In this episode, Jamey dives in to the critical topic of ownership of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) within an organization. Jamey talks about how everyone in the organization should feel a sense of ownership and engagement in DEI efforts, creating a collective and inclusive environment. Jamey provides a comprehensive overview of the different roles and responsibilities essential for successful DEI implementation, focusing particularly on the DEI leader, senior leadership, human resources, and compliance functions.

Jamey also stresses the importance of having a dedicated DEI leader who is part of the senior leadership team, enabling them to influence organizational change effectively. The discussion also covers how senior leaders can reinforce DEI by prioritizing it alongside other business metrics and actively participating in DEI activities. While HR and compliance are often associated with DEI, Jamey argues that DEI should be a standalone function to highlight its importance and cross-functional nature.

For more information or to connect with Jamey, visit: https://www.equity-at-work.com/

Key Topics Discussed:

• Importance of Collective Ownership of DEI
• Role and Responsibilities of a DEI Leader
• Involvement of Senior Leadership in DEI
• Position of DEI as a Standalone Function
• Contribution of HR and Compliance to DEI
• Strategies for Integrating DEI into Organizational Culture
• Potential Evolution of DEI Roles and Responsibilities Over Time

I'm Jamey Applegate, senior director of DEI at Equity at Work. 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 the actions you can take to move DEI forward at your organization, all in 15 minutes or less. Join us every other week as we break through the noise and help you do DEI right. Let's get to it. Today we're gonna talk about who should own DEI at your organization. I'm gonna start with a huge spoiler, it's everybody.

Everybody should own DEI at your organization. Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and initiatives are necessarily a collective effort, and everyone should feel bought in and engaged and that they have a role and a voice. Every person throughout the organization should feel a sense of ownership when it comes to DEI. So throughout this, we're gonna talk about some different roles that folks have, but really try to remember every single person has to play a role in a successful implementation of DEI programming. While everyone should feel bought in and should feel a sense of ownership, there do need to be clearly defined roles when it comes to DEI in your organization. Much like any critical initiative that your company might develop and implement, it is necessary to assign roles and responsibilities and create clear structures that will help the work progress and will help ensure overall success. So today we're gonna talk through some of those roles and responsibilities that we recommend putting in place for DEI at your organization, specifically focusing on the DEI leader, senior leadership, human resources, and compliance. So let's dive in.

We'll start with the DEI leader. We strongly recommend that organizations have a dedicated diversity, equity, and inclusion business function that reports directly to the organization's senior leadership and is not housed within another function. We'll share more about why DEI should be separate from HR and compliance functions later, but just remember for now, we're thinking about DEI as its own independent business function. We also recommend that each organization have a designated DEI leader position. I'm not gonna get into what we think the title of that should be, but we really do just wanna focus on building a position where 100% of the role specific tasks are related to DEI across the organization. This communicates the DEI is important to the organization. So much so that it allocated a full time employee whose sole responsibilities relate to DEI efforts, and it creates a position where a person's energy focuses exclusively on DEI and is not split. This can often lead to DEI competing for time and attention with other strategic priorities, and it weakens DEI at the organization.

It's also critical that this role have the flexibility to lean in where priorities arise, but the DEI leader should not be a rule by fiat position. It should be cross functional. It should develop and implement organization wide initiatives, something like DEI celebrations, and it should partner with other business functions to ensure that DEI is embedded throughout all organizational activities. An example of this is that it could partner with HR team to review and revise the recruiting, hiring, and promotion processes to ensure that they're equitable. When it comes to title, we're not going to make a recommendation because your organization will likely look different than other organizations, but we do recommend that the DEI leader be a member of the senior leadership within the organization. And we recommend this because members of senior leadership typically have significant influence across the organization. And that's what really matters, spheres of control and influence. The priority is that the DEI leader has the ability to influence decision making at any level of the organization.

They should be senior enough in title and in practice to really affect change throughout the company. Having someone who is a DEI manager is fine if that person can still influence change at the upper levels within a c suite. But if that is not how hierarchical positioning and relationships work within your organization, then you should consider changing that role so that person is senior enough to be able to really impact and make change. So that person is really senior enough to have impact and make change. Okay. So we've talked about having a DEI leader position. We're now gonna talk about the role senior leadership plays in DEI success. They should also play a huge role in all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives at the organization.

