Is DEI dying?
“The answer is that it depends. If leaders don’t embrace change, DEI could die,” Dr. Sandra Upton, founder and chief DEI strategist with Upton Consulting Group, said in our interview.
Dr. Upton has been consulting with organizations on DEI for years, much before it was called DEI. Her book, Make It Last: A Roadmap and Practical Strategies for How to Do DEI Work, helps leaders answer the question: How do we turn our good intentions and high hopes toward DEI into real and lasting change?
These pivotal times for DEI work, where there is a perceived backlash, might feel like change within change. Because DEI has always needed to be part of a bigger change management strategy, DEI is well-positioned to manage this change within the change environment. Change management is necessary for organizational cultures to truly embrace the full diversity of their workforce, treat all people fairly and sustain a culture of inclusion.
Baiba Žiga, founder and CEO of Impulsum, a workplace culture and leadership development consultancy, emphasizes the need for leaders to rethink their approach to change management. She asserts that change should no longer be seen as “just another thing to plan for” but rather as the constant context in which businesses operate. Consequently, change leadership must become a core competency in every leader’s skill set, essential for navigating today’s workplace environments.
Given the recent perceptions of DEI backlash, DEI practitioners have been pivoting and planning for changes to the DEI industry as a whole, including language shifts, strategy adjustments, and behavior and systems work. For practitioners, DEI may feel like change management within change management.
To manage this change within change conundrum, Dr. Upton suggests that DEI leaders consider these change management strategies in the current politically polarizing environment for DEI:
- Pivoting DEI language.
- Ensuring a data- and outcome-driven approach to the strategy.
- Emphasizing the change in behaviors and systems to achieve inclusion.
Pivoting DEI Language
Pivoting DEI language may involve replacing misunderstood phrases and acronyms with clear, relatable terms that resonate with everyone. This shift promotes inclusivity by making DEI concepts more accessible and understandable, encouraging broader participation and engagement.
While the words around DEI may shift, the work does not. Taking DEI out of a course title or strategic document does not change the course or document; it reduces the risk of putting an unnecessary DEI target on it.
As Dr. Upton remarks, “You can call DEI what you want. Just do the work. But not in a performative way. People can tell if you are doing the work or not. People need to see short-term wins and substantive longer-term results. This requires allocation of necessary resources and a never-ending commitment to the work, despite any backlash and messy distractions.”
Pivoting the language of DEI allows practitioners to continue to do the work without being targeted. By emphasizing the long-term game, DEI work can better survive the short-term backlash.
Ensuring a Data- and Outcome-Driven Approach to the Strategy
Ensuring a data- and outcome-driven approach to DEI strategy involves collecting and analyzing relevant data to identify disparities and track progress. This data-informed approach allows organizations to measure the effectiveness of initiatives, demonstrate impact and make necessary adjustments for continuous improvement. Dr. Upton also emphasizes that disaggregating the data is critical to understanding the often different experiences of historically marginalized and underrepresented groups in organizations compared to the dominant culture.
Drawing from her extensive work with organizations across the U.K. and Europe, Žiga observes that data collection in many workplaces tends to focus narrowly on demographic metrics and broad employee engagement scores. While these figures may serve as convenient talking points in quarterly leadership updates, they often fall short of delivering nuanced insights or driving meaningful progress. She notes, “Crucial elements of workplace culture—such as psychological safety and cognitive diversity—are frequently overlooked, leaving significant opportunities for impactful interventions untapped.”
Dr. Upton remarks, “I’m constantly reminding organizations that the challenges they had before the U.S. election—attracting diverse talent, upskilling employees to work effectively across different cultural groups, increasing employee engagement and psychological safety, ensuring pay equity, etc.—are still at your organization post-election. Stay focused on these things, or what your data is telling you, and strategically tackle them with efforts that produce outcomes, not just outputs.”
Finding the right data and continuing to measure the data to track DEI work to outcomes is critical for long-term success.
Emphasizing the Change in Behaviors and Systems to Achieve Inclusion
Emphasizing changes in behaviors and systems is crucial for achieving true inclusion and moving beyond surface-level pronouncements. Dr. Upton notes, “This requires those leading the work to see themselves as change agents and understanding the core principles of change management. This thinking and approach are a prerequisite to operationalizing the work through important efforts such as actively addressing unconscious biases, fostering inclusive leadership and redesigning processes to dismantle systemic barriers and promote equity.”
In her DEI Propel course, Dr. Upton walks DEI and HR leaders through the process of developing a strategy using change management practices.
Despite perceptions of a DEI backlash, leaders can ensure the longevity of DEI work by pivoting language, adopting a data-driven approach, and emphasizing behavioral and systemic changes for true inclusion.