Strategic and Impactful Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Efforts
Best in class organizations understand the value of leveraging the skills and perspectives of employees from all backgrounds to create the best products for their customers.
Unconscious bias and lack of trust, awareness, and candor may be among the reasons teams don’t fulfill their projected potential. Diversity, equity, and inclusion coaching, combined with ongoing strategies to drive more sophisticated approaches to decision-making, can transform workplaces for long-term effectiveness and viability.
With nearly two decades of experience developing and implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies across multiple companies and industries, Benton+Bradford understands how to position an organization’s full capabilities for optimal business success.
We develop diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies that foster a welcoming and collaborative culture, and bring about innovative, sustainable, and performance-driven team dynamics.
Case Studies
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy Development
Situation:
Despite garnering external accolades for its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, a client in the quick-service restaurant (QSR) space struggled to translate these initiatives into better internal collaboration and acceptance of the advantages of corporate diversity. Our partner aimed to engage its entire workforce and drive retention and customer satisfaction through its renewed inclusion and diversity efforts.
Process:
- We interviewed key constituents and the senior leadership team to gauge key diversity issues from various perspectives.
- From these interviews, we developed and presented recommendations for a diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy that focused not just on expanding the talent pool, but also on translating this range of skills and abilities into business success.
Results:
Working together, B+B and our client developed a successfully adopted diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy that included the company’s first Diversity Steering Committee Charter.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – Thinking and Working Session
Situation:
Our pharmaceutical client wanted to achieve meaningful diversity, equity, and inclusion impact after the murder of George Floyd. But the organization’s leaders were unsure how to translate social justice motives into a movement that would enable more thoughtful and effective colleague collaborations focused on achieving business goals.
Process:
We worked with the CEO and CHRO to understand what impact social unrest had on the company and its employees and what steps were taken to date. Once we understood the organization had not had meaningful internal discussions about diversity, equity, and inclusion, we crafted an approach to educate and begin planning for the effort with a small but committed group of employees. Starting with this group of individual contributors and leaders, we workshopped a collective understanding of diversity and its value in improving collaboration, innovation, and ability of team members to achieve business results. Our goal was to transform organizational feelings of injustice and social inequity into a sustainable effort that would help each individual recognize the benefits of a unified yet diverse culture with common purpose and goals.
Results:
Our efforts resulted in a company-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion definition, expansion of corporate values, and a balanced action plan that included: efforts to recruit demographically and behaviorally diverse people, training modules that encouraged employees to work together more effectively, coaching opportunities for people managers to lead diverse groups more effectively and community efforts to support the business and its diversity mission. We also outlined a process for the HR team to evaluate current policies and procedures to support their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Online Training
Situation:
Our client engaged the firm to assist with online diversity, equity, and inclusion training that would enable leaders to effectively work with colleagues and team members of varied cultures and backgrounds.
Process:
- We worked with Senior Operational and HR leadership to determine the areas of focus for the training and to ensure that goals were tied to business objectives.
- Our team conducted trainings for 150 leaders across the country that enabled higher self-awareness and the ability to facilitate a respectful collaborative dynamic to ensure team success.
Results:
Our efforts resulted in measurably positive changes in management perception, as noted in the organization’s employee engagement survey feedback.
In-Person Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Workshop
Situation:
Our client engaged the firm to assist with the development of a one-day, in-person diversity, equity, and inclusion coaching session for leaders and frontline employees to increase their understanding of DEI and its positive impact on business effectiveness.
Process:
- We evaluated business needs and past approach success/challenges with the VP of Learning and Development, VP of Diversity and Inclusion, and operational leaders.
- We developed a prototype training module, that was then workshopped with a group of participants. The testing group assisted with refining the approach and the teaching methods.
- The training module was implemented with more than 5,000 participants.
Results:
With the coaching session as the kick-off program, B + B contributed to laying the groundwork for a sustainable effort focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. All training participants gained an understanding of DEI practices as essential to organizational success, rather than being relegated to a “right thing to do” initiative.