Senior leaders matter. They make big decisions that impact the entire organization, and they're tasked with guiding the organization and its component parts through every type of environment. What they talk about, what they focus on, what they prioritize, what they say, all of it matters. The organization looks to senior leaders for both explicit and implicit instruction. When a senior leader says that a specific project is a priority, the organization shuffles its tasks to make sure enough time and attention are given to that project. When a senior leader regularly asks about a specific metric, the organization is likely to put effort into business activities that focus and impact that metric. This is how senior leaders can play a role in owning DEI efforts. During strategic planning discussions, senior leaders should include DEI as a stated priority up along with other items like revenue, operational efficiency, and employee experience.

This communicates the importance the organization is placing on diversity, equity, inclusion. Next, senior leaders should role model actions and behaviors that promote DEI, like attending trainings, participating in DEI initiatives or celebrations, or joining DEI task forces aimed at specific problems or focus areas. And they should ask the direct reports to engage similarly. Finally, senior leaders should talk about DEI programs and initiatives regularly reinforcing that it is an important part of the company's culture and signaling to others that they should prioritize DEI in their day to day roles as well. On top of having a DEI leader and making sure that senior leadership is really bought in and feels a sense of ownership, human resources and compliance are often also associated with DEI. It is very common to house the the DEI function within HR or within a compliance business function. And it makes a certain sense. So much of DEI efforts are about people and employee engagement and experience, topics that typically live within the HR function.

And some organizations, your organization might have regulatory requirements that require specific activities or set specific DEI metrics and goals, like percent spend on diverse suppliers, or they start DEI programming with mandated programming for all employees, maybe the annual module in the company's learning management system. These are often housed in an organizational compliance function. As we stated earlier, we recommend that DEI be a stand alone function outside of HR and compliance. It's not because DEI does not include items that affect people or items that stem from regulations or are organizationally mandated, but because DEI should not be seen exclusively as a sub function within HR or compliance. DEI is not exclusively HR and it's not exclusively compliance. It is its own thing. So like those departments, it is necessarily cross functional and org wide, and it should be treated as such. That being said, HR compliance both play a critical role in the success of DEI at any organization.

As DEI initiatives and programmings expand, HR can, much like senior leaders, participate fully in programming, role model DEI promoting behaviors, and be a champion for DEI. As it grows, DEI efforts should also begin to involve policy, practice, process, and procedure reviews. Those should include HR team members as co leaders and partners. HR team members are responsible for ensuring a successful employee experience across the employee life cycle, and they can partner with the DEI leader to apply a DEI lens to all of their work. And DEI programs should be responsive to regulatory mandates and should include items that are nonnegotiables in terms of external and internal compliance. Compliance team members can ensure they partner with DEI leaders to meet everyone's goals. They can meet and exceed all regulatory expectations. They can grow and expand DEI as a critical and foundational part of the organizational's culture.

These are not mutually exclusive. They go hand in hand. So, again, as we ask the top, who should own DEI organization? It should be a dedicated DEI leader. This person should lead a standalone DEI business function. It should report into the most senior leadership at the organization, ideally, the senior most leader, the CEO, the executive director, whatever you have in your organization. But remember a spoiler from earlier, everyone at the organization owns DEI. So a DEI leader might be the person pushing the work forward the most and has the most responsibility, but everybody owns DEI at the organization. Senior leaders own DEI and can help ensure its success, and HR and compliance functions can own DEI and also help ensure its success.

Everyone, every single person, every department, every location, at every level of the hierarchy, everyone owns DEI, and should help ensure its success. DEI ownership at your organization might not look like what we talked about today, and that's okay. It will change and evolve over time as different strategies and priorities arise. You might not have a DEI specific position currently, but it could be something that you add in as a short or mid term goal as part of your strategic planning process. And right now, you might have DEI house within your HR function, and that's also okay. Maybe the long term goal is to spin it off into its own business function and to hire someone like a chief DEI officer. And senior leaders might not actually be on the same page about DEI at this time. So maybe a next step is to implement some trainings that provide both foundational knowledge and create opportunities for senior leaders to talk through the organization's DEI strengths, the areas of opportunity, and the barriers to success.

As I mentioned earlier, everybody should own DEI organization. Diversity, equity, inclusion programs are a collective effort. Everyone should feel bought in and engaged, and they should feel that they have a role and a voice. Every person by the organization should feel a sense of ownership when it comes to DEI. And that's a wrap. I'm Jamey Applegate, and that's your DEI minute for today. Thank you so much for listening. That's a wrap.

I'm Jamey Applegate and that's your DEI Minute for today. Thank you for listening. Please be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts and don't forget to leave us a review. If you ever have questions, please visit our website or send us an email. You can also sign up for our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. Links to everything can be found in the episode notes. This episode was edited and produced by Podgrove with podcast art by me, Jamey Applegate.