In this first episode of Your DEI Minute™, host Michelle Bogan, founder and CEO of Equity at Work™, details a practical, five-step framework for setting up an organization's successful Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Program. She discusses why crucial steps must be taken to establish a solid foundation no matter where an organization is on its DEI journey.

These steps include:

1. Taking an honest look at the current state of DEI within your organization.
2. Setting clear and tangible goals
3. Fully resourcing the work
4. Ensuring comprehensive education and communication
5. Maintaining an agile approach to adapt to unforeseen challenges and opportunities.

Michelle dives deeper into each step with practical advice and real-world examples. She speaks at length about the importance of data in understanding where the organization currently stands and how to set realistic goals. She also discusses the necessity of internal and external resources to fully support DEI initiatives and stresses the significance of continuous education to ensure everyone in the organization is aligned with DEI principles.

Throughout the episode, Michelle emphasizes that DEI is an ongoing journey, not a one-time box-checking exercise, and requires consistent commitment and agility to adapt to evolving needs.

To learn more or connect with Michelle, visit: https://www.equity-at-work.com/

I'm Michelle Bogan, 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. Alright. So today, we're gonna cover the 5 key things to do to best set up DEI for success in your organization. So maybe you're starting totally fresh on your DEI journey. You're at the very early stages of even thinking about what diversity and equity and inclusion principles and strategies mean for your organization. Or maybe you've done a hodgepodge of different DEI related activities kind of here and there scattered over the last year or 2 or even longer, and you're looking to bring something together a little more holistically, or maybe you've even had a misstep, and you've decided you need to kind of take a step back and start with a fresh approach to moving DEI forward. The great news is no matter where you are in your DEI journey, there's always an opportunity to step back and focus on these five things to set the work forward up for as much success as possible.

So let's get into it. Number 1, take an honest look at where you are today. Now this may sound like an obvious thing to do, but a lot of people jump straight to action and forget to take that step back and really look at what you got in place today. And I what I'm talking about is looking at it from a bunch of different dimensions. First of all, what is driving you to do this work? What is sort of the desired end state or desired outcome that you want to have as part of it? And is there something that you're trying to fix from today? Do you have employees demanding this? Are you struggling to recruit, sort of have effective outreach and recruiting efforts and attract new potential employees who are much more focused on DI being kind of a core part of an organization that they join? Have you had a misstep and you've got some course correcting to do and and maybe some education that needs to be done as part of that? Or maybe you really are needing some new policies and processes and benefits to really make sure that DI is fully in place and everyone feels included, has a sense of belonging, and can be fully engaged. Understanding what the driver of this is, what the purpose of it is, what the objective and end goals are will help you frame the work appropriately and set the right priorities, but also determine the speed at which you need to move forward in your DEI work. The other thing to do is think about your mission, your vision, your values, the employee value proposition, the commitments you've take made to your stakeholders, and identify how does DEI align with that? Can DEI be something that enhances those things, that helps us meet those objectives, fulfill those promises? Is it aligned with our values? What part of our values really tie most directly into the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion? How can we really articulate that? That needs to be part of your framing as well. Another really important and maybe the most important part of this first step in understanding where you are today is looking at your data.

And the data can be a combination of things. And ideally it is a combination of things because you'll get different insights from each component. Number 1, most organizations are doing some kind of engagement survey or pulse check survey. Looking at that data and in particular questions in the surveys that are good indicators or relative to DI are really important. So things that identify a sense of belonging, a sense of feeling valued, employees being able to show up and as their full selves at work and feel like they're valued for that and valued for their contributions, that people feel like they wanna stay at the organization a long time. Those are all kinds of things or feedback related to that are all things that will help inform the DI work that you need to do. Additionally, if you use an NPS or net promoter score, that's a great way to get a gauge on, you know, do we need work in this space to help that score improve over time? And then absolutely your human resource data. So looking at it from a diversity lens of what kind of our of representation do we have across the organization and then going deep with analysis by function, by level, by location, by line of reporting, and also slicing that by different dimensions of diversity, like gender, age, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, country of origin, spoken language at home, all of those different elements, as well as some of the more psychographic components and sort of preferences that different employees have and looking at career paths for people as well, understanding, you know, are there spots where people typically get stuck, and is that different based on a different demographic? Or do we have people leave earlier than we'd really like them to leave? Or maybe they leave and return, but then they don't stay very long.

