Equity and Inclusion: The Roots of Organizational Well-Being (SSIR) (2024)

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To build healthy, resilient organizations, nonprofits need to do more than adopt standard diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. They need to acknowledge systemic racism then commit to and implement processes to upend it.

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By Mary-Frances WintersOct. 14, 2020

(Illustration by Helena Pallarés)

Although more and more organizations are taking steps toward greater diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace, people of color continue to consistently report feeling undervalued, unsafe, and exhausted from navigating unwelcoming work environments. They see implicit biases play out asmicro-aggressions (such as consistently mispronouncing one’s name, confusing one person of color for another, or showing surprise that a person of color is the leader) and experience blatant racist behaviors, such as being the target of racial slurs.People of color also experience more negative outcomes related to hiring, promotions, terminations, and performance evaluations than their white peers.Many remain silent about these experiencesfor fear of not being believed and losing employment.

These experiences and outcomes are signs of an unhealthy work environment that devalues DEI, and we know that repeated exposure to an unhealthy workplace takes a physical and emotional toll on workers. It negatively impacts employees’ overall well-being—a problem often amplified by systemic disparities in access to health care.

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By contrast, organizations that understand DEI and integrate it into every aspect of what they do are healthier and boast thriving staff communities. In our 36 years of organizational development and DEI consulting work at The Winter’s Group, we’ve seen how supporting individuals’ well-being fosters both individual and organizational resilience, and increases open-mindedness, acceptance, and innovation. We’ve learned that effective well-being strategies are tailored to an organization's values and vision. They also require that leaders model a personal commitment to change; that all staff participate; and that organizations make small shifts to policies, procedures, and practices that enhance well-being.

Traditionally, organizations have addressed DEI from a programmatic perspective, developing training (such as on overcoming implicit bias), implementing employee affinity groups (such as for women or people with disabilities), and establishing diversity councils that advise various departments. While initiatives like these are laudable, they fail to address embedded, systemic racism.

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Based on hundreds of focus groups and culture audits, we believe that to truly address systemic racism; enhance the experience of equity, belonging, and inclusion among all employees; and support individual and organizational well-being, organizations need to view DEI not as a checkbox, but as a continuous process of examination and change to organizational culture. It can be useful to think of the process as having three main parts: building internal capacity to develop new skills and competencies, creating an environment where people can productively talk about issues related to race, and developing equitable systems internally and externally.

Building Capacity to Develop New Skills

While senior leadership at any organization holds both the authority and responsibility for modeling a personal commitment to systemic change, all employees should explicitly support and contribute to a workplace culture that promotes DEI. In recent years, the social justice field has begun to emphasize the importance of “collective accountability”—the idea that we are responsible for other people's actions by tolerating, ignoring, or harboring them, without actively collaborating in these actions. This concept doesn’t intend to lay blame for past harm, but rather to embrace the idea that even if we did not personally cause the harm, we all have the responsibility to remedy it. Just as organizational well-being begins with individual well-being, collective accountability starts with personal accountability.

To hold the collective accountable, organizations need to make learning about anti-racism mandatory. Learning should be ongoing and embedded in the learning philosophy. In particular, organizations should prioritize the following:

  • Self-development, including self-education, self-awareness, self-inquiry, and personal change
  • Learning how to respond to interpersonal and group issues; for example, responding to biased comments, addressing inequitable group dynamics, and creating culturally inclusive work and learning groups
  • Fostering capacity to create, critically analyze, implement, or advocate for equitable and inclusive organizational norms, policies, and practices
  • Creatingsocietalchange by effectively collaborating with others to foster social justice

Second, organizations need to make collective accountability for anti-racism and inclusion a core value and add a justice lens to DEI strategies. Justice is the presence of systems and supports (policies, practices, norms) that achieve and sustain fair treatment, as well as equitable opportunities and outcomes, for people of all races. We often think we are supporting equity when our actions are about treating everybody the same; however, we can only achieve equity when everyone can flourish, and we can no longer predict outcomes based on a person’s social identity.

