What Start-Ups Need to Know About Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Strategy

Start-ups are unique workplaces where openness, agility, and a lack of bureaucracy lend themselves to more collaboration, more innovation, and a world of opportunity.?

It’s commonly misunderstood that start-ups are not developed enough to implement any DEI strategies or initiatives. While start-ups certainly face conflicting priorities and must be resourceful, it is still possible to incorporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy in the early days of a company’s formation. In fact, this is a great time for start-up founders to consider how to thoughtfully grow in a way that does not perpetuate inequity. By being realistic about their current state and intentional about their growth, start-ups can set themselves up for sustainable success in the long-run.

Here are a few tips for how start-ups can begin their DEI journey:

1. Identify the purpose of DEI for your start-up

The first thing to get clear on is why DEI is important to your start-up. Understand how DEI contributes to your unique offering and learn how it supports business goals. Ask yourself, “how can DEI elevate and fundamentally drive my company’s aspirations?”. Once you have identified how DEI is connected to your company, help your staff understand how DEI is tied to the company’s mission and goals. What start-ups lack in formal processes, they make up for in vision and passion. That drive and ingenuity can be applied to business goals as well as DEI goals.?

Founders should articulate their personal connection to DEI work and ask their teams to do the same. Let your values, not external expectations, guide the DEI path for your company. When founders can identify the unique purpose of DEI for themselves and their company, the actions that follow will be much more authentic.

2. Doing something is better than nothing

In the face of long to-do-lists and the hustle of start-up culture, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the rigor that is expected of DEI work. While DEI certainly requires thoughtful and intentional action, try not to let the thought of messing up or not getting things perfect stop you from getting started. We all have more to learn and mistakes are inevitable. Don’t underestimate the impact of (seemingly) small actions done consistently over time. For example, if you’re not in a place right now to afford a single DEI training workshop, let alone a strategic DEI Learning & Development plan to upskill your staff, then start by hosting a facilitated company-wide conversation about DEI. There are many free discussion guides and facilitator resources online that you can use, for example, this one from USC on identity, power, and privilege. Think about where you want the company to be in a year and map out something that your team can do monthly, quarterly, or annually, to get there. You’ll be surprised at the progress that can happen in one year.?

3. Connect the relevance of DEI to your products and services with a mindset of inclusion by design

Start-ups tend to be incredibly market/customer centered and less focused on internal people or HR processes. It’s understandable that building a viable product is a top priority but that doesn’t mean DEI isn’t relevant. In fact, the early stages of product design are an essential time to consider how DEI affects your external operations. Here are some questions that you can ask to center DEI as you build your products and services:

• What factors are taken into consideration when selecting vendors and strategic partners? How diverse is that pool?
• How accessible is our product, especially for people with disabilities??
• What representation is missing in our product design process? Whose perspective are we missing when we make decisions?
• Is customer feedback taken into consideration for product improvements?
• Does our marketing and positioning accurately reflect the people who use our products and services?
• How does power and privilege affect the work that we do and the impact we want to have?

These first decisions you make as a start-up are important and can set a precedent for many decisions to come. “Inclusion by Design” means pausing before taking a decision and being open to scrutinizing your choices for bias. It means putting an intentional focus on making the most thoughtful decision possible to foster inclusion and advance equity. Think about how to incorporate inclusivity while you are designing new product features, establishing new workflows, determining standards for new processes, gathering feedback, or making any decision that could have an effect on the future of your start-up as you scale.

4. Determine what actions will produce the best ROI

Imagine you are asked to buy pizzas for a party. You wouldn’t just hastily order a bunch of pepperoni pizzas, would you? You first need to figure out how many people are attending this party. Is this a small gathering of close friends or a big blow-out? Do we know if people have allergies or food restrictions? There is important information to gather before you buy the pizzas, so that you don’t end up missing the mark or wasting money.

When it comes to DEI projects, there are many things that start-up founders could do. For example, you could launch a diversity hiring project, revise your mission/vision statements, set DEI goals, conduct a DEI operational audit, host an unconscious bias training or other DEI workshop, facilitate an internal survey, or launch a marketing and rebranding campaign, release social media statements, conduct an internal pay equity audit, etc.?

But instead of launching into the coolest-sounding, flashiest DEI project, think about what makes sense for your reality today. The key is to prioritize and decide what will be the best use of your company’s limited resources. Be smart about what initiatives make sense in the early days of DEI formation and set your company up for success in the long-run. Focus on actions that give you the most return-on-investment, so that you don’t have to backpedal, or worse, cause harm.?

You may have a slow or delayed process for hiring and bringing folks onto the team, but when you do decide to hire, do things right the first time and set up your interview process to mitigate for bias.

For organizations just beginning their DEI journey, we recommend building on existing processes and practices, and taking steps that establish a shared language for DEI across the company. It’s okay if things are grassroots-driven or feel casual in the beginning. The success of a DEI strategy is not contingent on how formal or professional it is. If you want to learn more about how to proactively pace out your DEI initiatives for long-term success and organizational growth, and why organizations should first focus on building awareness, check out our Framework for DEI Development here in an article or below in a video.

5. Hold yourself and your team accountable

As the leader, you set the tone for the culture of your organization. People look to you to understand what behavior is acceptable and what is not. The level of commitment, support, and resources you put into creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment are essential to the success of your DEI approach.?

You can’t “pass the buck” by saying things like, “we have a pipeline problem”, “not enough diverse candidates apply to our roles”, “we need to focus on revenue now”, or “we should do another employee survey to gather ideas”. (Side note: employees will only give their input so far as there is action - we promise).

The buck stops with you. Role model inclusive behavior. Notice and name instances of inequity or exclusion when you see it. Choose empathy over defensiveness if/when someone calls you out. Take extra care to demonstrate openness and build psychological safety in your teams. The intention you put behind demonstrating inclusive behaviors and the amount of time you put into your own personal learning, will serve as an example to others about what success looks like at your company.?

Driving systemic change is not only up to the large corporate giants of the world. There is a great deal of opportunity for start-ups to lead disruptive change by embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion. Most DEI efforts fail because leaders are unable to translate good intentions into actions. Take personal responsibility for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in your organization and your own knowledge and skill building. Start with our DEI Starter Pack playlist on YouTube.