DEI Guide: How to Boost Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Work

While everyone’s specific definition of diversity might differ—proof in and of itself regarding the importance of discussing diversity—it fundamentally means the presence of differences. In a workplace, this means there are or should be many different demographics of people working together. These demographics can include different types of people in the following categories: ethnicities, gender identities, marital statuses, national origins, physical abilities, political perspectives, races, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses, and veteran statuses.

Equity means ensuring everyone receives fair treatment on a level playing field. It also means rooting out any disparities in your organization to ensure there is equal opportunity; an equitable distribution of resources among all of your workers; and the potential for equal outcomes for all your employees, regardless of which demographic group they represent.

Inclusion means people of all different demographics feel equally treated and welcome in your organization. This means ensuring all employees can build on their core competencies and express themselves in the ways they best see fit. Marginalized and underrepresented groups should feel just as included as anyone else. Inclusion doesn’t mean assimilation (or forcing people to hide a part of their identity to fit in)—it means ensuring everyone feels appreciated and heard as they are.

Pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, in your workplace can improve your organization from a pragmatic standpoint. Here are just five benefits you can expect to see as a result of DEI in your work environment:

1. 1. Better customer communication: Having a more diverse workforce means you can better connect with a diverse customer base. By placing emphasis on equity and inclusion, your customers will also feel welcomed and heard by your company.
2. 2. Greater job satisfaction: Creating an inclusive culture at work creates a positive employee experience for everyone. When a brand affirms people’s identities and hears their voices, it can boost job retention and satisfaction because of the increase in employees’ well-being.
3. 3. Increased ideation: An inclusive environment gives diverse teams greater bandwidth for creativity. When you allow people to be who they are as individuals, they can work more effectively as a holistic collective.
4. 4. Learning opportunities: Cultivating an environment filled with people from different backgrounds and with different identities means hearing from many different perspectives. These perspectives give everyone else an opportunity to see things uniquely.
5. 5. Organizational integrity: Implementing DEI initiatives enables you to better fulfill the social commitments of your organization. Rather than pursuing a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environment in a nebulous sense, you’ll be confident that you have a concrete plan of action for ensuring everyone at your company feels welcome and safe.

Here are seven steps for implementing a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy (DEI strategy) that you can continue to maintain and improve over time:

1. 1. Check in with employees. Before beginning any new DEI efforts, discover how employees feel about the current environment at your company. Do your best to make sure they realize there are no wrong answers and they can speak as honestly as possible. This is an important first step to increasing a sense of inclusion.
2. 2. Create an action plan. Draw up a strategic plan to base your initial DEI decision-making on something concrete and tangible. Make these commitments and metrics known to the rest of the workforce so everyone can hold one another accountable. This sort of business strategy can help solidify your next steps forward.
3. 3. Expand beyond human resources. Implementing DEI programs should involve more individuals than just those in your human resources (HR) department. Everyone should be on board with working toward ensuring all employees receive equitable and inclusive treatment.
4. 4. Identify disparities. To bolster diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, it’s important to recognize where disparities exist in your organization. For instance, perhaps there are not very many LGBTQ+ people or Black or Indigenous employees in your organization because of unconscious bias. Do your best to spot explicit, implicit, and systemic instances of bias, discrimination, and disparity in your organization so you can determine how to best mitigate and ultimately eliminate them.
5. 5. Prepare diversity training. Implement a regular training program to ensure the entire workforce is sensitive to the needs of each demographic in their workplace. Many people can behave in an insensitive manner without even realizing it. This sort of diversity training can help prevent that from happening.
6. 6. Root out inequities. An inclusive workplace is an equitable workplace. Examine your hiring processes, HR practices, social engagements, and so on to see how you can better iron out any inequities in your organization.
7. 7. Seek out partnerships. Team up with a social justice nonprofit or workplace mentoring program that specializes in DEI efforts. Doing this kind of work often requires guidance from someone experienced and sensitive to the unique identities of many different groups. You can learn a lot by asking for help.

Get the MasterClass Annual Membership for exclusive access to video lessons taught by business luminaries, including Sara Blakely, Chris Voss, Robin Roberts, Bob Iger, Howard Schultz, Anna Wintour, and more.