All of those data points help tell a story about where diversity and equity inclusion can really help you and help your organization. So that's really what encapsulates part 1 of taking that honest assessment of where you are today. The second piece is establishing really clear goals about what you're looking to accomplish. So using what you've gathered in step 1 and getting a very clear vision of, you know, what's the impact you're looking to have through this work? What kinds of behaviors or outcomes do you wanna see that are different that you think this work will help you achieve? And then what's realistic in terms of the time frame to go after that? So setting those goals, they need to be very specific. They need to be tangible and measurable. They need to be time bound, and they need to then align to specific groups and people in the organization. Another key element of this is accountability. So, again, related to number 2 on setting really realistic goals, you have to have people accountable for those specific goals for delivering them and the time that it's gonna take to get that done, and the steps along the way to ensure that that work is fully completed.

So establishing accountability, not just for sort of this most senior leaders who absolutely do need to be accountable, but also how does that trickle down to different levels in the organization? How can that be built into performance reviews or check ins or 1 on ones? Is there a point where, and really, this does absolutely need to happen at some point, but is there, how soon can we start to incorporate that in performance review ratings or ratings for bonuses? And how does that get spread across different groups? Thinking that through is a really, really important component of getting these goals to actually be meaningful and and come to fruition. And the final piece of setting goals and making sure that these are achievable, and this to me is really the fun part, is building the road map. So, you know, take the information from step 1 on the assessment of where you are today. That's your starting point. And building a story through that roadmap that you're going to share with the organization, and maybe even outwardly through your ESG reporting and with other external stakeholders on the journey that you foresee the organization going through to really hit the goals that you're looking for. So again, you're grounding in step 1, which is the assessment of where you are today. You're then layering in the vision and the goals that you have for DI. You're layering in the accountability and through the roadmap setting out, you know, the dependencies and the sequencing, prioritization, and the speed at which you're gonna, go after each of the elements of DEI that you feel are most important for your organization to get to the desired end state that you've really set out for yourself.

So that's number 2. So on to number 3. And to me, this is, you know, not just where the rubber meets the road, but is also where a lot of organizations really struggle, and this is to fully resource the work. And the reason organizations struggle is because a lot of times, DEI ends up being a passion project that we expect, you know, people to volunteer their time for. So it's time that's not paid. It's time that's on top of other job responsibilities. And it's oftentimes kind of a cross functional task force. It may even be with people that you don't work with on a regular basis or or never have worked with before.

So it can take time for that group to come together and establish its own norms and ways of working together in an effective way, which can slow the work down. So it's okay if that's if that's all your organization can do is to rely on volunteers at least to get things started, I think that's okay, but there needs to be recognition that this work does take dedicated time and it's, it can be significant time at times. If you need to identify people and pull them from additional roles to help with this, making sure that you, you know, number 1, provide them the time to do that during normal working hours. And number 2, make sure that what you're asking them to do as part of this work aligns with their professional goals and the development they need to do to meet their objectives for the year and ideally move forward, you know, if that's something they're looking to do, be able to move forward in the organization. And number 3, really making sure that you're pulling a a great cross functional team that brings a lot of different perspectives to the needs and opportunities, related to DI in the organization. But, again, you've got to resource the work. So some people do that fully internally with dedicated full time teams. Some people do it fully internally with, you know, internal sponsors and folks who are volunteering their time, and others do it combination internally, externally with at least some sponsors, maybe even a program manager, project manager internally, and then working with firms like ours, Equity at Work, to be outside consultants to help get, you know, get good traction on some things.

