In this episode, Michelle shares practical insights on how organizations can broaden the impact of their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) principles beyond internal practices and into their community outreach efforts. Michelle explains that while most DEI initiatives focus on improving retention, recruitment, and eliminating bias within company operations, it’s equally important to engage with external opportunities—such as partnerships, supplier diversity, and community involvement—to drive lasting change.

The episode introduces a three-circle framework for embedding DEI: starting with employee lifecycle processes, moving outward to organizational alignment, and finally reaching external efforts. The discussion highlights actionable approaches, including partnerships with academic institutions, involvement on boards, industry collaborations, intentional supplier spending, and public communications. Whether for small organizations with little staff turnover or larger companies, the episode serves up creative and accessible strategies to integrate DEI principles across a broader ecosystem.

To learn more and connect, visit: www.Equity-At-Work.com

To grab Michelle's new book, visit: Do DEI Right

Key Topics Discussed:

• Common internal DEI focus areas (recruiting, retention, reducing bias)
• The three-circle framework for embedding DEI
• Ways to extend DEI principles into community partnerships
• Specific examples: academic outreach, board participation, industry collaboration, philanthropy
• Best practices for supplier diversity and external communications
• Tips for small organizations or those with limited employee churn
• Additional resources available through the podcast’s website and blog

Michelle I'm Michelle Feferman, Founder and CEO of 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 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 are sold. Today I want to talk about how you can extend your DEI principles and desired impact out into your community outreach efforts. We find a lot of times when people come to us wanting help with their DEI work or projects or initiatives, they tend to be very internally focused. They go first to can we improve our retention? Can we improve our recruiting? Can we take the bias out of different promotion processes or review processes? Those are all very important things to work on. And what a lot of people forget is that there are also a lot of amazing ways to bring your DI principles and goals and desired impact out into the communities that you work in, the networks you're involved in, the industry associations you're in, different academic partnerships, et cetera. So I'm going to take you through several of those different concepts here and we've also covered this in some of our blog work. So if you would like to read more, please feel free to go to our website and the blog page and you can read more on this work. So I think of our you know, the best practice really is to integrate DI into all the different ways you touch your employees, your business, your partners and communities.

So we have a framework that has kind of like three circles to it. The center is very employee focused, so all the employee lifecycle processes are there. From attracting and interviewing to hiring, onboarding and then developing, retaining, transitioning. All of those are very distinct places where you can integrate your GI work. Then it clicks out to the more organizational elements which are things like bringing it and aligning it with your values, mission and vision. Defining the KPIs Aligning DI with your business KPIs looking at roles and responsibilities, looking at policies, benefits, processes and norms, intro communications and professional development and career support. And there are many others, but those are kind of the core operational business operational Elements that we also make sure that we cover as we're doing our DEI work or DI assessments to make sure that they're integrated there. So really the third ring is the one we're going to focus on now, which includes things like networks and associations, corporate and nonprofit boards, academic partnerships, supplier diversity, marketing and external communications, community outreach and philanthropy and give back.

Now, given that we've got 15 minutes at the most to go through this, I'm not going to go deep on each of those boxes. But what I want to do is raise your awareness that all of those are opportunities to extend your DEI work. And what we found is for our clients who are smaller or who have very long tenured organizations where there's not a lot of turnover and so therefore not a ton of, you know, work that can be done through recruiting, that when they are touching the things in that sort of second ring I described around taking biases at bias out of different processes and making sure all processes and policies and benefits are fully equitable. Other things like that, they get really excited when they realize that they can also leverage their external work to really drive change. Because sometimes they get frustrated. There's not a lot to do from an employee standpoint in terms of recruiting and really changing the employee dynamic. But they still want to have an impact. DI is still really important to them.

