaving their roles and citing burnout and a need to recharge. As one executive told Variety: “Black women are not allowed to be difficult, vulnerable, weak or challenging. We must be perfect, have unlimited understanding, and continuously validate a White person’s guilt and empty gestures on how we’re fixing things. It’s exhausting, and I’m fucking tired.”

We need to recognize that this is happening after, in response to movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, many Hollywood studios moved to correct their legacies of racism and sexism by staffing DEIB teams, hiring more women to writers’ rooms , and greenlighting more projects led by Black creators .??

But as we regularly write about, true transformation is hard — and it looks like Hollywood isn’t sufficiently supporting many of the people who are trying to lead it.

You might not have Hollywood’s specific problems, or Hollywood-sized budgets to fix them. But there are things you can be doing today to help better support your DEIB team, so that they don’t burn out. And that’s an effort that’s needed across industries. Read on for our tips.

3 ways you can help prevent fatigue and burnout in your DEIB team

1. Set —?and don’t cut —?multi-year budgets. Many companies froze or cut their DEIB budgets in 2022 when the market started to slow down, which in turn demotivated young workers and people of color. Be explicit about the amount of money you are committing to DEIB, in the form of internal funding, external community support, and other programs, and report on it regularly. That will help your DEIB team —?and your company as a whole — feel like their work has a long, meaningful runaway, and isn’t on the chopping block every time the economy turns.?
2. Create psychological safety at work that explicitly looks out for marginalized talent, including Black women. A 2022 report found that 66% of Black women don't feel emotionally safe at work. HBR suggests that companies invest in becoming trauma-informed workplaces and train all managers on related topics (including cultural humility and equitable decision-making), tying managers’ performance metrics to those areas. We have four other recommended strategies for you here .?
3. Expand your sabbatical policy, and encourage people to use it. A Harvard lecturer and sabbatical researcher found that most people who go on sabbatical go through three phases : recover (which can be pure relaxation, or more bucket-list-type activities like hiking, sailing, or traveling with family); explore (where they’re considering what the right next step for them is); and practice. As Aaron Stahl, who has gone on five “mini-sabbaticals” in his life and has set them up at his company, says , it’s not that complicated: their company offers one paid sabbatical month after five years of tenure, and builds from there. Sabbaticals can be especially restorative for Black women, as found by Essence , and resources like The Octavia Fund , which provides funding for Black women to use on sabbaticals and retreats, can help round out corporate offerings.??

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