Aligning DEI with your organizational strategy is a powerful way to amplify its impact across your organization. Small businesses, which make up over 70% of Canadian companies, employ almost two-thirds of the total workforce (Statistics Canada) —a testament to their critical role in our economy. If you’re managing the HR function in one of these businesses, chances are you’re also responsible for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming, given the close connection to talent management. But DEI isn’t just about talent; its impact can spread across your organization, influencing everything from innovation to bottom-line results.
By aligning your DEI activities with your organizational strategy, you can ensure your efforts drive meaningful and measurable results.
The strategic work of DEI
Workplaces have changed a great deal in recent decades. The growth of service and knowledge economies, globalization, and changing demographics have helped us better understand how critical an organization’s employee base is to its success. This has also led to a greater understanding of how important it is for the folks who lead People & Culture to be involved in strategy discussions with senior leadership.
All business functions can contribute to–or detract from–your ability to meet your strategic goals, and DEI is no exception. To unlock its full potential, DEI needs to be aligned with your organization’s strategic goals.
Aligning your DEI statement
Your DEI statement is the first place to look for alignment. It should both reflect your organization’s values and clearly connect to the organization’s mission and vision.
LEGO’s DEI statement is a great example of alignment:
“We believe the LEGO Group – and LEGO play – is for everyone, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or how you identify. It’s our mission to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. To succeed in this mission, and help all children develop the skills that will help them fulfil their potential, we must continue to play our part in building a more inclusive and equitable world, starting with our own organization.”
We love this statement as it is unambiguous and inspiring, but also because it directly includes LEGO’s organizational mission. It showcases how seamlessly DEI can align with organizational purpose and strategic goals.
Prioritizing DEI initiatives
When prioritizing different initiatives within your DEI program, it’s smart to consider your strategic direction, the biggest opportunities and challenges that you face as an organization, and what stage you are at on your DEI journey.
Below are two examples of how different strategic directions would influence the DEI program.
DEI program at a start-up
ABC Start UP is valued primarily for its intellectual property. Its strategic plan is to build to sell the business (a fact only known by the executive leadership team, which is another reason why the individual accountable for People & Culture needs to be included in the upper leadership team.)
With this strategic plan, ABC Start UP needs stability in operations and a strong revenue pipeline. As business and growth are fast paced long-term planning is challenging. So, to best support this the organizational direction, the DEI program should focus on directly and quickly supporting recruiting practices in sales, research, or other mission critical functions.
The DEI program should avoid initiatives that require heavy time commitments from top leadership, as they may be too onerous for a founder-led organization.
DEI at a small professional services organization
Build 123, a small engineering firm, is seeking strong organic growth. To succeed, they require employees with particular certifications. Build 123’s DEI program should focus on supporting recruitment practices that allow them to build a team that properly represents their market.
Understand your market to set better targets
A workplace analysis can be an important step in aligning your DEI initiatives to your organizational strategy. Conducting a workforce analysis can help you:
- understand what your labour market looks like,
- understand what minimum targets may look like in your industry, and
- identify if there is a gap between your client market and your labour market.
For example, if only 20% of the people in your labour market with the required education/certification identify as female, but 50% of your client decision makers identify as female, you have a gap.
Furthermore, when you are recruiting, if you fail to receive at least 20% of your applications from females, then you know you likely have work to do on inclusion, or at minimum on promoting your commitment to inclusion.
Paying particular attention to leadership ratios is also important, as your leadership ratios are visible outside the organization, and may be an important factor for applicants who are looking for representation in their next employer.
Communication around DEI
Before shouting from the rooftops about your DEI programming, you need to understand how your employees feel about your degree of inclusion.
When we work with small employers early in their DEI journeys, we often hear that they are interested in promoting their commitment to inclusiveness as soon as they officially undertake the DEI program. But that is risky. Any misalignment between what is said externally (perhaps on social media) and what employees feel inside the organization can result in resentment and a loss of engagement.
Internal perceptions are impossible to guess. To understand employees’ true feelings, they need to be surveyed with guaranteed anonymity and the results interpreted carefully.
At People First, when we conduct engagement surveys for clients, we may see a score of 89% engagement as very positive. However, we may interpret the same score on a DEI-focused survey, asking about feelings of inclusion, differently if only 11% of employees identify as part of an underrepresented group.
While it might not be exciting to keep the news your DEI initiatives internal, it might be beneficial to the success of your DEI journey. Once you understand how inclusive your environment is, you can decide how to communicate, internally and externally, on issues surrounding DEI.
Building a Foundation for Sustainable DEI Success
A DEI program is not a quick fix. It requires strategic planning, a seat at the leadership table, and alignment with organizational strategy. Following the steps outlined in this article can set you on the right direction for your organization’s DEI journey:
- Bring those managing People & Culture into strategic leadership discussions.
- Align your DEI statement with the organizations Mission and Vision.
- Use your strategic direction to help priorities your DEI initiatives – each organization is going to have a different DEI journey.
- Take time to learn your market, so you can understand and address gaps.
- Survey your employees to learn their true feelings and make more informed decisions on how and when to communicate about your DEI program.
By aligning DEI with your organizational strategy and the stage of your DEI journey, you are creating a platform for success that goes beyond talent, allowing you to fully realize the power of people.