By Anne Miller, Vice President
Last week, Feldman Daxon hosted another in our series of Think Tanks with nearly 100 Human Resources leaders from across Canada. This session focused on discussing their approaches and strategic plans to ensure Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging are ever present in their respective corporate cultures. Industry sectors represented were financial, insurance, telecom, sports and entertainment, provincial and municipal governments, healthcare, technology, manufacturing, mining, not for profit, construction, education, and virtual start-up companies.
Feldman Daxon simultaneously facilitated five different groups to discuss their strategies and ideas as part of an informal best practice sharing forum. The following is a summary of the meaningful and informative discussions that took place.
Why is DEI&B Important to Your Company’s Success?
Organizations felt that it was important they mirror the demographics of our Canadian population. They felt that with a DEI&B approach, they could make better business decisions because of more diverse thinking on the team. For international organizations there are a lot of employees being transferred between countries, so an understanding of EDI is important even critical. Employees who feel like they are included will contribute to their max. If not, then turnover happens which is extremely expensive. The cost of losing one employee is estimated at 33% of their base salary not to mention the loss of customer relationships. DEI&B also needs to be inclusive of our Indigenous population which has grown by 9.4% according to the most recent Canadian Census. We can’t afford to miss this important employee base.
Organizations appear to be across the scale when it comes to implementing a DEI strategy. Some are just beginning, and others have well thought out and implemented strategies. Some have totally committed leadership teams while others struggle to get buy-in from senior leadership. Many still have partnered with third-party consulting firms to help create their DEI strategies and implement recommendations.
What Action is Your Organization Taking to Promote DEI&B?
One organization has engaged with outside training organizations who work with groups to build the cultural competencies needed to create more authentically inclusive organizations and community spaces. Others have created anti-racist policies. Many have invested in training and made diversity an independent portfolio from HR. Guest speakers have been brought in to help facilitate open discussion amongst the various councils.
Employee Resource Groups are important to building DEI and have create a safe space for courageous conversations and sharing thoughts, feeling, and ideas. Some initiatives are more informal such as cooking classes and recipe sharing from different cuisines and ethnicities. Many conduct outreach programs and campaigns targeted at DEI populations to ensure they are aligning with their company missions and values. One organization has created a calendar with “significant dates” where different holidays from around the world are noted. Another has converted an office into a prayer/meditation room to promote employees taking the time they need for religious or personal reasons.
Many organizations are measuring how employees are feeling about “belonging.” One is taking it even further by hosting inclusive leadership programs which allow leaders to do a 360 on themselves to help bring increased awareness on how they see themselves versus how others view them. To help leaders stay current in their EDI thinking, many organizations have created an EDI advisory group with representation from each part of the organization to help demystify EDI so that leaders had a solid understanding of what’s meant by system racism and promoting social justice.
Many organizations are now doing land acknowledgements at the beginning of meetings and or town halls. Additionally, some have launched LGTBQ safe spaces and use pronouns to ensure people feel welcomed and are able to represent their authentic selves.
How Will Data, Analytics, and Metrics Be Used to Create Transparency and Enable Accountability?
Most of the organizations represented are doing some sort of progress measurement. Managers are tasked to achieve gender pay equity. Most are putting actions in place to make leadership teams more accountable for meeting DEI goals
Employees are surveyed, although some social identity (SI) surveys are not well received (if trust within the organization is an issue) and most had about a 30% non-participation rate. Important to also recognise not everyone is comfortable sharing that kind of data and that is also OK as part of fostering inclusion and belonging – respecting different viewpoints is part of inclusion strategies. For organizations surveying their employees – its important to communicate results back to employees. EDI is an ongoing journey not a destination. Some organizations are federally regulated and therefore obligated to do a lot of reporting and be transparent regarding their DEI strategies.
On the hiring front, many have started to put metrics in place to ensure that the candidate pool has enough DEI potential hires to start moving the needle. Of note are a couple of organizations with predominantly all white Boards of Directors – candidates will remove themselves from the interview process when they see “lopsided” board representation.
Overhauling the hiring process has become essential – revising job descriptions to focus on clear and inclusive language and removing any barriers to application, promoting jobs in diverse media /organizations / groups to attract talent, ensuring interview panels are made up of a diverse group of employees.
Another organization has removed the word “fit” and instead focuses on hiring for “culture-add.” It is more important for them to see what someone can bring to the organization and where they can add value versus wanting them to “fit in.” The wording “culture-add” resonated with all in attendance.
Summary
In summary, everyone agreed that it is important for DEI strategies to be unique to the employee base and the organization, and not to rely on cookie-cutter initiatives while respecting the differences of their employees as part of the diversity best practices.
We thank everyone who attended for sharing their thoughts, ideas, and best practices on such an important undertaking.