The importance of workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has made steady progress over the last few decades, but 2021 was the year where many employers finally made DEI a priority in their organization. An enormous undertaking for even a modestly sized company, these initiatives require challenging introspection and analysis regarding topics like strategic goals, hiring practices, workplace environment, and yes, benefit offerings.
It is impractical to expect every company aiming to improve on DEI measures to succeed in a matter of just one or two years. For many, this is a transition that will take much longer to come to fruition in a meaningful and measurable way. While enthusiasm should be applauded, trying to bite off too much in too short of a space of time can be overwhelming and ultimately does a disservice to the importance of the project. Breaking this process down into smaller, more manageable goals is a far better strategy than tackling the entire thing at once and then becoming discouraged when results do not meet expectations.
A great place to get started on this journey is with the single largest non-salary employee expense: healthcare. In order to truly achieve a more equitable workplace, where inclusive benefit offerings lead to improved health outcomes, plans need to be tailored to the individual needs of all employees.
What does healthcare discrimination look like?
Understanding inequities in the healthcare system begins with examining the underlying factors that impact health outcomes, known as the social determinants of health (SDOH). SDOH encompasses aspects of a person’s environment that have a major impact on their health, wellbeing, and quality of life. The unfortunate reality is that differences in socioeconomic status, geographic location, and racial background often result in substantial disparities in health outcomes. For example: if people don’t have access to grocery stores with healthy foods, they are less likely to have good nutrition, increasing their risk for a variety of health conditions like obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.
How are employees affected by discrimination in the health care system?
Employees can be left vulnerable to increased health risks either by lack of access to quality health care or by lack of adequate education about the resources that are available to them. Data from a recent Harris Poll survey of more than 2,000 adult Americans showed that 54% have delayed care in the past year due to cost. The 2020 Health Insurance Literacy Study from Policy Genius found that only 32% of Americans can define the terms deductible, copay, and premium. Whatever the cause, many employees lack the resources necessary to take care of their physical and mental well-being, which could potentially result in long-term health issues.
How can employers make the health care system more equitable?
Recognizing that there is no universal strategy to improving employee well-being allows you to diagnose the specific gaps and obstacles that your employees experience in their access to healthcare. The importance of personalizing clinical and wellness offerings to the needs of the individual is a factor that is often overlooked when administering healthcare benefits. That being said, here are some common barriers and strategies to address:
Add wellness programs to your overall benefits package that take into consideration how your employees’ diverse backgrounds and experiences impact their health. Wellness subsidization has the dual benefit of promoting healthy behavior while also lowering the employee’s financial burden.
Ensure your health plan uses clear and accessible language. 36% of Americans making less than $75,000 annually reported that they have avoided care due to uncertainty over what their health insurance covered. Inaccessible language can prevent even the most carefully designed benefit package from providing equitable healthcare access.
Provide first-dollar coverage and improved cost certainty. High prices, lack of cost certainty, and high deductibles are the most commonly cited reasons for skipping or postponing medical care. 44% of American adults don’t have $400 in savings, leading to a disproportionate impact on lower-income individuals and families.
In a recent survey, 7 in 10 employers said that they plan to bolster DEI-related aspects of their benefit packages in the next few years. While most organizations have their employees’ wellbeing in mind, few are truly aware of how these decisions impact their overall health. These investments are also good for the bottom line, as the fewer medical procedures and doctor visits your employees require, the fewer claims are submitted. A survey from Monster indicated that 86% of job candidates say DEI initiatives in the workplace are important to them, demonstrating the impact these programs can have on recruitment and retention.
From personalized benefit offerings to proper benefits education and improved cost certainty, there are many options available for employers to work toward providing equitable health plans. This is an important project that will likely take years to bring to fruition, but it is the right thing to do not only for your employees but also for your organization itself, and it is never too early to get started.
In observance of LGBTQ+ Pride Month and the one-year anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court ruling over Bostock vs. Clayton County, the U.S. Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has announced new resources to help employers understand the protection of applicants and workers against discrimination regarding sexual orientation and gender identity. Along with a new landing page summarizing information pertaining to sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination, they’ve released a new technical assistance document to “help educate employees, applicants and employers about the rights of all employees, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers, to be free from sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in employment.”
The EEOC’s new resources taken together with the Bostock ruling present wide-ranging implications for employers across the U.S. Before we dive into the key points of these changes, we need to take a closer look at how we got here.
