Building Diverse and Inclusive Teams
Building and retaining diverse and inclusive teams is no longer simply desirable — it’s become a must-have for both large and small companies.
Some resources for people wanting to build more antiracist and multicultural organizations:
Assess where your organization is on the multicultural spectrum: Continuum and Multicultural Org ID Model that you can use with your team to identify where your team/org is from monocultural to multicultural. Understanding where your organization is on this spectrum, will help you and your allies to make better informed decisions about next steps in your efforts to reduce racism and sexism and increase multiculturalism.
Failing to plan is planning to fail: This is a super simple DEI strategic planning tool, which is good, because the DEI problem is super complex, and it is good to take baby steps—maybe start with a 6-month plan. You want the step your team decides to take tied to a plan that you can share broadly so folks know what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how you are going to measure progress against goals, and learn and improve. Doing a workshop here and there on implicit bias and calling it good is NOT the way to go. Plan first, then do, study, and improve based on what you learned.
Consultants as a resource: Consider working with a consultant(s) to support you and your team in this process. Cultural change is an ultra-marathon. Having a coach who knows the evidence-based approaches for taking on this will save time, money, and prevent unnecessary damage to the employee, client, and community relationships. Two that I have been impressed with are Cultures Connecting and RevDEI. And, of course, data2insight is doing some work in this space. We specialize in 1) collecting and analyzing employee data in rigorous, culturally responsive ways that ensure their privacy and build trust, and 2) guiding leadership and management teams to be evidence-based, transparent, and accountable as they cultivate and sustain a more multicultural organization.
Start small: As you probably know, it is usually good to start small and very focused, and build from there, rather than put together a 5-year plan right out of the gate. Below are links to some info from a 2013 report from the Center for Talent Innovation that defines two dimensions of diversity and how they can contribute to increased innovation and market growth.
The Strategic Approach to Org ID doc has a nice outline of the process of getting started within your organization.
Hopefully, this will help inform your work within your organizations to build more diversity, equity, and inclusion on your team.
