When we are discussing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, it often feels like diversity is what gets the most attention in organizations.
As an organization, naturally you’ll want to deal with the problem that is easily identified just by glancing around the office. Understandably, from the point of view of your talent, no one wants to be the “only” representative of their group in the room. It is also not to anyone’s advantage to offer homogenous team photos when one is approaching potential clients.
And yet for being a problem that’s easy to spot, It isn’t an easy challenge to solve. One can go all-out researching ideal locations for job postings, or crafting promising incentives for the current diverse-identified talent to recommend their friends, and/or leveraging outside groups in order to diversify your current talent pool. These efforts are often effective leading to interviews, assuming many things line up. Perhaps you will make an offer to one or several great candidates that will increase your diversity. Now you have a bigger problem, how do you keep them?
In the race towards achieving a more diverse and inclusive organization, the issue that isn’t getting enough attention is equity. Does the diverse talent you already have feel as if they are being offered parity with their counterparts at work? Have you had women, people of color, LGBTQIA+, neurospicy, or disabled talent leave employment with you? Do you struggle to explain the pattern of this type of turnover?
These questions can illuminate an important truth:
Diversity, and even inclusion, do not matter if equity isn’t already in the room.
- So you have a diversity problem? Take a real look at your organizational culture and ask yourselves why diverse humans would want to work in your space. Talk to your talent; let them tell you their stories. Mine for what is positive, what is working, and what is useful to fuel your trajectory towards the culture you want to see.
- If you can’t imagine how you will get there? Hire help. There are many, many immensely talented consultants in this space. Find one whose methodology speaks to you and get an ally on board to support this important work.
- Need something concrete to do right now? Schedule a lunch for your team members from protected classes. For this first attempt, do not take a seat at the table. Instead, have your team interview each other about the workplace they’d like to see. Ask them to report back their findings. And, most importantly, take their words seriously. They are the only ones who truly know what it is really like to exist in your culture.
Here is the question I’d love for us to be asking: How do we align collective identity and the humans in the room to include the difference and diversity in everyone and offer equity for everyone? The system that achieves that is a system that is available to receive a multitude of wonderful, varied candidates and thrive with them. Our openness to change is what allows that to happen; and to begin, how we speak about identifying diversity, equity, and inclusion makes that happen. Our words make that happen. Words create Worlds1.
- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel ↩︎