In today’s fast-paced and increasingly progressive world, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are important in every aspect of our lives—but maybe nowhere is more true than in the workplace. The role of DE&I as a fundamental component of workplace culture has been widely recognized in recent years. A diverse and inclusive environment increases acceptance and tolerance, builds trust, and promotes innovation—all of which provide significant competitive advantages and improve a company’s bottom line.
In this article, we take a closer look at DE&I, discuss its benefits for business growth, and explain how you can develop a successful strategy for your company.
What is DE&I?
DE&I stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. To develop a successful DE&I strategy, it is essential to understand the meaning behind each of these three concepts and how to address them.
Diversity refers to all kinds of differences among people and focuses on recognizing, respecting, and celebrating those differences. In a workplace, this can mean race, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, and socioeconomic class. Diversity also means hiring people with different backgrounds and experiences who can bring a new perspective or a different approach to the workplace.
Equity refers to fair treatment regarding access, opportunity, and advancement for individuals. It should be distinct from equality. Simply put, equality means that everyone is treated the same regardless of individual differences, while equity means everyone gets what they need to succeed.
Inclusion means ensuring everyone feels welcome, comfortable, supported, and appreciated. It refers to creating a workplace environment where everyone feels valued and included, and thus has a sense of belonging.
A DE&I strategy is a holistic approach to incorporating all of these aspects into the company culture. It helps create a welcoming workplace that provides opportunities for growth and development for both employees and the company as a whole.
How Can a DE&I Strategy Benefit Your Business?
Developing a strategy that encourages and supports DE&I in your company culture will help you attract and retain a diverse talent pool, ultimately leading to significant business growth. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of recognizing and promoting diversity, and how DE&I initiatives can improve workplace culture and productivity.
A management plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) can help a company make the most of its diverse workforce by creating an inclusive, equitable, and sustainable work environment. Workplace diversity refers to a mix of similarities and differences, including individual and collective characteristics, values, beliefs, experiences, and backgrounds.
Diversity of experience, backgrounds, and thinking adds strength to a company. It fosters innovation and challenges the status quo. This creates resilient and flexible teams that are well-positioned to overcome challenges. McKinsey research shows that companies with a diverse workforce outperform their competitors by 35%, and that decision-making in diverse work environments leads to better results than that of a single employee 87% of the time.
While diversity creates the opportunity for innovation, it is inclusion that enables organizations to reap the benefits of that opportunity. Emerging research suggests that highly inclusive companies are up to 120% more likely to achieve their financial goals. This is another good reason to prioritize DE&I initiatives.
All employees deserve to feel safe and valued in the workplace. Another McKinsey report has shown that companies that focus on a holistic DE&I strategy see improvements in employee engagement, business innovation, and overall performance.
Implementing a DE&I Strategy
A solid DE&I strategy will help you strengthen your business in several ways—diverse workforces lead to a diversity of thought, greater innovation, and ultimately better business outcomes.
Get started with these 4 steps to developing an efficient DE&I strategy.
Data Analysis & Identifying Trends
The first step in developing an effective DE&I strategy is to understand employee demographics and identify areas or trends that need to be addressed. HR managers can access this information by leveraging data already available in the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or the Human Resources Information System (HRIS).
Once you have gathered this employee data, look for gaps and areas of concern. Try to identify which demographic groups are underrepresented, and then proceed to break down the data by location, department, and position to identify trends. Keep in mind that an efficient DE&I strategy should focus on representation, fairness, and equal opportunity for all genders, ethnicities, nationalities, sexual orientations, religions, disabilities, and age groups.
Once you’ve identified areas for improvement, it’s time to plan a strategy for more diverse recruitment and implement practices that ensure the inclusion of all employees.
Planning & Setting Targets
Before implementing a DE&I strategy, it’s important to set clear targets. There are several areas that HR managers should focus on, such as sourcing channels, attracting high-quality candidates from underrepresented groups, and filling hard-to-fill positions with more diverse talent.
Clearly defining the culture of your organization is essential when setting targets. A Harvard Business Review study showed that hiring individuals with a good culture fit for specific roles increases team productivity, job satisfaction, and employee retention. But when there is no clear definition of what makes a candidate a good culture fit, it could be difficult for recruiters to avoid biases and set optimal goals. For this reason, more and more companies are now looking for culture-add—instead of searching for candidates that will be a good culture fit. The goal should be finding candidates who can enrich the existing team culture.
When setting goals, it’s essential to focus on a few core areas rather than trying to accomplish everything at once. We recommend that you first think about your current and future staffing needs, and then focus on the critical diversity gaps that need to be addressed immediately. Make sure to be clear about the intentions and targets of your strategy, and establish the metrics that will show you how you are performing later on.
Once you’ve established these DE&I goals, list the actions you will take to achieve them. For example, if your goal is to hire people with specific learning styles or behavior, you will want to consider the selection tools needed. There are several AI-powered recruiting tools that can help you in this regard, while also reducing bias in the hiring process.
Implementation
With all data and targets in mind, it’s time to implement the DE&I strategy. Start by getting your key stakeholders—recruiters and managers—on board to establish which departments, teams, or positions have the greatest need for more diversity, equity, and inclusion. Creating personas that reflect the different demographics you want to target is an efficient way to understand your workforce.
Once you’ve identified your target segments, you should direct your efforts in two directions: recruiting and retaining new talent and implementing equity and inclusion practices for existing employees. It is important to ensure that initiatives extend beyond one team, department, or position. DE&I activities and efforts should send the same message across the entire organization.
Ongoing Strategy & Measuring Progress
A DE&I strategy is not an end state, but an ongoing process. It is critical to periodically review your initial goals, and adjust them as needed to ensure you are getting the most value from your efforts.
Final Thoughts
The importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion as fundamental components of workplace culture has been widely recognized in recent years. Companies that fail to adopt DE&I practices and lack an effective strategy are missing the opportunity to leverage the potential of their employees. A DE&I strategy can improve a company’s bottom line, provide important competitive advantages, and lead to significant business growth.
