Diversity and Inclusion Best Practices
What makes for effective DEI training? What do you need to educate yourself and other team leaders, empower employees, and make an actual difference?
These are the DEI books to get your bearings.
Our big takeaway from these 3 ebooks: it might feel like you need to strike at issues of diversity and inclusion with a hammer. What you really need is a chisel and careful aim.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion by Small Giants
What does it mean to be a company that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive? Is it a mindset? Is it company-wide practices? Is it quantifiable or quantitative?
Yes.
This ebook embraces the idea that we really don’t know what we’re doing yet.
- Few (if any) companies have decades-long processes in place structured around DEI.
- Even if there were, the nature of DEI is human-centric, and does not fit neatly into a one-size-fits-all approach.
- It grows, evolves, and shifts, as does our overall understanding of the practice.
DEI can be clumsy, and it’s always a learning process. As such, Small Giants is setting out to give you the information you need to succeed, but not the step-by-step instructions.
Explore the definitions and intersections of DEI, along with reasons why they are each important – and how you can begin integrating these concepts into your organization’s culture.
The Big Book of People Analytics: Diversity and Inclusion by Visier
As we briefly mentioned above, inclusion and diversity are sometimes used interchangeably. That’s incorrect though; they are, in fact, quite different. This ebook is a discovery process for the uninitiated, walking you through the intricacies of the two.
In an HR context, you might treat diversity as the numerical metrics, and inclusion as the sum of experiences a diverse employee has within your organization.
Diversity is measurable. You can interrogate it with questions like:
- What is our ratio of male to female employees?
- What is our ratio of white employees to employees of diverse ethnicities?
- What percentage of our leadership team are female?
- What percentage of our board of directors are ethnically diverse?
Inclusion, however, is subtle, complex, and much harder to measure. It speaks to many elements of the employee experience, such as whether or not they feel heard, experience a sense of belonging, and are able to express themselves safely in the workplace.
You can examine it through data, but the questions look more like this:
- Why are diverse candidates opting out during the recruiting cycle?
- If our employee population is 49% female, why is only 9.8% of our leadership team female?
- Are people of color paid fairly compared to other employees in their role?
- Why are our high-performing diverse employees choosing to exit the organization within their first two years?
The Essential Guide to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by lever
Progress is about more than a handful of favorable percentages in your demgraphic breakdown.
Getting true results out of your diversity initiatives requires expanded and transparent goal-setting.
- Get feedback from employees.
- Take your business’ larger value system into account.
- Create shared goals that align with the various inputs.
When people feel heard, and feel like they’re actually moving the needle, they’ll be much more inclined to throw their weight into the DEI program.
This ebook dives into Lever’s own DEI initiatives as well as how several other companies have handled it.
Take a peek at their 5-step system to set and maintain diversity goals:
- Solicit team-wide input from all employees and teams
- Track and measure your existing hiring bias
- Analyze the results for trends and turn them into action points
- Set goals and hem them in with deadlines – some short-term and others longer
- Celebrate wins and give voice to opportunities
books with ideas to Power Your Diversity and Inclusion Program
We’ve grounded ourselves in the general how and why. Let’s take a closer look at some specific “what”s.
The big takeaway from these books: a couple screwdrivers aren’t enough. You’ve got a lot of screws to adjust. Invest in a set of (metaphorical) drillbits instead. And don’t be afraid to swap them out — that’s exactly why you have so many on hand.
How to Build a Diverse Workplace with Coaching and Mentoring by torch
Usually, companies tend to focus on increasing diversity like this:
- Diversity training on unconscious bias
- Setting recruiting pipeline targets
- Supporting employee resource groups
This is important work that should be done, but the work doesn’t stop once these sorts of programs are implemented. A few ongoing programs can’t displace the importance of culture shift.
Diversity and inclusion-focused coaching and mentoring can help individual employees embrace the cause. It gives everyone a chance to understand that inclusion and belonging are also a quiet, interpersonal concern.
“People aren’t diverse, but teams and companies must be. Diversity is a relational concept. It shows up in the composition of teams and organizations, and it is measured based on a collective whole. In this way, diversity refers to ‘difference’ within a given setting. So while a person is not ‘diverse,’ they may bring a diverse range of experiences.”
The programs outlined here are tailored for growth and development, and promote people with a range of differences feeling valued in the workplace.
How to Increase Diversity in the Workplace by brazen
One DEI sticking point that rears its head often is our need to couch it in business terms. Its effect on the bottom line.
Working toward greater diversity and inclusion should be an end unto itself. But businesses have priorities, legacy processes, might be missing the frameworks to create a DEI push that gets results. Change can be hard.
