Countless data over the last 20 years have verified the efficacy of DEI’s’ impact on business performance and the employee experience. According to Deloitte, companies that embrace DEI are twice as likely to meet financial targets and six times as likely to be innovative and agile. McKinsey confirmed these results, stating that “companies with more diverse teams were also top financial performers.” Gallup reports that DEI efforts improve engagement and productivity.
Over the last 30 years, my firm Alignment Strategies has confirmed—via actual application and practice—these results with our Fortune 500 clients. Our customized DEI interventions have attracted and retained top performers, increased innovation and creativity, improved overall employee satisfaction, and generated millions in cost savings.
But some refuse to accept the truth. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts are under attack nationwide. Unfortunately, it has become embedded in our Culture Wars. Under the veiled attempt to be balanced in reporting, renowned publications are giving airspace to those researchers who refute DEI’s impact. They base their assessment on training programs or perspectives and feelings, which often masquerade as facts. For example, A Psychology Today article describes DEI as “a cultish monoculture in which dissent is blasphemy and heretics must be excommunicated.”
It would be easy to make these DEI dissenters the “boogey-people” and blame all the controversy on them. I contend that many DEI practitioners have unintentionally provided fodder for this dissent. Many organizations had a knee-jerk reaction to the appalling reality of racism unveiled by George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Corporate America committed $85+ billion to address issues of racial disparity in their marketplaces and inside their walls. Well-intentioned efforts to increase DEI in the workplace rose 55% after the murder of Floyd. Companies rushed to hire DEI practitioners without clarity about important requirements for this role, and they established underfunded initiatives.
These well-intentioned efforts backfired. Corporations that swore to increase DEI are now dissipating the roles almost as quickly as they created them. NBC News reports that 33% of these DEI roles have been eliminated in less than three years. Too many companies treated DEI like a trend that came and went, and their programs reflected that. They developed one-and-done initiatives—principally training—that made no impact on business performance, company culture, or employee experience. This was a formula for failure and has now opened the door for DEI detractors.
What happened to that $85 billion to eradicate racial disparities? Reportedly, most of the $85 billion, remains unspent. Businesses make excuses for their failure to move forward, but those impacted daily by racial disparities feel like the balloon of hope has burst.
The reality is that DEI didn’t just start in 2020. Many Fortune 500 companies have been engaged in DEI for decades and have played a key role in correcting the practices that make them vulnerable to doubters. Here’s my list of top DEI vulnerable practices:
No. 1 – Positioning DEI as the end goal
DEI is an enabler to improve organizational performance and employee experience. Some organizations make the mistake of positioning DEI as the goal. For example, once they’ve trained XX number of employees on unconscious bias, hired X% multicultural employees, reduced equal employment opportunity complaints, promoted XX women, and required leaders to use pronouns, they check off the DEI box and call it done.
These are important achievements, but leadership must acknowledge these are just starter actions. DEI practitioners and leaders should articulate how they intend to build on these preliminary movements and engage in more strategic and constructive DEI efforts that help drive business performance and enhance employee engagement.
No. 2 – Not showcasing DEI as a business enabler
You need to demonstrate how DEI can help achieve your leaders’ business goals. For example, if your organization aims to reduce safety incidents, show how DEI can help increase safety. If the goal is to improve relationships with regulators and customers, demonstrate how DEI can foster those connections. DEI can enhance team productivity, increase cost savings, reduce absenteeism, and improve operational efficiencies. Take the opportunity to display those capabilities and what’s required to make them real and discernible.
To do so, the DEI practitioner must invest in understanding and learning the fundamentals of their company operations and the love language of the business.
No. 3 – Overselling DEI training as the “end-all/save-all”
Many sell DEI training as a quick fix that can be economically and efficiently delivered. Such training has an important and valuable role in the DEI landscape. That role is to provide a shared experience that raises awareness, establishes a common understanding, and creates a shared language. But DEI training rarely creates systemic and cultural change.
Meaningful transformation is developed over a sustained period, and what drives it are the DEI behavioral practices that focus on business impact and employee experience. For DEI to make an impact, it can’t be a Band-Aid fix solution to a trending social issue. Your program can’t be one whose influence is quickly undone. It must be focused on individuals’ and the organization’s self-interest, and leadership must be all-in.
No. 4 – Misunderstanding that DEI is personal
Don’t ignore DEI’s self-interest principle. DEI is personal. Leaders, managers, and employees are asking, “What will DEI do for me? Why is it in my self-interest to embrace an effort, when I see it as extra work and a ZERO-SUM game?”
DEI campaigns lose momentum if employees don’t see the direct benefit to their day-to-day lives. Their first concern is, “Me, I, My.” If the only DEI benefit communicated to them is business-centric, they won’t put in the necessary effort. You must share with them how your DEI initiative will provide value to them by improving their relationships with their boss and peers, supporting their career aspirations, increasing performance, enhancing compensation, reducing stress, and helping them feel more fulfilled in their positions.
No.5 – Positioning DEI as Solely Owned
DEI practitioners often make the mistake of assuming sole accountability for implementation and goals. The DEI goals aren’t yours alone. Enroll leadership in a shared declaration of the objectives. Whatever the desired outcome, jointly communicate your idea of success to stakeholders so they know what you’re working towards.
As part of your communications and buy-in, create a process where each employee identifies how DEI can enable their personal success as well as that of their teams. Have that DEI enabler included as part of their personal performance goals. By doing so, you create a shared investment.
No. 6 – Not Delivering the Metrics
This is one of the most significant ways in which internal DEI practitioners have created vulnerability for our discipline and themselves. Don’t assume you can’t measure DEI impact just because it’s not intuitive or you don’t know how. Businesses’ love language is metrics—if it’s not measurable, it’s not sustainable, and therefore, it is extinguishable.
Many DEI practitioners are not skilled in applying business metrics to evaluate how their initiatives are driving revenue and other business impacts. This leaves them ill-equipped to argue the value proposition and showcase how DEI is in the organization’s best interest.
DEI Practitioners must address these points of vulnerability so that we can withstand these obsessive attacks defaming its viability. The data is on our side. We must be BOLD in speaking out and pushing forward. Business leaders and their employees must summon the courage to share DEI’s impact on their business and their own well-being.
Dr. Vanessa Weaver, is CEO of Alignment Strategies, with over 35+ years of experience customizing DEI initiatives that drive value for their clients. If you need help establishing the DEI value proposition, addressing these vulnerabilities, or setting quantifiable goals for your program, connect with us. Alignment Strategies is here to provide you with the expertise necessary to position DEI as a business enabler.
