Amid economic uncertainty, many leaders are facing pressure to prioritize organizational efficiency and customer-facing roles. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) jobs have been hit particularly hard by widespread layoffs this year, and many companies no longer have a dedicated DEI budget. Even more concerning is that reductions in force (RIFs) often have an outsized impact on women and underrepresented groups.
Now is not the time to walk back DEI commitments. Expanding the diversity of your company is not only the right thing to do, it's a business imperative. Diverse teams are shown to
While RIFs and budget cuts are inevitable in a challenging economy, there are steps business leaders can take to
Hold executives accountable to DEI outcomes
One crucial step is to frame DEI impact as a key leadership outcome. Without a dedicated DEI team, a broader base of leaders must be held accountable for those efforts.
For example, incorporating DEI impact into executive performance reviews can ensure this work remains a priority. At Outreach, we use performance reviews to hold leaders accountable for hiring and retaining diverse talent, as well as for employee engagement survey results, which include questions on inclusivity, equity, and belonging. These survey results can offer valuable insight into trends within functional areas that might indicate a need to reinforce your commitment to an inclusive culture.
Analyzing attrition data and themes from stay interviews and exit interviews can also yield information about where diverse talent are and aren't thriving. Weave these insights, challenges, and opportunities into executives' performance expectations to bolster accountability.
But quantitative metrics alone are not enough to move the needle on DEI progress. Leaders should also be expected to role-model organizational values and be held accountable for those more qualitative outcomes during performance reviews. We include behaviors like
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Make DEI a recruiting and retention priority
Even without dedicated DEI leaders, recruiting and retention teams can play a key role in driving DEI impact.
One approach is to hold the recruiting team and the leaders they support accountable for diverse hiring, and ensuring the organization's hiring process remains equitable and inclusive. At Outreach, our recruiting team has taken the lead to ensure we have inclusive job descriptions, a diverse candidate pipeline, and representation of diverse groups among individuals conducting interviews.
It's also good practice to audit recruiting processes with a DEI lens to identify and remove any unnecessary barriers. After a similar audit at Outreach, we made the decision to remove assessments for entry-level sales positions. In its place, we doubled down on onboarding to widen our pool of talent and ensure individuals from varied backgrounds and experience levels can be successful in these roles.
On the retention side, ramping up employee listening and stay interviews can help drive DEI outcomes and catch blindspots even without dedicated resources. Ensure that there are specific questions in your employee engagement survey that address DEI and hold leaders accountable for their results. Look for trends within functional areas that might indicate a need to reinforce your commitment to an inclusive culture. Stay interviews are a great way to get ahead of any potential departures. These conversations can create the space to discuss obstacles, mentorship opportunities, and any areas of concern that may be hard to bring up in day-to-day meetings.
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Empower and reward DEI work at all levels
While leaders must be held accountable for DEI outcomes, individuals within the organization must be empowered to drive DEI progress and, crucially, be recognized for this work.
Leveraging your lived experience in service of an organization's mission is rewarding, but can also be cognitively and emotionally draining. Individuals' DEI contributions should be framed as leadership skills and recognized as meaningful, business-critical work.
Internal DEI leaders should also be empowered to impact key initiatives, whether that's rewriting a company's mission, vision and values, participating in important events like a customer conference, or reviewing product or service offerings for inclusivity and accessibility. Again, this work must be rewarded and recognized. It should not be viewed as "extra" or volunteer work, but rather a crucial part of an individuals' contribution to the organization.
At Outreach, we recently rewrote our mission, vision and values to ensure they were keeping pace with our growth and could truly answer the question, how can an individual be successful here? Bringing our ERG leaders and other individuals into the process was what made the mission, vision, and values refresh so successful. It was important to us that our values were a collective process and not something that's dictated top-down by leadership. ERG leaders play an important role in ensuring these core guiding principles are reflective of our diverse culture, and we recognize the leadership role they play in performance reviews and in equity grants.
Now is the time to double-down on DEI commitments
There is still crucial work that can be done to change behavior and drive equity, even with fewer dedicated resources. Lower-investment activities can yield big results when everyone is held accountable for DEI outcomes, from the CEO to the recruiting team.
The companies that are best equipped to weather economic headwinds are those that invest in their people. DEI work absolutely impacts the customer and the product. Unless business leaders continue to prioritize DEI, they risk losing employee trust, jeopardizing hard-won diversity gains and disrupting the proven business benefits of diverse teams.
