Data Drives Success: 5 Steps to Map Your Organization’s DEI Landscape
Has your company launched diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, only to see them struggle or fail? Maybe you launched an initiative to recruit more job candidates from underrepresented groups, but after months of effort, your staff still consists of folks with similar backgrounds. What’s the problem? Or, maybe you know what the problem is, but you’re not sure how to fix it. Answering those questions requires data – specific to your organization – and the only way to get that information is to conduct an in-depth organizational assessment.
The first step in creating any lasting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative is to understand where you currently are. Your organization’s DEI goals, statement, and actions will all depend on the current company culture and employees’ receptiveness to DEI. In order to get to where you want to go, you must understand where you’re starting from.
A full organizational culture assessment consists of five key phases:
- Auditing existing organizational materials, policies, and procedures
- Surveying for demographic data as well as indicators of employee sentiment around DEI
- Listening to individual experiences within the organization
- Analyzing data to find common themes and outliers
- Sharing findings with the organization to gain buy-in for next steps
Let’s dive into each step in more detail.