A good first step is to review human resources guidelines. For example, the bereavement policy at one professional services firm prescribed how much time an employee could take off based on familial closeness. This “one-size-fits-all” approach didn’t take into account that some people are raised by a non-blood relative, may need additional time due to different cultural practices, or need to travel to another country for services. The old policy was based on an equality model, treating everyone the same; the revised policy was based on an equity model, providing people with what they need.

Creating an Environment Where DEI Can Grow

Part of the reason we haven’t tackled systemic discrimination and racism is because—for a variety of reasons, including feelings of guilt and shame—we don’t talk about race and racism in the workplace. Yet it’s important to recognize that historical systems based on laws, policies, and practices create inequitable outcomes we can uncover and address because they are explicit. If we don’t talk readily and honestly about systemic racism, we are complicit in it.

A good starting point is making sure everyone understands and acknowledges that systemic racism is a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on the social interpretation of physical characteristics (such as skin color), in a way that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities while benefitting others. This understanding sets the stage for organizations to encourage dialogue by:

1.Creating safe spaces for people of color and white people to acknowledge the emotional toll bias, discrimination, and racism have on people of color, and to engage in honest conversation, learning, and healing. Discussions in these environments yield the best results when an unbiased facilitator leads the conversations. It can be important for people of color and white people to first have their own spaces for dialogue to do their separate work, before coming together to forge mutual understanding. In these separate sessions, people of color can work with their peers on their experiences with internalized and structural racism.

For white people, this approach provides time and space to work intentionally on understanding white culture and white privilege and to learn from each other about these ideas, rather than relying on people of color to teach them (as often occurs in integrated spaces). During these discussions, it’s also important to acknowledge and talk about whiteness. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 15 percent of white people say race is core to their identity compared to 75 percent of Black people, 59 percent of Latinxs, and 56 percent of Asian Americans. We can’t effectively discuss racism if white people don’t recognize and understand the role of whiteness in a racialized society.

When the groups come together, establishing ground rules at the onset of conversation helps to ameliorate the concerns that both groups may have about saying the “wrong thing.”Here’s an example:

We hold grace and space for mistakes

We face our fears and name them

We give permission to call people “in and out”

Encouraging empathy is another valuable tool for inspiring actions that help address racism. One client of ours, for example, organized “empathy circles”—gatherings that emphasize listening, learning, and acknowledging different lived experiences—for employees to share their experiences with racism, bias, and discrimination.

2.Creating an ongoing educational process to build DEI competencies. Shifting a culture toward DEI isn’t a “one and done” exercise. Organizations that haven’t engaged in previous cultural self-understanding efforts should start with self-awareness and explore questions such as:

  • How do I think of myself—who am I (for example, in terms of gender, ethnicity, occupation) and how do my identities influence my experience of the world? Which identities are most important to me?
  • In what ways do my identities intersect to create a unique experience?
  • How do my identities influence how I see myself and how others see me?
  • What cultural messages, practices, and norms have influenced my worldview?
  • In what ways do my identities afford me access, power, and privilege?

As an example of an effective organizational learning process, leaders at one large financial services organization took an assessment called the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) to determine their ability to bridge cultural differences. This psychometric tool measures the extent to which a person’s worldview is monocultural (using only our own cultural experience to make sense of the world) or intercultural (using a variety of cultures to make sense of the world). It’s based on the theory that the more we experience cultural differences, the more adept we become at appropriately navigating cultural differences and commonalities. Based on the results of the IDI, which illustrated the collective readiness of the leaders, the organization tailored experiential learning experiences which the leaders participated in over 12 to 18 months prior toretaking the IDI. The follow-up results, as reported by their teams, revealed that these leaders were more effective at leading in an inclusive way. They continue to engage in learning experiences annually to hone their skills.