This ebook is here to address that.
Plenty of the DEI books on this list at least mention the business case for diversity. They dip their toes in. This one dives off the highboard.
Make the case for diversity in the workplace as a prudent business decision – one that:
- Expands your talent pool
- Enables better decision-making and innovation
- Serves your existing (or a potentially new!) customer base
- Offers real ROI in the form of outperforming competition, sales returns, and turning capital into profit
- Isn’t a sunk cost but a compounding dividend
What Women Want 2021 by work180
We’re inclined to agree. The survey asked questions about career barriers, views on workplace gender equity, and what women look for in an employer.
“It’s increasingly clear that a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion isn't just a nice-to-have; it’s a moral and economic necessity for any business to truly thrive.”
It features original data and insights, and an interesting focus on equity, which is lacking in lots of other materials.
- Equality focuses on fair treatment
- This cannot be achieved without first achieving equity, which focuses on a fair outcome
Focusing on providing a fair outcome as opposed to fair treatment is important because some individuals face a greater number of workplace barriers than others. These individuals may require different treatment in order to access the same opportunities and achieve the same levels of success (relative to others).
inclusive and more equitable hiring practices
Building a diverse, inclusive workforce starts with your recruiting process.
Inclusive Hiring Strategies for Recruiters by Greenhouse Recruiting
Recruitment is a personal affair.
- Applicants, no matter at what volume they may pour in, are all different individuals. People you are trying to bring into the fold.
- You’ll hire them based on their personal as well as professional experiences.
- The difference between one candidate and another, all things being equal, could be how well their personality clicks with the hiring manager.
And as a talent or hiring manager, you hold a lot of the cards.
You’re at the front lines of giving your organization a friendly human face. Directly shaping who gets what opportunities. So a commitment to inclusivity, and recognition of where the organization – or its systems or its people culture – may be falling short has to start with you.
That’s why we’re recommending this particular ebook on diverse and inclusive recruitment. Only companies running Greenhouse will be able to wring the absolute most value out of this one. But it begins with a thorough and honest self-assessment that’s worth exploring at least once.
The Complete Guide to Building an Inclusive Recruitment Process by JazzHR
Prioritizing candidate diversity and an equitable experience has to start by revisiting your existing processes. Use this guide to ensure inclusivity is at the core of your hiring.
- Inclusive job descriptions
- Advertising channels
- Screening and interviewing best practices
- Onboarding and beyond
Inclusive recruitment is an important first step for employers committed to diversity, but it’s not the full story. Your company culture must support the same inclusive values presented in your recruitment process in order to retain the diverse workforce you’ve built.
Hiring a diverse workforce is one thing; retaining one, as we’ve seen a few times over now, is another.
One thing you can do is put your own efforts and commitments front and center. Consider sharing your journey with your social media audience, your clients, and your competitors to present a transparent view of your organization. Encouraging others to evaluate their recruitment process can be valuable, too.
books on Exploring and Minimizing Biases in the Workplace
Bias can be insidious.
Not inherently – developing and relying on preconceived notions is a natural and normal way for our brains to make good (or “good”) decisions. It helps us make split-second judgment calls. It helps us analyze a situation for danger or reward.
But left unconfronted, it also locks us into bad habits. Every so often we need to actively examine the biases we’ve built up over time and how they’re affecting our decisions.
When it comes to your people, actual individuals, wiggle room is especially important:
- In fact, the hiring process allows us to be selective, thorough, meticulous
- There’s less need to rely on prior biases
- You owe it to candidates and employees to see them for who they are and what they bring to the table
How to Manage Unconscious Bias to Make Better People Decisions by emtrain
Have you ever wondered why many of our biases are unconscious?
“Our brains are wired like relational databases. We’re actually wired to "guess at" answers based on the existing data in our brains. And when we have limited information (limited experiences with specific groups of people), we rely on a minimal set of images and associations. Just like artificial intelligence (AI) triggers responses based on patterns and associations, our brain does the same thing.”
Ah, the efficient machinery of humanity.
As we’ve touched on, hiring can serve as an initial pattern breaker. Though our experience with specific groups may be limited, interviews and other exercises allow us to move beyond that limited information and start forming a picture of a single person.
But in the workplace itself, we aren’t (and shouldn’t be!) grilling our colleagues or team members. Unconscious bias is still at play though. This ebook prepares us to confront our internalized messaging with systematic, probing self-questions and a framework to move forward.
7 Types of Bias that Can Negatively Impact Your Workforce by neogov
Let’s return to the idea of insidious bias.
