In this episode, Jamey dives into the concept of DEI readiness, discussing how organizations often rush into implementing flashy DEI initiatives without a deeper, data-driven strategy, which can lead to superficial changes that don't address underlying issues. Jamey outlines the importance of assessing an organization's current state before rolling out DEI programs and introduces three critical steps for achieving DEI readiness.

These steps are:

1. Conducting a current state assessment
2. Defining DEI purpose and vision
3. Developing a comprehensive DEI road map and strategy

Jamey also discusses best practices for evaluating an organization's foundational culture and DEI landscape, such as conducting organization-wide surveys and listening tours. The episode also covers the necessity of leadership alignment and capacity, underscoring the role of senior leaders in driving DEI success.

Emphasizing a strategic and intentional approach, Jamey advises that DEI efforts should start with an accurate assessment of the organization's current state and steadily build towards meaningful and sustainable progress.

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

Key Topics Discussed:

• DEI readiness and its importance
• Pitfalls of jumping into DEI initiatives without a strategy
• Assessing the current state of organizational culture and DEI
• Best practices for conducting surveys and listening tours
• Leadership's role in DEI alignment and capacity
• Creating DEI purpose and vision statements
• Developing a DEI road map and strategy
• Balancing regulatory compliance with strategic DEI initiatives
• Steps for long-term sustainable DEI success

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 gonna discuss the concept of DEI readiness. So many organizations make the initial decision that diversity, equity and inclusion is now a strategic priority and they start identifying programs, initiatives or activities that they wanna focus on.

These are often flashier, buzzier items that get highlighted in end of year reports, things like diverse recruiting or partnerships with historically black colleges and universities, doing gender pay equity studies and starting mentorship programs for people from underrepresented backgrounds or starting monthly DEI trainings and doing community service projects that impact historically marginalized communities. These are all great things and they can and should be part of a larger DEI strategy eventually, but not right at the beginning. DEI is too important to be a scattershot effort that follows what's popular or flashy or talked about now, and doesn't have a deeper strategy to support its growth and sustainability. Now what I shared earlier about where many organizations start was meant to be a bit of a trick, Each of those items while well intentioned has a pretty clear flaw. So what good is diverse recruiting if the internal organizational culture creates bad experiences for diverse talent? Are we partnering with HBCUs but not Latino serving institutions and higher education programs that support other groups? Are we looking at not just the gender pay gap but also the racial pay gap? And are we looking at gender and racial representation across the organization's hierarchy? Are we so focused on race and gender that we forget to consider other dimensions of diversity, like age, disability, LGBTQ plus status, and veteran status? Are we asking leaders to be mentors without identifying what the goal of a mentorship program is? Are we doing monthly DEI trainings before identifying and addressing organizational culture gaps first? And are we trying to do service projects in communities where we haven't first established relationships? As Michelle mentioned on our first episode when talking about the 5 steps to DEI success, you have to know where you stand. So that's what we're gonna talk about today, how to determine where you are and how to assess your DEI readiness, and we're gonna focus on 3 specific steps. A current state assessment, including a focus on foundational culture, DEI, and leadership alignment and capacity. We're talking about DEI purpose and vision, and we're gonna talk about DEI strategy and road map.

So let's dive in. The first step to DEI readiness is to know where we are right now. We have to assess the current state of our organization and we should focus on foundational culture, DEI, and leadership alignment and capacity. Your organization has a culture and an approach to DEI whether or not you've been intentional about it up to this point, and it's critical to know where the organization stands before we shift focus to developing and implementing programming. For foundational culture in DEI, a couple of best practices are to do an org wide survey and a listening tour. The org wide survey should focus on team members perspective on the workplace. Some items on the survey that focus on foundational culture can include things like, I look forward to coming to work. I feel like our culture is people first and our company has a climate in which all perspectives are valued.

