Moving Beyond the Diversity Conversation to Drive Systemic Change

We have all read or heard the corporate statements in support of Black Lives Matter. We have participated and/or seen the protests. As a nation, we have been here before. How can we deliver a different outcome this time?

Working in the field of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, I am all too familiar with organizations taking a check the box approach to DEI. Many companies provide annual sexual harassment and diversity training. Check! Moving on.

Driving organizational systemic change requires a much deeper dive and takes significant time and resources. I recommend the following approach:

1. Assess you current culture, policies, processes, and outcomes.
2. Leverage your human capital management systems to dive deep into to your data to really understand how your organization hires, retains, and promotes diverse talent.
3. Make a Board and C-suite commitment to change and provide tools, resources, and time to achieve these goals. 
4. Engage experts to facilitate developing and implementing a DEI project plan.

A recent WSJ highlights the need to conduct a comprehensive audit of your operations, recruitment, investments, and suppliers. This assessment begins the process of shining a spotlight on how your organization is impacting BIPOC through its daily activities.

The talent pipeline is another area for significant improvement. Using our human capital system expertise, we help organizations better understand their recruitment strategy and how that impacts the diversity of the talent pool. Drilling into your HCM data provides details on talent at each level of your organization by level, function, and senior management. 

Leadership development and competencies are another area to peel back the layers. How are candidates selected for leadership development? Is it meritocracy? What does meritocracy mean if certain people are given the big projects and high profile clients and others are not? Are you practicing allyship and sponsorship or are you still using a mentorship model?

While Chief Diversity Officer roles have been on the rise, turnover in these positions remains high as many positions are more figurehead than change agent. If you want to drive meaningful change, it requires significant commitment to changing the staus quo including engaging  a DEI consultant to help support and guide your internal team.

In my next article, I will share some of our techniques to design for diversity, equity, and inclusion. 

We have been able to have impact and success working with clients remotely. If we can be of help, please reach out to Kristina Kohl at Kris@HRComputes.com

Until then, stay safe and well.