Some biases are overt and obvious. Others are sneakier. They might take on negative or positive connotations.
It’s crucial that leaders and employees alike educate themselves on the various forms of bias – so that they may learn to recognize their own biased thinking, reflect more closely on those thoughts, and move forward with more awareness and compassion.
What are common biases, both in the workplace and in society at large? This ebook identifies and breaks down:
Confirmation bias
Seeking out or selectively seeing evidence and examples that affirm and reinforce an existing bias.
Recency bias
The idea that more recent experiences weigh more heavily on our minds. It colors your view for better or worse, and exists in the fact that our recent memories are most vivid.
Affinity bias
When someone or something reminds you of yourself, you’re likely to view them more favorably or sympathetically, and act in accordance.
Gender and Stereotype biases
We should all be familiar with these – they’re shaped by both our personal experiences and upbringing, as well as the larger culture.
Halo/Horns effect
Remembering one positive or negative trait or event in particular, and hinging your whole outlook of a person, place, or thing on it.
Idiosyncratic rater effect
This is a toughie – it’s basically passing judgment based on your subjective opinions of good and bad. None of us can completely detach from this, but it’s important to take a look at why you may have those feelings, as well as push back against them.
Beyond Beginner diversity, equity, and inclusion Tools: books on Global Diversity, Amplifying Inclusion, and Equity in the Workplace
Council Perspectives: Diversity and Inclusion Global Challenges and Opportunities by The Conference Board
There is perhaps no context in which diversity makes more sense than for a global business. Even smaller companies may scout internationally if they’re 100% distributed and have the right red tape snipped.
Admittedly, this write-up on diversity and inclusion best practices is geared toward large businesses that have regional markets legitimately spanning the globe. But there may be some golden nuggets for anyone viewing it through a lens of research and broadening horizons.
- A global diversity and inclusion movement necessitates experiences and interactions with people outside of one’s own comfort zone.
- Diversity and inclusion professionals playing an international role need to be culturally competent.
- Depending on the region of the world, diversity may denote anything from race, ethnicity, nationality, class, or language, to age, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.
Exporting strategies from your home base to a new country may render them irrelevant or ineffective. But as you work to understand the relevant culture, politics, economics, and legislation, your viewpoint will naturally open up and enable you to do better DEI work.
This is a collection of firsthand and vetted observations, strategies, and concerns your diversity and inclusion efforts need to be aware of to perform on an international stage.
Bridging the Pay Gap: Why Pay Equity Pays Off by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management)
Equity often becomes the forgotten step-child of DEI. It’s easier to focus on the diversity and inclusion – efforts that basically everyone acknowledges today, even if begrudgingly.
But compensation is a touchy subject still.
Salary transparency is its own contentious issue, let alone without bringing equity into it. But pay equity is simply not possible without pay transparency. The two go hand in hand.
This research-heavy report is one of the only on this list with a focus on equitable outcomes. (Another being What Women Want in 2021, which shows an interesting correlation with some of the data presented here) According to SHRM,
“Less than half (47%) of HR professionals say their organization is transparent with employees about how pay decisions are made – but more than 9 in 10 think it is important for organizations to be transparent on this issue.”
More than half (58%) of the companies surveyed, however, conduct voluntary pay equity reviews.
In particular, larger companies and/or ones with female CEOs represent the majority. So while diversity and inclusion have broken into the mainstream, finding champions even in allies, equity remains somewhat insular to the people inordinately affected by it (or companies who have more to lose).
Measuring the Invisible, Why and How You Should Measure Inclusion by Aleria
DE&I initiatives are what you might call the hot new thing. But within many organizations, these good intentions fail to realize significant, lasting impact.
If diversity initiatives are the norm, why are so many industries and big companies still struggling to achieve an inclusive, diverse workforce? Let’s put the glaring answer aside momentarily (that these industries and companies are largely paying lip service while doing the bare minimum).
Per Aleria,
“Even with clear values, commitment from leadership and access to resources, very few companies can point to significant, quantifiable progress. A study conducted by Boston Consulting Group found that 97% of respondents reported that their companies had a diversity and inclusion program in place, yet only 25% of them felt they had personally benefited from it.”
The solution?
- Centering less on diversity itself and tackling the unique challenges posed by inclusion.
- Figuring out the actionable ways to build an inclusive workplace culture.
- Creating internal systems that encourage, reward, and cultivate inclusive experience for all employees.
This ebook isn’t a how-to guide, but it does provide a framework to get you started on turning those good intentions into measurable objectives and scalable goals.