Psychological safety exists, and I am confident in leadership and my supervisor, and they set me up for success in my role. Some survey items about DEI could include things like, our company is committed to DEI in the workplace, my direct supervisor supports DEI in the workplace, all employees regardless of differences are treated fairly, and I feel like I can be my full self at work. And the goal there would be to have employees rank those on a scale of 1 to 5 or 1 to 10, where one is I completely disagree, and 5 or 10 is I completely agree. And a listening tour can complement that survey. There might be specific issue or incident that a team member is thinking about, and providing an in person space for employees to confidentially share their perspectives on organizational culture and DEI can help surface those items, and can help contextualize survey responses and provide illustrative examples of larger trends. An org wide survey and listening tour gives us a broad view of how team members experience the workplace and ensures that we are inviting everyone to use their voice and share their perspectives. This also helps foster feelings of inclusion, belonging, and employee empowerment. In addition to that broad grassroots view of the organization, we also need to recognize that leadership plays a critical role in the success of any organizational culture and DEI initiative.

So special attention should be played in assessing leadership alignment and capacity. This can be accomplished through 1 on 1 interviews with the organization's leadership team, and these conversations should include space for participants to share their backgrounds and how they approach their work and leading the organization. And it should include space for frank discussion about their perspectives on foundational culture and on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, both in general and at the organization more specifically. The next thing we're gonna talk about is DEI purpose and vision, and as I discussed in a different episode, senior leadership must play a central role in driving foundational culture in DEI at any organization. So it's critical to ensure that they are aligned and have the capacity to successfully push that work forward. Once a current state assessment is developed, the next step is to create space for the leadership team to develop DEI purpose and vision statements. This step has a dual purpose. The first one is to provide an activity based experience for the leadership team to focus on group alignment and candid examination of its own ability to successfully lead the organization towards its organizational culture and DEI goals.

And the second is that it creates a shared vision for DEI at the organization and clearly articulates why the organization is committed to a strong people focused culture and to DEI as a strategic priority that pushes the organization forward. As a note, the development of organizational DEI purpose and vision statements might also need to be supplemented by education and coaching for leadership team members, if they are not aligned or if they don't have the background or education on those topics. This can help ensure that they have the knowledge and skills they need both as a group and individually as leaders of their respective teams. I also wanna pause here to talk about compliance and regulations. Your organization might be required to complete certain activities and submit reports as part of its compliance with regulatory mandates. Ensuring compliance with regulations and mandates is important, but it should not constitute the entirety of an organization's commitment to a strong culture and to a DEI program. A people first culture and a steadfast commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion should be strategic priorities because they are the right thing to do both for your people and for your organization. The final piece is a DEI road map and strategy.

So once you develop a clear DEI purpose and vision, you can develop a DEI road map and strategy. And this takes us back to some of the items I mentioned at the beginning, although some of those should come later in the process. Your DEI road map should include clear work streams with identified activities and owners, and should be structured so that it rolls out intentionally over time. Those work streams could include things like ongoing leadership team alignment, development and education, foundational cultural development, defining DEI success, setting DEI goals, and launching DEI governance, change management and communications, and integrating DEI into the employee life cycle, thinking through things like education, process and policy reviews, and recruiting and hiring activities. And then you're off to the races. So to recap what we discussed today, DEI readiness is all about setting ourselves up for success. We need a clear understanding of where our organization is right now, including what's going well and what needs to change, which we can get through surveys, listening tours, and interviews. We need an aligned leadership team with the capacity to drive culture and DEI at the organization, which we can build early on.

We need an established DEI purpose and vision created by leadership and inclusive of the voices of all team members, and we need a solidified DEI road map and strategy. This lays out a path forward and creates a unified understanding of what we are doing to move our organization forward. While these steps help us become ready for DEI, I wanna underline that this is not a simple process, and it requires a significant investment of time, attention, and energy from a large group of stakeholders. It's easy to get caught up in flashy programs and initiatives that reflect where you want to be, but impactful and sustainable long term success will be driven by intentionality and a strategic approach that starts where you are now. Reflects your current level of DEI readiness and builds towards where you wanna go. 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. 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, Jamie Hopkins.