Building a DEI Strategy: Turn Your Goals into Actions
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are more than just ideals—they’re the foundation of a thriving organization. But how do you move from aspiration to action?
A robust DEI strategy provides the roadmap, guiding your organization toward meaningful change with clear goals, actionable steps, and measurable outcomes. In this blog, we’ll explore what makes a DEI strategy effective, the challenges you might encounter along the way, and how to build a framework that delivers lasting impact.
What is a DEI Strategy?
A DEI strategy is, in essence, a long-term framework designed to drive change. They are comprehensive, actionable, and ultimately set the overall standard and direction for real, actionable progress within an organization. While DEI policies outline an organization or workplace’s stance, regulations, expectations, and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, a DEI strategy centers around the how—more specifically, it provides a roadmap with goals and timelines on how to achieve DEI-related commitments.
Key Characteristics of a DEI Strategy
1. DEI Strategies are Dynamic and Flexible
Unlike policies, which are static and formalized, a DEI strategy tends to be ever-evolving, with built-in flexibility to allow for quick responses to sudden changes. As organizations or workplaces grow, pitch new goals and priorities, or experience challenges, their DEI strategy is bound to shift with them.
When big changes happen and leadership teams are reviewing current policies and practices, reevaluating their DEI strategy can help lay the groundwork for the future.
2. Integrate All Functions and Departments
DEI strategies go beyond individual-focused objectives. Rather, they focus on the process of embedding DEI principles across all functions of the organization. This includes hiring, executive and leadership teams and development, performance evaluations, marketing, community engagement, policy-making, and more.
3. Sustainable Upwards Development
A robust DEI strategy will not be a one-off project or process; it’s an ongoing process that evolves alongside your organization. When creating a DEI strategy, think of it as the blueprint for embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion into every facet of your organization.
Consider this: you’re not just developing a plan—you are shaping how DEI principles are integrated into your organization's culture and systems. For your strategy to be effective, it must be stable, sustainable, and aligned with the structures you have (or those you intend to build) to support it.
4. Oriented on Outcomes
Strategies prioritize measurable, actionable goals and outcomes that ensure the upward, positive growth of your organization. They help guide the direction of your policies and goals, turning words and ideas into tangible outcomes that can be felt across departments and employees.
For example, a DEI policy may include a specific commitment to inclusive leadership practices. But words don’t do much without actions, and that’s where a DEI strategy comes in. While the policy states a goal, a strategy specifies the concrete, doable steps towards a target. In this case, that might mean inclusive leadership training or an audit of internal practices.
Overall, you can think of a DEI strategy as the root system of a tree. While unseen, it is essential for growth and stability. And, just like how roots distribute nutrients, a DEI strategy nourishes every aspect of an organization and supports it to become more sustainable and resilient over time.
What Should You Include in Your DEI Strategy?
Depending on your organization’s goals and current state of DEI, your strategy will require a variety of different explorations and focuses. It goes beyond implementing rules and making claims about hiring more diverse or racialized individuals. A good DEI strategy is measurable, sustainable, and can be improved as needed.
With that in mind, some components of a robust DEI strategy include:
Vision and Goals
This is where you will define your organization's aspirations when it comes to DEI. These will align with the overall mission and values of an organization and its employees, and showcase future goals when it comes to DEI.
Your values and goals section will serve as a high-level outline of the rest of your strategy, and is an easy, accessible way to reference the important changes you are aiming to make.
Strategic Priorities
Offer a high-level overview of your strategic priorities to establish an overall series of goals that will guide the rest of the plan. These should be focused on your organization’s needs, and can cover a wide range of topics.
For example:
➡️ Sustainable, Responsible Growth
➡️ Creating Reliable Support Networks
➡️ Creating Effective Communication and Complaint Networks
Data and Benchmarking
In order to create a strategy that addresses your specific needs, it is important to gather current data from your employees. Here, you will outline your data collection methods and their particulars. For example, if you hold 10 focus groups it is important to outline the questions posed to groups.
This can be done through employee surveys, demographic analysis, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews. To maximize the data you are able to gather, it can be helpful to hire an outside consultant. This helps ensure that employees are able to freely express their recommendations and overall needs without fear of pushback.
