5 major D&I mistakes to avoid

One of the many things the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has done this year is to shine a bright light on diver­si­ty and inclu­sion (D&I) in the work­place. And when you con­sid­er 66 per cent of FTSE 100 com­pa­nies have all-white man­age­ment teams and just 3.5 per cent of senior exec­u­tives come from a BAME – Black, Asian and minor­i­ty eth­nic – back­ground, you can start to see why.

It doesn’t just stop at a lack of diverse rep­re­sen­ta­tion either. It’s also the lack of a safe and inclu­sive work­place cul­ture. Accord­ing to Glass­door, 55 per cent of employed adults have wit­nessed or expe­ri­enced dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place. Employ­ees should expect to feel safe and com­fort­able in their work­ing envi­ron­ment and not alien­at­ed or iso­lat­ed by their organ­i­sa­tion.

Renewed dis­cus­sion around D&I in work­ing envi­ron­ments has exposed wide cracks and revealed five com­mon mis­takes com­pa­nies make.

1. Using the same recruitment and hiring process to find diverse talent

A com­mon mis­take when it comes to embrac­ing diver­si­ty in the work­place is approach­ing the hir­ing and recruit­ment process in the same way as before. Sonya Bar­low, a D&I expert and founder of Like Mind­ed Females, says “com­pa­nies are not expand­ing their reach when it comes to look­ing for a tal­ent pool”, while also attempt­ing to attract diverse tal­ent through the same old recruiters. Com­pa­nies are sim­ply not diver­si­fy­ing their efforts to find the avail­able tal­ent.

Mac Alonge, founder of The Equal Group, says com­pa­nies need to be look­ing at the “big pic­ture” when hir­ing new employ­ees. Where is the vacan­cy being adver­tised? Are the ads acces­si­ble to the peo­ple you’re try­ing to reach? Which recruit­ment agen­cies are being used? These are just some of the ques­tions employ­ers need to be ask­ing them­selves.

To bridge this gap and suc­cess­ful­ly bring on new and diverse employ­ees, Bar­low sug­gests work­ing with com­mu­ni­ty groups and con­sul­tants to ensure all parts of the hir­ing process are diverse and inclu­sive. A new focus on remote and online work­ing has shown com­pa­nies can con­sid­er “new tal­ent with­out bor­ders”, reduc­ing the need to approach the same recruit­ment agen­cies again and again, she says.

2. Hiring a D&I lead to fix the issues

There is an assump­tion that hir­ing a D&I lead will fix every­thing. Glass­door recent­ly report­ed that June saw a huge 50 per cent increase in D&I job open­ings. But bring­ing in a D&I lead can be just anoth­er form of tokenis­tic hir­ing, says Leyya Sat­tar and Rosh­ni Goy­ate, co-founders of The Oth­er Box. She says that unless the D&I lead has “buy-in from senior lead­er­ship, bud­get and influ­ence, it will be a super­fi­cial, sur­face-lev­el action and ulti­mate­ly a waste of mon­ey”.

The Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has exposed com­pa­nies that use diverse employ­ees as token hires and ulti­mate­ly approach D&I as a tick-box exer­cise. That’s not to say com­pa­nies shouldn’t hire a D&I lead. An employ­ee ded­i­cat­ed to inclu­sion and diver­si­ty in the work­place is a good thing.

But, as Sat­tar says, this role must become an inte­gral part of the com­pa­ny and not just viewed as an add-on, if com­pa­nies want to see real ben­e­fits. They must be giv­en ade­quate bud­gets, staff and the free­dom to imple­ment effec­tive poli­cies.

3. Depending on diverse employees to organise D&I initiatives

As well as token hires, some com­pa­nies decide to look inwards to their diverse employ­ees. These employ­ees may have no spe­cif­ic skills and expe­ri­ence when it comes to D&I, but have sim­ply been approached because of their per­son­al char­ac­ter­is­tics.

Sat­tar points out that The Oth­er Box has had hun­dreds of con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple from diverse back­grounds who’ve had to take on the respon­si­bil­i­ty of their company’s D&I efforts. She says: “It can­not fall to the most mar­gin­alised to do the work, or for them to do it with­out com­pen­sa­tion, when D&I isn’t part of their job descrip­tion.” D&I should not be viewed as some­thing that only affects those from mar­gin­alised back­grounds.

Instead, com­pa­nies need to be prop­er­ly pri­ori­tis­ing and invest­ing in D&I efforts. Train­ing pro­grammes, such as uncon­scious bias train­ing, should be put in place and reg­u­lar­ly main­tained. Experts should be con­sult­ed on how to estab­lish D&I poli­cies and prac­tices in the work­place, and be paid for their work. This way, extra respon­si­bil­i­ty isn’t passed off to employ­ees, while also cre­at­ing an inclu­sive work­ing envi­ron­ment.

4. Classing D&I as one and the same

Anoth­er cru­cial mis­take that com­pa­nies make is group­ing D&I togeth­er, with­out dis­tinc­tion. This assump­tion couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth. Liz John­son, founder of The Abil­i­ty Peo­ple and Podi­um, explains that “diverse hir­ing doesn’t auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­late into an inclu­sive cul­ture”. If a com­pa­ny has only thought about the diverse rep­re­sen­ta­tion of employ­ees, with­out giv­ing prop­er thought to the work­ing envi­ron­ment and cul­ture these employ­ees are walk­ing into, that’s a fail­ure on the inclu­sion front, she says.

The dif­fer­ences that impact indi­vid­u­als and their needs at work must be recog­nised, if com­pa­nies want real change. John­son uses the exam­ple of how dis­abled employ­ees can be treat­ed. She says: “Even with all the tal­ent in the world, if work­ers with dis­abil­i­ties are para­chut­ed into roles with­out the appro­pri­ate resources, equip­ment and sup­port, they can­not be expect­ed to do their jobs to the best of their abil­i­ty.”

Peo­ple need to feel safe and sup­port­ed at work. Alonge says employ­ers can do this by tak­ing the time to have gen­uine con­ver­sa­tions with their employ­ees, to give them a voice and to also see if addi­tion­al sup­port is need­ed. Because, as Jess Mal­ly, writer and co-founder of Belovd Agency, explains, organ­i­sa­tions that fail to look beyond the issue of access and hir­ing tend to find there is a high turnover among the diverse tal­ent com­ing in.

5. Fixating on signing pledges and commitments

The final mis­take is one that has become much more com­mon in the wake of the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment: the sign­ing of com­pa­ny pledges and com­mit­ments. “Human resources depart­ments have become pub­lic rela­tions depart­ments, where the way a com­pa­ny is per­ceived is more impor­tant than the real­i­ty,” says Jack Mizel, founder and chief exec­u­tive of Pride 365.

There is a fix­a­tion on want­i­ng to appear a diverse com­pa­ny with an inclu­sive envi­ron­ment, with­out doing any of the work. It’s an attempt by com­pa­nies to cut cor­ners and avoid invest­ing in the long, and some­times uncom­fort­able, D&I process. Sign­ing pub­lic pledges is an emp­ty ges­ture if it isn’t backed by action. So instead of mak­ing grand state­ments, com­pa­nies should focus on work behind the scenes. D&I in the work­place shouldn’t be viewed as a poten­tial PR oppor­tu­ni­ty, but some­thing that will ben­e­fit the com­pa­ny as a whole. D&I is for every­one. As Mal­ly con­cludes: “A shift in per­spec­tive to an under­stand­ing that a fair, equi­table and diverse work­place will ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit all of us is absolute­ly essen­tial for D&I work to be fruit­ful.”