Cultivating a truly inclusive workplace requires a long-term commitment and dedication from all members of an organization. While DEI initiatives for 2024 may be well underway, it’s important to continually evaluate your current efforts, adapt your approach, and plan for future investments.
Now is the time to be proactive with your DEI strategies and learn what top companies are doing to make diversity, equity and inclusion a priority. Listen in as our panel of experts: moderator Lindiwe Davis, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Leader at Google; Mia Ellis, Global Head of DEI at Mendix (Siemens); Glenn Newman, Director, DEI & Employee Experience at Strava; and Shana Sumers, Senior Manager, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Communities at HubSpot share their strategies for addressing DEI in the coming year.
Watch the video below to hear the full discussion, and to stay up to date on all of Tech in Motion's upcoming webinars and in-person gatherings, head to our Upcoming Events Page:
From discussing AI’s impact on DEI, redefining recruitment, and retention strategies, providing mental health and wellness support, & much more - this discussion will equip you with lessons learned from the past year and actionable steps to navigate DEI and ensure it becomes an integral part of your organization's DNA.
Davis: Can you dig into what types of trends are top of mind for you not only for your company but also for the industry?
Newman: One thing that is definitely top of mind for me and for our leadership team right now and likely other leaders internally, is returning to the office. So how do we support our teammates, especially our teammates who are members of underrepresented groups? How do we try to mitigate and prevent microaggressions as much as possible, especially when so many of us have been protected from those while we've been working from home? How do we have protected safe spaces? As you think about people who think differently and who work differently, that's something that's definitely top of mind for me.
We are prioritizing and scaling our employee resource groups (ERGS) while welcoming others who want to learn and who want to grow into allies. It’s important to note that if you want to start an ERG program make sure you have leadership buy-in and that's just not verbal, that leaders are going to make an active effort and commit to engage with ERG leaders to engage with the community.
Training is a big thing as well. How are we continuing to enable managers to be inclusive leaders and to really understand how to manage diverse teams? What does that look like?
And the last thing that I'm really excited about is we are going to have objectives and key results (OKRS) for the first time. More specifically all of our leadership teams and then eventually the rest of our employees will have an OKR, which will help add more of that stickiness around the commitment that we have to DEI.
Ellis: We are very focused on remote and hybrid work and my company is completely distributed so we are in all parts of the world. So how do we preserve that culture and sense of belongingness as a distributed workforce?
We are also really focused on the intersection of DEI and digital transformation, so there's a lot of conversation around digital transformation. What does that mean? How come so many organizations aren't progressing as much as they would like? The answer is that there's so much focus on technology, that the people and culture pieces are overlooked. So, we are looking at how we prepare our leaders to be the new type of leaders necessary in this digital age and the problems they face cannot be solved with technology alone. It's being able to realize you have to surround yourself with diversity to be able to tackle these problems. It’s being comfortable with ambiguity and not knowing all the answers and having this kind of iterative process of experimentation.
Also, it’s great that DEI from a Global Perspective is really picking up steam and there's a lot of new legislation that's coming out in different parts of the world focusing on eliminating discrimination in the hiring process and employee recruitment.
Sumers: I think the number one thing that we really have to look into and remind ourselves and remind our leaders of is that we are no longer in 2020. It’s been four years now. It's been a whole high school time that we have been here and if you think of what life was like when you were a freshman in high school all the way up to when you were a senior, you're a whole different person. You've gone through a lot of changes, and I think companies just need to remember that.
Now employees are starting to ask for more of that accountability. They're asking for leadership to do those things. So, when you were saying, ‘can it just be the one thing?” It can't be. It has to be something that is actually woven with different pieces into the DNA.
I can say that we're shifting in HubSpot to working on the pathway to leadership. We're working on having sponsorship programs. We're improving mentorship programs.
Newman: Most senior leaders have publicly stated that DEI is a commitment and why is it important, not just for the business but for them personally. Why does this work for them when they're out on the weekends with their families? The second thing is accountability, organizational readiness and leadership readiness. I have learned probably the hard way that there are a lot of DEI best practices I would love to bring to organizations and sometimes, quite frankly, the organization and the leadership team are just not ready.
It is helpful and important in doing this work to address change management and the associated partnering and communications within internal and external groups.
Ellis: I think finding more creative ways to collect data from your employees is also important. We have to be very cognizant of different data privacy laws, and it makes it a bit more challenging to find out information about who's in the organization, how they are feeling, and how they are doing.
Davis: How can we use data analytic tools within this space to really kind of propel us forward?
Newman: I'm always looking at differences in who we hire across gender and ethnicity, who we promote, who’s leaving the organization, etc., and our overall demographic trends. I love the fact that there have been so many tools that have been popping up lately to really make this work less manual, focusing on the statistically significant differences so that we can help focus on intervention when we are disproportionately losing women in engineering, for example. Then we can delve into that.
Davis: Do you think that focus groups and surveying are still quite useful?
Newman: On our annual engagement survey there are questions around belonging, so I'm definitely looking at differences in belonging scores by certain demographics, by tenure levels, by certain levels within the organization, and by location. Who are members of ERGs? Who are not members of ERGs?
Ellis: We have a gender equity program and trying to get more women into leadership and focus groups really helped, where we were offering these positions, and women employees weren't jumping for them. So the focus groups really helped us to understand what were those additional barriers that weren't initially considered and things that came out that you wouldn't even think of like people actually want to work part-time and share a leadership role with someone or when leadership meetings happen at 8:00 am every day and they can make that work with their schedules.
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Davis: What are some of the challenges and or triumphs you may face with the rise of AI?
Really understanding the language. A lot of times when new things are introduced to the world or to various communities’ people don't have access to context, which means that when you don't have access to context that builds a level of fear, and when you have fear of something you are against it.
Ellis: Technology in general can be very helpful in mitigating bias, but if there is not a critical component built into the design and development, it can reinforce a lot of the inequities for marginalized groups. I would say that often bias is embedded in the outcomes that the AI is asked to predict. So bias is in the data used to train the AI.
Davis: I want to dive into well-being and having balance both in your life and your business life. What kinds of practical strategies can be created to support a culture that is much more interested in a person's well-being than just making money?
Ellis: The first thing is to understand that well-being and mental health isn't solely the responsibility of the employee. I hear that a lot of frustration with organizations that are putting out tools like the Calm app is that they are not paying attention to the major stressor of the burnout, which is the work environment or maybe the person that they're directly reporting to. And so, I can use these tools and take individual responsibility, but that's only a temporary fix because I'm putting myself right back into that toxic environment.
People don't want to be working in these perfectionist cultures where they're being dehumanized. I think normalizing diversity and moving away from this idea that there's only one right way to do this and if you don't conform to this way of working, you're not considered a valuable member of this team and constantly having to prove yourself, is important.
The other thing is that it helps to remove the stigma of people having to reach out and say ‘I have this condition or I'm going through this’ whether it's substance use or mental health or anything. I don't think people realize how demeaning it can be when they're saying things just kind of casually about mental illness or substance use or anything that somebody might be going through.
Davis: What kinds of things can leaders be doing to create that culture of wellness?
A good leader is going to be there advocating for you and supporting you and understanding what's going on so if you do have someone who is experiencing that it shouldn't be like a reactive thing.
Leaders should remember that the people they are working with are people and should be able to move forward in a life-centered approach. So, allowing people to manage their schedules and set appropriate expectations will go a long way.