For Better Or Worse, Organizations Get The DEI Team They Deserve

This article was originally posted on Forbes.com.

According to a late 2022 study conducted by HR consulting group Paradigm and discussed in Harvard Business Review, some 60% of organizations have implemented a DEI strategy, to include a dedicated team, with the explicit goal of improving everything from workforce culture to representation in leadership to equity in hiring and promotions. Yet, while organizational leaders may sincerely pursue tangible improvements across the DEI spectrum, these efforts often turn up short, regrettably failing to move the needle. One reason this standstill occurs, in our experience, is organizations’ misunderstanding of how to leverage a DEI team.

Most enterprises will have either a team or a collection of roles with names such as “DEI Manager” or “Global Head of DEI” or even “Director of Culture and Engagement.” By whatever name it’s known, this role or team must have the goal, broadly, to explore an organization’s culture from many perspectives, with the understanding that being a part of the organization may feel vastly different for each individual.

Gaining this awareness and addressing it effectively is a significant challenge, and DEI teams require certain conditions to enable them to be as impactful as possible.

Mindful Hiring

Often, organizations jump into hiring either a person or a team to advance DEI without having the clarity of what they want that person or team to deliver. Almost inevitably, this leads to wasted time and resources, with no discernible advancement of any DEI commitments. .

This is why organizational leaders must establish from the start what specific problem or issues they’re trying to solve or what opportunity they're trying to create / benefit from—and therefore, what skill sets and knowledge are needed. They must clearly delineate the roles and responsibilities for which they are hiring.

There is a common, erroneous assumption that success in DEI roles is contingent upon lived experience within a marginalized identity group. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of a complex and skill-based role. Rather, to be successful in DEI advancement, a deep knowledge of change management (and stakeholder management) processes is vital, as well as business and people processes. Individuals who will succeed in this role often have backgrounds in, or have studied, sociology and psychology; they understand group dynamics, how humans operate and how individual experiences create a unique worldview.

Productive Utilization

A clear sign that an organization does not know what it’s doing with its DEI team is when the constituent roles morph into “Head of Events” or “Office of Communication,” with DEI personnel relegated to simply creating events for key dates of recognition such as Black History or Pride Months. This is a massive underutilization of a DEI team. Naturally, there's an element of increasing education and awareness—but a dedicated DEI team is not about event planning. Instead, its objective should be to fundamentally shift the culture of an organization and influence and support others to be able to do the same.

There’s also a problem we often see wherein organizational leaders assume that it's solely the purview of the DEI team to create and deliver change, with those in the C-suite relinquishing their responsibilities by saying, “Well, obviously I don't need to do anything because we've got a team in place.” The onus must always be on leadership to be at the vanguard of a significant cultural shift within a company, whether or not they have a team to support this endeavor.

Practical Implications

To shepherd an organization through meaningful change, the DEI team needs full clarity around the business strategy and aspiration: where this business is heading, both as far as its people and its product, and what success should look like. They require this understanding to be able to look objectively at the company and say, “If we viewed this through the different lenses of diversity, equity and inclusion, how would we do things differently?”

The DEI team is there to challenge, prod and poke those who are responsible for delivering the business strategy—particularly those at the leadership level. They’re there to hold a mirror up to the decision-makers, encouraging them to consider whether organizational choices are as bias-free and barrier-free as possible. Ultimately, they’re responsible for guiding those at the helm to ask the hard questions: “Are we creating the type of organization for our people that we, and they, want? If not, how can we change?”

Importantly, this thinking is not abstract. The DEI team is there to assess what measures are in place or can be put in place to indicate how the organization is progressing toward its commitments and aspirations. One challenge we see many organizations facing is a lack of maturity in thinking about the quality of the data and the insights they need to be able to measure progress and impact in DEI. The DEI team is, thus, a strategic engine for offering insight, expertise and challenge to the work of embedding DEI into operations and measures.

Avoiding The Backfoot

To be most impactful, DEI personnel must help organizational leaders be proactive, as opposed to reactive to situations. From an internal events point of view, this involves being close to leadership and understanding what's happening in the business—and making sure this trajectory is aligned with any statements made around sexism, racism, misogyny or whatever else may be happening.

It's also about building external relationships with people who can provide different insights and perspectives about global events, allowing DEI personnel to think ahead about the implications of significant incidents (such as racially motivated violence, disasters, wars, even elections) for a company’s people, stakeholders and wider community. When a shocking event takes place, many organizations try to send communications out quickly—and these messages tend to be rushed, emotionally driven and sometimes poorly worded or executed. The DEI team can facilitate and help implement a crisis management communication process so that organizational leaders are not left scrambling when events occur that require a response.

Getting Started

Ultimately, organizational leaders who recognize a need to improve their culture or operations and place DEI at the centre of this need to ask some soul-searching questions: What challenges (or opportunities) do we see within our organization concerning DEI? What skills and abilities are needed to help us respond to these challenges? And, bluntly, how will we know if we have moved the needle or made a difference?

The answers to these questions should inform not just hiring for and facilitation of DEI work, but also organizational identity, as company leaders invest the time and effort to truly reflect on how their businesses can “be better”—first internally, with their own people, and then more broadly, as members of the global community.