As we head into 2023, many companies are coming up with and implementing diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility (DEIA) plans. The importance of belonging (B)—which means some professionals prefer to use DEIB instead of DEIA—came to a head during the pandemic. Behaviors that had been swept under the rug were called out, and companies started to recognize they were in dire need of organizational change.

Rebecca Ferlotti, Content Marketer, sat down with Dr. Erica Glover, CEO of Disrupter University, to discuss how organizations can improve and initiate their DEIA plans as well as the changes we all have to make as individuals within a global society.

We can Google the essential components of a DEIA plan, but what do you personally feel companies should focus on when they’re going to develop such a plan?

I think first and foremost you have to do an assessment of where your organization is from the perspective of the organization as a whole. Look across departments and think about cross-functionally how teams are working or not working. Think about HR and their practices plus how leadership looks. All these things speak to when folks feel included or excluded at the end of the day—are you giving them opportunities, access, or is it lacking? Are we seeking the voices of all stakeholders involved?

As it applies to stakeholders in the community, ask yourself, “How are we communicating things? How are we framing things?” Those individuals within your community are also, a lot of times, your employees. And so, that ripple effect will be very instrumental later on for recruiting and retaining.

It’s also important that organizations revisit their vision and mission statements, especially as it applies to DEIA work. Oftentimes, we’ll see folks who will say one thing but not necessarily understand how to push the work forward and keep the work moving. You always have to have metrics not just to hold yourself accountable but to connect back to your mission and vision. Folks might think of this work as trying to get to a utopia, but it’s more important to focus on being creative and innovative around DEIA, setting metrics that are attainable to make people feel welcome.

You also have to have senior staff onboard. If senior leadership isn’t onboard, the work can be stifled, stopped completely or take on all different shapes and forms that weren’t intended. Unintended consequences are real. When senior leadership isn’t on board, you give up the opportunity to maximize bringing the entire organization together under one vision, under one mission.

I also believe it’s important to have diversity councils with folks from different walks of life as well as your community stakeholders. One of the worst things we could do is dismiss the experiences of diverse groups of people because then you’re losing creativity.

There’s something to be said about a company’s bottom line, which I understand, but in order to reach that bottom line, you have to have those diverse thinkers, diverse groups of people, folks who experience life differently. Think about the dimensions of diversity—gender, sexual orientation, race, neurodiversity. You need all types of differences at the table so you can understand what you don’t know because you’re not experiencing all those things in your role at your company. Senior leadership not only has to be open but move on it, too. It’s not just about listening sessions; although, listening sessions are important. They’re a great way to start in order to check your temperature of where you are, be strategic about where you’re going, and frame your goals.

The one part you said that stuck out to me is to make sure that you’re not only making sure everything is in place to write this plan, but you need to have metrics too, just like you would with a business plan, a content marketing plan, whatever the case may be. You have to have metrics to make sure this is sticking and impactful—not just performative.

Absolutely. Performative allyship is real. Taking things to a DEIB perspective is to know each and every person matters, and you matter as equally to us as you do to the organization. The bottom line for all of that is trust, so if your employees and your community stakeholders don’t trust you, that becomes your biggest struggle. If they see senior leadership inconsistent in terms of following through with a DEIA statement, that’s more or less performative allyship. That’s where those issues regarding engagement and retention become more salient as a result of people not being able to trust what you say you’re going to do.

I think that was a perfect lead-in to the next question: In addition to that, what are some other struggles people go through as they’re implementing these plans?

That lack of commitment by senior leadership is probably the biggest struggle. Not only can I attest to that, but DEIA/DEIB professionals across the country and the world will speak to that. When you’re working with consultants, that’s the first thing they’ll ask you: Where’s senior leadership on this? Because they realize how difficult it can be when everyone’s not on board.

The other struggle is folks who aren’t in the work make this assumption it’s a checklist way of approaching things. DEIB work is lifelong. I’ll tell people I don’t like the word “expert” because I believe I’m a lifelong learner. The reality is that it’s about checkpoints. There are places you want to go, and you realize that progress is way more important than just checking something off the list. I think we do that when we say “diversity.” Because you’ll have folks recruit in the name of diversity, saying they have a percentage of folks, and then it stops.

But the struggle becomes equity, inclusion, and belonging because of two things: If you’re not seeing the value that people bring in terms of their individualism, it’s harder for them to be engaged because you don’t see, hear, or value them. If they’re not engaged, the likelihood of them remaining with the company probably decreases.

Retention becomes the obvious indicator of success. I believe that’s a larger struggle than I think most people in leadership realize because it forces you to look at data you don’t want to look at. It forces you to be uncomfortable in spaces where maybe you influenced a decision and now you’re having to reflect and think about things differently. With all of that being said, the struggle is just an honest approach of being humble in our humanity and how you actually develop a culture of that so that folks feel safe enough and brave enough to enter the space and have conversations around this work.

