In this episode, Michelle discusses the practical steps of building an effective communications plan for workplace DEI initiatives. She first talks about the importance of understanding your audience—not just as a broad organizational segment, but as distinct individuals with unique profiles, needs, and influences. To do this, Michelle recommends using empathy maps and provides actionable guidance on how to create and utilize these maps to tailor communications that truly resonate.

She also breaks down the essential elements of a DEI communication plan, from clarifying your message and determining urgency to identifying delivery channels and establishing timing for dissemination. A recurring theme is the necessity of repetition; she notes that messages must often be communicated multiple times across various channels to ensure they stick. She reminds us that communication in the success of DEI programs and offers listeners practical checklists while pointing towards additional resources for deeper support.

Key Topics Discussed

• Importance of audience segmentation and empathy mapping for DEI communications
• How to build and use empathy maps
• Structuring a detailed DEI communications plan
• Determining urgency and appropriate tone for messages
• Identifying and approving communication stakeholders
• Choosing the right channels for message delivery
• Repetition and reinforcement in DEI messaging
• Resources and templates available for communication planning

Michelle I'm Michelle Feferman, founder and CEO of EquityAtWork, and this is your DEI minute, your go to podcast for leaders looking to navigate the ever evolving landscape of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. Whether you're just starting out with DEI or looking to sustain your long term successes, each episode will provide you with actions you can take to move DEI forward at your organization, all in 15 minutes or less. Before we get started, I'm really excited to let you know that my new book, Do DEI Write is now available. This is your guide to the Equity at Work Maturity model, which shows leaders how to make DEI part of every day and drive great results. You can get your copy through the link in the show notes or wherever books are sold. In this episode, I'm going to spend some time taking you through the nuts and bolts of how to build a communications plan for your DEI work. But before I get into the tactics of that, I think it's really important to first ground yourself in your audience. Many people sort of intuitively do, but I think they think of their audience as sort of this big vague pool of people or the entire organization.

And what I want to challenge you to do, and this is very much in keeping with DI principles, is to try to get down to a more individual level. So, so a tool that we use a lot for this, and we've had our clients find quite helpful, is something called an empathy map. And this was first developed by a gentleman named Dave Gray from the company GameStorming. And he published it a number of years ago and it kind of went viral. It's an amazing tool when you're thinking about anything, communication based, rolling out a new process, training, if you're selling, if you're pitching a concept, if you're developing communications externally, all of these things help you kind of ground in who very specifically is our audience. And you can even develop sort of different avatars or profiles of different types of people in your audience, which might be, you know, based on level or based on function, or, you know, the scope of their job might be based on tenure. So again, just think about a lot of different ways to profile it. So first to ground you in the empathy map, at the center of the map is a face.

It can be a stick figure, can be actual pictures, whatever helps you envision this particular profile of person and you're wanting to think about, you know, what do they feel and think, what causes them pain, what are things that they view positively and view negatively. So that's kind of the center. And to get to that. We're going to go around that image in the middle, starting with, who is it that we're empathizing with? So what's their role? What situation are they in? Who are they? You know, just some definitions of who they are. Then you're going to think about what do they need to do? So what are we asking them to do differently? Or what are we asking them to listen for? What are we asking them to be aware of? But basically, like, what is. What is sort of the. The key communication message to them that's going to impact their behavior next as a way to help figure out the best way to get that message across, you're going to think about what do they see and what do they say, who are they influenced by? Who do they communicate with, both internally and externally? For both of those. And external can be everything from social media to news sources and television, podcasts, radio, et cetera.

So really thinking, taking a kind of broad view at, you know, what is it that really influences them and what are the things that they then play back out to audiences that they have, which may just be perhaps friends and family, maybe they're social, but, you know, may extend even further, particularly if they are a leader in the organization, then thinking about what do they do? So how do they really, you know, go about their day? What defines their type of behavior? Are they very operational? Are they more of a strategic thinker? How do they like to move through the workplace? What sort of characteristics do they have that define, you know, how they behave day to day? And then finally thinking about what do they hear? What are some other things they hear from colleagues that. That really are influential to them? What are some secondhand sources that they might use to get information about their job? Or maybe there's training materials, maybe there are existing, you know, policy manuals and other things. What are they consuming from the people around them and the resources around them that really influence how they show up in the workplace? So that when you. And you don't necessarily need to go in great detail through all of those elements, but thinking about those kinds of questions will help you identify the audience that you're trying to communicate to. And again, if you're thinking about your whole organization or a very large division, trying to segment it in a couple different ways so that you know that you're able to think about what's in it for this person, what's going to be an impactful message for this kind of person in this type of role or whatever the dimension might be that'll really set you up for great effective communications. Second thing I want to talk about related to communications plan is don't forget, you need to plan to communicate over and over and over again. You will feel like a broken record, but studies have shown, you know, until people hear things, you know, 7, 10, 15 times, it tends to not sink in. So depending on the magnitude of the message you're trying to get out, or the change you're trying to tee up, you may need to really feel like through from your standpoint, you're way over communicating just to ensure the message gets across.

