A second look at DEI: Retaining diverse talent
I’ve long feared that someday my name might have an asterisk next to it indicating a “diversity hire” and many other young women of colour share the same fear.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has become a commonplace phrase in many HR departments today, as the push for more equitable representation has resulted in higher performing companies. During the height of the Black Lives Matter protests across the US last June, companies placed renewed importance on diverse hiring practices, unconscious bias training, and issuing anti-racism statements. But while many companies have begun to acknowledge the importance of diversity, inclusion and equity, women, particularly of colour, are still significantly underrepresented in higher levels of the corporate pipeline, with many considering leaving the workforce entirely.
So, what is going wrong here?
Promoting diversity in hiring practices is not enough if a company is unable to retain its diverse employees.
“Take advantage of hiring initiatives that prioritize diversity, but if you’re looking for a genuinely inclusive company, pay attention to how current employees are treated, mentored, and promoted” says Nithya Ramachandran, VP of Strategy and Integration at NATIONAL Public Relations.
Last year Nithya and I got to talking about the unique challenges for young women in the workplace and she explained that while plenty of companies have placed more emphasis on hiring as an immediate action to demonstrate their commitment to DEI, looking at which employees are represented at higher levels of management is far more telling of a company’s values.
Strong DEI programs integrated into recruitment, retention, and advancement need to go beyond asterisks indicating “diversity hires.” In addition to those programs, BCG’s research shows that companies with a culture of allyship are far more likely to foster inclusion.
Allyship culture in the workplace
Retaining employees of diverse ethnicity, race, gender-identity, and ability requires a genuine effort beyond performative activism. Issuing statements and even conducting formal bias training is ineffective if the culture itself is not conducive to supporting the voices of diverse employees. There is a disconnect between how dominant culture employees experience company culture and how minority employees experience it.
In a study done by LeanIn.Org and SurveyMonkey, over 80% of white men and women felt they were allies to colleagues of other races and ethnicities, but less than half of Black women and slightly more than half of Latinas felt that they had strong allies in the workplace. The data further showed that 49% of Black women feel like their race or ethnicity poses further challenges to getting promoted, whereas only 3% of white women and 11% of women overall echoed the same sentiment. Retaining top talent requires your company to act on building a culture of genuine allyship and support.
Shifting focus to digital inclusion
The global pandemic has created a unique opportunity for company leaders to encourage more inclusive online interactions as a way of building positive company culture. For many organizations, remote work is here to stay in some capacity, and companies that value DEI will need to create online environments which foster honest conversations and allow employees to bring their whole selves to work.
Often, the onus of these conversations and culture-building activities is placed on women, people of colour, and women of colour as additional tasks on top of their regular work responsibilities, adding to their workload as well as emotional burden. But what if these digital culture-building efforts could be automated, bringing together a hybrid workforce in an inclusive and empowering way?
At Areto Labs we’ve developed Coach, a Slack bot which supports online culture building amongst all team members. It works by sending prompts and questions to initiate conversations and promote engagement with remote workers, and uses natural language processing to provide sentiment and engagement analysis to help managers better understand morale and engagement. Coach promotes a fun team culture while supporting HR initiatives to create an inclusive working environment.
Recruiting diverse talent is only step one to becoming an inclusive company. Break down the narrative of “diversity hires” by retaining talent and diversifying the workforce at all stages of the corporate pipeline. Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about how we can help support your culture building and DEI initiatives today.