Whether you’re a seasoned DEI professional or diving in for the first time, it pays to familiarize yourself with the guiding principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
These principles form a foundation from which diversity, equity, and inclusion work can begin and provide a framework for DEI leaders to use when developing DEI strategies and statements.
By focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion, organizations create a workplace where employees feel like they belong, which helps with employee engagement, increases trust, and supports innovation.
1. Bias
What is bias in the workplace?
Workplace bias is holding opinions, beliefs, or attributes about an individual or group of people based on certain characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or age, that affect the way you think or perceive.
Two forms of bias are unconscious bias and conscious bias. Unconscious biases are stereotypes and assumptions that individuals form outside of their awareness. An example of unconscious bias is unconsciously favoring men for leadership positions despite women in the candidate pool having the same qualifications.
Conscious bias refers to intentional biases held toward individuals or groups and involves being aware of one’s own biases and making decisions or making judgments based on those biases. For example, a hiring manager will not hire Asian workers because he is racist.
Everyone has biases, and they’re more prevalent in the workplace than you might think. According Deloitte39% of employees say they frequently experience bias, and 83% classify bias experienced or witnessed in the workplace as subtle and indirect or microaggressions.
Bias touches all areas of the business, from the language used in job descriptions to compensation and who gets hired. And since all employees have some form of bias, this is all the more reason to make fighting bias an integral principle of your DEI efforts.
How does bias affect DEI?
Being biased against another person or group means your workplace will not be built with inclusion in mind. If allowed to go unchecked, bias can lead to unfair treatment, favorability, and discrimination. This affects critical business decision-making, including hiring, career progression and development, and budget allocation. The result is an underrepresented and marginalized organization.
Other reading: 5 key tips to remove social and cultural biases from employee self-assessments.
2. Transparency
What is transparency in the workplace?
Transparency in the workplace relates to an organization’s efforts to be open, honest, and transparent. An example of transparency in the workplace is sharing precise salary bands on job postings and making compensation information available for employees to see or openly sharing revenue goals, growth strategies, and insights.
How does transparency impact DEI?
Prioritizing transparency helps create a culture of trust and candor while providing employees with relevant information to help them stay informed about the business and their careers. Without transparency, a culture of mistrust and miscommunication can emerge, affecting employee performance, morale, and productivity.
Other reading: Tearing down your open door policy.
3. Liability
What is responsibility in the workplace?
Has anyone ever held you accountable for your behavior? This question relates to taking responsibility for your actions and understanding that your actions are responsible. Accountability also means accepting the consequences, whether positive or negative.
Let’s say you set a recruiting goal to increase the number of female-identified developers on your engineering team. Share your goals and objectives, regularly report on progress, including tracking the number of candidates identified as women in the pipeline, and share this information with relevant stakeholders. This is being responsible in the workplace.
How does accountability impact DEI?
According Harvard Business ReviewWhen workplace challenges arise, they can be more difficult to manage without an accountability framework to measure and evaluate DEI efforts.
By following accountability as a guiding principle for diversity, equity and inclusion, organizations show their commitment to creating a culture in which employees are held accountable for their actions, which helps create an environment that drives success. change.
Other reading: Engage millennial employees through accountability, clarity and prioritization.
4. Empathy
What is empathy in the workplace?
Empathy in the workplace is the ability to relate to other people’s experience, thoughts, and emotions and to recognize the meaning behind verbal and nonverbal tails. Empathy also means reacting compassionately and understanding another person’s point of view.
For example, a direct report is struggling with losing a family member. As a manager, he actively listens, seeks to understand their perspective, offers support, and allows them to adjust their work schedule to meet their needs.
How does empathy impact DEI?
Having empathy as a guiding principle for DEI’s efforts means your work will come from a place of understanding and compassion, allowing you to foster deeper working relationships. But unfortunately, not everyone is a natural empath. If you need help flexing your empathic muscle, check out this article from the New York Times on how to practice empathy.
Other reading: Empathy: the leadership skill you lack to understand your people.
5. Accessibility
What is accessibility in the workplace?
Workplace accessibility refers to creating an environment that prioritizes equal opportunity and inclusion for all employees, including those with disabilities, neurodivergent individuals, and other needs.
Accessibility involves removing barriers and providing accommodations to ensure people can fully participate in work-related activities, programs and facilities. For example, one organization ensures that its office space is physically accessible by installing elevators, ramps, and wide doorways to assist people who use wheelchairs or have mobility issues.
How does accessibility impact DEI?
Creating a workplace that is accessible to all helps create an inclusive environment, ensures equal opportunity for employees, broadens the talent pool, and increases diversity.
Other reading: How to set goals to achieve greater inclusion and accessibility of people with disabilities in the workplace.
6. Intersectionality
What is intersectionality in the workplace?
Intersectionality is the recognition and examination of the interconnected nature of different social identities, such as race, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, and other dimensions of diversity. It recognizes that individuals possess multiple identities that can intersect and influence their experiences of privilege or oppression.
How does intersectionality impact DEI?
Intersectionality recognizes that individuals have multiple dimensions of identity that interact and intersect. It goes beyond seeing diversity as a unique characteristic and recognizes the complexity of human experiences. By considering how different identities intersect, organizations gain a more complete understanding of the diversity and unique challenges faced by people with intersecting identities.
Other reading: How to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.
