In this episode, Jamey tackles the crucial question of where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) should sit within an organization’s structure. Drawing on common pitfalls and practical recommendations, Jamey explains why embedding DEI as a secondary or split responsibility—often within HR—is a mistake that can undermine the initiative’s effectiveness. The episode highlights the difference between HR and DEI, emphasizing that DEI is not a compliance exercise but a strategic, culture-shaping function that deserves dedicated staffing and focus.

Jamey offers actionable advice, urging organizations to treat DEI as a core priority by assigning full-time staff and ideally establishing it as a standalone department. The discussion covers the importance of pairing passion with expertise in DEI leadership and why structural placement matters for long-term program success. For organizations not yet able to fully resource DEI, Jamey suggests ways to mitigate risks and set DEI leaders up for success as they work toward a more robust model.

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

Key Topics Discussed:

• Common challenges in staffing and locating DEI within organizations
• Pitfalls of housing DEI within HR or making it a part-time responsibility
• The distinction between HR and DEI roles and focus
• The negative impact of treating DEI as a compliance exercise
• The importance of dedicated DEI staff and resources
• Recommendations for optimal DEI placement: standalone department or people experience/engagement team
• The need for DEI leaders with both passion and expertise
• Practical considerations for organizations with current resource constraints

I'm Jamie Applegate, Senior Director of DEI at EquityAtWork, 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 I want to talk about where DEI should live in an organization. And so I want to talk about a couple places that it typically goes or a couple issues that typically come up when we're talking about staffing and sort of hierarchically where it should go and then give a couple recommendations for what might be most effective for DEI to be successful at a given organization. So a couple things that we commonly see is that DEI doesn't actually get staffed at an organizational level. Some organizations put DEI within another staff role or they make it a 0.5 position or a task set within an HR team member's role. And then their challenge that we see is that folks often don't know where to put dei, so they stick it under human resources or under HR and they make the CHRO the de facto chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer. And these can present real long term success challenge challenges to success at a given organization. And so here's why that doesn't typically work.

So if you're not staffing DEI at the organizational level, if you're not giving it sort of a full time staff member, it does a couple things that you might not have intended but then ended up happening. So it typically sends the message that DEI is not enough of an organizational priority to land a full time staff member. So that might not be your intention. You might not be there financially yet as an organization or size wise as an organization. But when you are at the point where you can't afford to have a full time staff member to DEI and then to not do it, what it typically says is that we don't think DEI is important enough for a full time headcount. Another issue is that it forces the person or the people who are leading DEI so we have it as a 0.5 or as 1 of their, you know, work streams to compete with the other priorities and tasks that they have. So DEI becomes something that lives in competition with somebody else's priorities. And under hr, many HR tasks are people experience related, but many are also Compliance related.

Many are also around benefits, administration, other things like that. And if you're having DEI go up against that DEI then can kind of look like a nice to have. It doesn't maybe land in the way that we want it to or get the attention that it needs to be successful. And so what we want to avoid is having DEI seem like a nice to have. We want to make it known that it is a must have. And then the challenges that we see when we house DEI under HR is that it falsely equates DEI with hr. While they do both help to ensure that every person has a positive and successful experience in the workplace, they're not the same thing, they are distinct. So it makes it seem as though DEI is an HR exercise.

And so it also makes DEI seem like it's about compliance, not about organizational culture or people experience or community engagement. It makes it seem as though we're trying to check the box to make sure that we do this. So many of HR's work is obviously people focused, but a lot of it is around the technical aspects of making sure people logistically are able to be successful in the workplace by having all of the forms they'd have done, being onboarded correctly, all of these things. And also typically when something goes wrong and people have a negative interaction together, HR steps in to sort of mediate the situation or determine a path forward. And it can become about a compliance system. And we want to really make sure that DEI doesn't become a compliance exercise and really becomes a foundational culture exercise. Ultimately, this sets the DEI leads up for failure. If it's an add on to a different role, how can we be sure? And especially if it's an add on to a role for someone in the HR field, how can we be sure that that person leading the DEI work has the experience and skills necessary to be successful? So we really want to make sure that when we're staffing up and if we are adding it to someone's position, that we're adding to someone who has the skill set.

And this is true from an HR manager who leads DEI up to someone being the Chief Human Resources Officer. A chro might have years of experience and have engaged with dei, but they're rarely rising to the level of chro because of their ability to to lead dei and instead they usually reach that level because they have a degree in HR and the years of experience in the technical aspects of leading a human resources division at an organization. So we really want to make sure that we're staffing it with someone who knows how to do it and knows how to do it well. And so we want to avoid some of those pitfalls. And so things that we recommend are, number one, start with just articulating that DEI is a core priority for the organization. Articulate that it is not a nice to have, that it is a must have, that the organization is committed and bought into it. We encourage companies to staff DEI at a level that is aligned to its importance in the organization. If an organization says that DEI is important if it's included in its values, if it's included on its website, if you talk about it during the interview and hiring process, then you should staff it.