Bostock v. Clayton County, a Brief Overview
The significance of the EEOC’s new guidance documents cannot be fully appreciated without understanding the consequences of last June’s Bostock v. Clayton County Supreme Court ruling. That 6-3 decision added discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of practices deemed in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Supreme Court consolidated 3 separate cases into this historic decision: two centered upon the firing of gay men due to their sexual orientation (Bostock v. Clayton County and Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda) and another on the firing of a transgender woman due to her gender identity (R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission). The question at hand was “whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender.” The opinion of the court, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, was unambiguous: “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law”. Gorsuch also noted that various caveats regarding religious liberty issues stemming from the First Amendment, exemptions provided to religious employers in Title VII, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act were not addressed.
Bostock v. Clayton County has since been interpreted by the EEOC and other courts to prohibit all forms of harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The EEOC’s New Guidance Explained
The new resources provided by the EEOC consolidate critical information concerning sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination along with links to fact sheets regarding recent EEOC litigation on this topic. Also included is a new Technical Assistance Document explaining the implications of the Bostock decision and reiterating that employers cannot:
Discriminate against individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity with respect to terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, including hiring, firing, furloughs, reductions in force, promotions, demotions, discipline, training, work assignments, pay, overtime, other compensation, or fringe benefits.
Create or tolerate harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity, including harassment by customers or clients. This may include intentionally and repeatedly using the wrong name and pronouns to refer to a transgender employee.
Use customer preference to fire, refuse to hire, or assign work.
Discriminate because an individual does not conform to a sex-based stereotype about feminine or masculine behavior (whether or not an employer knows the individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity).
Require a transgender employee to dress or use a bathroom in accordance with the employee’s sex assigned at birth. However, employers may have separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers for men and women, or may have unisex or single-use bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers.
Retaliate against any employee for opposing employment discrimination that the employee reasonably believes is unlawful; filing an EEOC charge or complaint; or participating in any investigation, hearing, or other proceeding connected to Title VII enforcement.
The Technical Assistance Document also notes that employers are prohibited from creating, or tolerating, harassment, or discriminating against straight or cisgender (those who identify with the sex assigned at birth) individuals. Additionally, the EEOC addresses the tension between protections provided to employers and employees with sincerely held religious beliefs and LGBTQ+ applicants and employees by noting, “Courts and the EEOC consider and apply, on a case by case basis, any religious defenses to discrimination claims, under Title VII and other applicable laws.”
5 Key Points for Employers
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 now prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity nationally, regardless of state and local laws. Many recurring questions regarding protections for LGBTQ+ employees have been clarified by the EEOC’s new guidance, and here are the 5 key points for U.S. employers to take away:
Discriminatory action cannot be justified by customer or client preferences. “An employer covered by Title VII is not allowed to fire, refuse to hire, or take assignments away from someone (or discriminate in any other way) because customers or clients would prefer to work with people who have a different sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Whether or not an employer knows an employee’s sexual orientation or gender identity, employers are not permitted to discriminate against an employee because that employee does not conform to sex-based stereotypes about traditional feminine or masculine behavior.
Employers requiring transgender employees to dress in accordance with the employee’s sex assigned at birth constitutes sex discrimination.
Employers may have separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers for men and women. However, “all men (including transgender men) should be allowed to use the men’s facilities and all women (including transgender women) should be allowed to use the women’s facilities.” Because the Supreme Court left this issue unaddressed in the Bostock ruling, stating: “Under Title VII… we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind,” this is a controversial issue that is still developing.
Accidental misuse of a transgendered employee’s preferred name and pronouns does not violate Title VII. However, “intentionally and repeatedly using the wrong name and pronouns to refer to a transgender employee could contribute to an unlawful hostile work environment.”
The implications of the Bostock ruling and the EEOC’s new guidance are far-reaching and consequential, and they make it clear that any discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is now prohibited under Title VII. However, some matters remain unresolved, such as gendered bathrooms/locker rooms and potential conflicts with protections provided to private employers and employees with sincerely held religious beliefs. It is paramount for all U.S. employers to review the EEOC resources, assess their policies and practices to ensure that they are in compliance, and remain attentive to further developments regarding LGBTQ+ workplace discrimination law.
As we begin to settle into the new year, it’s important to take some time to both reflect on the past year and continue planning for the year to come. While 2020 was an unpredictable year, through the chaos we find insights that will shape the future of the workforce and employee benefits.
