Once you’ve done some of the preliminary work and are ready to present your strategy to the company, it’s important to get everyone bought in. We’ve created a template deck that you can use to present the strategy to your organization!

Having Brave Conversations About D&I in the Workplace is a Necessity for Success

As HR professionals, we all want to play a role in helping our workplace to improve diversity and inclusion (D&I). But, that can be a difficult task. How do you create an environment where our differences are celebrated? How do you change long-held beliefs and biases?

Don’t assume corporate social responsibility (CSR) is nothing more than draining company resources for the sake of being nice; it’s a critical element of building a business.

For example, over 70 percent of millennials - with a combined spending power of $2.45 trillion dollars - will spend more on brands that support causes. Add in the boost to employee morale from CSR, the tax benefits, and the marketing benefits and you’ve got a compelling reason for your company to give back.

So how can a company find and support community groups and nonprofits?

Picture the most admired companies in the world, and chances are they have an ERG - or ten. Sometimes that goal is social and fun, such as an ERG for vegans in the office. More commonly, though, ERGs create space for employees of underrepresented identity groups, such as LGBTQ+ people, women, or people of colour.

Crescendo disclaimer: This policy is for example purposes only. It may not meet the needs of your organization due to jurisdictional or other legal framework differences. Any adoption of this policy should include a review from any relevant parties to your organization’s circumstances.

Commentary is underlined to offer context on some sections and can be deleted in the final product. All text within [square brackets] is intended to be replaced with your company name as stated within the bracket.

The sections in this sample policy are as follows:

Getting asked to executive sponsor a diversity and inclusion project is an honour, but it isn’t all smiles and speeches.

It’s a signal that your team believes you ‘get it’ and can effect change. Both of those things require action to fully realize the value your team sees in you.

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) stretches across the whole organization, so D&I success metrics should too. Specific D&I success metrics indicating both micro and macro organizational impact is necessary to show the value of your program and measure the outcomes of D&I projects.

Creating and executing inclusive events requires a dedicated attendee focus. This can initially be time consuming, but embedding D&I into your event process will build the habits necessary to host amazing, inclusive events.

Hiring can be overwhelming, and when you have the added goal of hiring diversely, it can be hard to know where to start. It may be tempting to limit yourself to who happens to apply to your job, or to skim applications based on traditional measures like a degree from a top university. Unfortunately, that’s also a fast track to a homogeneous team.

Building for inclusion is fundamentally about ensuring the maximum number of people possible can use your product.

Add in the fact that marginalized communities have huge buying power - for example Americans with disabilities alone have $175 billion dollars in discretionary spending and global LGBTQ+ buying power is estimated at over $1 trillion dollars - building inclusive products has a direct revenue connection.

Inclusive writing is about focusing on what the reader needs and how the reader interacts with content. As language evolves, content marketers and writers alike must learn new ways to continue producing content that resonates with a wide customer base.

You’re likely already employing parents. Millennials are now in the 22-36 age range, and while it is true that many are delaying parenthood, these remain the most common years to start a family. Good policies will enable you to retain top performers through this life phase. Parents are skilled prioritizers, and many of them claim to be even more productive in their work than they were prior to parenthood. Supporting parents doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and great policies can help you stand out from the pack as an employer of choice.

Once you get past diversity and inclusion basics, the next step is all about finding what works in your organization. This means you need high quality diversity and inclusion (D&I) metrics - ones that help with eliminating researcher bias - so you can track progress over time.

Diversity and inclusion is about a lot of things, chief among them creating work environments where all types of people are welcome and can thrive. Said another way, it’s about creating a work environment optimized for sourcing talent and increasing productivity.

When asking for money, resources, or even just executive support (which means asking for their time) for your diversity and inclusion strategy, be aware that you are competing against other corporate initiatives asking for resources. It may not be fair – buying new pens with logos on them can hardly feel comparative to a D&I program – but it’s the reality of budgets.

So, you’ve decided to embark on the journey of creating a diverse and inclusive organization - but where do you start? Knowing which strategies to implement can be daunting, as can figuring which organizational actions will be or have been effective. At the same time, how do you create an approach that is specifically and uniquely tailored to your organization? To help answer some of these questions, we have compiled a list of measurement tools that can help in various areas of your particular diversity and inclusion program.

In keeping with the title of most diverse city in the world, Toronto has many organizations working to fight injustice, discrimination, and build community for under-served groups. Each group on this list has a unique angle or way of working to support its community.

The organizations listed here are by no means exhaustive, nor does this list imply they are the only ones doing the work they do. The vast network of organizations in the city often collaborate, helping in many different ways that contribute to change over time. Crescendo highlighted a few organizations doing interesting, impactful work in the following communities:

1-on-1 meetings may be the most important time spent in a company. Not only are they times to share experiences and deliver critical feedback, they are a key driver in reduced turnover and higher employee engagement. Managers also become better leaders because they learn about different employee work styles and how to motivate different types of people. Combine that with the revenue jump that inclusive organizations enjoy and the case is clear: inclusive 1-on-1’s need to be a business priority.

More studies on diversity and inclusion are published seemingly every week, each discussing its benefits and fallbacks with intensity. To the D&I practitioner, this can seem like a great thing - visibility and data for the cause is suddenly everywhere.

However, this is a double edged sword for people hoping to start inclusion initiatives in their business. While there’s visibility, it’s easy for detractors to say D&I is just a fad.

Instead of starting with the intent to “have an activity about D&I,” thoughtful leaders and diversity champions should begin with the end in mind. Set the goal of activities to be both increased interpersonal understanding and increased awareness of invisible things like privilege, not either / or, in order to get the most from your time with the fewest possible side effects.

As you get started on your DEI journey as an organization, it becomes important that you be proactive rather than simply compliant or reactive in your approach. Here’s a guide to help you assess your current structures, policies and processes so that you can make changes that will help you create a more inclusive workplace.