5 Ways To Get Leaders to Care About DEI
It is a challenge to keep Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at the top of everyone’s list. As our lives and workplaces run day and night on routines and norms, DEI initiatives get overlooked.
We know that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has never lost its importance and still is, in fact, one of the most important needs in our work environments.
We also know that implementing these initiatives in your places starts with your leadership. As a member of an organization committed to improving the quality of inclusion, diversity and equity on your teams, we know that you can only do so much and that oftentimes you often can’t make final decisions.
However, we recognize that you have the ideas and the good intentions to transform your workplace into a diverse, equitable and inclusive one.
Your leaders and managers are key to transforming your workspaces. They have the voice to help create more diverse, inclusive and equitable spaces because the key decisions for organizations, teams and workplaces are made from the top.
Looking to improve your own DEI leadership skills?
Learn more about DEI for Leaders training!
Using CultureAlly’s consulting process as a reference, here are five ways you can get leaders to care more about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in your workplace:
1. Gather Your Data
This is an opportunity to learn more about where your organization is currently at with its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and to help understand what your teams are saying.
Consider gathering information from your full workplace with a survey, including CultureAlly’s Free DEI survey to help get you started on your DEI strategy.
With the information gathered in your survey, you will be able to see your organization's profiles and examine the numbers behind how diverse, inclusive and equitable your workplace actually is. Here you can gather data on the state of diversity within your organization. The goal of the survey is to understand your employees better.
With the data collected, you can now get an idea of how diverse your organization is, how many employees identify as racialized communities, how many of your team members are members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and who practices or culturally represents a religious minority.
It can also help answer questions about how many of your employees feel there are barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion within your organization. With this data, you can also examine where these diverse individuals exist within your organization.
Gathering this information and presenting it to leaders to demonstrate helps your leaders visualize where your diversity and inclusivity measure. Whether the numbers are lacking in some areas, you will see where there needs improvement in representation on your team.
It can also help understand where the current representation lies and what your team can do to ensure these diverse communities are seen and heard.
2. Listen to Your Team
One of the best ways to make an actual case for diversity, equity and inclusion within your workplace is getting is truly listening to what your team has to say. This can be done in many ways, like simply engaging with and getting your team to participate in open discussions and offer their experiences and opinions.
Having open conversations is a simple task that is already a step in the direction of transforming your workplace into a more inclusive one.
Consider asking your employees questions like:
How do they feel about the current state of your organization’s DEI initiatives?
What changes and enhancements would you like to see?
What are the most important things to you?
It’s time to elevate the voices of the individuals on your team. It’s a great way to evoke emotion, build connections between individuals, and better understand certain experiences, which will help make a case for increasing DEI initiatives in the workplace.
Your team will likely have already done much of the work for you. Their answers may give some actionable steps and ideas on improving diversity, equity and inclusion in your workplace and another great way to get your leaders brought in to care and create those strategies.
3. Analyze Your Organization’s Previous Experiences
Don’t let history repeat itself. For example, from the lens of inclusive hiring practices, you can take a look at previous hiring strategies and explore how diverse your teams have been in the past. Is there anything that stands out?
How many women have been on the team?
What about racialized individuals?
Is there any information about members of the LGBTQIA+ community?
While examining this information, questions we want you to ask your leaders are on how diverse representation has affected your organization. Use the data and understand how you can affect change within your workplace.
4. Frame Your Position on a Human-to-Human Level
Those in leadership positions will also have their own lived experiences and perspectives. While presenting any of the above tactics, we encourage you to use this time to connect with management and your organization’s leaders to discuss their lived experiences.
Ask your senior leaders if they:
Have ever been faced with their own challenges?
Are they a member of a marginalized community?
This is an approach that relies on emotions and connection-building. It allows leaders to build self-awareness and perspectives based on their own experiences and apply it to spaces where they may typically remain more objective.
Based on their experiences and perspectives, you can ask how they would want their employees' experiences to be improved. This is a great opportunity to make a case for improved diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
5. Benchmark Your Data
As you may already know, many organizations are continuously doing studies and running data on the state of today’s workplaces, especially in conjunction with diversity, equity and inclusion. This data is then compared and benchmarked across geography and industry to get an understanding of how they stack up.
They often explore the current state of DEI in our workplaces, what and how employees feel about this, what prospective employees (and high talent) are looking for from companies and organizations in regards to their workplace diversity and lastly and possibly more importantly, how it all impacts the bottom line.
Much like gathering information from your team, the larger exploration of the workplace diversity conversation as a whole will empower any leader to be informed and make some decisions.
DEI Statistics to Win Over Every Leader
There is tons of research out there, but we got you started with some important facts:
Larger Talent Pool:
89% of Black and Asian, 72% of women, and 70% of Latino respondents said that corporate diversity influences their job applications greatly. And more than 50% of White respondents also agreed that workforce diversity is essential. (Glassdoor)
Better Employee Engagement:
Organizations that support D&l will have up to 83% of their millennial base substantially more engaged in their organization. (Glassdoor)
Growth, Growth, Growth:
Corporations experienced a 3.5% increase in profit growth for every 10% increase in gender diversity. (McKinsey)
Corporations with considerably more ethnic and racial diversity also have a 35% higher chance of outperforming competitors. (McKinsey)
Harvard Business Review reported that diverse corporations post 19% higher revenue per year. (HBR)
Organizations saw an almost 1% increase in profits for every 10% increase in the ethnic and racial diversity of a company’s top management. (McKinsey)
Companies in the top quartile for ethnic, racial, and gender diversity have a 25% better chance of higher profitability than the expected national median for their respective industries. (McKinsey)
At CultureAlly, we know that you are interested in advancing your company’s diversity, equity and inclusion, and we know you know that it makes good business sense.
We hope that the above steps—whether you use one or all—will be the support you need to get your leaders to care more about transforming their workplaces!