It should be reflected in the staffing model, the level of importance you place on it. Also, we encourage DEI to have standalone staff because that allows them to focus exclusively on DEI at the organization and really enables that cross functional collaboration that is necessary. And it avoids forcing an employee who leads DEI to choosing between DEI and other priorities. That creates a false choice for that person where they're saying, well, I want to do this DEI work and I want to do this project for DEI that I'm excited about, but I have a deadline coming up for this HR task that I'm working on and it diminishes DEI and the tasks it competes with. Additionally, when we say where should DEI live, and we've sort of been teasing this, DEI should honestly be its own department or it should connect at most with the people experience team. We want to make sure that DEI has the standing within the organization that is its own distinct thing, that supports all aspects of the work being done at the organization. So DEI should be a position and its own department that supports finance, that supports hr, that supports the C suite, that supports operations, that supports every single other thing DEI is there. So DEI is really the lens and this person helps provide that lens to all other aspects of the building.

So DEI really, in an ideal world, should be its own department. But if you're going to house it somewhere, we would say avoid HR for all the reasons we mentioned. Making a team about compliance. Do we have setup? And then we would lean toward having it be in like a people experience team or a people engagement team around that so that it can be really, truly cross functional and really avoiding that sense of it being about compliance. Finally, because we know that so many folks place DEI under hr, if that's true at your organization, we recommend just clearly articulating how DEI and HR collaborate and inform each other's work so that even though this DEI person might be reporting to the chro. Is the DEI person really the lead on DEI work? How much autonomy do they have within the organization to really push their initiatives forward and make sure that they're being successful? And how do we make sure that we, the organization understands and the people in the organization understand that they are separate and distinct and serve different functions. They do connect, but they are distinct. And finally, if you are going to have DEI under hr, we recommend avoiding assigning DEI to employees who are not prepared to successfully lead it.

Passion is really important. If someone is super passionate about dei, you should absolutely find a way for them to get involved in DEI initiatives at the organization. That should not be taken for granted. And we should honor people's passion and desire to engage in that way. But passion must be paired with experience and skills in order to be successful. You wouldn't promote someone to a CHRO role if they didn't have a degree in HR and they didn't have experience doing HR for many years. We shouldn't but are excited about it. You should move people up because they have the skills to do it.

We should task with things that they're set up for success in and being set up in dei. It's a ton of cross functional collaboration. It's a ton of strategy and planning and engagement. It's a ton of patience. It's a ton of working things through and iterating on ideas until you have a go forward plan. It's advocacy. It's all sorts of activities that we maybe don't think about because people who are excited about DEI too excited about one specific program or project. And so we really want to make sure that they have the project management and the people skills and the collaboration to actually push it forward.

So when you have DEI be a separate thing or you staff it at the right levels, typically what you see is you get better buy in for DEI as a core part of the organization. Because when someone says how invested is organization in dei? You can say very invested. We've assigned a full time staff member to our DEI work. They lead XYZ initiatives and programs. They connect with these, these different departments and teams regularly. Here's what we do. The organization can also avoid messaging that DEI is a compliance exercise. DEI is not about compliance.

It's not about checking the box to say that we did our annual DEI training. It's really about saying DEI informs everything. This person sits in these meetings and in these roles and gives this guidance and advice to support it. You get improved implementation of DEI programs and initiatives because that person isn't trying to fit DEI into another role. They're not competing with other priorities, they're solely focused on DEI and on DEI work. And then you get a better experience for employees. Both DEI leaders and employees, everyone has so the DEI leader is going to have a better experience because again, they're not competing with other tasks. And then employees are going to have a better experience because if they want to talk about DEI they know exactly who to go to and they're not worried that that person is in other project mode.

And finally you're going to see improved DEI strategy. It's more intentional and it's less constrained by time and attention needs. So again, we recommend that DEI not live under HR for all the reasons listed, mainly around compliance and just focus of DEI and making sure that it has the people it needs. And then we also really recommend that you give DEI the staffing that it needs to be successful. So if you do those two things, if you have it as its own department and you give it a full time staff member, you're going to see much greater returns on investment. If you have any questions about how to develop a staffing model that includes DEI or you're feeling constrained and you maybe do need to have it under HR or have it as a part time or a 0.5 of someone's role, come talk with us. We'd love to talk through how to make sure you can set that person up for success in the meantime as you build toward maybe a different model. But connect with us.

We're happy to talk to anyway and thanks so much.

That's a wrap. I'm Jamie Applegate and that's your DEI minute for today.

Thank you for listening.

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