Colleges and universities increasingly require faculty members to draft diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) statements as part of the application process for faculty positions. These statements outline how candidates will address diversity issues when teaching, conducting research or participating in university service activities.
DEI encompasses aspects related to race, gender, sexual orientation, age and religion. To create an inclusive academic environment requires listening with an open mind while engaging in learning experiences with an open spirit.
Identify the Issues
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are issues that affect people from varying backgrounds and experiences. They span demographics such as race, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion and disability but can also impact ideas, perspectives, values and beliefs. When applied to groups – discrimination occurs when treatment of members differs due to unconscious bias favoring one group over the other; or inequity occurs due to imbalanced resources or opportunities that create disadvantages for certain groups.
Organizations may hire employees from diverse backgrounds, but might not provide equal pay and training as other workers – this can create discord among team members that is detrimental to business, as well as problems in customer and employee retention.
For businesses to successfully address these challenges, an inclusive culture must be fostered within. This can be accomplished through training managers on recognizing and avoiding biases such as unconscious ones that cause microaggressions; or through providing employees with knowledge about what it means to be inclusive and how best to treat others fairly.
Companies should encourage employees to bring the whole persona of themselves into work rather than only their professional personas. This can help employees feel like part of the company family while performing better and experiencing greater job satisfaction.
Communication about diversity should take the form of a diversity statement, which can be as brief as two pages and include examples that demonstrate your commitment. Furthermore, your statement should touch upon personal experiences related to these issues that have helped form who you are today.
Example of Statement for Ethnic Minority Researchers If your statement provides insight into how your race has inspired mentoring students and junior scholars from marginalized communities within your discipline, or how your own disability shaped research and teaching practices; in addition, include your commitments for the future.
Describe Your Commitment
An effective diversity, equity and inclusion statement is an excellent way to demonstrate your organization’s dedication to creating an inclusive workplace culture. Not only can it attract customers or employees; it is also used as an important tool in setting specific goals and strategies that lead to more inclusive business environments.
Your DEI statement should provide an honest assessment of where your company stands today and its plans for addressing challenges in the future. It should include public-facing goals for increasing employee diversity, such as setting timelines to achieve gender parity in leadership or providing training on unconscious bias to all managers. Furthermore, its goals must link back into its mission and values so employees understand how it plans to live its commitment to inclusivity.
DEI statements offer candidates a chance to not only showcase the company commitment they represent but also their own individual commitment. This is especially relevant in academic job applications where diversity, equity and inclusion statements have become essential parts of the application process – to demonstrate how their values and experiences advance inclusion principles within classrooms, research or scholarly works.
Some academic institutions have stringent rules regarding what should be included in a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion statement; it is crucial to abide by them. Typically, statements should not exceed two pages single-spaced and should cover multiple facets of experience, including teaching strategies to promote inclusion, mentoring underrepresented students and community service efforts. It is acceptable for the statement to contain some degree of self-disclosure; it’s just important not to tokenize these experiences too easily.
The YMCA’s commitment to inclusivity is clear and strong. They articulated this promise by emphasizing their core values of caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility as the cornerstones of their programs and services. Furthermore, the YMCA provided concrete examples of how they are upholding those values; such as creating anti-bullying programs and offering mental health resources for employees.
Explain How You Plan to Address the Issues
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) often leads to confusion. Although hiring more diverse workforce may help meet DEI goals, this alone won’t do. Without prioritizing equity and inclusion as well, disparate experiences of employees within your organization will continue.
One of the primary factors contributing to diversity-related issues among your employees is unconscious biases and prejudices they hold toward certain groups, including race, religion and sexual orientation. To combat this problem, employee training programs should focus on teaching everyone how to recognize and respect differences as well as setting up an accountability mechanism to track diversity initiatives’ success.
Some employees can feel excluded due to lifestyle choices made by other employees; this may include diet restrictions, non-meat eating, tattoos, body piercings or brightly-colored hair dyeing. To address this problem effectively, ensure your employees undergo sensitivity training so they understand that lifestyle decisions of other employees don’t necessarily represent them personally.
There may also be employees who feel discriminated against because of their spiritual beliefs, for instance if an employee adheres to Islam they may not be permitted to work during certain holidays such as Eid al-Fitr or Diwali, creating issues in the workplace due to reduced morale, decreased productivity and higher turnover rates.
To address these issues, it’s essential that your business makes an explicit commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in its mission statement and employee trainings. Furthermore, all employees should be familiar with and have access to an anti-discrimination policy, along with a process for reporting incidents of discrimination or harassment. Furthermore, celebrate different cultures and religions within your workplace to foster a welcoming atmosphere for employees – this will lead to more productive workplace environments! By taking steps like these you will create a more positive and engaging work experience for all employees! By addressing these issues head on, all employees will benefit.
Include Examples
An effective diversity statement must include more than just an organization’s mission and values; it must demonstrate tangible proof that changes are being implemented, in order to both inspire employees and candidates while showing company leaders are serious about diversity commitment.
Veteran United Home Loans’ diversity statement begins by emphasizing their core value “respect for everyone,” then detailing how this value is embedded into employee-driven programs and community outreach efforts. They then share employee testimonials as a means of adding credibility to their mission statement.
Mastercard’s Diversity Statement begins with its mission statement of “empower people and communities to thrive”. This strong statement shows they care more than just compliance; an inclusive culture is vital to both their success and creating a better world.
This statement goes beyond mere sentiment to demonstrate their actions and achievements, such as highlighting how many women hold leadership positions and the amount spent with diverse suppliers. Furthermore, they share their vision for where they wish to be by 2023 and this level of transparency helps further engage their target audience.
Though many organizations are striving to enhance their DEI statements, some still aren’t seeing results. One step that could help your DEI statement achieve its desired effect is aligning it with your business strategy – this allows meaningful changes and builds a more accepting culture for all individuals regardless of background or identity.
As part of creating a diversity statement, it is crucial to know who your target audience is. Your stakeholders could include employees, candidates and customers as well as local communities or societal change efforts. To maximize its effectiveness and ensure maximum impact it must be tailored specifically for each audience and purpose so they feel connected with and invested in the mission of the organization.
Making an effective diversity statement requires time and effort. Begin by setting goals, determining your success metrics and creating an action plan; with these steps in place you can create a workplace with diverse and inclusive practices that is sure to thrive.