I think when we strive for equity, we achieve DEI.

THE MOTIVATION OF DEI 

There are 2 or 3 sort of catalysts or impetus that drive the decision of organizations to take a closer look at DEI and how it affects their organization. Either there is pressure from an outside group, pressure from an internal group, some kind of a catalytic moment by one of the members of the board and or the executives and it’s risen to become the sort of topic du jour. I haven’t seen it often enough, being driven by a desire to increase results.

There have been a ton of initiatives that have been launched with the objective and the mandate to increase diversity, equity and inclusion within organizations. I think the biggest challenge I’ve seen is how do you know it’s working? And, you know, a lot of companies are struggling with demonstrating that it’s working. They’re just sort of doing it because you’re supposed to. And that’s not a sustainable reason for getting involved in these types of initiatives. And I’d love to see the day come when they’re doing it, because there’s a business case.

HOW DO WE MAKE IT STICK?

So I think until there are measurements and metrics that allow an organization to measure the effectiveness of their leaders as being equitable, as opposed to diverse, I think equitable is really a term I rather see. And you have measurements that can be established to measure the equitable perception of others of your leaders. You have measurements that you can measure, just like employee engagement, the perception of your staff and or other stakeholders of your organization as being equitable. And then we have to have an ability to say, so let’s assume you can score that. What does a score mean? And until we have the ability to do that, I think we’re going to be constantly seeing DEI flow in and out of boardroom conversations and in and out of executive conversations, as opposed to being a mainstay as to how we measure the performance of our people and our executives and our organizations.

If you can’t measure that result, quite frankly, I think it’s not going to survive. There are a number of different sort of non-financial metrics that sort of allow companies to associate sort of those non-financial activities with financial performance. One of the most common is the employee engagement scores. There is a high correlation between the performance of a company and the level of employee engagement, as measured by companies that have come up with very standard and standardized measurements of employee engagement. I think that, you know, when we get to having those types of measurements for human equity and or diversity, equity, inclusion, we’re going to get to the point where it becomes a common stance in organizations.

THE CASE STUDY

I had the privilege 6 or 7 years ago of actually having the responsibility of making the financial performance connection to DEI initiatives of a company, a midwestern company that, you know, if you looked at that company, when they started down that journey, it was white men, period.

It was a typical Midwestern company and Midwest US, and there was no issue with that.

I came into them along that journey. They were going down a path with a Dei consultant and they gave him the challenge 2 or 3 years in to quantify the impact. And it was a very difficult exercise. And he asked me to help him do that. We put together a number of metrics that, I think, measured what they had done and what it translated into. And we were able to draw an association between that organization moving along this measurement scale and the financial performance of that business. And it actually became a case study.

So the finance guy in me says, measure it, okay. He says, and if you don’t know how to pull those measurements in, it’s not a bad place to start with a good financial executive. They might be able to help you figure out how to measure it.

YOU’LL KNOW WHEN IT HAS STUCK – THE CULTURE

Dei as a term is a lightning rod in 2024. The truth of the matter is your culture has to be one of equity. Your culture has to be one where it strives to look at the individual regardless of any of those other factors that are commonly associated with Dei.

I’ve been hiring for 28 years now. And what I’ve often found, interestingly enough, is when I run a group or a division over a period of time, magically, you look at an organization that I took over and you fast forward 2 or 3 years and somehow, miraculously, it starts to look like the fabric of its environment. If you look in my organization today, it’s the United Nations, and we didn’t set out to hire a whole lot of people from a whole lot of different backgrounds. We didn’t set out to hire more men or more women. We just kind of set out to hire people that fit a certain value set, and that can mix in with other people who don’t necessarily fit their value set, but they just look at that individual and we really take more, more effort in our organization to encourage people who are totally different to interact with each other. And I got to tell you, it seems to work. So I’d love to see when organizations take that as the norm.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I long for the day when DEI only retains the E. It just becomes about equity. It just becomes about equitable and being seen and being equitable towards everyone in your sphere, in your universe, in your community. Because I think when we strive for equity, we achieve DEI.