DEI: What are you measuring?

One of the biggest failures of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement is that it has failed to set clear and measurable diversity, equity and inclusion goals.

The field is filled with passionate, gifted individuals, who have staked their careers on championing the under-represented, those left out – unheard and unseen, and the unjustly treated.

But increasingly in 2024 DEI positions have come under threat because business leaders, who have not yet been convinced by the ethical justification, have not yet seen an impact in the business case.

Building sustainable change

Setting diversity, equity and inclusion goals is the only way to ensure that policies and actions are sustainable.

After all, any function that doesn’t deliver value to the organization is always going to be at risk.

And if you can’t measure that value, it is harder to make your case, particularly if there is any financial pressure to save costs.

There is a challenge here.

Many DEI professionals are extremely passionate.

They have an in-depth knowledge of the ways in which privilege has given some an unfair advantage, they know fully how deliberate and accidental discrimination has prevented large groups of people having a fair opportunity to succeed and they understand the impact of exclusion and microaggressions at an individual level.

They are advocates and champions but have often allowed their passion to focus on advocacy and less on actions.?

Measurable impact

This is often because they have no budget, resources and little support.

Organizing a meeting or training led by internal advocates has little budget impact, but the impact is hard to measure.

And business is about measurable impact.

Nearly every meeting focused on diversity, equity and inclusion discusses actions – what are we going to do.

In this article, we will look at why this is misguided.

We must, instead, start every discussion with: what changes do we need and how will we measure that change?

The more time we spend on identifying specific changes that can be measured the more sustainable the impact will be.

And just as importantly, the DEI function is seen to have a specific and measurable positive impact on the organization.

Setting FAST diversity, equity and inclusion goals

Most people are familiar with SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound).

When setting diversity, equity and inclusion goals, it may be more appropriate to use the FAST approach:

• Frequently discussed
• Ambitious
• Specific
• Transparent

Frequently discussed

Goals need to be out in the open.

Everyone needs to be involved with them and interested in them.

But they also need constant evolution and development.

Businesses don’t stand still, and neither should your goals. If your goal is to increase representation of women on the board to 50% within five years, you could revise that to having 30% of the board from global majority backgrounds if you achieve the 50% goal early or combine the two to recognize intersectionality.?

Leadership meetings and performance reviews should include a discussion of the diversity, equity and inclusion goals – how as leaders are you helping to achieve them?

DEI initiatives succeed best when they are normalized into conversations that aren’t about DEI.

If a meeting by default includes a discussion about the impact on the diversity, equity and inclusion goals, then the change is cemented.?

DEI professionals are not gatekeepers.

They don’t control the discussion, but they enable and facilitate discussion.

Rather than a list of ‘don’ts,’ DEI can lead a conversation on ‘Do’s’.

Ambitious

If you ask for a thimble of water, you can only ever get a thimbleful.

If you ask for a swimming pool of water, you might get 10 buckets!

The SMART acronym suggests that goals should be attainable, but FAST suggests they should be almost unattainable.

Comfortable goals promote underachievement and complacency.

Difficult, ambitious goals push to overachieve and create a sense of urgency and energy.

And when you get close to achieving an ambitious goal, there really is something to sing and shout about in celebration.?

And if we’re honest, small goals are hardly noticed and don’t get us much closer to real equity.

According to the World Economic Forum , at the current rate of change, it will take 136 years to close the gender economic gap.

In the opinion of many, this is partly the result of under-ambitious goals.

Specific

Both models of goal setting agree on specificity.

Specific – not only in the numbers, but in the actual goal itself.

‘Increasing diversity on the board’ is not a specific goal.

‘Increasing the representation on the board of women from global-majority backgrounds to 25% and of women in general to 50% within three years’ is specific both in number and in the target itself.?

Setting specific diversity, equity and inclusion goals requires significant research.

You need to learn the weak spots within your organization.

The safe areas to look are retention and recruitment – do you hire and keep people that are representative of the wider population?

But you’ll need to look deeper.?

Every organization has employees with discipline and grievance histories.

But are they spread proportionally? Many organizations find that black women have a disproportionate number of grievances and black men a disproportionate number of disciplinary actions (e.g. in the British Public Health Service (NHS) ).

The same is true for bullying, harassment, performance and capability conversations.?

Engagement surveys often highlight areas that need work, so you’ll need to do some research and talk to lots of people to get an idea of where the specific goals you need to set will come from.

Transparent

We’ve already mentioned the importance of talking about goals – and that is one element of transparency.

But it’s also essential to be transparent about how diversity, equity and inclusion goals fit into organizational, team and individual goals.

After all, for the organization to achieve the goals, they will be supported by individuals who are organized in teams. The goals must have internal cohesion and link vertically and horizontally.

The vertical link ensures accountability upwards and engagement downwards. Leadership must recognize their role in building a more inclusive organization and employees must believe that the changes they are being asked to incorporate have wider significance.?

Horizontal alignment reinforces the message that inclusion is the responsibility of all.

It is not the job of a DEI professional (or volunteer!) to make the organization inclusive.

However, every employee is an essential part of the road to an organization that values all talent and backgrounds and rejects inequity, injustice and exclusion.

Transformative goals

We’ve looked at how to set goals, so now we move to which goals we need to set.

