Developed by IIICONIC.
1. Clarify Your Purpose
Why are you doing this? What is your motivation? What are the benefits and the desired outcomes you want? Agree on a shared understanding of what diversity, equity and inclusion means to you. Obtain buy-in from all stakeholders. Avoid the common check the box approach to avoid unintended consequences. The tone and commitment for your diversity journey must emanate from the senior ranks.
2. Review the Culture
Review your current mission, values, beliefs and traditions. Are the actions of your leaders aligned with the guiding principles and values of the club? The leaders of the club reinforce workplace culture in a positive or inadvertently negative way everyday. Ask your staff to define the workplace culture they experience. Is their definition of the culture congruent with the established values and their actual workplace behavior? Clearly understand the characteristics of your current culture before trying to implement a diversity plan.
3. Audit the People and Processes in Place
Analyze all human resources practices, policies and procedures. Partner with your legal department to ensure the policies are compliant and void of bias. Understand the process for reporting workplace harassment and discrimination, the investigation process and progressive discipline steps to resolve employee matters. Implementing exit interviews will help you gain valuable insight about the employee work experience. The information obtained will help you decrease employee turnover and increase employee retention. This audit process will help you uncover blind spots in your existing policies and practices that could potentially stunt DEI progress.
4. Conduct Baseline Assessments
An assessment provides data-driven information about your current state of diversity, equity and inclusion. Collect diversity statistics and demographics at all levels including ethnicity, age, gender, veteran and disability status. Utilize lifecycle data to create a human capital index which captures: Employee function, seniority, staff reporting to female managers, staff reporting to minority managers, promotions, raises, bonuses, board of directors, committees, candidate pools, voluntary and involuntary attrition rates, complaints and complaint resolutions by age, race and gender. If you don’t capture this information from your membership office, consider a voluntary inclusion survey for new members to increase diverse member representation. This thoughtful process will provide the data to determine what DEI indicators you want to measure and will help guide your future DEI strategy.
5. Collect Feedback and Experiences
Understand the employee and member experience before implementing changes to promote your DEI plan. Conduct in depth research via surveys, diversity assessments, focus groups, one on ones and town halls. Create feedback channels at every level to encourage a continuous flow of information from employees and members. The sooner you know about issues and concerns, the sooner you can take corrective action. Determine the levels of transparency for sharing this data so better and broader solutions can be generated.
6. Evaluate Learning and Development Programs and the Training Outcomes
Does your current training plan increase participants’ cultural awareness, knowledge, and communication? Any training you offer should contribute to the betterment of the overall business. DEI learning should be part of your annual training program. Recommended training: Unconscious or Implicit bias training (gatekeepers for hiring), cultural awareness (all management), annual anti-harassment policy review (all staff) and inclusive mindset (executives). Review training allocation to ensure equity and access for available professional development opportunities.
7. Align Diversity Process with Strategic Business Goals
# 1 Determine what issues of diversity, equity and inclusion you want your club to focus on. List the desired outcomes, then prioritize. Expand your vision to articulate what you aspire to achieve. Create a diversity, equity and inclusion commitment statement. Set specific action plans and assign ownership for each goal. Your DEI scorecard should be anchored to these established goals. Be inclusive, involve all levels in the process to ensure buy-in and support from all stakeholders. Integrate your diversity, equity and inclusion commitment statement into all business and operational plans. The larger focus is to embed an inclusion lens within every business practice for enriched employer and member experiences.
8. Encourage Collaboration with Cultural Teams
Create opportunities for staff to better connect in the workplace. Ensure psychologically safe spaces for DEI events. Consider inclusion councils, ERG (Employee Resources Groups) and women’s forums. Designate days of inclusion to allow for intercultural learning, idea sharing and problem solving. Intentionally allocate time to bring different teams together to share work experiences, ideas and collaborate to the advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Invite diverse guests speakers from different industries to offer fresh perspectives to inspire the team.
9. Invite Diverse Talent to Your Recruitment Process
Diversify your hiring sources. Utilize gender neutral words in job descriptions, avoid prohibitive and exclusionary language. Invest in artificial intelligence software to eliminate bias in your recruiting and hiring processes. Follow EEOC hiring guidelines. Post your non-discrimination and DEI commitment statement in all recruitment and onboarding communications. Both documents should be refreshed annually with all staff. Develop a college ambassador program and mentorships to attract and recruit diverse next generation talent. Create diverse internships. Establish a diverse slate interviewing policy. Conduct post-interviews with diverse candidates to gain honest insight into your interviewing process. Set goals for retention not just for hiring. When diverse employees resign, take the time to ask them why.
10. Diversify Your Supply Chain
Get to know your supply chain. Understand who makes the purchasing decisions and why certain vendors are being used? Invite other departments to the procurement process to expand sourcing ideas. Survey your current suppliers and inquire about ways to embed diversity into their procurement practices. Begin outreach dialogue to minority and women owned businesses. Update your purchasing department’s current bidding policy to require a diverse slate of vendors to be considered. Connect your local and state certified MWBE (Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise) directories to expand your sourcing program. Support your local and national supplier diversity councils, they offer great resources and networks for diversification of your supply chain.
11. Expand Access. Create an Accessibility Statement
Educate staff on accessibility and how to better assist employees and members with accommodation requests. Consider offering assistive technology, website screen readers, open or closed caption, larger print and text options. Commit to translating club information into braille such as history, general club information and menus. Update the use of the word handicapped to accessible in all print and signage. Create an accessibility statement to elevate club services offered to all people. Reach out to diverse associations and advocates for the preferred language and the best practices for accommodations and accessibility. Preboard new members by offering a dedicated communication channel to request accommodation needs to best experience your club.
12. Elevate Your Marketing Strategy to be More Inclusive
Use the club’s demographic statistics and survey feedback to authentically market to multicultural members and employees. Redefine how you represent different generations and multicultural people in your marketing, events, promotional, human resources and training materials. Align your diversity commitment statement and inclusion values with your brand messaging. Invite other departments and diverse members to share their insight to help create a diversity style guide for authentic brand representation.
13. Seek Out Opportunities to Celebrate Diversity
Acknowledge different holidays and observances. Recognize federally designated diverse holidays, months and days. Utilize employee workforce demographics to identify cultural events and observances that are personal to your staff. Consider floating benefit days to empower employees to select the diverse holidays that are most meaningful to them. Prior to implementing serious changes to your holiday policies, ask the staff and members what diverse local, national and world observances are most meaningful to them.
14. Prioritize Metrics to Measure and Reward Impact
Design simple measures. Monitor metrics that reflect the most impact. Scorecard metrics to monitor: Applicant sourcing, hiring, promotions, training allocation, retention, internal mobility, and succession planning. For members: Attrition rates by gender and race, # of diverse events offered and # of diverse representation on committees and boards. Share your DEI scorecard with internal and external stakeholders. Consistently seek feedback from members and employees to measure the inclusion climate and your DEI progress. Include DEI metrics as part of the annual performance review and rewards process. Diversity, equity and inclusion goals exceeded should be rewarded like any other business metric.
15. Celebrate and Reward Success
You can never over promote, over celebrate or over reward your diversity and inclusion commitment efforts. Share inclusion success stories of employee engagement, hiring and promotions, mentoring, board and committee appointments, diverse partnerships, broadened philanthropy and community outreach. A member of the marketing team should be included in all diversity councils, they are instrumental to ensure the full amplification of your DEI success.