While many experts have made predictions for what 2021 might entail, there are a handful of themes that have come to the forefront for most. Likely the most notable of these is the prioritization among employers to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Following a year of civil unrest and mass protests for social justice, it makes sense that there is more interest in DEI. And we are seeing more people of color filling roles in high-profile positions – inspiring others, and influencing change. Additionally, we’ve seen a growing interest in environmental, social, and corporate governance policies among corporations where ESG had traditionally been less of a priority.
While priorities have been shifting regarding social equality, we have also been enduring the impacts of a global pandemic. This has shed light on many areas that have been overlooked in the past, such as improved benefits for working parents, women, and low-income individuals. These emerging themes have played a major role in what experts believe will influence the benefits strategies of employers in 2021.
Meeting a Diverse Range of Needs
It has become apparent that a broad benefits plan for all isn’t an effective strategy for companies that are working to create a more inclusive and diverse workplace. Instead, the standard has changed to a need for personalized benefits. While a change to benefits that serve a wider variety of employee needs (mental health, childcare, etc.) has been in the works for a few years, the events of 2020 have and continue to accelerate the need for more inclusive, well-rounded benefit programs.
More Equitable Benefits
2020 brought with it a variety of new challenges for employers and employees alike. While working parents struggled with the stress of ever-changing childcare solutions, many single non-parents struggled with the mental health concerns caused by isolation. The differences in the varying needs of employees brought forth the need for empathy and a shift in the benefits and services offered by employers. The effects of these differences will influence employers to have a more equitable approach to the benefits offered moving forward.
The Rise of Social Benefits
Social benefits refer to things such as student loan repayment programs, commuter benefits, child care, elder care, and more. They are a response to what many employees consider their employer’s social responsibility. While student loan repayment plans were expected to be the big trend of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic certainly had a big impact on the emergence of such plans. However, that idea and similar non-traditional benefits are continuing to become more important as we see a growing interest in social benefits.
An Emphasis on Connecting Remotely
Our daily working environments have changed dramatically this year and with it came many opportunities and challenges. For example, remote work has allowed employers to tap into a wider pool of talent. However, employers need to continue to prioritize the use of technology that helps their teams succeed and educate them on time management and skills that will improve productivity while working from home.
Surge in DEI-Based Recruitment Efforts
Among all of the realization of the past year, we have seen a significant focus on the need for effective DEI initiatives from employers. The new virtual environment is not only helpful to the continuity of businesses, it encourages DEI initiatives in the future. Employers are no longer limited by geographical location when acquiring talent, rather, the virtual environment enables them to leverage recruitment platforms to access a more diverse pool of talent.
A Focus on Inclusivity, Despite Social Distancing
It uncertain when we will return to working in the office again. Many employers are feeling the struggles of the disconnect between employees. While Zoom meetings are helping us stay connected, it doesn’t quite replace the feeling of seeing and collaborating in-person. In the future, it will be important for leaders to structure remote work in a way that puts inclusivity as the top priority. Regardless of what the future holds, it is important that employers create a uniform and inclusive experience that encourages employees to do their best work.
This is a guest post written by Launchways partners Rada Yovovich and Chanté Thurmond, representing The Darkest Horse, a next generation Diversity & Inclusion consulting firm.
The Long-Awaited “Future of Work” Has Come Early, and Brought Surprises Galore
Particularly in the last few years, Thought Leaders have been heralding the approach of “The Future of Work,” imagining a model of what “work” would look like in a world of abundant emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation. That future vision has typically focused on the need to manage a shift of the workforce to virtual, remote, and alternative models to full-time staff (gig-based, contract-based, and part-time labor, for example).
Enter COVID-19, and the timetable has changed, and brought with it a number of unexpected features. In a matter of weeks, we’ve seen non-essential workers being told to work from home (WFH) while sheltering-in-place. Organizations, in an effort to recalibrate their budgets in tightened consumer and supply chain markets, have done their best to be creative by adapting HR policies and employment contracts to allow for safer working conditions, flexible hours, and many have reduced their workforce resulting in employees being shifted to subcontractors, part-time status, or have simply been laid off, forcing them to seek new income opportunities from home.
Who would have guessed that these disrupting shifts to work-from-home would coincide, hand-in-hand, with equally disrupting shifts to school-from-home, making working parents into teachers as well? And who would have predicted the explosive and breathtaking speed of almost-universal adoption of Zoom and other web-conferencing services?
