How To Start A DEI Initiative: 7 Ways To Improve Your Success

Introduction

Imagine what it would be like to see real success in your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program.?

Perhaps this looks like a healthy work culture where microaggressions and biased behaviors have no place. And everyone experiences equity, respect, and a feeling of belonging.

This type of success is possible with a cultural transformation.

Where do you start?

Before your start, look at these Dos and Don’ts of DEI.

Do NOT:

• Start DEI without leadership support.
• Force-feed your approach or training.?
• Provide negative messages in training and performance evaluations.
• Make the legal case for diversity - don’t say: “if you discriminate, the company will pay for it.”?
• Make diversity training mandatory. You can start with new expectations, make it voluntary, and be supportive of increasing KSAs.
• Punish people with training - it shouldn’t be remedial.
• Focus on strategies or tactics that focus on control or “aim” to increase diversity. Your approach must be more positive, people-focused, and aimed at improving relationships.

Do What Works:

• Find the “bright spots” of inclusive practices/behaviors. What is already working, and how can we replicate it?
• Use recruiting initiatives that focus on increasing diversity by dropping the GPA requirements, attracting diverse candidates with unbiased language in job posts, etc.
• Implement mentoring programs and diversity task forces (Employee Resource Groups).
• Improve the relationship between supervisors and employees.
• Engage managers in solving the problem. When managers actively help boost diversity and inclusion, they become invested in the change efforts and “champions of change!”

No Quick Fixes

Part of the problem is that we like to seek quick fixes to a problem that requires a radical transformation of our culture. You look for a solution, tip, or tool that you can immediately use to address your DEI issues.

Although tools and practical steps are needed, you must follow up with work that requires you to grow in the disciplines of DEI, HR, and organizational change.?

You cannot simply apply a shortcut to problems like discrimination with roots in historical, institutionalized racism and sexism.

DEI practitioners must implement DEI as a change process to get REAL results.

The Seven Ways

Take these 7 actions to massively improve your change process with short-term activities and long-game performance for achieving DEI goals:

1. Perform A DEI Audit.
2. Establish Inclusion As Your Goal.
3. Use A Strategic Approach.
4. Follow-up On Systemic Change.
5. Focus On Behavioral Change.
6. Apply Lessons From Psychology.
7. Set Your Path And Stay The Course.

One: Perform A DEI Audit

Before you start anything, audit your current situation to identify gaps, solutions, and priorities. This gives you a pulse on how employees feel and how your values align with DEI principles and are practiced throughout your organizational culture.?

Surveys

Surveys are one of many effective ways to collect useful data. Use them in addition to other methods for assessing your organizational culture, levels of employee engagement, and perceptions of inclusion.

Use a variety of surveys as well.? For example, conduct a demographics survey, pay equity survey and analysis, and most importantly, an employee engagement and inclusion survey to get valuable data.

This is an important point: you need to make data-driven decisions.? And surveys provide real-time insights into how employees feel about their work environment, sense of inclusion and belonging, and levels of engagement.?

Give adequate consideration to your efforts for developing surveys based on valid, research-based questions that measure employee perceptions.

Perceptions tell how well employees believe you support them through performance management, career development, and other retention activities.

Perceptions also tell you how engaged and motivated employees are at performing their jobs, how well you communicate with them, and how they view the employee-employer relationship.

If you’re ready to conduct your DEI Audit, make sure you use these proven surveys and tools found in this bundle (they’re free!):

• DEI Collection of Guides and Tools

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Employee Lifecycle

Additionally, look at how DEI plays out in the employee lifecycle. The employee lifecycle is a concept in HR management that describes the stages an employee goes through at different points in your organization.?

Here’s a typical employee lifecycle:?

1. Recruitment.
2. Orientation.
3. Onboarding.
4. Retention.
5. Career development.
6. Performance management.
7. Engage and motivate.
8. Recognition.
9. Separation.

