Making sense of DEI complexity

Welcome to our Thinking Differently about DEI blog series where we explore new approaches to overcoming the most common diversity, equity and inclusion challenges. If you missed it, check out our intro post where we dive into why this is so important.

The first challenge we explore is how organisations can better make sense of the complex world of DEI.

How does DEI complexity pose a challenge for organisations?

DEI can be overwhelming. There are so many underrepresented groups, each with different needs, terminology and other factors that can vary. Just knowing where to start, much less determining what actions will have the biggest impact, can seem impossible.?

Organisations sometimes try to accommodate everyone with multiple approaches and communications that overlap, overwhelming and confusing employees.? Others take a more focused approach that allocates time and effort to a few groups, but can unintentionally exclude others.

How might we think differently to make sense of this complexity?

At Leaders For Good we advocate for an Inclusion Foundations first approach. This means an initial focus on common aspects of inclusion that apply across multiple groups. This can include things like having an inclusive mindset, being aware of common biases and embedding overall behaviours and ways of working that help foster an inclusive environment.?

This doesn’t mean focusing solely on inclusion. And developing these foundations is not easy. But think of it like building the foundation of a house. You need to start with a stable structure that’s robust enough to support the rest of what you want to build.??

How to get started with an Inclusion First approach

Here are four elements of an Inclusion First approach that will help you establish your foundation.

1: Create an overarching vision and cohesive story??

Whether they realise it or not, many organisations don’t have one DEI strategy – they have multiple strategies led by different groups, which risk being disconnected.

It could look like there’s a whole lot of great work centred around race, gender or sexual orientation (for example). But it can be hard for people in the organisation to absorb all the different messages. Finding adequate resources for all of those initiatives can also become difficult. Additionally, we often see huge levels of crossover – for example a recruitment initiative for disability and a different recruitment initiative for race can often cover some of the same foundational ground .e.g ‘how and why humans have bias’ that could be more efficiently covered with an integrated approach.

Inclusion First means having one DEI strategy with a clear overarching narrative, set of actions and progress metrics that are relevant across all groups. This strategy is then built upon with elements tailored to work for specific groups. Getting this right can help organisations draw a clearer link to business strategy and outcomes

2: Set foundational strategic pillars

As noted above, we tend to see DEI strategies that have strategic pillars focused on multiple diversity groups. Our thinking differently approach includes inclusion-first pillars.???

Examples could include:?

• Inclusive leadership
• Effective decision making
• Employee experience
• Foundational inclusion skills
• Flexible working and accessibility
• Inclusive hiring

It’s important these strategic pillars are based on data and insights to ensure we’re solving for real challenges. For example, if we know from an organisation’s employee engagement survey that people don’t understand how decisions are being made, that organisation might choose to focus on improving their leadership’s capability to make inclusive decisions. We can measure the impact over time by looking at subsequent engagement survey results or leadership 360s. It’s easier to measure results that directly relate to business and business strategy when we’re looking at strategic pillars versus individual group specific work.

3: Focus learning and development (L&D) on foundational skills

This Inclusion First approach can also apply to how we think about and structure our L&D efforts and investment.??

Taking a foundational approach and focusing on core skills means people can connect the learning back to their day-to-day work. Concepts like bias and privilege – how do we recognise and notice these playing out, and what do we do with that? And then core skill sets. How do we give and receive feedback effectively? How do we make decisions which are less biassed? How do we deploy things such as coaching skills? As these skills are more foundational, people get to practise them straight away and reflect on their impact.

A common example we come across is clients only being able to find diversity group specific allyship training solutions, e.g. for First Nations, or women or LGBTQI+ allies. A more effective approach is to run allyship training that works across all groups, using examples tailored to different groups’ experiences. There are multiple benefits to this approach. It limits cognitive overload, it’s more effective for the training budget, attendees can increase their knowledge across multiple groups’ needs and allies can support multiple groups.

4: Connected and collaborative Employee Resource Groups (ERGs)

What does an Inclusion First approach mean for ERGs? ERGs can provide an important place for people from different groups to connect and have a voice.?

ERGs work together with an Inclusion First approach. Having a foundational DEI strategy in place means ERGs understand what the organisation is trying to achieve overall, and they can centre their messaging around that and leverage available resources to enhance their efforts. Rather than multiple ERGs working in isolation, they can point in the same direction and work collectively on common challenges.

Here’s some recent examples we have worked on where ERGs working collaboratively was more effective than them working independently:

• Events – International Women’s Day planning with multiple ERGs involved led to an intersectional approach that also incorporated a focus on women with disability and women from underrepresented races..
• Policy reviews – rather than six ERGs’ perspectives on policy reviews (which is challenging for HR to integrate), all ERGs reviewed policy together and provided one set of feedback.
• Communication – a collaborative ERG approach with one ERG-led newsletter covering priorities such as recruitment and events resulted in clearer, connected messaging, thus reducing communication overload for the organisation.

We explore more about working collaboratively with ERGs in our blog Are your ERGs working for you or against you? ?

While there is no one right way to approach implementing an Inclusion First approach, we hope this has given you some food for thought, or some actions to take away.

If you’d like to listen to the podcast exploring this topic you can do so here . In our next blog, we will talk about how to embed DEI into the organisation.?