So some of the ways that we've seen our clients and other great organizations integrate DI into their outreach is they maybe establishing a partnership with a couple of academic organizations that have a shared mission and investing in doing a lot of work with clubs on campus and maybe offering internships earlier than they historically may have, or being a speaker or running a class or sponsoring a key event, maybe a DI related event on a campus or showing up for different affinity groups on campus, lots of really great ways to establish partnerships. Those that have maybe bigger, bigger checks they can cut may also sponsor a program or you know, establish a foundation with a campus or something like that. So a lot of creative things to do there. Boards can also be a great place to get involved. So you've seen a lot of movement around getting more women on boards and getting more diversity on boards overall. This is tends to be more targeted senior executives, but helping those executives network and get on different boards can be great to bring that, that sort of DI focused perspective onto into another organization through a board membership. Getting on nonprofit boards can also be a really terrific way to extend a partnership, build a partnership and extend those principles out. If you've got a nonprofit board where the, the Nonprofit is focused on a initiative that's really near and dear to your organization.

That can be another great way to help extend and bring help and assistance to that organization. Extend your, your internal mission out to the external. Another one that we've seen a lot is for especially smaller companies, let's say their industry is trying to drive change in this space and so they may partner up with people who may even otherwise be competitors to help come together around this topic. Also sponsoring speaker events and bringing in business partners and other organizations that also may be small businesses to do something together. We've also seen a lot of fundraising happen that way or different philanthropy work. And it's a great way to also network with others in your industry that are outside of your specific organization. So it's kind of a win win for that one. And then certainly external communications, this is a tough space to navigate because all of us are trying to be aware of the risk associated with, you know, we go out on a limb and maybe really do a lot of communicating on a particular topic that as an organization we feel passionate about.

But still doing that external communication, even if it's highlighting employees that you're really proud of or initiatives that you support, that can be a great way to just kind of spread the word amongst followers of yours that that DEI is really important and the different ways that you invest and it can help spark some great ideas among other people. The final one I want to mention is supplier diversity. So this is one where any organization, big or small, can, can make a difference if you're really intentional about your spend with your suppliers. And suppliers can be suppliers of products, suppliers of service, business partners, vendors. You know, there are a lot of different ways to kind of categorize people. But thinking about, you know, the spend that you make externally at your organization and then identifying, was there a portion of that that we really want to make? Sure goes to some diverse suppliers. Supplier diversity is supported through a number of organizations that do certifications of different elements of diversity. So and there are great resources to tap into their networks around, you know, women, business owned enterprises, minority certified businesses, LGBTQ certified businesses, veteran owned businesses.

The list really goes on and on. Disable. I mean there are a lot of different great certification agencies. They can also help you tap into networks and job postings and things like that to help you find different diverse suppliers who've been certified. Also working with your local chamber of commerce can be a great way to find some people. But really just being intentional about your spend, you know, are we trying to make sure. That, you know, we don't just sort of fall into kind of the same patterns that before. Are we really, you know, stepping back and thinking about how do we kind of extend our values into the way that, that we spend out in the market? I'm not recommending that you ditch a former supplier that was wonderful, but doesn't happen to be diverse.

You absolutely don't want to do that. But just as your AS contracts come up for renewal or you have new opportunities to bring in service providers and materials and goods providers, this is a great way to just be really thoughtful and intentional about how you're screening those folks and determining if they're qualified to be a good partner for you going forward. Another piece I really like is where different small organizations come together and pitch in for a speaker or a consultant or someone who can really give really great guidance around how to navigate tough topics or issues that are tougher. Each of the organizations that are part of part of that event, and that can also help a lot if you feel like you don't have the budget internally to sponsor that. There's a lot of value to your employees in providing that kind of offering. Looking to your industry, looking to others in your local area to make sure that those needs are being met, and providing a partnership there. Again, it's another great way to do some external networking, but still provide a service that's very much needed by everyone in those organizations. We've done a deep dive on supplier diversity in one of our blog posts, so please feel free to dig into that on our website and also reference some of the frameworks that we have there.

I hope this has given you some really good ideas of how to extend your di work out into the environments that you show up in.

And that's a wrap. I'm Michelle and that's your DEI minute for today. Thank you so much 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 and Instagram. Links to everything can be found in the episode notes. This episode was produced and edited by Podgross with podcast art by our very own Jamie Applegate.