The employee lifecycle exists in every organization. When you understand how your organization interacts with employees at every stage of this cycle, you'll know where you can improve DEI. That's why it is critical to see how your organization considers diversity, equity, and inclusion to create positive relationships.

The following DEI-informed questions will help you gain insight into how your organization interacts with people in the employee lifecycle.?

• How are we meeting DEI goals during our recruitment and retention practices?
• How are we practicing fairness or providing equal access to career development or promotional opportunities?
• What policies advance or hinder DEI goals throughout the employee lifecycle?

Finally, look for areas in the employee lifecycle where:??

• Disparate Impact and bias may be happening.
• Diversity and Inclusion opportunities can happen.

Analyze your results and look for patterns and trends. The goal is to prioritize areas for improvement that you can address. This also helps you identify quick wins - those things you can take care of with little effort.

Two: Establish Inclusion As Your Goal

Everyone knows that inclusion is a choice. Those in power can either choose or not choose to include people from marginalized communities. Courageous inclusive leaders call out discrimination, inequality, and exclusionary employment practices.

Inclusive leaders focus on improving inclusion throughout the organization. This positions your DEI change process as an operationalized effort from within the organization that supports diversity, equity, and inclusion goals for everyone.

This way, your initiative becomes a business priority and does not exclude straight white men or others.

You need everyone on board. If you want to have productive convos and take action on how people in power support people from marginalized communities by providing them with the resources they need to succeed.

You need everyone working together, moving in the same direction.

The biggest reasons people leave their workplace are because they experience a negative culture: they don’t feel valued by their managers or the organization and they don’t have a sense of belonging.

Belonging and equity are critical outcomes of inclusion.??

When people experience inclusion, they experience a true sense of belonging while also feeling that their individuality is recognized and valued by others.

Inclusion is about balancing how well people experience belongingness, and uniqueness and how equity supports people’s specific needs for succeeding in the workplace.

So, play the long game: cultivate a culture of inclusion that values people and gives them the sense of belonging and support they need.

DEI initiatives that focus on inclusion differ from those that focus on increasing diversity or making systemic changes alone, with little effort on promoting behavioral change. An initiative centered on inclusion builds quality relationships with everyone. Regardless of who they are, what they believe in, and who they love.

Inclusion requires meaningful action to inspire inclusive behaviors that welcome everyone.

Inclusion requires that you build trust with everyone, especially with those employees who come from marginalized communities.

Inclusion requires a shift in your thinking, beliefs, and behaviors.

Three: Use A Strategic Approach

You will achieve real progress by plugging the priorities that came from your audit into your strategic approach.?

It's not enough to just bring in people from diverse backgrounds. You need to engage, develop, advance, and retain them. So think about how you want to address employee engagement and retention in your strategy.

Remember, it’s not just about changing policies, it’s about changing behaviors. Thus, your strategy must address how your systemic change affects employee behaviors.

Think about the behavioral outcomes you want to see when implementing your DEI initiative. Then articulate those behavioral outcomes in your strategy and action plan.

Simply put, include an evaluation component in your action plan to hold you accountable for results: a way to measure behavioral outcomes. To help you, think about what might be some key results or indicators of progress for meeting behavioral outcomes.?

You might include these indicators to see whether or not you’re meeting outcomes: an increase/use of resources for underrepresented groups, an increase in positive individual behaviors, attitudes, or participation rates.

To help you formulate a strategy, take a big-picture view of your situation to reimagine a new vision for a preferred future. Then make a commitment and declaration to make that vision a reality.

Answer these four questions to formulate your strategy:

1. Where are you now?
2. Where do you want to go?
3. How are you going to get there?
4. How will you know when you arrived?

Four: Follow-up On Systemic Change

Of course, you've heard that DEI requires systemic change if you want to see a cultural transformation and long-term results. Organizational systems or structures include things like policies, processes, and procedures.

Systemic change is necessary. It just requires follow-up work. Real action.? You must follow up with continuous learning and ongoing activities that promote and measure behavioral outcomes, accountability, performance management, practicing training lessons, etc.

