In this episode, Jamey continues to talk about setting DEI goals using the SMART Plus framework. He discusses a real-world example of working with a large organization to implement unconscious bias training. By breaking down the goal into specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound components, Jamey showcases how to develop and implement DEI initiatives successfully. He also emphasizes the importance of additional elements, such as accountability and DEI alignment, to ensure that goals are clearly defined and achievable within a set timeframe.

The discussion covers setting specific and measurable targets, ensuring achievable and relevant goals, and determining a realistic timeline. Jamey also elaborates on the importance of collecting qualitative and quantitative data to measure the impact of training and offers some actionable steps so you can start setting your own DEI goals.

To find out more, visit: https://www.equity-at-work.com/

Key Topics Discussed:

• Overview of the SMART Plus Framework
• Real-world Example: Unconscious Bias Training
• Specific Goals and Activities Required
• Measuring the Training's Impact
• Ensuring Achievability and Relevance
• Setting Time-bound Objectives
• Accountability through a RACI Framework
• DEI Alignment: Readiness, Capacity, and Leadership
• Wrap-up and Actionable Insights for Listeners

I'm Jamie 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 talking about DEI goals and how to set them.

If you're just joining us, we suggest you listen to the previous episode about, your mindset around setting DEI goals and about the SMART plus framework. Today, we are actually going to walk through a goal that we are working with a client to achieve. Okay. So we've got our SMART plus framework. So let's actually walk through a goal so you can sort of hear how it goes. So we've been working with a client to develop and implement an unconscious bias training across their entire organization. This is part of their sort of foundational culture, they've identified it as a really critical piece, they've noticed that bias is popping up in a couple different sort of processes, but it's really driven by people don't have the skills to identify and address bias in their own organization. And so for context, this is a large matrix organization with dozens of offices across the country.

So we are thinking really big about how to get everyone involved in this training. So let's do our smart plus framework. So s again is for specific. We are setting out to develop and implement an unconscious bias training for everybody within this organization. This means we need to do the following activities. We need to develop an implementation calendar and plan, we need to train session facilitators, we also need to identify session facilitators, we need to communicate to the organization about this training, both the content and the timing for implementation. We need to complete the training sessions, and then after we've completed the training sessions, we need to get feedback on the session, both the content and the facilitation and revise it over time, and then we need to develop a plan for next steps. So what comes after we do this training? What additional supports do folks at different levels of the organization need? So that's our specific.

We are setting out to develop and implement an unconscious bias training, and we have a whole list of activities. Next is m for measurable. So this one might seem straightforward. We will know that we achieved this goal when every team member has gone through the unconscious bias training. But that's a very surface level metric and that's just sort of one part of the initial thing is like it's more operational. We just wanna get it going through the training. But we wanna dig a little deeper and make sure that there's other data that we are going to collect more about the quality of the training and the impact of the training. So we wanna know that the training was impactful.

So we wanna collect qualitative data immediately following the training and this tells us about the training experience. We can ask a lot of questions about, did you learn something new today? What did you like or not like about the training? What are some of the actionable things you learned that you can take into your day to day life? And we want lagging data about how team members use the skills they developed in the session. So this will be long term, maybe a 3 month or a 6 month check-in, and this tells us about the applicability of the content in those workers' day to day lives. So that first measure, did every team go through the training, that's a simple quantitative report, just a yes, no. We can have people sign in, assign them to it, make sure they were there on that day, offer follow-up sessions, get everyone through the door. The second measure about the training experience is 100% qualitative, and it can include ratings and open ended responses. And then the 3rd measure about the application of the training concepts is also qualitative, and it would focus on open ended responses, including questions about ongoing support needs. So as I mentioned early in the specific, developing a plan for next steps, a lot of that will come out here.

Was this applicable to your day to day life, and what additional supports do you specifically need to implement these this unconscious bias work in your day to day life at the company? So A, achievable for this one, we discuss this a lot as a team and we are very confident that we can achieve this goal. The organization already has numerous required trainings that all staff go through, maybe they're slightly varied by sort of role or department or hierarchical level, but there are numerous required trainings and including some that are DEI focused, so we already have a base for DEI related required trainings. Additionally, this is a cross functional process that brings in multiple teams. So the DEI team, the HR team, the L and D team, senior leadership, we built, out a large amount of capacity and skills and a lot of perspectives. And so by having that large group, we can set ourselves up in terms of time and energy allocation. Also, the organization knew that it needed an external expert to help push the work forward, so that's where we come in and it put resources toward that by hiring us and having us join with the DEI team to co lead this project. R is for relevant. So this is something we talked about at length early on in the project.

The organization has a very strong culture and it puts a lot of energy into fostering an inclusive workplace, but identified some data points that it found concerning, specifically around retention rates for black and Latino employees. And so they're leaving the organization at rates much higher than their white peers, and the organization's leadership saw this and said, we need to do something about this. And it thought about things like, programs that are gonna support hiring of more black and Latino talent, which are great, but it also needed to look in the mirror and say, what are we doing right now that is causing employees that are black and Latino to leave early before we would want them to, or at all. They needed to look in the mirror and they needed to say, what are we doing right now that is causing black and Latino employees to have a bad workplace experience? And a big thing in there is unconscious bias. So there is a lot of small things and bigger processes that bias can creep into, that leads to black and Latino employees having a worse experience and deciding to leave the organization. So again, this led to a large scale review of the policies and processes and practices that, to determine what might be happening and it became clear that bias was creeping in a lot of decisions. So instead of starting with policy change though, the organization wanted to focus on education, that is a key component of their value system is educating folks, building capacity, and they want to share with people what bias is, how it might impact decision making and then what everyone can do to identify and address it. So they really want to go down to the sort of nuts and bolts basics, what is bias? What are the different types of bias and then walk employees through an experience to reflect on what are all the decisions they make and how might bias be creeping into those decisions on a daily basis.

