Educating Leaders on DEI
Date: May 16, 2022
Your organization’s executives and managers will be instrumental to your DEI efforts. “At the end of the day, it’s the leader who’s on the front line with our employees,” says Dianne Campbell, vice president of global diversity and inclusion at American Express in Washington, D.C. “It’s the experience that the leader is creating that is going to make or break” your DEI initiatives.
This year, Amex is rolling out mandatory training for people at the vice president level and above. It will start with the basics—what inclusion is and why it is important. Small groups will discuss strategies to foster it in the company.
“We have always focused on inclusion and know this is something that’s important,” Campbell says. However, “as HR practitioners, we take for granted when we say to leaders that they need to be inclusive that they know what we mean.”
‘As HR practitioners, we take for granted when we say to leaders that they need to be inclusive that they know what we mean.’
Dianne Campbell
At global pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck & Co. Inc., bosses at every level undergo training in unconscious bias, which occurs when individuals make judgments about people based on gender, race or other factors without realizing they’re doing it. The training helps make people aware of this form of bias and drives home the importance of modeling inclusive behavior. Examples of inclusive behavior include engaging in active listening during performance reviews, encouraging different points of view in meetings and carefully choosing what language to use.
The company’s global DEI team periodically evaluates its professional development offerings to ensure that managers have opportunities to learn how to better manage diverse workgroups. Members talk about how to deal with real-life scenarios that people managers face, such as supervising an employee who needs an accommodation for a disability or a worker who is a single parent with challenging child care issues.
“We look at the opportunities where people managers are making decisions about employees and integrate a DEI filter into those opportunities to ensure we are making decisions appropriately,” says Celeste R. Warren, vice president, HR and global diversity and inclusion center of excellence at the Upper Gwynedd, Pa.
Leaders at Merck are also expected to demonstrate a commitment to inclusivity and, importantly, to be responsible for the environment in their respective departments. Ongoing feedback from their own managers helps to hold them accountable, as does tying the goal to their performance evaluations.
“Leaders—especially middle managers—must be held accountable for results,” says Erin L. Thomas, a diversity researcher, and a partner at Paradigm, a DEI consulting firm based in San Francisco. That means structuring meetings, allocating resources and using language that advances inclusion. “Employees need to see that inclusive behavior is a core competency.