Follow-up includes collaborating, giving people resources, modeling and reinforcing behaviors, and walking the walk, not just talking the talk.

Real systemic change requires that you dismantle systems of oppression and power and rebuild them with human-centered systems that embody equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Easy-peasy, right?

Well, as it turns out, it's not easy. Because structural change alone isn't enough. You must follow up with substantive action that makes a real impact on behaviors. Section five addresses behavioral change.

For now, let’s look at basic examples of where you can change organizational structures to foster DEI.

1. Develop behavioral expectations for job performance.
2. Performance management, management policies, practices, etc.
3. Recruitment policy, process.
4. Retention policies and activities.
5. Job structures, job design, job descriptions.
6. Other systems, processes, policies, and procedures.

HR Functions: Where Follow-Up Works Happens - Where You Can Take Real Action

Remember the employee lifecycle???

The employee lifecycle represents every stage an employee goes through. The HR Functions represent the operationalized efforts required to run the org and ensure employees move smoothly along the employee lifecycle.

HR Functions are those functions that belong to the HR department. For example, the functions of recruiting people and managing their performance through implementing policies, practices, training, etc., are placed under the HR department or equivalent department concerned with supporting people.

So, changing policies or improving performance management activities or the structures of the org is a function of HR.? Just because it's an HR function doesn’t necessarily mean that HR is entirely responsible for successfully implementing it.? You require the partnership support of the CEO, executive staff, and senior management to be successful.?

Nonetheless, here are examples of HR Functions and Activities you can implement to impact systemic change.

Staffing: Recruiting, Hiring, and Onboarding

• Make Job Alignment a priority to ensure accurate job descriptions, realistic job previews, and other job characteristics are clearly defined and communicated with job applicants. Avoid a disconnect between what you say and what the reality is once employees join your org.
• Update middle manager job descriptions to make sure they understand how important they are to creating experiences for inclusion and belonging within teams and make Inclusive Climates, diversity, and inclusion core job functions and expectations.
• Get better representation and development of BIPOCs, cis women, LGBTQ+, and neurodivergent people throughout the organization (in more senior, managerial, and executive positions).
• Get the workforce to resemble the community where the org is located or the community it serves.
• Do targeted recruitment (colleges, community centers, etc.).
• Create a “Diversity Manager” job to support DEI and accountability.
• Eliminate biased questions during the interview process and focus on job requirements, abilities, potential, qualifications, and performance.
• Provide mentor and cross-training programs during onboarding.
• Use inclusive language in job ads, interviews, etc.
• Make sure the company's core values reflect inclusive language and share them with staff.
• Provide clear job expectations, realistic previews of jobs, and qualifications - and connect your mission and values - give them the “why” this job exists. Clearly define the role and link to the mission.

Health and Safety (well-being - some overlap with work-life-balance)

• Support employee well-being with flexible leave and childcare, eldercare, and same-sex care policies.
• Take care of employee health and safety to reduce risk and boost productivity (create a culture where it's OK to acknowledge stress!).
• Workers’ Compensation policies and processes are easy to follow, focusing on taking care of people and getting them back to work.
• The IIPP (Injury, Illness, Prevention Program) is fair, easy, inclusive, etc.
• Establish a diverse safety committee, task force, ERG (Employee Resource Group), and representation from different departments to help identify safety issues and recommendations.

Risk Management

• Include diverse viewpoints to enhance the approach to identifying and mitigating risk.
• Include risk management in employee health and safety initiatives.
• Brand reputation - improve the image of the brand/org for having a reputation of being equitable, inclusive, and practicing what you preach.
• Do a SWOT analysis to identify gaps, weaknesses, and threats to your DEI initiatives, etc.