After all, diversity, equity and inclusion goals are supposed to change things.

Any goal is the enemy of the status quo and a goal that doesn’t lead to change is toothless and meaningless.

That means that we must carefully consider what we want to change before we think about how we want to change it.

Mckinsey’s famous Diversity at Work report introduced the concept of a diversity dividend – greater diversity correlates to greater profitability and productivity.

Regardless of how you view the methods behind the analysis of that data, the report has put in the mind of businesses everywhere that there is a way to measure the impact of diversity, equity and inclusion goals on the bottom line of the business.?

This means that the first responsibility of the DEI professional who wants to set impactful goals is to study the business strategy, vision and mission. To be completely familiar with the company strategy.

Your research will pay dividends as you align your goals to the things that business leaders are worrying about.

Innovation and creativity

Most businesses have a forward-thinking strategy to meet the future needs of their customers.

If you can frame your diversity, equity and inclusion goals in terms of solving problems, creative solutions and innovative approaches you are speaking the language of decision makers and stakeholders.?

This can be as simple as talking about cognitive diversity – the view that many perspectives generate better ideas with more data points to support conclusions.

Or ensuring that those making decisions reflect the diversity of those impacted by them.

In other words, if your customer base is diverse, your workforce must have a similar make up – particularly those making the decisions.?

In a notorious example, crash-test dummies were only made to conform to the average male body shape until 2007.

The (mostly) male engineers considered women’s body shapes to be exceptions and therefore not statistically significant.

The result – women were much more likely to be seriously injured or to die in a car accident than men.?

Mobile phones, designed by men, were made for the average size of a man’s hand, not a smaller women’s hand; cancer medication was rarely tested on women because their hormones affected test results (!)…. And many many more examples.

It can be difficult to measure the exact contribution of increased innovation and creativity, but we can measure whose ideas are followed through, who is promoted or receives bonuses and who leaves the business. These are measurable data points.

Cost-effective goals

And this brings us to our next point.

Recruitment is expensive.

Employee churn not only costs money, but it also reduces productivity and stability and impacts long term projects negatively.

You can set goals around reducing churn and, through proper exit interviews, aim to reduce disillusionment from exclusion.?

You aren’t just looking to reduce the number of women or people of color leaving the business – although that is certainly one measure.

You’re looking at teams with unusual patterns of turnover.?

When someone who is considered ‘other’ or ‘different’ is overlooked, feels unseen or unheard, the entire team suffers.

Research shows that not only performance and productivity drop, but the whole team suffers reduced trust, poorer mental and physical wellbeing and disillusionment.?

Setting a goal to reduce recruitment costs will help you uncover teams where microaggressions, exclusion and discrimination flourish as you look deeper into the data.?

Ethical goals

DEI policies that only talk about the business case fail.

They fail because they don’t engage people at an emotional level – they don’t win the ‘hearts and minds’ of employees.

We don’t often get passionate about the bottom line or abstract numbers. But people do buy into emotional causes.?

That’s why we still need to invest in raising awareness.

We don’t necessarily need awareness of the 217 varying types of unconscious bias, but we do need to understand the devastating impact of structural inequity and the personal pain of exclusion.?

Doing the ‘right thing’ must be high on our list of diversity, equity and inclusion goals. And that can be measured and aligned to corporate strategies and value statements.

It can also be measured.

You can identify the number of mentions of inclusion in public statements, internal meetings and corporate communications. You can measure the representation in marketing documentation, the acceptance of different identity presentation and the use of inclusive language.

We’re not talking about the much-maligned political correctness – which is in the view of many just as discriminator as it applies a one-size-fits-all solution.

We’re talking about ensuring that everyone is valued, seen and has equity of opportunity.

It’s not saying you should hire a black woman because she applied, but that you ensure that the black woman is assessed on her talents and skills and not disqualified because she has a ‘difficult name’ or didn’t go to the ‘right school’ or have a traditional career.

Inclusive behaviors

Diversity, equity and inclusion goals must be inextricably linked to behaviors and competencies.

And not as a separate item, but as an integral part of a competency framework.

A leader who is not inclusive all the time in all their behaviors is not inclusive at all.

Deloitte developed research to identify the six signature traits of inclusive leadership – and if you can incorporate these into your diversity, equity and inclusion goals, you’ll be making a significant and hugely positive difference to your organization.?

Data rules!?

HR systems are getting more and more clever at measuring behavioral competencies and it’s well worth your time getting to know your HRM software – or at least the people who manage it – to identify what yours can do.

That will help you track and measure those behaviors.

Robert McNamara was the US Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1968 and was probably the person who first said, ‘If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist’ – commonly called the McNamara Fallacy (Fallacy, in the sense that it’s patently not true).

And while it is an exaggeration, you will notice that this article about diversity, equity and inclusion goal setting is more about measuring than setting goals.?

There is a clear logic to this approach.

If you can measure it, you can demonstrate an improvement.

And if that improvement aligns to the business goals and strategies, then it becomes a valuable change that the business cannot ignore.

And if it is valuable, then inclusion will become part of the lifeblood of the organization, rather than the ‘fun police’ that many DEI teams have an unfair reputation for being.?

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I'm Matthew MacLachlan .

I help build culturally diverse and inclusive organizations.

DM me to talk Cultural Intelligence. ??