Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are essential to fostering a positive work culture. Through exposure to diverse perspectives, you can improve employee morale, promote business ethics, and drive creative problem-solving and innovation.
According to a LinkedIn survey, 69 percent of recruiters and human resources professionals believe their organizations commit to diverse hiring practices. Yet, only 47 percent think they hold hiring managers to those standards.
If you want to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion at your organization, here's an overview of DEI’s goals, why it’s important in business, and how you can implement it.
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To better understand DEI, here’s a breakdown of its components and benefits.
Your organization can achieve workplace diversity by employing people from various backgrounds based on:
Doing so can produce several benefits for your company's bottom line. For example, research shows that businesses with diverse teams experience more than twice as much cash flow per employee.
Employees can also file charges against your organization if they've been discriminated against. According to a Good Jobs First report, 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies have been involved in at least one lawsuit related to discrimination or sexual harassment since 2000.
Such conflict resolution can be costly, but workplace diversity involves more than difficult conversations with employees.
“I don’t want diversity to be about policing people,” says Oona King, vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Snap Inc., in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability. “I want diversity to be about unleashing innovation and having more diverse perspectives in the room to come up with solutions to the most pressing problems of our day.”
Equity in the workplace requires treating all employees fairly and justly—regardless of their backgrounds—and ensuring equal opportunities for growth, development, and success.
While diversity provides financial benefits, equity ensures all employees feel valued. Yet, this isn’t always the case. According to a Gallup poll, 24 percent of Black and Hispanic employees experienced workplace discrimination between 2019 and 2020.
Since people often hire or promote individuals who share similar characteristics as themselves, proactively combatting influences—such as unconscious bias—can lead to workplace equity in the form of:
“What you have to do around equity is tell people there are a lot of biases we’ve built up since we were kids that have been reinforced repeatedly,” King says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability. “And you need more awareness around them if you want to do well in a forward-thinking company.”
Inclusion extends beyond diversity and refers to employees’ workplace experiences.
It involves creating an environment where all employees feel valued, respected, and fully integrated into your organization's culture and operations.
According to Forrester, 60 percent of sales teams believe inclusion in the workplace has contributed to their success, while a Pew Research study indicates that over half of employees value DEI initiatives at work.
If you hope to make your organization more inclusive, consider your role as an ethical leader. According to Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability, thinking about the biases and concepts that influence your decision-making is essential to creating an inclusive workplace.
DEI is only effective when you implement it into your overall business strategy.
“You cannot have a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy as a separate strategy,” King says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability. “It's not going to work. You have to tie it into the heart of your business strategy because separate is never equal.”
Here are four tips for implementing DEI effectively.
Investing in DEI initiatives can take several forms in business.
For example, Walmart invests in DEI by offering a Supplier Inclusion Program that supports businesses and suppliers from communities often underrepresented in large-scale retail.
Companies like Salesforce also emphasize DEI education. Through its partnership with professional skills-based platform Trailhead, employees can take courses and earn certifications in subjects such as inclusion guidelines for data visualization and inclusive content creation. According to the company’s Annual Equality Update, its commitment to DEI education and inclusive hiring tactics has resulted in nearly 51 percent of U.S. employees coming from underrepresented groups.
Stereotypes—whether blatant or unconscious—can negatively impact your organization and result in decreased motivation and employee engagement.
One way to overcome workplace stereotypes is by offering unconscious bias training sessions to increase employees’ awareness of implicit biases. For example, the Implicit Association Test (IAT)—developed by professors from Harvard University, the University of Washington, and the University of Virginia—helps identify implicit associations or stereotypes you might be unaware of.
You can also provide employees the opportunity to earn a business ethics certificate to gain skills to identify and surmount biases.
Don’t be afraid to make training mandatory. According to Pew Research, approximately 53 percent of employees find DEI training helpful, with only 13 percent finding it unhelpful.
In addition, companies like Google provide this type of training through workshops that more than half of its employees participate in.
Ensuring employees earn equitable salaries is crucial to championing DEI.
“When you measure objectives for metrics in corporate America, you’ll see very clear differences for different groups,” King says in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability. “That's the data; we know it's a fact. So our job is to change those objectives in the workplace.”
One of those data points is pay equity. In the U.S., women earn approximately 82 percent of what men do—a figure that's only increased two percent since 2002. While various factors impact that statistic, it's critical for your organization to offer equitable compensation, regardless of gender.
“That's where today's diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts really come in,” King says. “What levers and tools do we have to change, so that whoever walks through the door has the same chance as anyone else of success?”
Developing talent from underrepresented groups is crucial to fostering diversity and inclusion. By providing opportunities for personal and professional growth, your organization can help address historical workplace disparities.
For example, Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability highlights Google’s push for DEI initiatives, including:
These align with what Harvard Business School Professor Nien-hê Hsieh calls “the pipeline problem” in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability.
“There simply aren’t enough qualified members of underrepresented groups available to hire for these jobs,” Hsieh says. “In the United States, this theory points to patterns like fewer women and Black people receiving degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math than their male, white, or Asian counterparts.”
When implemented properly, DEI’s benefits can't be overstated.
“The underlying point of DEI is to understand the impact of culture and the way we do things in business strategy,” King says.
If you want to promote DEI, Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability can help you learn how to make ethical leadership decisions and create a fair workplace culture through interactive learning activities and real-world business examples.
Ready to champion DEI at your organization? Enroll in Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability—one of our online leadership and management courses—and download our free leadership e-book on how to become a more effective leader.
Michael Boyles is a content marketing specialist and contributing writer for Harvard Business School Online.
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