4 Powerful Actions: How to Establish Your DEIB Strategy for 2023

It seems evident by now that most organizations are preparing for extremely uncertain economic conditions in 2023 (continued global inflation, layoffs and recession among them).

Usually, most of these organizations do what seems to be the “easiest” thing to do to prepare for market shocks: downsize their workforce.

In almost all cases, they begin with teams whose work will decrease (for example, recruitment teams – which they end up paying very dearly for after a few months when market conditions improve), or whose people they seemingly see as underperforming, or teams that business leaders don’t necessarily see connected with revenue creation, innovation, cost reduction or anything in between.

Sadly, in the majority of the cases, HR, and specifically DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging) teams, are among the first subjects of corporate downsizing. This does not mean that business leaders don’t necessarily see the value in DEIB (although some really don’t), but it means that they don’t see how doing more or investing more (or the same) in DEIB connects with helping the business survive and thrive through crises by generating more revenue, becoming more innovative or reducing costs.

Research shows that diverse and inclusive organizations where people feel psychologically safe and that they belong outperform the competition in the three key financial indicators mentioned above: generating more revenue, becoming more innovative and reducing costs. Unfortunately, either business leaders don’t see it (or they see it but still choose to the “easiest” path to respond to market shocks) and/or those of us in the field of HR + DEIB have not been able to create a stronger case for those leaders to focus their cost cutting efforts in areas other than HR/DEIB.

I would love to be more optimistic and say: “organizations won’t downsize their DEIB teams in 2023 because they truly care about what the right thing to do is for the people and they will instead double down on DEIB next year”. But, that would be a lie. The reality is that even when leaders care about doing “the right thing to do for the people”, if they don’t see how that aligns and contributes to doing “the right thing for the business” then they will most definitely axe their DEIB teams (with very visible long-lasting effects such as external and internal reputational challenges).

Thus, my preference is in choosing an alternative thinking and mindset strategy. That is, to exceptionally and extraordinarily connect the dots between generating more revenue, becoming more innovative and reducing costs (what we very often call “the language of the business”) with DEIB strategies (what can be understood as “the language of HR”), and how those dots connected ultimately allow the organization to outperform the competition and survive and thrive even in times of crisis and uncertainty.

For DEIB professionals this would entail a twofold thinking strategy: understanding that DEIB is the right thing to do for the people, but also acknowledging that doing so must be the right thing for the business too. More importantly, by embracing the fact that one can’t excel without the other we are going to be on a much better path to continue doing our DEIB work.

In my view, there are four components that allow us to do the above effectively:

Component 1: Understand deeply the business goals and priorities and how they are shifting to adapt to potential market shocks

We always talk about HR understanding business goals and priorities, more specifically those that have to do with financial metrics. Unfortunately, even though we have talked about this for decades it continues to be an unrealized strategy. This time, however, if we want to get our DEIB teams surviving and even thriving during the uncertain future economic conditions, then we must fully understand business goals and priorities.

Talk to the CEO and CFO, go around on a listening tour to understand the pain points of the internal HR/DEIB clients, have a clear understanding of how the strategies are shifting in the organization.

For example, during times of crises (like COVID) many organizations decided to abandon new business initiatives and double down on others. Some other businesses, instead, decided to innovative and open up new products and services. Whatever it is, make sure you can recite the business goals and priorities like your own name!

Component 2: Break down the business goals and priorities to understand the specific operational and people challenges they will pose to the business

As you gain the clearest understanding of business goals and priorities, now it is time to use your HR skills and capabilities to define what operational and people challenges they pose for the organization. For example, if a company is looking to abandon an existing line of business that is still in initial phases and sucking up resources and moves on to doubling down on an existing product, what does that mean for the people working on the first? How doubling down on an existing product will require more talent and even new skills?

To understand the operational and people challenges to implement and achieve business goals and priorities, make sure you are performing this exercise with your clients. They may not know much about HR, but they may have an idea about the upcoming challenges and difficulties that those goals will create for them.

Component 3: Connect the dots: business goals, priorities, people challenges, people data, and how Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and/or Belonging strategies will help solve those challenges

Now you arrived to the fun exercise and the space where you will prove the “business value” of investing more (not less), even during times of crisis and uncertainty, in a DEIB team. Your narrative can’t only be “by becoming more diverse we are doing the right thing for our talent and for society”. That is a powerful statement, but for a business leader who is dealing with ridiculous top-down demands and pressures to achieve his or her goals, that statement becomes more powerful when it is the likes of “this is how investing in diversity and inclusion will help us solve challenge X or Y that you and I worked out as we were thinking how to achieve goal A or B”.

To effectively connect the dots between business goals and priorities and DEIB you must go through steps one and two first. Then you have to be able to truly set up a DEIB strategy that is twofold: the right thing for the business and the right thing for the humans. That’s not rocket science, but it isn’t 2+2 either. Here, you may need to rely on market data to see what your competitors or other organizations are doing. You may need to talk to DEIB experts or business leaders who have already accomplished difficult business goals by investing more in DEIB. You may need to being steps 1-3 with business leaders who are already on the path of acknowledging that DEIB is a way to achieve business goals, instead of starting with the “unconvinced”. And, perhaps more importantly, you may need to start with the goals and priorities where there is a more clear connection with DEIB.

Component 4: Create and evaluate the metrics, indicators and milestones that will determine whether the DEIB strategies are actually solving the operational and people challenges they were meant to operate and how much added value they are creating

Last, you have to include the metrics, indicators and milestones that will prove that what you said was going to work actually works. And, if it is not working, at least you will be able to determine what data points are falling behind and intervene.

This doesn’t happen ex-post, by the way. You don’t design metrics and indicators after you started implementing the strategy. It happens ex-ante. You are clear from the beginning and you (maybe together with your business leaders) design the DEIB indicators that will support the case for more and not less investment in it.

It is important to understand that the achievement of a business goal depends on many factors, not just DEIB. Thus, your metrics and indicators are DEIB metrics and indicators connected to the goal, but alone don’t achieve it. This is critical because you may achieve your DEIB goals and the business goal may still fall short. Clarity in this regards is fundamental.

Doing these four things doesn’t guarantee that a DEIB team wouldn’t be downsized or eliminated altogether, but it does provide a much stronger case for DEIB to be strengthen in 2023 rather than cut out. 

------------

By Enrique Rubio, Founder at Hacking HR