4 ways to boost the ROI of DEI programs

4 ways to boost the ROI of your DEI programs

November 15, 2022 5:30 AM

How does your organization approach diversity, equity and inclusion?

The answer to that question likely varies greatly depending on a number of factors, from what industry you work in and your seniority level to what gender, race and ethnicity you identify with. Decades of corporate efforts to improve company culture and equity have yielded varying results, but one takeaway is universal: Inclusion takes work, and it takes honesty.

We recently spoke to four industry leaders to understand just how their organizations exercise a genuine commitment to DEI — one that results in cultural growth as well as a healthy and thriving bottom line.

Here's what they had to say.

Think holistically

"We are moving away from formal programs and baking our DEI efforts into strategy. Programs have a start and an end. And that is not necessarily part of your culture. Your DEI strategy should not, in my opinion, be a collection of programs. Our professional networks provide our people with opportunities to form a community and to connect inside and outside of work. It helps them create informal mentoring relationships and strengthen their leadership skills. It's grassroots, and it creates a real back-and-forth between our communities and leadership." —Leslie Patterson, Americas and US DEI leader, EY

Measure progress

"Our focus is gender equality. We joined the UN Global Compact Target Gender Equality initiative, which will assist us in structuring our strategic plans. We introduced a coaching program, Balance, to support gender equality in leadership. Recent research indicates that 87% of Fortune 500 companies with a female CEO record above-average profits, so there's no excuse for 'business as usual.' The UK side of our business ranked among the top companies for DEI on Glassdoor; we're holding ourselves to this standard in the U.S. as well." —Caroline Fox, global ED&I strategy lead, Frank Recruitment Group

Reconsider recruiting

"My employer makes a conscious effort to diversify our recruiting outreach strategy to embrace our DEI efforts. Job ads, employee referrals, nor any other single approach provides a representative sample of the candidates in a job market. Relying on one approach overlooks most candidates. We gather a talent pool full of diverse candidates by sourcing them from a variety of unconventional hiring platforms, such as Hired and Underdog. We also use offline recruitment methods such as industry- specific conferences and events, or host our own meetups." — Andrew Chen, chief product officer, Videeo

Prioritize development

"We're developing DEI training programs for all levels of leadership to ensures that everyone has access to the same information about what it means to be an inclusive organization. There have been some challenges, however. One is that some managers are not comfortable talking about issues related to race or gender in a corporate setting. Another is that many employees don't feel it's their place to bring up these issues because they make them uncomfortable or don't know how to handle them themselves." — Kimberley Tyler-Smith, VP of strategy and growth, Resume Worded