This is not the graceful, opportunity-driven entrance into the future we may have envisioned. In fact, initial waves of surprises produced longings for a “return to normal.” But, more recently, subsequent waves of signals from the future have pointed toward possible shapes of things to come. Many uncertainties remain, but some things have become quite clear. We most certainly aren’t going “back to normal!” The past has passed, and it is not coming back. Winners and losers will be defined by their agility in adopting new technologies, by the ability to learn and innovate quickly, and by how well they attract and retain top talent.
Competing for Talent in the Future of Work
In a world where more companies’ workforce is remote/virtual, the geographic and financial constraints of recruiting melt away. Suddenly, teams have an opportunity to pursue a truly global talent pool in a more democratized way—allowing them to expand their talent search beyond their local zip codes.
The expansion goes beyond geography. Entire populations of people for whom a traditional office role is challenging, unsafe, or even impossible are finally able to access the labor market in a more equitable and inclusive way. These include, just to name a few:
Individuals with significant physical disabilities
Individuals who are gender nonconforming or going through a gender transition
Individuals with phobias or other mental health challenges
Individuals with chronic or acute health conditions
Neurodiverse individuals
Caregivers, whether for children or aging/ill family members
These types of barriers to workplace accessibility can be easier to accommodate in a remote-work context. Individuals can curate their space and constraints to meet their own needs, particularly if their organization provides proper technology, infrastructure and policies to support them.
The Best Talent is Diverse
The greatest talent in the world includes members of populations who are suddenly gaining access in this new normal. If your organization is hiring the best talent without bias, members of your team will represent a wide array of cultures and identities.
Not only is diversity an inevitable outcome of unbiased recruitment practices, but the data shows diverse teams far outperform homogenous teams. This ROI has been proven time and time again — reports by Forbes, Mercer, the Harvard Business Review, and many more demonstrate that a diversified workforce drives innovation and business growth — bottom line: diverse organizations perform better.
Here’s How: Practice Inclusion and Equity Throughout your Employee Lifecycle
It starts with Attraction.
Inclusive employer branding, content marketing, events and continuous networking
Talent Acquisition and Recruitment.
Engaging diverse talent, identify diverse sourcing opportunities, curb unconscious biases, reduce barriers to application process, create transparent process and develop culturally intelligent communication practices
Hiring and Onboarding
Transparency, over-communication and personalization can make all the difference
Combat bias by building a fair and consistent processes
Build interview guides and scorecards that are clear and objective
Promotion of wellness programming is more important now than ever before
Re-evaluate and optimize for equity and gender parity
Employee Engagement and Training & Development
Make it a regular practice to check-in with your employees. Conduct pulse-surveys that specifically gauge inclusion, equity and belonging. Click here to learn how The Darkest Horse can help your organization with this!
Cultivate an inclusive culture
Offer inclusive and accessible learning experiences and develop clear learning/career pathways
Performance Management
Here’s your opportunity to acknowledge, celebrate and reward for each team member’s cultural contribution, unique ways of working, and fostering a culture of inclusion!
This is also an opportunity to re-evaluate your performance metrics. Some questions you may want to ask yourself includes:
Is your process fair, equitable and inclusive?
Are your policies unintentionally punitive or do they lean towards corrective action?
Foster Community
Create, support, and invest in Employee Resource/Affinity Groups
The Future is Yours!
Now is the time to catch the wave of change and surf it to success—don’t get pulled into the undertow of clinging to old ways of working! Here are a few steps to move your organization towards the future of work:
Harness the inclusion capacity of your organization. Identify the innovative, forward-thinking, and inclusion-minded changemakers in your organization. Activate them toward a goal of fostering inclusion. Empower them to set audacious goals and affect disruptive change when needed, and support them with leadership buy-in.
Get help. When you have reached the bounds of your team’s capacity for in-house inclusion efforts, partner with inclusion experts like The Darkest Horse to bring in external support for consulting, training, facilitation, and events/experiences.
Use the right tools. Work with an HR and Benefits expert like Launchways to ensure your HR processes and benefits packages meet the needs of a modern workforce.
About The Darkest Horse: The Darkest Horse (TDH) is a women and minority-owned next-gen consultancy firm helping the workforce and organizations explore the intersections of Radical Inclusion; The Future of Work; Emerging Technology; Health, Well-Being and Human Potential.