Rewards: Benefits and Compensation

• Reward excellent performance for meeting DEI key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Make rewards and recognition public to normalize behaviors and motivate others to behave similarly.?
• Do total rewards assessments using an “equity” lens. Identify and correct disparate impact and bias practices that contribute to pay inequalities.
• Pay equity - conduct regular pay equity analysis and adjust accordingly.
• Establish a pay philosophy that is fair and equitable (and competitive within your industry).
• Policies and practices for fair access to benefits, compensation plans, pay structures, promotions, etc.
• Tie DEI/Inclusive Climate goals to compensation and incentives.

Performance Management & Management Strategies

• Make Manager-Employee Relationships a priority to support managers in developing the skills to practice positive behaviors that build relationships and Inclusive Climates.
• Update Performance Management to include KPIs that support diversity and inclusion in performance management systems. Outline the expectations of middle managers for meeting DEI goals. Identify the behaviors that demonstrate alignment with DEI goals. And reward middle managers for excellent performance (tangible rewards like salary increases or bonuses or intangible rewards like recognition or perks, which send a more public message). Make performance management an ongoing, regular part of the daily management of staff.
• Create Mentoring and Sponsorships (taking on a pro·té·gé) programs to support new hires or less senior employees - help them learn the ropes!
• Connect mission to jobs and translate how the job and people’s work bring value to the organization and mission.
• Practice more objectivity and one-on-one coaching.
• Engage Managers in problem-solving and creating inclusive climates. Use different approaches for each (Senior and Middle management). Senior managers must focus on strategy. Middle managers must focus on building teams via Inclusive Climates.
• Use checklists when leading teams, team processes, etc.
• Set clear expectations, and examples and model behaviors for leaders.
• Establish teams, a teamwork approach that embraces uniqueness and makes people feel like they belong.
• Challenge your unconscious bias.
• Establish accountability measures for DEI behaviors and practices.
• Establish and practice company values (that enforce who you are and how you value people, diversity, etc.).

[Here's FREE Guide To Holistic Performance Evaluations With Sample Tools if you're ready to improve your performance management process.]

Training & Development (including career development)

• Make Career Development a priority with training and succession planning to encourage growth and retention.
• Job equity - evaluate gender/minority representation across various jobs and org levels and update talent development plans accordingly.
• Make diversity and inclusion training voluntary.
• Provide inclusive leadership training for managers (training should focus on how it helps managers meet job expectations).
• Provide cross-training to expose others from different workgroups/ethnicities, increasing contact.
• Improve communication skills using a diversity lens.
• Practice your company values.
• Provide “required” training on “teamwork” to increase contact between groups to lessen bias. So people learn to work together on common goals as equals and will practice teamwork when they work side by side, breaking down stereotypes.
• Provide ongoing strategic DEI learning and development opportunities.

Employee and Labor Relations

• Establish an Open Door policy and encourage employees to report ideas, complaints, and concerns and make them feel valued.
• Practice policies that build positive relationships between managers and staff.
• Gather feedback and establish town hall-style meetings and dedicated office hours.
• Create a diversity task force or ERG to help identify gaps, make recommendations, and foster social responsibility.
• Establish an employee relations hotline or other methods to improve and encourage communications for employees seeking support outside their immediate supervisors.

Employee Engagement, Employee Experience

• Create Inclusive Climates throughout the organization, with a focus on retention.
• Review policies and practices to identify and remove systemic barriers to inclusion.
• Manage for engagement – the approach to managing employees with an engagement lens.
• Create a physical space that is inviting and supports the employee experience.
• Improve organization communications to enhance employee experience.
• Be mindful about who you’re speaking to (male, female, non-binary) and what voice you’re using (male, female, gender neutral) to communicate with people. Strive for inclusive, gender-neutral, validate and promote others, etc.
• Celebrate diversity and cultural events.
• Encourage a DEI committee (free spaces) or a DEI task force (or ERG), as an employee-led group for DEI recommendations and accountability.
• Encourage voluntary resource or affinity groups (ERGs) for employees with similar interests to create a sense of community, support, etc.

Leadership?