Other struggles are there’s no strategic plan. We’re just going to do what’s trending. There’s no alignment back to your vision, to your mission, to your metrics. And then the other piece is: Who’s holding who accountable? Top leadership can’t make the assumption they’re exempt from the work and the learning because then what happens is DEIA/DEIAB becomes the thing that lives with your diversity officer or diversity council. Then everything becomes the burden of one or a few people, and oftentimes it’s those very same people who are traumatized, minoritized, and marginalized. So the cycle continues. It’s also important to understand employee resource groups (ERGs) so people can feel like they belong. Diversity councils should have a budget too; that can also be the struggle of pushing the DEIA work forward.

Finally, what most organizations struggle with even outside of this DEIB space is organizational change: changing mindsets and preparing people for that. I think oftentimes folks at the foundational level make assumptions about how people are going to change without really understanding what it takes to change so they become resistant to it.

And probably because of that, there are a lot of mistakes made as you develop and implement these strategic plans. What do you think are some of the mistakes folks make during this process?

The first thing I already spoke to is just when you’re talking about the creation of the plan—recognizing who’s not there. When you don’t have voices being represented at the table, then misunderstandings easily occur. I can’t make assumptions about what Susie does in Department X and then create some strategies not considering their experiences and their role and how it will affect them. That’s a huge mistake when people don’t have the diverse groups of people at the table to help speak to this work.

The culture that is already in place prior to this is something you always have to be mindful of as well. If you’re not nurturing an inclusive culture, if you’re not priming it, then bringing something new in when most folks don’t have the experiences in that space is going to be very difficult. A mistake a lot of leaders are struggling with making is really sitting in that space of humility. If your culture allows for humility and vulnerability and your team sees that modeled within senior leadership, more of your employees will be open to change because they see you accepting change. People will go above and beyond if they know you not only care but you’re modeling exactly what they’re expecting to see.

With that being said: collective leadership. This work really does encompass everyone as a community and it shouldn't be delivered from a top down approach, it should be shared and distributed power. Folks should understand the power they have in those positions, that they can be changemakers. Everyone has the opportunity to be an ally.

Switching gears but along the same line, how do people attract diversity officers to their businesses, especially if they’re new to implementing a DEIA or DEIB plan—if they’re still a work in progress themselves? What are some strategies to attract top talent?

One of the first things I said when we first started talking is the importance of understanding your community stakeholders. Organizations can’t do true DEIB work without that partnership. It has to be seen as a partnership, a reciprocal relationship where both sides are mutually benefitting from the support they’re providing to each other. Without that partnership, it’s going to be difficult in terms of the types of talent you’re going to retain from that community.

The other piece, from an HR perspective, is what job descriptions look like. Think about what language is allowing folks to understand, “This is who we are; this isn’t performative allyship. This is an expectation, and this is what it looks like for individuals who want to come work with us.” Those roles, responsibilities, and duties should speak to that. It should also reflect that you’re doing ongoing training.

If you look at the demographics across most organizations, especially if you’re talking about leadership, you’ll have mostly white men. Or you’ll have—and since I’m covering the space of education—mostly white women. The reality is this: A lot of folks have limited experiences working with culturally-diverse people. That’s just the reality. So you have to be able to understand that folks aren’t going to come into that space comfortable, knowing what to do, knowing what to say. And as an organization, it’s going to be important to train, coach, and support folks so they’re able to communicate the need, the work, and implement it in practice.

I think most organizations are scared of engagement data, feedback, and exit surveys. That’s when you have to look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that these are the changes we have to make internally so people want to stay. And then develop opportunities and processes for those individuals who are missing.

So partner with those community members. Developing a pipeline is important. That truly is low-hanging fruit. Local colleges, job fairs, fraternities, sororities…there are always opportunities to connect even with your school district. Developing projects with schools to unpack a community issue would help you easily find talent you could then pull through your own pipeline.

And it helps that students tend to think outside the box with those projects, which benefits them in the long run. RGI has St. Joseph Design-Build Studio to really drive home those concepts of design thinking and social-emotional learning for our youth. Similarly, going through a program like Disrupter University hopefully makes them more inclined to stay in their communities—regardless if they go straight to work, to trade school, to college, or otherwise.

When I did facilitation for new hires and cultural awareness training, I used to tell them, “You’re recruiting while you’re teaching.” The same holds true for organizations. You’re recruiting when you’re in the community whether you know it or not, even if your intent is not to recruit. Think about what you and your body language are saying, and do people feel like they can approach you and feel welcome. That’s where authenticity in organizations matters.