So you've got to spend some time thinking through which model really makes the most sense for you. It's a matter of time, budget, resources, of course. So, you know, just really thinking that through, but just hoping this will all sort of work itself out never works. So big making sure that you really spend this time on number 3 of fully resourcing the work is a really critical component for any success in DEI. So moving from number 3 of building the road map to number 4, This is where you're gonna get into a lot of the actual work. And I think a lot of people jump into activities, events, which are all really great and important, or go right to policy change and updating benefits. Again, super important, really, really good work to do. But oftentimes, they sort of forget the education and communication pieces that need to go alongside that.

So if your organization has opportunities related to DI, that means that, you know, there are things that aren't naturally happening that need nurturing along. They need some structure. They need some kind of some scaffolding built around it. Maybe need some process work. And in parallel with that, you've really got to communicate out to the organization, not just what's happening, but why and how it connects back to the roadmap and how it connects back to the broader goals. A very key part of that communication is identifying and soliciting feedback on where people feel like they need more information. They either need to know more about a skill or a behavior or best practices or updated standards, or maybe they need some external research on, you know, what potential employee, you know, candidates are looking for nowadays or what other organizations in their industry are really honing in on. But really getting, making sure that education component is part of this is really vital.

This will also enable you to have everyone speaking a common language related to DEI, and there are certainly a lot of terms that get thrown around interchangeably, which aren't quite correct. So getting that common language is important, getting everyone to understand how DEI sort of fits within the broader company mission and values and value proposition is important. All of that takes education. Doesn't have to be, you know, heavy, heavy education. It can be very light touch that can come through a newsletter or infographics or postings or things on an internal portal. All of those are great ways to provide communication and provide, you know, snippets of education. You also, of course, can do, dedicated training programs. And a lot of times, if you're rolling out new processes, policies, benefits, that training needs to be just a, you know, a natural part of that rollout.

But don't forget, you can also leverage a lot of existing training that you probably have in place already to insert and reinforce a lot of those messages, principles, and and these goals that you're trying to achieve. So don't forget to look at onboarding. Discrimination, harassment, other things. This needs to become part of discrimination, harassment, other things. This needs to become part of just the ongoing training that everyone in your organization is getting. So be sure to do that education in parallel with any of the other work that you're doing. So that is number 4. So we're coming in on number 5, and this final one is to remember to be agile in your approach and know that there is even if you make the most well thought out plan, there are things that are gonna pop up that you could not have anticipated, and you need to be ready for that to happen and know that you're gonna, you know, take some feedback and be willing to pivot and change and adjust and sort of keep moving on the fly for the sake of the broader mission of the work.

I often tell clients, you know, it can feel like something's going wrong, but actually, when DEI has done really well, you'll start to hear about challenges and issues in your organization that you didn't know about before. And the great thing about it is now you know about them, so you can address them. You can go after that. You can figure out what needs to change. You can probably roll some of those things into your DI program planning. But a lot of that comes from, ideally, some psychological safety that you're really reinforcing by digging into this work and making it priority. So don't be, you know, don't be flustered. Don't get frazzled.

If you start to hear of issues you didn't know before, That's actually a great thing, and that's why we need to be agile going through this approach. Because oftentimes, starting to look at one policy helps open people's minds and sort of opens the aperture to thinking about other changes that would be great to include in this or other policies that are needed or new processes that are needed. There are just a variety of things that are that don't really have a chance to come up until you get this work started. So be sure to prep your teams, and in particular, your sponsors and champions, to know that that's just part of this process. It's part of working through the road map and that the road map is somewhat fluid. There will be things that need to be added to that that you really can't anticipate today. But having that open mind to doing that is part of what will drive your success. So in going through those five elements, I hope that has given you a great primer on either your first start or a fresh start or a pivot to a new approach in pushing your DI work forward.

I would say, you know, above all else, remember, this is a journey. It's not a sprint. It is. It's not, you know, a quick effort. It's best done when it is not a check the box exercise, but something that's really taken with a lot of introspection and a lot of reflection on what this, you know, what great things this could really deliver for our organization. So I hope this gives you some great primers and and points to reference as you start to think about, you know, what your opportunities are and and how you really wanna go after those. And that's a wrap. I'm Michelle Bogan, and that's your DEI Minute for today.

Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to follow us wherever you 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 produced and edited by Podgrove with podcast art by our very own Jamie Applegate.