• Develop KSAs on DEI for leadership; remove fear-based leadership, transactional leadership, etc.
• Build trust by being more transparent about processes (how promotions work, bottom line).
• Lead by example to ensure we’re celebrating the uniqueness of employees and fostering a sense of belonging.
• Vision, Mission, and Values must-have elements of diversity, inclusion, etc.
• Mentor managers and supervisors.
• Establish an inclusive team approach to leading/managing staff/teams.

Personal Life, Work-Life Balance (flexibility)

• Make Work-Life Balance a priority by encouraging flexible work schedules, telecommuting, and work-from-home (remote/virtual) arrangements.
• Flexible work culture, with flexible leaves of absence policies to meet diverse needs of employees - a little flexibility goes a long way toward retention!
• Provide EAPs, wellness programs, financial planning, and a holistic approach to providing benefits that meet the needs of employees at work and home.
• Make work fun! Encourage employees not to take work home.
• Consider employees' needs - family, children, and pet needs, and support them!
• Reduce stress levels at work - support mental health!?

Offboarding, Exit Interviews

• Feedback on why employees leave (best to gather this feedback during performance management, and check-ins, and not wait until they leave!).
• Improve exit interview questions to help gather insightful information to help improve employee engagement and retention.
• Learn about the organization's strengths, weaknesses, and room for improvement.

So there you have it. Use those examples to help you make structural changes in your organization.

Next is behavioral change.

Five: Focus On Behavioral Change

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could control people’s behaviors? They’ll be kinder, more open, and more collaborative. All the racism, white supremacy, toxic masculinity-informed, power-motivated behaviors would be gone.?

Of course, I’m being facetious. The point I want to make is this. You cannot make substantive changes by sending your employees to unconscious bias training or instituting a policy on diversity and expecting people to act differently.?

It's a situational, cultural issue, not a people problem.

Systemic change without follow-up work on behavioral change is a sure way to halt any progress for organizational change. People get excited about change and then disappointed because of inaction and no follow-up.

It seems like the odds are against you. Because DEI initiatives are always at risk of failure because they threaten to upset power dynamics, they’re unsupported by leadership, they don’t align with business priorities, and did I mention that changing people's behaviors is so darn difficult?

Since organizations are made up of people, it makes sense to focus on behavioral change - to help people behave in more DEI-informed ways.?

For example, set expectations for those behaviors that are not tolerated. Like blatant racism, unfair treatment, or microaggressions. And encourage positive behaviors such as practicing allyship, psychological safety, and micro-affirmations.?

So, real progress happens when you incorporate ways to influence behaviors at the start of your planning process.

So, how do we do that?

Define, Work On, and Measure Inclusive Behavioral Outcomes

An objective defines the specific, measurable actions you must take to achieve an overall goal.? An outcome is the finish line for an objective, it’s the result or product. Objectives are rooted in intention and planning. It's not something you hope to achieve, it's something you actively plan to achieve.??

The outcome is what you achieved - the result you see - the desired inclusive behavior you see.

Here’s a comparison between Objectives and Outcomes:

Objectives

• Describe the intended result.
• Describe what the leaders and employees will do.
• State the purpose and goals.
• May be numerous, specific, and detailed.

Outcomes (Results)

• Are the results, the products and evidence that the goals or objectives were achieved.
• Are statements that describe or list measurable behaviors that people achieved and can demonstrate.
• Express higher-level thinking skills that are observed as a behavior, skill, or ability to apply learned knowledge.
• Are displayed or observed and evaluated against criteria.
• Are clear and measurable criteria for guiding employee’s behaviors for reaching work performance goals and objectives.

Inclusive Behavioral Outcome Statements

Here’s a formula for writing a spectacular outcome statement:

Who/What (target subject) + Change/Desired effect (action verb) +?In What (expected results) + By When = Outcome Statement.

Example:

Employees attending team meetings increase their sense of belonging within 6 months of the implementation of our strategic intervention.

