Join Karen Prater Jasmine and James Felton Keith, executives of the #1 global certifying body in organizational Diversity Equity Inclusion & Belonging (D&I) per the International ISO-30415 Standard for D&I.

In this episode:

Kay & Jay briefly answer more question from the 2022 cohorts of D&I Professionals certified in the ISO-30415 standard. Here we explore a question from the D&I Officer of one of America's largest states. Listen to her question and the 4 part answer from JFK. 

1st:

ERG leaders should not be writing these policies, because they are not a part of the organization's mission/function. They should serve as auxiliary or advisory boards to keep the policies as authentically ambitious as reasonably possible per the organization's potential to make progress. You (or the D&I Leader) should write the policy as skeletons with objectives as a starter and assign them to management-level leaders. You can tie ERGs to each policy, but there should be 32 Max. The objective here is to normalize D&I as a process activity not a people-specific activity, so that even if you were replaced with a Rich Straight White Cisgender man, he would still be obligated to report on these process functions, as he would accounting at the end of a month, quarter, year.

2nd:

I understand that management-level leaders may just ignore the policy that you delegate to them, but the mere existence of these policies is what makes the management accountable, per your job description, which your management probably wrote too generously and poorly, not considering the legal implications. Use your ERG leaders to anonymously-in-caucus accuse the management in charge of your policy variations of discrimination. (Ignoring us is a violation). That is what they are actually there for. Even if you lose your job, there is a paper trail of you doing your job and the organization bucking the process in place. That's worth at least $217K in the USA today, and there is plenty of other work for you to do in this space from your current or other locations. D&I Pro was the #2 job on LinkedIn last year and I know about 20 companies that want an auditor as soon as yesterday.

3rd:

Get your organization addicted to an automated technological process of audit, change, consideration, and execution of policy principals. The stronger you make your paper trail at the lower levels of the organization the more difficult it will be for leadership to just ignore what you've built. Ignoring your standardized structure is by default either retaliation (55% of EEOC claims) or discrimination (45% of EEOC claims).

The process is entrapment.

4th:

I would start with looking for another incentive for D&I, without the HR Director's buy-in. The world can't wait for HR people to care or smarten up.  Do you know how the state is insured and how many grievances the state departments have? My team rarely talks to HR people until the CFO realized that the HR people should be in more trouble. We tie grievances to the regular costs of doing business and ask the CFO the three questions at the top of this link, after showing them how much they spend in either turnover or grievances, we ask if the HR director is worth it. You don't have to do this. I could do it tomorrow... We do need to make a non HR case for D&I and the case is that D&I is not about feel-good or even demographic change, it is about not losing your shirt to lawsuits. The Black, Latino, Womens, and LGBT bar who all support your Governor right now would have a field day with this. Let's table that piece for a moment.