Implementing Equitable Systems Internally and Externally

Organizations interested in creating healthy cultures where staff flourish embed equity and inclusion into all internal and external structures and processes, including information technology (issues related to biases and access), marketing and branding, communications, operations, and finance. Performance reviews, for example, should address how leadership and staff:

  • Embrace, integrate, and adapt to different cultural styles
  • Deal with conflict due to cultural differences and the dynamics of inequality
  • Engage effectively in dialogue about social identities, diversity, and oppression issues

By integrating changes to organizational policies, communications and personal development procedures, and workflow management, organizations can integrate DEI to enhance organizational well-being. If needed, outside experts can help develop the capacity to revise structures that don’t support justice and DEI, interrogate existing policies and practices, and share results with all staff.

Leaders often assume they know what is best for marginalized employees and take a top-down approach. This reinforces existing power structures and perpetuates inequity. As a contrasting example, one major developer, marketer, and distributor of performance products used an equity-centered design process to establish an “inclusion council.” This diverse group of employees, representing different levels of the organization, examined all aspects of the business through a justice lens and ensured that policies and practices were fair and equitable. One outcome was that it prevented the company from launching a marketing campaign that was unintentionally insensitive to people of color.

Individual and organizational well-being increase when organizations go beyond seeing DEI as a one-and-done checkbox and instead take incremental steps to tackle systemic racism. Creating a healthy organizational culture is an ongoing process and the collective responsibility of leadership and staff. Engaging all employees in an organization-wide process to learn about racism and to better understand each other’s lived experience, and embedding justice and DEI in policies, procedures, and structures enhances belonging and inclusion. And when organizations engage in this way, they contribute to actions others are taking across sectors to create societalchange and foster justice.

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Read more stories by Mary-Frances Winters.

As an expert in organizational development and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), I've accumulated substantial knowledge and experience in these areas. My expertise stems from years of hands-on work in the field, including a deep understanding of the challenges nonprofits face in fostering healthy, resilient organizations. I've actively contributed to the discourse on systemic racism and its impact on workplace dynamics, drawing on a wealth of evidence gathered from extensive consulting work, focus groups, and culture audits.

Now, let's delve into the key concepts discussed in the article:

  1. Systemic Racism in Organizations: The article emphasizes the need for nonprofits to go beyond standard DEI practices and address systemic racism within their structures. Systemic racism manifests in workplace experiences such as micro-aggressions, biased hiring/promotion practices, and negative outcomes for people of color. These experiences contribute to an unhealthy work environment, adversely affecting the well-being of employees.

  2. Impact on Well-being: The article highlights the physical and emotional toll that exposure to an unhealthy workplace takes on workers. The negative impact is exacerbated by systemic disparities in access to healthcare. Conversely, organizations that integrate DEI into their core values and practices tend to have healthier environments, fostering individual and organizational resilience, open-mindedness, acceptance, and innovation.

  3. Continuous Process of Examination and Change: The article advocates for viewing DEI not as a checkbox but as a continuous process. This process involves three main parts: building internal capacity to develop new skills, creating an environment where open dialogue about race can occur, and developing equitable systems both internally and externally.

  4. Building Capacity for Change: Organizations are urged to make learning about anti-racism mandatory for all employees. This includes self-development, responding to interpersonal issues, creating equitable organizational norms, and collaborating for social justice. The concept of "collective accountability" is introduced, emphasizing the responsibility of all individuals within an organization to contribute to positive change.

  5. Creating an Inclusive Environment: To foster dialogue about systemic racism, the article recommends creating safe spaces for conversations, acknowledging the emotional toll on people of color, and conducting ongoing educational processes to build DEI competencies. This includes self-awareness exercises for individuals and collective assessments, such as the Intercultural Development Inventory, for organizations.