Let’s Make This Real

Write an outcome statement and behavior expectations. And then later, turn your expectations into policies and practices and standards for performance management.

Using our example from above, here is inclusive behavior management in action.? This is what you can do to manage inclusive behaviors by establishing behavioral outcomes and expectations:

Inclusive Behavior Outcome

Inclusive Behavior Expectation - this is the strategic intervention (manage expectations through performance management).

Objective:

To make our team meetings more inclusive so that employees feel like they belong and are part of the team.

Outcome:

Employees attending team meetings increase their sense of belonging within 6 months of the implementation of our strategic intervention.

Practical:

• Practice the communication skills found in our guidelines/policies/job descriptions to increase an employee’s sense of belonging.
• Practice empathy when meeting with others who are different from you to gain more understanding for who they are and the perspectives or insights they offer.
• Practice active listening and positive body language when interacting with co-workers.
• Practice micro-affirmations to support colleagues who might be shy or feeling like their voice doesn’t matter, or their voice is being muted by more vocal people, or microaggressions.

With enough practice, you will write clear behavioral outcomes and achieve them through updated performance management practices.

This is where things get real. Where you begin to transform your organizational culture. And where you’re making real, measurable progress in achieving your DEI goals.

Six: Apply Lessons From Psychology

Just imagine what an inclusive workplace looks like - what are people doing, and saying?

What you’re looking at is their behaviors, right? You're looking at how behavioral outcomes occur in day-to-day activities.

Thus, the field of organizational psychology can help you shape your approach to behavioral change. This is a big deal. Because behavioral change is hard and you won’t see results when you're stuck doing the same thing over and over.?

Real progress with DEI happens here. Because the key to experiencing and seeing inclusive behaviors is to incorporate ways to change behaviors in your strategic approach to DEI.

Change Follows A Pattern

In their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip Heath and Dan Heath provide a framework for behavioral change. The framework is from organizational psychology and uses the analogy of the elephant-rider working together and following the same path.

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt introduced the elephant-rider analogy to describe a fundamental tension in psychology. Everyone has two sides: a rational system (the Rider) and an emotional system (the Elephant). These two systems are at odds with each other, constantly creating tension between knowing what is right and doing what is right.

The Rider represents rational, logical thinking, the part of the brain that takes in and analyzes information, plans, crunches the numbers, etc. The Elephant represents emotions, the part of the brain that runs on autopilot behaviors, where you give in to your feelings, cravings, desires, etc.

Now, imagine a rider on top of a 5,000-pound elephant. Getting a 5,000-pound elephant to do what you know is right is not easy. There’s a constant fight between the Rider and the Elephant, the rational and the emotional. It’s a fight for supremacy!

As the Heath brothers observe: If the Rider and the Elephant ever get into a tug of war, who do you think will win? It’s no wonder why diets are hard. Change is hard because you’re fighting a tug-of-war with an elephant!?

So, if you want to make a real change, then you need to get the Rider and Elephant to work together and follow the same path.

What follows are two additional models for a behavioral change you can adapt in your strategic approach to DEI.

The A D K A R Model

Change leaders use the popular organizational change model ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement) to align their change efforts with individual change. ADKAR guides people through the change process, addressing how to remove roadblocks or barriers to the change.

ADKAR moves people along these steps, each one building on the next:

• Awareness - Make employees aware of the change.?
• Desire - Create a desire to change.
• Knowledge - Teach employees how to make the change.
• Ability - Link knowledge with the ability to make the change.
• Reinforcement - Make the change permanent by reinforcing new methods.

The A A A Model

The Awareness, Acceptance, and Action (AAA) model is a three-stage process for empowering yourself to take deliberate steps to change your behavior. It’s a transformative process that affects your thoughts, values, and behaviors.

Because real change happens when you start to act differently, replacing old behaviors with new ones.?

The AAA model for behavioral change moves you along these three steps:

• Awareness - this is when you become self-aware of the situation or problem you’re experiencing.
• Acceptance - this is when you face the truth about your situation, and you accept that whatever you have become aware of is real.??
• Action - this is when you take your first practical step towards changing your behavior to address your situation.