The goal here is about building capacity and supporting team members, it is not about attacking anybody for their beliefs or any biases that they might have. We all have biases, it's more about identifying them and mitigating negative impacts of those biases on decisions we make for the organization. This approach also aligns with the organization stated priority of creating a supportive work environment and supporting on coaching and development, so it's definitely relevant. Finally, as part of the SMART goal process, time bound, this was the trickiest one to determine and part of our work, is to determine the implementation plan and calendar, we are in the middle of this. We set tentative deadlines for finishing the training, for the review process, for having a comms plan, having an implementation plan, but it's all kind of moving targets, but we do have an overall goal that we wanna have the materials finalized and an implementation calendar fully completed by the end of summer 2024. We might need to adjust that, but that is our working target. And then the overall goal is that we then have time for reviews, revisions, piloting it, making sure we feel confident in the content we've developed and the sort of impact and applicability of it, and that we have everyone in the organization go through the training in calendar year 2025. So the big goal is by December 31, 2025, every single employee at every office and every department across this organization will have received this training and will have been able to give us feedback on how it went, its applicability, so we can make revisions and update it for calendar year 2026.

So let's just finish up quickly with our plus components, accountable. So who's leading this? Who's ultimately responsible? So for responsible, this varies based on the activity. We actually did a more detailed RACI chart that includes by activity, who sits where. So I personally was responsible for developing the training materials and the facilitator guide, the DEI leader, the HR leader, and the L and D team were the responsible folks in reviewing the materials. The DEI leader, the HR leader, and the L and D team are going to develop the implementation calendar. I will be consulted on that, I will not be responsible for it, and then the L and D team and I will be responsible for training facilitators. Overall, the DEI leader is accountable for this entire project. So the DEI leader is the person who is responsible for each activity and it keep she keeps the overall project moving forward.

Consulted, the HR leader and the LND team are consulted on all aspects of this. We send questions their way, we set up calls, we send drafts their way. This training needs to align with organizational priorities, so that's where we get some insight from the HR leader, and then it also needs to sit within the larger professional development approach, so that's where the L and D team comes in. They have expertise in those areas and we need to fit within those. Then finally, informed, senior leadership is informed about this project. We are also sending them drafts for their insights. They're not involved really in day to day. They don't typically show up to weekly check-in meetings or review sessions, but they have sent kind of overall guiding thoughts to make sure that their perspectives are also included.

And then lastly, we want to be DEI aligned. So for DEI readiness, this organization is mature in its DEI work. It's done a ton of work around foundational culture and initial DEI. So it's really focused on expanding and enhancing. So this focuses on refining its approach to unconscious bias. It's kind of been a thing that's kind of been sitting on the back burner of how do we address this and the organization feels it's ready to really dive in and focus. It's done a lot of other work previously and so now it's sitting with this. For DEI capacity, this organization has DEI capacity.

It has, a DEI leader, and they just added another person to the DEI team to continue the expansion of their work. So DEI centered knowledge, and skills are really solid. And the L and D team has great experience with both technical trainings and trainings that focus on developing people skills, that team members need to engage and collaborate with each other successfully. So learning centered knowledge and skills are also where they need to be. And finally, if we're talking about leadership alignment, this project is an outgrowth of a leadership driven review process, which started with a problem statement of why are Black and Latino employees leaving our organization at rates higher than their white peers, and it led to identifying that bias was creeping into a lot of decision making and day to day operational spaces, and that needs to be addressed. Initially, the leadership team did wanna jump into sort of just tons of policies, tons of mitigation things, but it really, you know, through conversations with the DEI leader and with the L and D team, it needed to focus on, do people even know what bias is and do they understand how bias might be impacting the way they make decisions? And so we really wanted to bring it down to that level. So part of this organization's commitment is to a people first culture and it became clear that Unconscious Bias was negatively impacting tons of decision making processes and so, a group really advocated for, let's get down to the bottom of this and let's really focus on foundational education, because then we'll have something to build on as we roll out more things like policy changes or, more trainings or more specific new processes and practices we do. So the leadership team definitely agrees that identifying and addressing unconscious bias is a goal.

It's bought in. They will be the 1st ones to take the training to sort of pilot it. So they're all in on it. They're really ready to go. And so this organization, not only have we set SMART goals, but we've also done the plus side for being accountable and DEI aligned. So I'm super excited to see how this project ends, and I'm definitely confident in our abilities to meet our goal. And so that's how to set DEI goals. Let's do a quick recap, remember DEI goals are just like other goals that you already have, you just have to set them.

Remember, set them just like you set other goals, set DEI goals, monitor them and make adjustments and then assess whether or not you achieve them. Bonus points, again, if each individual has their own goals that tie into and support those big picture goals and also bonus points if each individual knows how their day to day behaviors and actions ensure ultimate success. So goals then identify behaviors and actions to achieve those goals. And then finally, use a framework. We just talked about it, SMART plus Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time Bound. And then plus, you wanna add in accountability, we suggest a RACI framework, RACI framework and DEI aligned, Focusing on DEI readiness, DEI capacity, and leadership alignment. As I said at the top, it can be super easy to jump into exciting DEI programs and initiatives, but it is critical for long term success to set DEI goals. It allows you to understand what you've achieved and where you need to refocus your efforts.

So go out there and set some DEI goals. You got this. And that's a wrap. I'm Jamie Applegate and that's your DEI minute for today. Thank you for listening. That's a wrap. I'm Jamie Applegate and that's your DEI minute for today. Thank you for listening.

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