What’s getting in the way of your DEI journey?

This article was co-authored by Jay Alvather, president of TEKsystems, and Franklin Reed, executive director of inclusion and diversity of TEKsystems.

Over the past several years, TEKsystems has been on a journey to foster a culture of diversity, inclusion and equity. Diversity is the work to increase representation of people from all backgrounds and walks of life throughout the organization. Inclusion involves the efforts to ensure everyone can bring their full talents to the table with the support and resources they need to thrive in a work culture. Equity can sometimes be a misconstrued and even more polarizing topic, but in its simplest terms—it's about building a culture where everyone has equal and unhindered access to opportunity.

With that in mind, we want to share what we’ve learned along our diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) journey and encourage leaders—both inside and outside of TEKsystems—to stay the course. We’ve implemented strategies that have resulted in progress, but that’s not to say there haven’t been detours and bumps along the way. It’s a journey, a perpetual journey, filled not only with challenges that test your resolve, but also milestone achievements that affirm your purpose—reminding you that you’re headed in the right direction and that you need to keep going.

Work from where you are

When we first set out to create a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace, we focused on the diversity aspect. We wanted to recruit and retain people of diverse backgrounds and experiences. Because we understand that what gets measured gets done, we set goals for increased representation across various demographics. To reach our goals, we expanded the pools from which we historically recruited to include non-traditional sources. We built a diversity talent acquisition team and strategy. We removed degree requirements for certain roles. We continually leverage insights from our human resources data to shine light on areas where we’re underperforming.

From that foundation, we have since invested in many initiatives, resources and programs to drive greater inclusion and equity. We’ve expanded the team that is fully dedicated to our DEI strategy. We established an Executive Inclusion Board, which we co-chair. The board includes leaders from across the company who meet regularly to evaluate our strategy, track progress and help set our priorities, such as implementing unconscious bias mitigation training and introducing our Conversations That Matter series, which are ongoing, collective pauses for our teams across the organization to engage in various topics to help better understand one another and foster a more inclusive culture. Other priorities have included creating more transparency into internal opportunities and building new access and development programs to increase sponsorship and advocacy of diverse talent—looking to ensure equal, unhindered access to opportunity for those willing to seize it! No matter where you are on your DEI journey, you can take steps that can have a big impact across any or all the DEI elements.

Get the right mindset

Focus on enrolling a cross section of stakeholders to create your approach. At TEKsystems, we’re working to cultivate a co-creation mindset. Currently, we’re undergoing a culture renovation, seeking to align our values and our purpose with how they truly show up in our everyday life. But this is not simply a group of leaders making decisions. Last month, we hosted our first ever company-wide Culture Jam, a three-day global discussion on what makes our culture unique. All employees were invited to an open and transparent dialogue on Microsoft Teams with a third-party host facilitating the conversation. Everyone in our company around the world had equal footing to express their views. It’s important to find the opportunity for equity in your feedback loops and processes. Investigate and remove barriers that muffle feedback from certain communities to build the co-creation mindset, enrolling as many people as possible on the journey.

Break down processes

As you review your DEI strategies, look for the unintentional processes and business norms that can inadvertently affect equitable access to opportunity. For example, we’re not only creating a broader transparency of open opportunities but also seeking to enhance talent mobility across the organization. We’ve found that focused, high-performing leaders can sometimes be a bit myopic when considering opportunities for their best talent. Not surprisingly, often it is those leaders who want to keep that talent on their team. Instead, we should incentivize leaders to seek the best opportunities for their people, even if those opportunities are in another function or department. It’s easy to ask leaders to be selfless in this regard, but you’ll likely make more progress when you make that selflessness a standard for your leadership. Try including talent mobility and leadership legacy goals in your leaders’ performance reviews, and seek ways to create positive reinforcement of the leadership behaviors that open greater access to opportunity. ?

Secure senior leader support

Nothing is sustainable in any culture without leadership commitment. Over the course of our journey, every leader bought in conceptually when we started, but our progress shifted when senior leaders made it a top, ongoing priority for their business and their teams. Diversity, equity and inclusion must be top priorities and must be treated by senior leaders as other clearly defined strategic business imperatives. They can’t be things you simply pay lip service to because, if so, despite the best of motivations and intentions, you’ll risk getting distracted or derailed on the journey when other business opportunities, challenges or threats invariably come to pass. Besides, your employees know the difference between genuine commitment and effort vs. performative responses. So, you must have consistent leadership follow through on purposeful DEI strategy and initiatives, but you must also consider that your leaders are people too—people on their own journey. They need education, support and guidance. They need to feel safe to ask questions, express concerns and challenge assumptions without fear of reprisal, as they would when engaging in any other strategic initiative.

Be intentional

There is a plan behind the journey that TEKsystems has been on. It’s intentional. We have taken a three-pillar approach to our strategy—focused on impacting the marketplace, workplace and workforce. We have worked diligently on our workforce and workplace initiatives for some time, and now we are making more significant investments in our marketplace work. We want to share what we have learned with our customers to help support their needs in a purposeful way, and we’re well-positioned to do so as both a full-stack technology services provider and the largest provider of IT talent in North America. We recommend that you be intentional in the work, invest and resource the team, set goals, measure progress, meet regularly with your Executive Inclusion Board or other DEI champions, adjust along the way, and seek ways to share what you’ve learned with your customers, partners and employees.

Look outside your organization

Your team members want to be part of an organization that has a great culture, and more and more that means being one that also invests outwardly into the communities where we all work and live. We’ve invested in organizations committed to underrepresented groups, such as the?Equal Justice Initiative,?Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and?the conscious kid, along with military and veterans’ groups such as the Pat Tillman Foundation and 50Strong. We’ve established significant training partnerships with organizations like Per Scholas and Creating IT Futures to help create more opportunities and greater representation in the tech industry. We believe it’s our responsibility to set the example for more education, awareness, empathy and equity within our broader communities.?Choose organizations with a shared vision, find ways to partner with them and involve your team members in the process.

Keep going

The journey continues. It requires purposeful intent, consistent leadership commitment, a strong but adaptable strategy, and investments in structure, programs and processes to support you along that journey. It’s about consistent progress, not perfection. With the right approach and mindset, we can all play a part in creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive environment in which everyone can thrive. We are beyond thankful for our TEKsystems team members who have educated, inspired and walked alongside us thus far on this journey.

For the betterment of our company, our culture and our greater community, we will keep going! We hope that wherever you are on your DEI journey, you will as well.

Let’s be in this together. Learn more at TEKsystems.com.?