Are you beginning to see the importance of defining and achieving behavioral outcomes in your DEI initiative?

Behavioral outcomes are important because they are clear indicators of progress toward achieving goals that matter. Like creating an organization that is supportive and engaging where people experience psychological safety, belonging, and equity.

Without behavioral outcomes, all you have is a policy statement or excitement fostered by a charismatic trainer who convinced you that a particular training solves your DEI problems.

Seven: Set Your Path And Stay Your Course

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you had a clear path to follow along your DEI journey?

I like to think of DEI as a journey - a destination. Not in the way that makes you stop because you arrived. It's more like a guiding star for living your vision of a preferred future. So it makes sense to establish a clear path to help you stay the course.

After all, it’s a lifestyle, a change process. It’s your culture: “it's the way we do things here.”

So, here’s how to remember that you’re on a journey: use a roadmap. The AAARoadmap to Impactful Change.

I created the AAA Roadmap to help people like you follow a clear path to create lasting change rooted in organizational psychology. The AAA Roadmap is a powerful framework for positive organizational cultural change, especially applicable to areas like HR, DEI, or Learning and Development (L&D)

For DEI specifically, the AAA framework helps to create targeted strategies that not only shift mindsets but also lead to sustainable organizational change by addressing systemic barriers to inclusion and belonging.

Awareness - The journey begins with self-awareness and recognizing the existing barriers to DEI within your organization. Awareness here means more than being aware of diversity metrics; it’s about understanding how personal and organizational biases influence behaviors, decision-making, and even team structures.

For instance, leaders should reflect on questions like, “How do my actions or decisions impact underrepresented team members?” and “Where do existing policies and practices fail to support DEI goals?”

Effective awareness-building strategies might include unconscious bias training, open discussions on microaggressions, and facilitated reflections on the impact of organizational culture on diverse identities.

This step sets the foundation for an authentic commitment to DEI by aligning leadership and team values with the goal of inclusion.

Assessment - Once you have developed self-awareness, the next step is to conduct a thorough assessment of your organizational DEI landscape.

This involves data-driven audits to identify specific barriers within policies, team dynamics, and broader cultural practices. Leaders might start by analyzing DEI metrics to assess representation and inclusion across all organizational levels.

But beyond metrics, the assessment should include qualitative data, like employee feedback and climate surveys, to capture experiences of belonging, fairness, and respect among diverse employees.

Consider this phase as a way to map out the obstacles that hinder DEI success. For example, if the data shows a high turnover rate among marginalized employees, a deeper examination of exit interviews and stay interviews can reveal pain points that are causing disengagement.

This assessment phase empowers you to identify where specific interventions, such as policy adjustments or targeted mentorship programs, can be most impactful.

Action - The final stage is about translating insights from Awareness and Assessment into concrete action. Here, organizations implement targeted initiatives that not only address identified DEI challenges but are also aligned with broader organizational goals.

Action could include initiatives such as redesigning recruitment processes to reduce unconscious bias, developing inclusive leadership training, or establishing accountability structures to ensure ongoing support for DEI goals.

Action in the AAA Roadmap is also about building a culture that promotes inclusive behaviors on an everyday basis, as outlined in the earlier sections of this guide. For DEI initiatives to be effective, it’s crucial to foster an environment where all employees feel empowered to contribute to the DEI mission.

This might involve creating DEI champions across departments, setting up regular check-ins to track DEI progress, and ensuring leaders model the inclusive values they seek to establish.

The AAA Roadmap provides a structured yet flexible approach to advancing DEI, equipping organizations to set and achieve sustainable DEI goals.

By following the AAA steps, leaders can foster an environment where all employees feel empowered and valued, creating the foundation for meaningful, organization-wide change.

