Building your business case for workplace diversity and inclusion initiatives. 

For many c-suite leaders, building a business case for diversity and inclusion is about showing the payoffs that your specific organization will receive from investing time and money into programs and changing workplace processes.

How to make the business case specific to YOUR organization.

1. Know what is keeping your CEO up at night.

• If it’s expansion into a new market, tailor your presentation to how a diverse and inclusive work environment will help make that a success. If it’s recruiting candidates or retaining current employees, show the data that investing in your company’s diversity and inclusion is a key way to attract and keep talent. See AcuityWorks' downloadable powerpoint slides to help get you started. 

2. Address what is top of mind for employees.

• What would employees like to change in their workplace environment? What are employees dissatisfied with at work? What energizes and sustains them?
• An efficient way to capture this data is to issue an anonymous and optional survey. Culture Amp provides a good diversity and inclusion survey.  If you prefer to create your own survey, below are some sample questions:
  • I feel I belong at [your organization].
  • I feel respected at work.
  • I feel my opinion is valued at work.  
  • I feel that my job performance is fairly evaluated.
  • I feel that promotions are fair.
  • I want to look for another job at a different company in the coming year. 
• Survey tips:
  • Provide a 1-5 scale. Define each number. For example:
    • 1 = Strongly disagree
    • 2 = Disagree
    • 3 = Neither agree nor disagree
    • 4 = Agree
    • 5 = Strongly agree
  • Leave space for comments after each question.
  • Make it optional and anonymous.
  • Include an optional question that asks for the respondent’s demographics and division or team. You may find that there are different issues going on for men versus women at the company, for folks on the engineering team versus the marketing team, etc. Briefly explain why you are asking these (optional) demographic and division or team questions. 

3. Target your presentation to your organization’s needs.

• You can start with the downloadable powerpoint slides provided by AcuityWorks and then add/delete/customize as needed. Don’t use all the slides unless they are all relevant.

• Show you’ve done your homework. If you conducted a survey, show the relevant survey results on what employees would benefit from. If you’ve been putting in overtime work into doing a grassroots effort for diversity and inclusion at your company, show the results of your efforts. If your company is headed in a new direction, show how diversity and inclusion initiatives would help achieve the new company goals.

4. Be specific in your ask.

• You will be more successful if you make your requests specific, rather than make a vague request for more attention to diversity and inclusion. For example:
  • Would you like to revamp your recruiting or interviewing process? Propose what that would involve, including the time and resources it would take.
  • Do you want to hire a firm to conduct a salary analysis? Do your research on reputable firms and include their prices.
  • Are you hoping to get a portion of your time devoted to D&I work? Outline what you would do, the impact you hope it would have on the company, the percentage of time you are asking for, and, if relevant, how your team will compensate for the time you devote to D&I. Show that you have thought through the pieces.

• If you have a bucket-list of initiatives you would like to take, create a timeline, building in checkpoints to gauge progress and impact.  Be aware that you may initially only get resources for some of them. Follow-up, showing the impact these initiatives have had.
• There are big asks in terms of resources (e.g., providing 100% healthcare coverage or parental leave, revamping your hiring process) and small asks (e.g., forming a ERG).  Don’t assume that it’s best to go with a small ask first. Think about impact versus time/resources. At the same time, be realistic in terms of where your company currently is and its capacity to take on different initiatives.
• What if you don’t know what initiatives to take? Most consultants, including those at AcuityWorks, are happy to have a free phone consultation with you.

5. State what you hope to achieve.

• Provide metrics to track your progress. For example:
  • If you want to increase feelings of belongingness at work, track increases in satisfaction to the relevant question on your D&I survey. Consider also looking at attrition rates (belongingness is one, but not the only reason, why team members chose to stay or leave an organization).
  • If you want to increase the percentage of diverse hires,  track the attraction and hiring metrics. Break down your metrics so that you can identity the exact place where more work is needed. For example, if you are receiving a lot of applications from diverse candidates but these candidates fall off after the interview, you know you need to examine your interview and evaluation process. Consider these metrics (separate by demographic group):
    • Percent who apply.
    • Percent who are offered and pass each interviewing stage (e.g., phone interview, in-person interview).
    • Percent who are offered the job.
    • Percent who take the job.
    • Percent successful on the job 6 months later.
• Be realistic. If you are trying to increase your diverse hires but the only change your company makes is where the recruiting team places job ads,  you likely won't see much impact.  Taking a comprehensive approach yields better results (e.g., improving your company’s image, providing inclusive benefits, evaluating your job description and evaluation filters.).

​