Oftentimes, if we’re not leveraging commonalities and differences, folks won’t come to work as their authentic selves. If we’re not valuing the genius that authenticity brings to the next generation, then the likelihood of them coming back to their community is very limited. They’ll find other, bigger places who accept them.

Disrupter Universiry Presentation — *From Disrupter University*

That’s something this younger generation does exceptionally well. There’s so much we can learn from younger folks in addition to educating ourselves more effectively through training, by reading, and even just Googling. You’re getting to interact with young folks all the time. What are some of the things you’re seeing in the education space with regard to DEIA that are happening for the better?

You really do have folks who want to be more culturally aware. I’m finding that to be true more than I expected, honestly. And that’s something that’s beautiful because the reality is that my generation and the generations prior to me didn’t have as many opportunities to explore cultural awareness. Those opportunities were limited. So now, even though we’re as polarized as I think we’ve ever been, folks are still open to learning. My hope is definitely aligned to that. We are products of how we are socialized, and when I talk about Disrupter University, I talk about disrupting how we’re socialized in a way so that we’re embracing cultural differences and commonalities to leverage global relationships and learning.

We want our young people to be global learners, but we’re not training our educators to be global learners. I believe educators are starting to sense that and starting to say, “I grew up here, but I can’t say my experiences are the same for the young people I work with. So I need to learn and know about these differences.”

Educators are also becoming more and more brave in terms of being advocates. Folks understand how to push beyond sympathy toward empathy and compassion, which means they take action. They’re becoming more aware of the socio-political context their scholars are coming into. It's very difficult if a scholar comes to school and starts talking about something racist they experienced and it’s brushed under the rug, but then they’re told that you care about them.

We’re such a global society which emphasizes the need to be more culturally aware, so I’m seeing a lot of that shifting amongst educators and our current scholars in K–12 who will be our future educators. They’re doing the work I wish we could’ve had the opportunity to do, but at the same time, you have educators in a space who want to learn and are trying to do more.

In my book, Centering Student Voice: A Guide for Cultivating Emotionally Intelligent Educators and Culturally Responsive Classrooms, I talk about emotional intelligence, and I don’t think we really make connections to self-awareness, cultural awareness, and social awareness in terms of how we relate not just with our colleagues but also with scholars and families. Once we get to the space of understanding foundationally what we truly believe, we’ll accept folks as their authentic selves.

Our scholars are experts of their experiences. And we are experts of our own experiences. If we truly want to share knowledge and power, we have to co-construct what that means. Lifelong learning means I’m learning from my scholars as well; they’re teaching me things from facilitating them that I’ve never learned before.

Is there anything else you think folks should be doing on a personal or professional level to push toward inclusivity?

I think it’s important, especially as a leader, to validate others’ experiences. Oftentimes, I’ve heard so many stories around folks feeling dismissed and resulting in them feeling devalued. As leaders, we need to sit in the space of listening—not trying to find the solution—and validate others’ experiences. Something like, “I could see why you see things that way.” And then on the back end, go do the work to learn. Don’t validate without learning for yourself. Be careful who you’re expecting to teach you what you need to go and learn. We can’t tax the heck out of BIPOC people because it eventually can be seen as exploitation or becomes more triggering, more traumatic. So if you are truly sincere about the DEIB space, and even if you don’t know everything you want to know, it’s okay to engage in your own learning. I think that’s one thing I’ve learned the most, even in my own experiences. Go and do the work of learning.

BIPOC people are constantly immersing themselves in spaces that don’t reflect who they are and what they look like. So if we are expecting BIPOC folks to immerse themselves in certain spaces, then that should be held true for others. That's how you begin to learn about differences. That’s how you begin to understand not just how to leverage commonalities and differences but to respond appropriately when something is different. That’s the most important piece to authenticity, engagement, and retention.

Top Takeaways

Develop a DEIA Plan

Conduct an organizational assessment to understand where your company is at with DEIA, taking into account your team and community stakeholders.
Revisit your mission and vision statements and connect them to your DEIB work.
Get senior leadership on board before implementing your DEIA plan.
Create a diversity council with folks from all different walks of life.

Adjust Your DEIA Plan

Check in with your team to understand any DEIA plan gaps or struggles.
Make sure everything is written down with all perspectives taken into account.
If you didn’t have everyone’s voice at the table when creating a DEIA plan, have them around when you adjust it.

Implement Your DEIA Plan

Retention is the #1 indicator of a DEIA plan’s success.
Embrace a company culture that follows through with your DEIA plan, not just creates it and never acts on it.
Review job descriptions and consider the expectations you’re setting as well as who you’ll attract with the language you’re using.
Create a community pipeline by engaging K–12 and colleges.
Value the authenticity that occurs when your organization implements a DEIA plan backed by an inclusive culture.
Be open to learning about cultures different from your own since we are only experts of our own experiences.
Validate what other people are going through, and then follow that up with your own research.