For years, diversity and inclusion (D&I) efforts were nonexistent in most companies. Even after D&I gained more widespread focus, corporate efforts to promote D&I were largely symbolic and vague or focused purely on the numbers—i.e., seeking to fill X% of positions with women or people of color.
These efforts only paid lip service to the actual goals of D&I and often failed to generate any meaningful impacts. This didn’t just hurt the people D&I efforts are focused on bringing into an organization; it also hurt the companies involved because they failed to realize the many benefits D&I provides to their businesses.
