Building a Culture of DEI and Empathy in the Workplace

While the push to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in offices has picked up steam in the past year, DEI work has been around for decades without creating sustained improvement. Recognizing this, the Society for Human Resource Management recently released several reports to both quantify the importance of DEI and help employers improve DEI at their workplace.

“The Cost of Racial Injustice” [PDF] estimated that employee absenteeism due to anxiety, worry, stress, or frustration stemming from experiencing or witnessing unfair treatment based on race or ethnicity may have cost U.S. businesses up to $54 billion in the past year. To help employers combat these problems, SHRM’s Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on Racial Equity released a report that offers steps workplaces can take right now to improve DEI.

The BRC report included these six recommendations: redefine your culture and values, practice inclusive hiring and promotion, have open dialogue about taboo topics, invest capital in social impact funds and corporate social responsibility programs, market to those who have been ignored, and rebuild your enterprise to be a force for good.

According to SHRM Chief Knowledge Officer Alexander Alonso, Ph.D., SHRM-SCP, the steps in the report can be taken in any order. “I think the key first step for anyone—no matter how you are going about this and no matter what your culture looks like—is you should assess what it is that your current state is,” he said. “Then chart a course for how you want to get to your new state.”

Part of this should include understanding how an organization currently works.

“In the world of change management, we’ve seen that change requires not just a change in the ways that we are looking to accomplish things or create new products, but it also speaks to changing the way that people accomplish things,” Alonso said. “The easiest way to do that is by understanding how it is that people within the organization go about getting stuff done.”

While the BRC report noted the six steps are something organizations can start right now, Alonso said substantive change takes time.

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