You also want to be very clear, very specific and leverage all of the channels that your audience uses to get their information. Then getting into the nuts and the bolts of the actual communication plan. We have a template that we use with clients. We've written a blog about this. So if you want to see it, you can go on our website and look for that in the blog section. But I'll take you through the key elements of that now. So the first step is what is it that we're communicating, communicating about, you know, what's happening, when is it happening, why is it happening? What are the key elements that are driving the need for this communication? That's basically the scope of your communication. The second gets into a little bit on timing in terms of how urgent is it.

So is this critical? Like, is it based on an emergency or an urgent event? Is it a priority, which means it's very time sensitive? Is it important so it's part of corporations? Or is it something that's more, you know, important to know or nice to have, or just something that's a little more playful, fun, social, but trying to sort of determine what the urgency of this will help you figure out the tone to take. It will also help you figure out how quickly you need to get the message out and maybe how frequently it needs to be repeated or updated. Next, as you're developing the communication, you definitely want to think of, you know, who needs to review this and approve this. Do we have to allow time for anyone to go sign off on it? Do we need to socialize this? Some organizations are really rigid about their socialization. They want every senior leader to see any major communication going out. Others, it stays just within kind of the core leadership of that particular team or group. So just making sure you're thinking about who needs to be involved again will help you with your timing and your process for developing this. Then you want to differentiate between potentially who will develop the communication versus who's going to Deliver the communication.

So you may have a communications team or an internal PR team or something of that nature, marketing team that can help craft the communication, do the writing, but they're not going to be the actual person who then delivers it, who gives the speech, who who sends the email, who does the post. If you do have a team that is helping to craft it, that they're really making sure they put it in the voice of the person who is delivering the communication, then you're going to think about this kind of goes back to the original of what are we communicating about? Sort of how broad is this? What's the scope? Who will the communication go out to? You want to know who is the target audience and then who else needs to be included, as an FYI or just to make sure they're aware in the loop, et cetera, have awareness this communication has gone out. So again, it may help to go back to your empathy map and think about, okay, who influences the people within this profile and make sure you're adding them into the communication as a CC or just as a heads up. You may even want to give people some of that ahead of time. If it's a communication that's going to create, you know, a big change for that person's role or behavior or something like that. Next we're getting into things around delivery. So how will the communication be delivered? What's the format? Do you do a town hall? Do you do team meetings? Do you have an intranet that you use? Do you have a newsletter? Do you want to use a number of different leaders to talk about this communication in their smaller group meetings? There are so many different channels that can be tapped into for this. So you want to make sure, again, thinking about your empathy map, which ones are going to be the most meaningful, the most influential, the most relevant for people? And then as you're thinking about those channels, what are the most important kind of key messages to include? So this is getting down into like, why are we doing this? What does this mean for me? What action are we asking you to do? What's the timing for that to happen? What are the next steps coming after that? Who can you reach out to for more information? Are there FAQs available, other resources available? We want to make sure we provide people.

And then finally timing. So obviously we've been thinking of timing from the beginning based on what the scope of the communication is, how urgent it is, who else needs to be involved. This will now get into, when exactly does this need to go out? Is there a certain order across different channels you might use. So do you want to talk about it first and then follow up with the newsletter piece and then have something permanent on your internal portal or some different mix of that? Also is there how often are we going to repeat this and do we change the messaging at all with that, or is it just simply a reminder, kind of a refresh of some of the key highlights there and then is this something that needs to be done on an anniversary basis or is it more of a one off? So all of those things are really important in the timing. So again, as you are building your plan, you want to have this checklist in front of you, ground in the empathy map first, get really crystal clear on your messaging, think about what's in it for this particular audience and make sure you're addressing that at the beginning, in the middle, at the end, and then reinforcing it through ongoing communications. Communications, I think, are one of the real backbones to the effectiveness of your DEI work and something that we often forget about, or we do maybe once and then forget to do it again. And there's so much that would keep your GI work on track and keep great momentum going if we kept this communication top of mind. So this checklist should be your friend, something you post in your office or have readily available on your desktop.

Just as a constant reminder of being really diligent about thinking through this whole approach and making sure that it becomes just part of your the DNA of how you run your DI programs. And if there's anything we can help with. As I said, we do have a number of resources on our website related to communication, planning and execution. And of course, reach out anytime. We'd be happy to help you. And that's a wrap. I'm Michelle Bogan and that's your DEI minute for today. Thank you so much for listening.

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