DE&I vs Woke Washing

“We will all profit from a more diverse, inclusive society, understanding, accommodating, even celebrating our differences, while pulling together for the common good.”

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg ??

A sense of belonging at work is something I talk about on here pretty much every week. This is both internally with what you are communicating to your team, as well as externally in how you advertise your product/service.

What I’ve come to realise over time is the marketing of your product improves as your internal comms improve. Having a shared belief system and vision internally will be the podium you use to shout about your product.

What is increasingly becoming popularised unfortunately is what is colloquially known as ‘woke washing’ - a term to describe the outward facing effort to improve DE&I efforts, without truly implementing anything or actively changing.

In this week’s Culture Compass I will be diving into:

• Woke Washing vs DE&I
• How this impacts your brand
• A breakdown of how US fast food chain, Denny's , implemented immediate and impactful DE&I change

Let’s get into it…

Woke Washing vs DE&I

We can describe woke washing as “the act of using social justice themes to create a positive image for a company, without taking meaningful action”. It is most commonly used as a marketing tactic, but we are seeing it increasingly used in HR/Operations also. An easy way to think about it is the business equivalent of virtue signalling

Vs.

A true DE&I strategy which is directed toward impactful change. Below is a guide to what the 3 individual policies are and how they link together to find that all important sense of belonging:

In summary, if you’re not practicing what you preach you will lose top talent (and likely also brand market share). Increasingly top talent are avoiding companies with bad reputations or negative employee reviews - in the same way that customers are avoiding companies that don’t stand for the same social justice issues they believe in.

More on this below ??

How this impacts your brand

Alan Jope , former CEO of 联合利华 , expressed his concern for the industry through this lens:

“[woke washing is] putting in peril the very thing which offers us the opportunity to help tackle many of the world’s issues.”

Highlighting your brands purpose without ‘walking the talk’ is more damaging for your brand in the long run. Internally the team won’t trust that you truly care about this sense of belonging. For example if you say that everyone is welcome and you hire blindly, but only post job ads on websites that are notorious for a specific demographic - no one believes you’re actively trying to work on it.

Externally an example would be if you put out an ad for plus size clothing which caters to every shape of person - but in reality the clothes don’t fit anyone north of 6ft or larger than a size 16. Your customers would lose faith in you as a brand that is truly standing up to these issues.

There is a tricky line to walk when it comes to political movements in business - but ultimately you need to be standing by what you believe internally and externally in equal measure. Everything starts from the internal ops.

So what can you do?

• Ensure that you start with a full values and company morals assessment - are these rules of the road for everyone in the business and something you can all get behind? If not, review and change so they are more manageable internally.
• Review your hiring processes - ultimately the message you’re communicating about your business starts with the people within it. Who you have in the team matters, are they all the best possible pioneers for your shared vision?
• Feedback! Regular team check ins coupled with regular customer/market check ins ensures that you are actively on the pulse, not just woke washing for short-term benefit.

???Company Spotlight ??

Denny's - the all American 24/7 diner is one we can all learn from when it comes to practicing what you preach.

For a brand that identifies itself as “a diner for today’s America”, there is nothing more important than showing up as a business where everyone belongs. After an initial step of regular DE&I pulse surveys to their entire corporate team - they spotted troublesome gaps.

To tackle it head on they implemented an 18 month DE&I program, ‘Denny’s Together’. Here’s the steps they went through:

Phase 0

‘Rules to live by’ - their base level DE&I beliefs

• Whilst policy alone isn’t quite enough to invoke change, it is the only way to start. For Denny’s they rolled out a set of beliefs they have, based on the research and surveys conducted.
• As Raila Roinisalo said - “We wanted to have an approach that really taps into people's natural compassion and curiosity”

Their rules to live by were:

Phase 1

Education and awareness of these rules

• e-learning, videos and tailored content sent out regularly to team

Phase 2

30 day ‘Go Beyond’ challenge

• With daily challenges, focal reading areas and prizes to be won they hit the ground running with ensuring DE&I was front of mind every single day.

Phase 3

Conversation

• Two-day session to understand how to communicate in an empathetic and supportive way, actively listening to everyone. This is cohort based to mix up communication styles

Phase 4

Allyship

• How they can be active allies at all times and create safe spaces for all

During the campaign they reached 80% (!!!) participation among all corporate staff, and implemented a long standing focus on DE&I by continuing the learning process for 18 months through ongoing learning, reflection and practice.

So how can you implement something similar?

Ensure you get executive buy-in

• It is a large time and financial investment so ensuring the CEO/Leadership team is fully on board is vital

Be sure to review and understand what your culture is first

• As Denny’s did, rolling out a survey of some sort to the whole team is a good way of starting point to understanding your team culture and what gaps there are.

Ensure there is a huge amount of trust and psychological safety at play before starting

• Take your time to let everyone know what the purpose is of this challenge and why it is so important. This helps set the scene for everyone to be honest and trust in the process.

Full commitment by participants

• Setting the tone at the beginning will help with this but communicating the importance of full commitment, and setting fun challenges throughout to win prizes or similar is a super useful way to engage the team.

Finally - practice what you preach. If your team are going through the motions you should be too. If you don’t implement what is learnt or brought up during this period then all faith will be lost in you as business leaders.

In other words - Be more Denny's !

“Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.”

– Vernā Myers (Author, Founder and ex VP of Inclusion Strategy at Netflix )

What we are reading

• Why Woke Washing is damaging for the CPG industry
• How Denny’s rolled out an active DE&I program involving the entire team
• Social justice activation and HR