The AAA Roadmap provides a clear path to inclusion by helping you:

1. Perform a well-structured audit and assessment.
2. Establish inclusion as the guiding DEI objective.
3. Formulate a strategic action plan with measurable milestones.
4. Identify and transform systemic and organizational structures that
5. Establish a framework for change to cultivate and reinforce inclusive
6. Leverage insights from Organizational Psychology to drive authentic,
7. Implement your DEI initiative with the AAA Roadmap as a guide to

The AAA Roadmap offers a step-by-step strategic approach that fosters true behavioral change through DEI principles. Success lies in reshaping both organizational structures and everyday behaviors.

Because, ultimately, all change is behavioral change.

Inclusive Climates

A fundamental aspect of the AAA Roadmap is Inclusive Climates.?

Inclusive Climates help you build quality relationships with people because inclusion is a relational construct required for thriving as humans.

Benefits of Inclusive Climates:

• Employees gain a sense of meaning and purpose.
• They feel welcomed.
• They feel safe expressing themselves as valued, equal members of the team.

An Inclusive Climate relates to how your team functions and performs based on the quality of social connections, openness to learning, agility, and depth of decision-making.

Climate refers to shared perceptions about the behaviors that are expected and rewarded within your organization or workgroup. They elicit a shared understanding of the social norms within a particular organizational context concerning the behaviors expected of employees to pursue inclusion goals.

Inclusive Climates provides leaders with the tools to examine the conditions under which all employees experience inclusion and what leaders can do to shape those conditions to ensure everyone experiences inclusion.

The focus isn’t so much on trying to ensure that members of underrepresented or historically marginalized groups don't feel excluded. It’s about fostering inclusion for everyone. This is not to say that power dynamics rooted in racism or sexism, or fairness aren't important.? Because they are.

That’s why inclusive leaders ensure that everyone feels safe and valued in all interactions in the workplace. After all, everyone is at risk of experiencing exclusion.

Thus, inclusion isn't a DEI initiative that targets members of a particular group. Inclusion is more than that: it targets human connection across the entire organization. This doesn’t mean that you ignore equity and equitable treatment of marginalized groups with your change efforts.

Inclusion involves two distinct sets of experiences innate to humans. The first is experiencing belongingness: the feeling you get when you’re a valued member of the in-group. The other one is the feeling that your uniqueness is valued and integrated.??

You can use Inclusive Climates in your management practices to support a climate of inclusion. Your managers have the power to foster Inclusive Climates. They set expectations for behaviors and facilitate positive relationships through management techniques essential for Inclusive Climates.

Inclusion is significant because it helps you systematically de-bias work environments. You’re more conscious of your behavior. You work toward identifying when you engage with others differently. You find opportunities to practice empathy to understand how your actions affect others. And this leads to you taking action to mitigate bad feelings in others.??

Positive change starts with you. That’s why I believe inclusion is a powerful principle in DEI that can shape your direction. At the same time, you must consider other DEI principles to help you define your path. After all, it takes careful thought, planning, and execution to create and sustain positive change.

It Takes More Than Good Intentions

Good intentions aren’t enough. You need a 100% commitment from executive leadership and meaningful action that transforms the work environment and influences behaviors.

Yes, managing people is hard work. Especially when you don’t know where to begin, or you’re used to practicing transactional management, or you have a multicultural team, or no diversity, or [insert excuses here].

Yes, I’m being a bit harsh. Open yourself to the possibility of doing something different. Doing something that advances your DEI goals, moves you toward progress, toward the behavioral change you want to see.?

Yes, change is hard. But, it is possible when you have a clear path to follow.

You’re not alone. Many caring people like you face similar challenges with designing and implementing a DEI program. Ask for help from like-minded people in your organization, and tap into Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), and DEI groups on social media.

Or get in touch with me at [email protected]. I will be happy to point you in the right direction!

Get Up and Grow!

Raúl T. Pereyra - CEO | RTP Learning

RTP Learning: Helping mission-driven leaders drive real change through transformational coaching and consulting.

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