The Darkest Horse partners with organizations to empower diverse talent to thrive by embracing emerging technologies and instituting strategies that maximize human potential.
Before we dive deep into the power of Diversity and
Inclusion, let’s take a second to establish our terms and clarify what D&I
actually looks like.
Workplace
Diversity: The practice of hiring, promoting, and building a team in a way
that brings together people of different backgrounds, educations, personal
histories, experiences, and areas of expertise.
Workplace
Inclusion: The practice of ensuring diverse voices are fully comfortable,
integrated into, and valued as members of a thriving, complementary,
interdependent team.
To be clear, diversity is nothing without inclusion!
It’s pointless and somewhat dishonest to build a diverse team only to
maintain a leadership framework where a certain “in-group” maintains the power
to impactfully steer the ship while a nominally diverse team underneath them
feels disenfranchised or fearful.
Why Diversity and Inclusion Build the Best Possible Team
The true potential of humanity lies in our ability to come
together and build a unit that’s more powerful than the sum of its parts. A
group of people from similar backgrounds, educations, and ways of navigating
the world might be able to put their heads together to come up with one, two,
or even three ways of solving a given problem, but when you invite
professionals of diverse backgrounds to the table, the possibilities are far
more open-ended.
When businesses make diversity and inclusion main values and
priorities, they can gain incredible benefits, includes:
Increased brainstorming/innovation potential
More access to outside-the-box problem-solving
A wider skill and knowledge base across the
organization
A thinktank and business team that accurately
reflects the national and global marketplace
Building a Foundation for a Great Team
There’s no magic recipe you can learn to turn D&I into
areas of pride and opportunity for your business, but the key is to foster a strong
culture. If that culture is one that values diversity of people and ideas,
fights for representation and inclusion in every situation, and works to give
everybody a voice, then you can really capitalize on the innovative power of
D&I.
Workplace culture determines both the levels of buy-in,
engagement, and persistence your team will put into their work on a day-to-day
basis, their feeling of personal investment and their job, and the dedication
they put into embracing and maintaining the company culture. Great talent wants
to work in a culture that supports them and sets them up for success. When they
encounter a situation where they don’t feel comfortable, valued, or positively
plugged in, they leave quickly.
Creating a Level Playing Field Through Education
While diversity hiring programs are nearly ubiquitous in the
big business world, they often lack the crucial, consistent ground-level
follow-through (inclusion) that turns that diversity into business power. Employee
education (in the form of in-house training or formal professional development)
is a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to shaping your existing culture
into the kind of inclusive environment that sets the business up to win big
with D&I.
Of course, you can’t just do diversity and anti-harassment
education to check them off the list for compliance purposes – employees can
smell that from a mile away, and it directly affects their ability to engage
authentically with the training and reflect on the information in a way that’s
going to augment their mindset or behavior at work. Discussions of diversity
and inclusion need to be powerful, real, and backed by thought-provoking
human-to-human engagement – not a comprehension quiz at the end.
Designing and building that education program is a key step
in articulating, fostering, and supporting a great employee culture. When you
give great talent something important to aspire to and make it real for them,
the possibilities are endless. At the same time, worker education creates a
foundation for accountability and makes it easier to remove toxic mindsets that
do damage to inclusion or morale.
Don’t Hesitate to Be Great!
The biggest mistake organizations make is waiting to
articulate the perfect approach to D&I. Every business can and should be
doing something about diversity and inclusion at scale today. If you think
diversity training or inclusion workshops would be valuable to your team, seek
out a great independent PD provider who can help you today – don’t form a
committee to discuss what the training might look like two years from now.
Of course, long-term initiatives are key to harnessing
diversity and inclusion as business strategies over time, but the best thing
any organization can do from a talent-centric and corporate decency standpoint
is to identify a starting point and dig into exploring the challenge and
addressing the issues at hand.
In the next section of this book, we’ll explore some of the thinking
points and strategies businesses can use to find a starting point for their
D&I program, articulate a commitment to diversity and inclusion and begin
creating that great culture and winning team. Depending on the size, industry,
or existing culture of your business, some of these approaches might be more
relevant or feasible early-on in the process than others, but any of these
strategies will help you grow in your ability to embrace D&I in a powerful,
data-driven way.
Part 2: Planning to Become Unbeatable
Aligning Your Values
Everybody knows diversity is good, right? Everybody believes
people should be represented and have voice at the table, right? Those
statements are hopefully true, but creating a culture of excellence through
diversity and inclusion requires that you as a business shout those values from
the rooftops.