Plan of Action
Here, you can outline specific initiatives that will help lead to better DEI outcomes. This could include:
➡️ Recruitment and hiring practices
➡️ Leadership/executive development and training
➡️ Specific training for employees on identified topics (e.g. cultural competency, observance days, neurodiversity, and more).
➡️ Timelines and milestones
➡️ Specific responsibilities and roles
Your action plan may take place over a number of years or months with a variety of goals to meet along the way.
Accountability Frameworks
Outline and introduce team members or employee roles who will be accountable for various aspects of the strategy. This can include reporting, implementation, review processes, and goals.
Accountability frameworks can be established per goal or can cover the entire strategy. Either way, they are crucial to protect employees and organizations as they move towards change.
Evaluation Metrics
Lastly, creating and implementing evaluation mechanisms that are measurable and track progress is an important part of your strategy. Regularly evaluating your progress helps identify areas where improvement is needed, areas your organization is excelling, and additional support needs.
What Are Some Common Challenges When Creating a DEI Strategy?
Like any big change, creating a DEI strategy will shift the dynamics and structures of your organization, and anything that does that has the potential to create obstacles. Let’s review some of the common pain points and their solutions.
Limited Buy-In From Leaders
The Challenge
Resistance from leadership is one of the biggest challenges encountered whenever an organization changes. Executive and leadership teams set the tone for the organization as a whole, and if they do not buy into the DEI strategy or discourage it, there is inevitably going to be a trickle down effect to other staff members.
Possible Solutions
👉 During the development process, involve leadership teams, stakeholders, and executives throughout the process.
👉 Facilitate open discussions about your DEI strategy, potentially with a consultant present to guide the conversation.
👉 Emphasize the importance of a DEI strategy on those it impacts most.
The Lack Of Authenticity
The Challenge
Although many organizations initiating DEI strategies and programming are coming from a genuine place, it can be challenging to create a strategy that isn’t just performative and instead reflects an authentic commitment. This can happen when organizations are working to check boxes to meet internal and external expectations.
Possible Solutions
👉 Open engagement between employees and leadership facilitated via external consultants can be an excellent way to explore uncomfortable feelings and truths when it comes to DEI.
👉 Acknowledge gaps in understanding through DEI Essentials Training.
👉 Avoid templated, generic strategies; rather, base initiatives off of genuine data collected from employees within an organization, therefore addressing pain points directly.
Accountability and Progress-Tracking Systems
The Challenge
Without accountability systems in place and the ability to measure progress, it is difficult to effectively set standards, make sure you’re on the right track, and reinforce commitments.
Possible Solutions
👉 When developing your DEI strategy, create clear accountability frameworks that define the roles and responsibilities of the people involved.
👉 Create clear timelines and metrics to keep track of your organization’s progress towards its DEI goals.
👉 Review and adjust your strategy regularly to remain aligned with your ideas.
Misinterpreting DEI Goals
The Challenge
When teams don’t already have an understanding of DEI learnings and structures, they may feel excluded.
For example, this article describes a scenario where non-marginilized employees may feel excluded, as DEI efforts center around voices of historically marginalized employees. Without exploring these feelings for what they are—discomfort with being decentered rather than excluded—key decision-makers in an organization may come to the conclusion that DEI efforts are not worth the natural discomfort.
Possible Solutions
👉 Support executive and HR teams with relevant training sessions that can specifically address these concerns and questions.
👉 Create a safe space for open dialogue with structured conversations where employees can express concerns and confusion related to DEI initiatives.
👉 Normalize and emphasize the link between discomfort and growth. Anytime we experience change it can be deeply unsettling, so it’s important to reframe the negative feelings as a part of the process rather than the end goal.
The Impact of a Well-Crafted DEI Strategy
It’s important to remember that a well-crafted DEI strategy is more than a roadmap: it’s a transformative, living tool that reshapes organizational culture over time, strengthens teams, and improves the overall well-being of employees. When executed thoughtfully and carefully with the proper support in place to fully realize your strategy, it creates environments where marginalized employees feel empowered, heard, and valued.
And it goes beyond internal benefits—externally, your workplace’s DEI strategy can earn it a positive reputation, strengthens community relationships, and drives long-term success by attracting talent from all walks of life.
Overall, a strong DEI strategy addresses systemic inequalities while paving the way for a more inclusive, equitable, and thriving organization.
