DEI: Beyond Hiring
DEI is such an important area for companies to invest in. I hear many leaders and organizations hyper focused on hiring right now- for valid reasons! Many companies have so much room to improve their representation, especially for Black, Latinx, and Native American groups in the US. But for an organization really trying to achieve transformation, it’s critical to extend the diversity strategy beyond just hiring.
Representation & Inclusion in Marketing
Marketing is a key business component to any type of organization- corporate, nonprofit, even education. It’s how companies get customers, schools attract students, and nonprofits drive their mission forward. Many companies think that representation in marketing means doing a social campaign for International Women’s Day or Black History Month. It’s important to recognize those moments, but 1 post a year about those audiences is NOT enough. One off marketing campaigns like this read inauthentic and performative. Your marketing should be representative and inclusive all year long if you want to truly connect with your audience.
When was the last time your organization looked at the representation in your marketing? If there are models or graphics in your campaigns, have you captured a diverse range of skin tones? What about language? What about gender or ability? If you’re trying to engage with Latinx users, have you tried doing a campaign in Spanish or even Spanglish? The #1 way to ensure your teams are thinking about these things is to have diverse representation on the team itself. This will ensure that in each meeting, there is a diverse group of individuals that have a voice at the table. #2- Do ongoing user research, and make sure you have a diverse base of individuals for your surveys and focus groups. Ask your users what is top of mind, what resonates with them? Incorporate this into your marketing and other areas. Lastly- change your systems. It’s important to systematize this work. Representation should not be seen as an exception, or a one off, or just 1 person’s job. Elevating the diversity in your marketing campaigns will help you earn trust with all audiences over time, so put the process in place now to ensure your marketing team has the right protocols before they launch their next campaign. Your users want to see themselves reflected in your campaigns and your products.
DEI in Product Strategy
Similar to marketing, it’s crucial for organizations to incorporate DEI in their product strategy. Do you remember when Instagram added audio captions to stories? Game changer. It’s estimated that over 5% of the world’s population has some form of disabling hearing loss. That’s a lot of people! There is a whole field of work that is also known as product inclusion. It means leveling the playing field so that your products are: 1. Equally accessible to all types of people 2. People feel your product works well and is inclusive of them & their experience. The opposite of inclusion is exclusion. Is the representation on your team currently leading to certain voices being excluded from the conversation? Does the geographic location of your launch require a different type of strategy to ensure easy access (think of all the places in the world without wifi for example!) Be intentional & show commitment- don’t take a bandaid approach or look for quick or easy fixes for inclusion. A great speaker I heard once referred to this as the jalapeno effect. In other worse, if you’re a food provider looking to expand to the Latinx market, don’t continue selling the same exact food item and lazily add a jalapeno on top as an attempt to appeal to the Latinx market. Make an effort to stay committed for long term solutions and improvements over time and really shape products based on the varied needs of your diverse users.
Representation in Events
If you want your events to be inclusive, they also need to incorporate aspects of diversity. If your organization is hosting an event, whether that is internal or external-make sure it will have a representative slate of individuals and voices involved. Who is planning the event? Who will be speaking at the event? What vendors will you be hiring to support the event? Each of those aspects should include a diverse team. If you are doing an event for Black History Month, but did not hire Black owned vendors, then you are missing the entire point! If you are hosting an event for International Women’s Day, but decide to have a male keynote speaker, who is this really serving? Even if it is just an every day team meeting or All Hands, if every single update comes from white only voices, it’s time to do better. I know you may think those are laughable examples, but I have seen them happen real time.
If you’re in a leadership position, you need to create a culture with avenues of feedback and psychological safety, so that when mistakes or misses happen in any of these categories, people are able to provide feedback. Be open to hearing the feedback, and be ready to make the change to do better in the future. But don’t wait around for the next mistake. It’s time to get proactive about DEI in your marketing, product strategy, and events!
What are other aspects of diversity beyond hiring that you wish you saw more of at your organization?