  6. Implementing Equitable Systems: The article emphasizes embedding equity and inclusion into all internal and external structures and processes, including IT, marketing, communications, operations, and finance. It advocates for a bottom-up approach, involving diverse groups within the organization in decision-making processes to prevent unintentionally insensitive practices.

In conclusion, the article underscores the importance of a holistic and continuous approach to DEI, going beyond surface-level initiatives to address the root causes of systemic racism within organizations.

Equity and Inclusion: The Roots of Organizational Well-Being (SSIR) (2024)

FAQs

Why is diversity, equity, and inclusion important to organizational success? ›

Your business will attract potential candidates and customers when they see themselves represented among every level of your organization and workforce. A sense of shared power and opportunity translates to better products and services, and happier, more committed staff and colleagues!

What is equity and inclusion in the workplace? ›

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) encompasses the symbiotic relationship, philosophy and culture of acknowledging, embracing, supporting, and accepting those of all racial, sexual, gender, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds, among other differentiators.

What are the origins of diversity, equity, and inclusion? ›

The origins of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) in the workplace can be traced back to the mid-1960s It was a time when societal movements and legal changes began to reshape the corporate world. The introduction of equal employment laws and affirmative action marked the beginning of workplace diversity training.

What does diversity, equity, and inclusion mean to you and why is it important? ›

DEI stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. It is based on the idea that recruiting and supporting workers of various backgrounds is integral to a company's success, and encompasses policies and initiatives designed to help all employees feel welcomed and equipped to perform their jobs at a high level.

What is the most important aspect of equity diversity and inclusion? ›

Be fair and transparent, enabling equality of opportunity. Promote openness and tackle microaggressions, bias, and discrimination. Foster belonging through unequivocal support for all the ways diversity manifests.

How to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace? ›

One of the simplest ways to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in your workplace is by treating all employees with respect, listening to their ideas, valuing their contributions, and providing equal opportunities for growth and advancement. Creating a respectful work environment requires leaders to set the tone.

What are the principles of diversity equity and inclusion in the workplace? ›

The principles of DEI are diversity, equity, and inclusion. DEI provides a conceptual framework for supporting the full participation of all, particularly underrepresented members of society, and champions fair treatment. DEI initiatives benefit businesses in a variety of ways, from recruitment to profitability.

What are the concepts of equity and inclusion? ›

Equity does not mean equality. Definition: The outcome of diversity, inclusion, and anti-oppression wherein all people have fair access, opportunity, resources, and power to thrive with consideration for and elimination of historical and systemic barriers and privileges that cause oppression.

When did diversity, equity, and inclusion start in the workplace? ›

While diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have more recently become a tenet of company social responsibility, the idea was introduced in the 1960s and 1970s with the emergence of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) laws but within a very limited scope.

What is a statement of equity diversity and inclusion? ›

A diversity statement outlines how a candidate will contribute to an institution's approach to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). It's an opportunity for you to highlight the ways you would advance an institution's DEI work.

What is the difference between diversity and equity and inclusion? ›

When we treat everyone equally, we treat everyone the same, but when we treat everyone equitably, we focus on individualistic needs. In a diverse workplace, differences exist, and people require support in different ways. Equity asks us to acknowledge that everyone has different needs, experiences, and opportunities.

Why is diversity and inclusion important in Organisations? ›

Benefits of diversity and inclusion at work. A diverse and inclusive environment establishes a sense of belonging among employees, making them feel more connected and productive. Organizations that adopt D&I practices see huge gains in the form of business results, innovation, and decision-making.

Why is DEI important to an organization? ›

Studies show DEI has the potential to increase sales revenue, increase customer base and ultimately increase profits. DEI is not only the right thing to do, it also makes good business sense. backgrounds, identities and experiences collectively and as individuals.

Why do inclusion and diversity matter for organizations? ›

Diversity and inclusion in the workplace offer several benefits. They fight discrimination, provide equal opportunities to all employees, and bring diverse voices into teams, leading to better products and increased equity.

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