Articulation is the first step for you as an employer to
tell your team members what you really stand for as an organization and what
you expect out of them as employees. At the same time, your company values help
you establish a public face that can be used as part of on-going marketing or
recruitment campaigns.
When you as an organization show your employees and
the public through your actions and business practices that you care about
diversity and value inclusion (and don’t just tell them), you set
yourself up to win big on many levels including:
Improved recruitment capabilities
More talent from diverse backgrounds
Fewer toxic team members who don’t embrace
diversity
Improved reputation in the public space
Improved opportunities for partnerships with
other diverse companies
Improved ability to create logical, powerful
procedures that are rooted in established values
Building the Strongest Possible Understanding of Your
Current Team
Of course, before you can hone yourself into a diversity and
inclusion powerhouse, you need to build a rich understanding of the current
state of D&I in your organization. Without that foundation of data, it’s
hard to know what the challenge/opportunity really looks like and what you need
to do to get there.
A few years ago, gathering that data would’ve been pretty
tough, but thanks to advances in human capital management technology such as
Paylocity’s demographics dashboard, mining your HR records to create a “state
of the business” diversity report for your business only takes a few clicks.
That data can help you understand your workforce in terms of:
Age makeup
Experience level
Education level/background diversity
Gender representation
Diversity among leadership
Diversity by department
Diversity by team
Once you’ve created that roadmap of your current state, it’s
much easier to understand the work at hand. When it comes to understanding the
state of inclusion in your organization, that can be a little trickier, but
employee surveys and other engagement markers can be useful to fill out the
picture.
Setting Ambitious but Achievable Goals
With your commitment to diversity and inclusion articulated
and a rich understanding of your existing team’s make-up and culture, it’s time
to roll up your sleeves and get down to the work of determining what your
D&I strategy is going to look like and how it will impact your business.
The key here is to be sure you’re setting data-driven goals – things that you
can measure either through qualitative or quantitative means to determine your
success.
If your program is going to grow into something great, you
need to dream big, but it’s important to think at scale and in a logical order.
When it comes time to set those tentpoles that will guide the vision and work
moving forward, ask yourself:
If we’re not satisfied with the current state of
diversity in this organization, what would we like to look like three years
from now?
Does the diversity of our leadership
align with the diversity we envision for our workforce?
If not, how can we step up recruitment and
promotion of diverse leaders? Where would those leaders fit best?
How will our regular recruiting, on-boarding,
and P.D. approaches need to be modified to support our commitment to making
these things happen?
What can we do to improve workplace culture
in a way that maximizes talent and invites everybody to the party?
How will we use data to measure whether
or not this is happening?
What will we do on a daily, weekly, and monthly
basis to reinforce our commitment to D&I and ensure the work environment
stays healthy?
Creating Powerful Policies & Procedures
The answer to some of those questions will likely lie within
your policies and procedures. The best way to guarantee the success of your
D&I initiatives is to give them real teeth by backing them with official,
well-defined rules and policies. It’s one thing to say you value diversity and
inclusion, it’s another to codify your beliefs in a way that make it easier to
hold everybody accountable to organizational ideals.
Some of those procedures will be dictated by government
compliance. The EEOC is responsible for ensuring that diversity and inclusion –
at least to the levels articulated by the federal government – occur in the
workplace, and many states are adopting increasingly specific racial or LGBTQ+
inclusion laws to hold businesses to a higher standard.
You’ll never become a leader in the fields of diversity and
inclusion by sticking to government guidelines, however! If you’re looking to
get a better sense of how your HR department can support a diverse workforce
better, take a look at some of your industry’s identified diversity leaders.
What do they do to attract talent? How has that diversity, inclusion, and
strong culture created wins for them? What can you do at scale to replicate
their success?
By using legal guidelines, industry best practices, and
emerging trends, you can create a D&I framework that speaks to both the
current climate and what’s unique, special, and exciting about your business.
Building Benefit Packages that Truly Value Diversity & Inclusion
Part of inclusion is recognizing everybody’s needs and
ensuring they are met in a way that supports productivity and a positive
relationship with work and the workplace. That means taking care of your
diverse workforce away from the office is just as important as building a great
environment for them to work in.
