Sustaining diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in any organization requires a strategic plan, but ensuring that the strategic plan stays on course is a day-to-day effort. Forgetting to maintain small inclusion efforts that support the strategy can lead to stalled DEIB progress. -By Debra Jenkins

To sustain diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), it is crucial to continuously assess and prioritize these values in all aspects of the organization. This includes actions such as regularly reviewing hiring processes, policies, and practices to ensure they are equitable and inclusive, so that bias creep does not make its way into future revisions and leadership decision-making. It is also important to provide ongoing and not one-off training and education to all team members, to promote awareness and understanding of both diversity issues and how to create a welcoming and inclusive organizational culture. Too often, the process of embedding DEI stalls because the strategy needs day-to-day support. By making DEI a core value and actively working to promote it, a sustainable culture of inclusivity that supports everyone is possible.

Nurturing DEI and Belonging

Changing the organizational culture to become truly inclusive and support all employees’ sense of belonging is not easy. Being truly inclusive means a sustainable culture of DEI and belonging exists, and DEI is embedded on a day-to-day basis in the ongoing talent management system and operational decision-making. Operational decisions are included, because DEI is not sustainable if business leaders support DEI in talent systems but not in areas like marketing, R&D, and product and service designs. A good example is biopharmaceutical research firms striving to ensure clinical trial participants include minority participants, and that some projects also address medical issues relevant to minorities.

DEI should not be viewed as a program or initiative. It should be a core value that needs nurturing to remain a driver of behaviors. The tech industry has learned that committing money to increased minority hiring and not following through will lead to a high turnover of those talented women and minority employees. The manufacturing industry has learned that attracting and retaining younger, diverse talent depends on adhering to corporate environmental sustainability values. Younger generations want to work at companies that support their values. So sustaining DEI progress requires truly embedding DEI and belonging (DEIB) as actionable values supported by committed leaders.

Weaving Long-Term DEI and Belonging into the Organization’s Fabric

Tandem is an example of a company that understands DEIB requires being “honest, authentic, and committed to continuously pursuing growth, knowing more, and doing better every year.” In 2022, the company established a formal DEI department and a foundation to integrate DEI into the fabric of the organization. Continuing to make progress was in mind from the beginning, so the DEI strategy focuses on the workforce, workplace, customers, and communities.

The foundation of Tandem’s journey was laid by creating an annual DEI strategy, launching an ERG program, rolling out a structured hiring system, restructuring the DEI Council model, and “building a regular cadence of inclusion-focused events for employees to engage in and learn from.” Tandem conducts employee engagement surveys, is improving diverse representation in clinical studies. They introduced structured hiring that supports a consistent and repeatable recruitment and interview process for job candidates that is inclusive and makes equitable data-driven comparisons.

There are multiple ERGs at Tandem called Inclusion Communities. The DEI Council structure was transformed so that the DEI Council, the voice of the employees, and senior-level leadership champions work on a separate but equal basis but are accountable to one another. Where the two groups intersect is where initiatives are developed. A pilot model was also instituted in which decision-making was further dispersed into four separate but equal incubators focused on the employee value proposition, the future of work, inclusion events, and the DEI Council recruit and replace process.

There are tactics that employers can utilize to ensure DEIB maintains momentum. They address every area of the organization, from the talent management system to operations.

Developing Metrics Beyond Demographics

The importance of leadership cannot be overstated. Leaders should consistently be role models. Studies have found that employees frequently go to training sessions and promptly forget much of what they learned as soon as the training ends. DEI is not an event, training session, or multicultural activity. DEI must be a set of cultural values, and organizational leaders are crucial to organizational culture development and sustainability. They must be models of the ideal behaviors for employees.

Developing metrics and benchmarks are necessary for sustaining DEI. This is why leadership accountability is so important. A mistake organizations make is believing DEI metrics are limited to demographics when measuring a broader set of outcomes is critical to sustainability. Lily Zheng, consultant and author of DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing it Right, recommends developing an accountability infrastructure based on the appropriate metrics. They include leadership metrics for holding leaders accountable for achieving DEI goals, and metrics for tracking demographics, but they should consist of much more. For example, metrics should track participation in DEI formal and informal groups and the productivity of groups such as ERGs and DEI Councils. Zheng suggests tracking career progression to include every process, from recognition and promotion to learning and development and mentorship. She recommends tracking the types of conflicts, including those involving discrimination and bias, and their resolution, the impact of operations on communities and people, and the environmental impact of operations.

Consistent Actions Needed for DEI Progress

To keep DEI progressing, senior leaders should regularly communicate the DEI strategy, goals, measures for accountability, and expected behaviors to managers down the line. It is also important to periodically review Human Resources policies and how they are implemented and executed. There is always the risk of bias creeping into new policies, leadership behaviors, and decision-making over time due to unconscious bias. Inclusion and belonging are strengthened through consistent actions, and day-to-day practices help keep the values at the forefront of employee minds and help people realize their unconscious biases. For example, inclusion nudges can increase awareness of unconscious biases during decision-making. The power of inclusion nudges to change perspectives and behaviors is based on behavioral science. Nudges are feedback messages that interrupt the automatic, unconscious thought systems all people develop. The nudges are effective because they suggest small behavior and decision-making changes at a time when change is important. They also avoid overwhelming people with too much information at a time. The nudges can help leaders recognize that each decision concerning human capital is important to creating an inclusive culture. The inclusion nudges are adaptable for use with all employees and employee groups. For example, a leader sends a nudge to a project team, asking if all members can speak.

Connecting Daily Behaviors to Long-Term Goals

Lack of sustainable DEI progress is often due to a need for clear strategy and goals, consistent leadership training and behaviors, regular employee communication, and meaningful metrics. The DEI strategy is only as effective as the ongoing day-to-day process of addressing people’s conscious and unconscious biases. DEI progress can stall when organizational leaders and employees view the strategy as a series of training sessions, but are not connecting what they learn to their daily decision-making. This applies to both leaders making people decisions and employees making decisions about how they interact with coworkers. Embedding DEI and belonging in the organization’s culture is the ultimate goal, because people act with the understanding that how they perceive people makes a difference.