13 Tips to Drive DEI at Workplace

Inclusion ensures everyone on the team is treated fairly and respectfully, despite differences. Gartner reports that inclusive teams have 30% better performance. Inclusion is about how employees interact.

The 7 Pillars model is about providing a ‘helicopter’ view of inclusion that looks at the common elements that contribute to creating inclusive environments that reflect the communities that we live in. As an organization, you cannot overstate how important early leadership buy-in is to organizational initiatives like creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace. But once you have it, you can move on to the difficult yet rewarding work ahead.

Reference from my upcoming Book: Cracking the Code of Diversity & Inclusion

For some organizations, mounting a diversity and inclusion initiative seems like an impossibly big and multi-faceted endeavour. After all, you are initiating nothing less than a massive cultural change in your workplace, right? It helps to look at it this way: the risk is well worth the reward. So where do you begin?

Here are thirteen practical tips and best practices listed for you:

13 Things to Do to Make Diversity & Inclusion a Priority

Here are thirteen practical tips and best practices listed for you:

1. Invest time in training: Diversity and inclusion training helps employees understand how cultural differences can impact how people work and interact in the workplace. It can cover anything from concepts of time and communication styles to self-identity and dealing with conflict. Diversity training offered as optional tends to be more effective than that which is made mandatory.

2. Define and clarify terms: Diversity and inclusion can have different meanings to different people. What does “diversity” actually mean in your organization? What does it not mean? What does “inclusion” mean? Who is included in what? Why are they included, and how? Establishing standard definitions is essential for mutual understanding

3. Set clear goals and objectives: Unclear goals (e.g., increase applicant diversity) create confusion. Moreover, broad, and ambiguous goals are either not demonstrable and measurable or are nearly impossible to meet, which can lower morale or create resentment. Research your competitors—especially those recognized for their diversity and inclusion efforts. Doing so will help you understand where your organization stands, allowing you to set realistic goals.

4. Build accountability into the process: Organizations that are deeply committed to diversity and inclusion have metrics in place to recognize and reward inclusive leaders. They also ensure executives in positions of influence—like business units or regional leadership roles—are trained to lead inclusively. Diversity and inclusion goals should be written into job descriptions and considered equally with other KPIs.

5. Create a psychologically safe environment: People need to understand that they are welcome to contribute to, and help you promote, the cultural shift you want to instil. This often requires intentional education and learning opportunities for people to gain the skills to navigate differences. Whether that is through learning and development activities or personal development and understanding, they need to know that they have room to make mistakes and learn from them without the fear of repercussion.

6. Model from top to bottom: Board chairs and CEOs who model inclusive behaviours create an environment in which others can safely voice different opinions, which communicates the importance of diversity and inclusion to the organization. They make diversity and inclusion an organization-level rather than HR-level priority, and they emphasize diversity and inclusion as part of a business strategy.

7. Tailor your strategies: What works for one organization will not necessarily work for another. Consider a SWOT analysis to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats specific to your organization. Then build out your strategies to address those findings.

8. Hire and promote accordingly: Work to remove subconscious biases from the hiring process. Job postings should be worded with care and evaluated to ensure they do not appeal to only one group of people. For example, attributes such as “competitive” or “dominant” are viewed as positive traits for men, but negative for women. Make sure your posting is well-balanced and appeals to all genders equally. Consider removing personal identifiers (e.g., names, photos, or age) from resumes, and assemble diverse teams of employees to interview candidates.

9. Emphasize commonalities: Commonalities can be as powerful as differences. When people create connections and find common ground, they often find it easier to share, appreciate, and benefit from their differences. What is your organization’s common cause? What do you collectively value? Communicate these. These things can help your employees work together despite their differences

10. Avoid groupthink: It is a natural tendency for people to conform to groups. But when ideas are not challenged and are simply embraced with no questions asked, it can lead to poor decision-making. Leaders should encourage healthy debate and intentionally assemble employees with different personalities and perspectives. This helps eliminate bias and leads to better-vetted decisions

11. Be aware of unconscious bias: Educate leadership and employees about types of unconscious bias, how bias affect individuals, and what actions continue to reinforce biases. Build awareness and address unconscious bias by encouraging every employee to review, question, and analyze their own biases and assumptions.

12. Engage the least supportive groups: This segment is your most significant lever for changing your culture relative to diversity and inclusion and is also the most overlooked segment. Get them engaged, ground them in stable language and logic, help them find their diversity and inclusion story, recruit their support, and connect them to diverse peers.

13. Measure and adjust your approach: Top organizations measure progress over time and use KPIs to refine their plan and hold leaders accountable for results. Organizations must include affected employees—minority and majority, frontline employees, and managers—in the design and assessment of the programs. This inclusivity helps ensure the program will work and take hold.

Start the loop again for continuous improvement!

Learn how to cascade a balanced scorecard based DEI- business impact strategy with our internationally accredited certification courses, designed to transform organizations.

UpgradeHRM is the leading provider of a unified D&I platform with its state-of-the-art Integrated D&I - Business Impact Model. Globally, successful enterprises rely on UpgradeHRM's industry-recognized high-impact platform to develop and deploy complex, strategy-driven, and employee-engaging business applications. We unlock inclusive workplace culture with speed and agility for organizational change and cultural diversity transformation. We use evidence-based methods with scalable strategies and effective tools to transform an organization's culture and people while linking its DE&I strategy with the business. We offer continued education and business opportunities to DEIB enthusiasts through our online certifications and masterclasses.

Categories: : DEI Strategy