Employee benefits are an area in which businesses frequently
send subtle, non-inclusive messages that employees pick up on. For example,
many health plans provide no coverage for same-sex couples. For organizations
that value diversity and inclusion, those kinds of biases must be eliminated
from your compensation, benefits, and healthcare packages in order to build a
system that’s truly valuable and authentic for everybody.
At the same time, it’s important for HR to consider how
their offerings will support a wide variety of workers from different
backgrounds. Ask yourself questions like:
How can you build value for young families?
What about single, relatively healthy folks? How
can you save them (and yourself) money while still providing a strong healthcare
safety net?
What about transgender or intersex employees who
need access to preferred doctors to get their medical needs met?
What about employees with long-term medical
issues who require expensive medicines and therapies?
How can we help provide culturally responsive
medicine and services? How can we make sure all our employees have access to
services that make them and their families feel comfortable and happy?
In order to support a diverse workforce and live up to your
values as a progressive, inclusive employer, you need to find a way to answer
those questions without making the classic benefits plan design error of trying
to offer everything. It’s important to remember that more doesn’t always mean
better when it comes to benefits. Building a truly inclusive benefits framework
is a tall task, but it’s incredibly rewarding and can set your business apart
from the pack at a time when talent is more conscious than ever of their
healthcare needs.
Part 3: Staying Unbeatable
Keep Your Eye on the Data
So, you’ve established diversity and inclusion as core
values, devised a recruitment and promotion initiative, beefed up your policies
and training procedures, and gotten the feedback you need to build a really
great culture. It’s tough work, and it’s rewarding, but it’s important not to
fool yourself into thinking the work is done once your program has been created
and rolled out in its initial form.
Part of inclusion is being responsive to the evolving needs
of your team members as individuals and a community. Those targets move
month-from-month and year-to-year, and for your organization’s D&I approach
to remain strong over time, you need to keep evolving to keep up with shifts in
your employee culture.
Of course, your most powerful ally in this work is data! You can and should continue to monitor your HCM data and survey your employees regularly to provide yourself with a strong understanding of the state of diversity and inclusion across the organization.
Create a Built-in Feedback/Assessment Loop
Part of getting the data you need to stay unbeatable is
creating a formal framework through which employees can conduct on-going
discussions about diversity and inclusion to help you, the employer, understand
how well you’re doing and what they need from you.
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are a great way to support a
diversity and inclusion strategy, as they provide tremendous two-way value. For
employees they provide the opportunity to speak frankly with their most direct
peers about the needs of their specific community or interest group and finally
create a space that’s specifically designated for talking about the personal
side of work at hand. For the employer, ERGs are a great way of making sure
team members feel empowered to discuss the issues that concern them in the
workplace, and they create a feedback loop that lets you know very clearly what
people’s needs, wants, and goals for the office culture are.
Once again, it’s important to mention that you can roll out ERGs at any point in your D&I journey. As soon as you’ve identified particular communities or interest groups within your team, create a framework for them to get together, talk about their shared experience, and discuss their vision for the workplace and issues that are relevant to them. There’s no need to wait until you’re three years into the initiative and have greatly increased the diversity of your workforce – in fact, it’s better for you to start small early on and allow the ERG program to scale up with your business.
Maintaining the Commitment to Greatness Together
Diversity and inclusion are all about commitment –
commitment to talent, commitment to values, and commitment to greatness
together. When you create a great cultural platform, create a diverse,
complementary team, and focus on inclusion in a way that ensures everybody is
heard and their abilities are maximized, you set your business up to maximize
its potential for profit, innovation, and high-level problem-solving.
Remember:
Diversity is nothing without inclusion – A
hiring/recruiting initiative is just one piece of a much larger picture
A strong, positive culture and employee
education framework must be in place in order for a D&I initiative to be
successful in the long term
Every business should be doing something to
tackle D&I at scale today – Progress over perfection
Good HCM data is necessary to benchmark your current
state of D&I and measure the success of your initiatives over time
HR policies and procedures, along with employee
benefit offerings, must reflect the organization’s deep commitment to diversity
and inclusion
Diversity and inclusion is a complex, evolving
challenge/opportunity, but businesses that get it right have the power to
maximize the potential of their individual team members and their organization
as a whole.
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Diversity and inclusion are the keys to creating a truly
modern team that’s built to maximize each individual’s skills, shore up
individual weaknesses, and build a powerful unit that can thrive, brainstorm,
problem-solve, and celebrate achievements together. With that said, getting
diversity and inclusion right is such an important responsibility that many HR
and business leaders continue to hire for cultural fit, leaving a coordinated,
purposeful D&I initiative for another day.
In order for businesses to succeed and innovate into the 2020s, that kind of thinking needs to stop. Each and every employer should be doing something at scale to encourage diversity and foster inclusion. The businesses that do not will soon stand to miss out on some of the world’s best talent and leave themselves exposed to costly lawsuits.In order to demystify the complexity of D&I and connect business and HR leaders with actionable strategies, Launchways recently held a free one-hour webinar, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Workplace Diversity & Inclusion but Were Afraid to Ask.”
The webinar featured an all-star panel of four of the
Midwest’s leading experts on diversity and inclusion, each of whom provided
crucial considerations and actionable strategies for businesses of any size or
growth stage looking to improve their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Rebekah Wolford of Paylocity began the conversation
by articulating the importance of diversity and inclusion as prized values
baked into the core of what your organization does and represents. She
explained how D&I initiatives all about building the “We” that’s going to
maximize company potential and customer experience.
Rebekah also provided a valuable real-world case study for
D&I success by walking through how she and her team planned, initiated, and
built an impactful diversity and inclusion program at Paylocity. She discussed…
How to use surveys and HCM data to build an
understanding of the current state of D&I at your organization
Which data points should be most important to
your D&I planning and assessment
How to create a comfortable space in which
employees and leadership can challenge each other
How to be sure you’re practicing inclusive
behaviors and creating a strong culture
How to use employee resource groups (ERGs) as an
on-going part of a D&I strategy
How to create and provide meaningful D&I
training for your team
Rada Yovovich of The Darkest Horseshared
some of her wisdom as an expert diversity and inclusion consultant, expanding
on the vital importance of strong company culture and discussing how businesses
can work towards getting there from any starting point.
Rada stressed that the workplace is an unintentional “bias
factory,” which presents an unwelcoming or additionally challenging situation
for diverse talent. She specifically discussed how organizations can work to
identify and eliminate bias in their job postings, hiring interactions, and
performance management evaluations. She also explained…
How to build buy-in for your D&I program by
making it authentic to, designed for, and reflective of your organization’s
existing culture
How to use employee engagement to drive forward
the culture and team you aspire to
How to recognize, address, and eliminate the
unconscious bias that works against diversity and inclusion
How to provide non-judgmental employee
assessments by staying grounded in functional competencies
How to create a documentation trail that protects
your business in compliance scenarios
Dr. Renee McLaughlin of Cignadrew upon her years of
experience as an LGBTQ+ inclusion and healthcare professional to emphasize the
importance of proactive planning in corporate D&I. Whether it’s an
early-stage organization devising a plan for maintaining their strong culture
if a merger or buyout occurs or choosing which healthcare offerings will
ideally support your team, the best answer is to have a clear, powerful plan in
place.
Renee also provided tremendous insight into the necessity of
transition resources for professionals in any workplace. That means having a
policy-backed transition plan, proactively working to ensure the safety of
trans professionals, and providing healthcare offerings that provide trans team
members with the best opportunity to be their authentic selves at work. She
specifically discussed…
Why
diversity and inclusion are especially relevant for early-stage businesses
How
to work toward combining cultures in a positive, authentic way during a
business merger scenario
How
early stage companies can plan proactively to reduce these challenges
How
to proactively address the needs of LGBTQ+ employees, particularly transgender
team members, through company policies and insurance offerings
Which
specific terms need to be included in your policies
How
to plan to address resistant beliefs in LGBTQ+ inclusion scenarios
The
importance of understanding all local laws related to LGBTQ+ rights, particularly
for multi-site corporations
Alex Koglin of Launchways
applied his expertise as a leading employee benefits consultant and LGBTQ+
rights activist in the Chicago area to provide specific insight into how you
can build alignment between your benefits offerings and your commitment to
diversity and inclusion.
Alex provided specific employee benefits recommendations
that organizations can use to build the necessary support for diversity,
inclusion, and transition that Renee, Rebekah, and Rada discussed. He
explained…
How to create a strong, supportive D&I framework regardless of your personal feelings through employee benefits and healthcare offerings
The importance of benefits offerings that account for domestic partners and same-sex spouses
How to ensure your transgender employees’ healthcare needs are met
The importance of providing robust mental health coverage as well as physical healthcare
How to provide on-going health and wellness education to maximize team-wide well-being
