Creating equity in the workplace is an ongoing process that involves both a dedicated effort from senior leadership, and an ongoing commitment from everyone within the organization.

Equity initiatives to support your organization’s staff may include:

• Conduct a diversity assessment
  • Collect data to support the need for equity measures, and talk to experts in the field
  • Form a representative committee of employees from across your organization to evaluate existing practices and needs. Pull data from your data platforms to determine where you stand currently in terms of diversity and development
• Use the data to determine your starting benchmarks and establish goals
  • This could mean auditing your job descriptions and recruitment ads to make them more accessible and more widely relevant
  • Consider switching from credentials-based to skills-based hiring to attract candidates who may have backgrounds that differ from current staff
• Examine questions of personal and organizational bias (such as blind spot bias, confirmation bias, perception bias, and affinity bias), and utilize bias interrupters such as training, audits and HR review of hiring and promotional decisions and requirements
  • Provide meaningful DEI focused training on implicit bias and interrupting bias
• Develop a communication strategy

• Create an equitable action plan that defines internal and external goals
  • Make goals flexible/aspirational by avoiding numerical targets or tying these to compensation/performance evaluations
  • Emphasize outreach/programs instead of “hitting a number”
    
  • Focus on inclusion efforts
  • Do not use quotas
  • Do not give preference to candidates based on diverse characteristic alone
• Implement a DEI program that includes an organizational values statement and rationale, across departments
  • Define and record your organization’s values
  • Discuss how those values are reflected in inclusive-hiring practices
  • Define underlying organizational rationale, and develop the culture to make this a priority and key goal

• Set specific action goals (not quotas), with periodic measurement and accountability through transparency
  • An inclusive workplace is one where people with varying differences including, for example, differing age, ability (both physical and mental, both visible and not), education, ethnicity/national origin, family/pregnancy/caregiver status, gender identity or expression, language, neurodiversity, race/color, religion, belief and spirituality, sexual orientation or veteran status will also feel that their voices are heard and respected.
• Hire employees who have diverse backgrounds
  • Broaden the hiring pool, by rethinking hiring requirements (e.g. not requiring past nonprofit experience, or not setting education requirements beyond what is required to best perform in a position) and supporting diverse candidates once they are hired can help advance board and staff diversity
  • Develop policies to institutionalize inclusive practices, such as in hiring, consultant-use, and board composition
    • For reference, see this fact sheet on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Recruitment, Hiring and Retention from the Urban Sustainability Directors Network
• Rethink hiring and advancement requirements and eliminate barriers that screen out otherwise capable candidates and emphasize skills that value the perspective of, and experience in, communities served
  • Explore living wage measures in your area (consider MIT’s Living Wage Calculator)
  • Identify minimum, maximum and necessary qualifications, experience and skills for job and use objective information
  • Use “blind applicant” review system (no names, photos, graduation dates, etc) and multiple diverse interviewers asking the same questions
• Set goals and periodic measurements, provide for accountability, and vertically integrate goals with leaders and management (such as making them part of reviews)
  • Establish objective advancement and promotion basis/criteria for each position

• Support candidates and personnel from diverse backgrounds once hired with equitable access to resources that level the playing field for all employees
  • This can mean providing a combination of targeted resources for specific demographics and roles, but also ensuring that all employees are able to access the same development material
• Include leadership as active participants through performance goals & measurements, cross-training and mentoring programs
• Develop the culture, policies and practices to make hiring and retaining diverse talent a priority and to provide a sense of belonging (during onboarding, via training, and throughout organizational culture)
  • Obtain buy in & participation from leadership, facilitators and team members
• Examine questions of personal and organizational bias (such as blind spot bias, confirmation bias, perception bias, and affinity bias), and utilize bias interrupters in practices]
  • Training may include educating staff about implicit biases
    • Learn more about implicit biases from the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights Implicit Bias Guide: Implicit Biases & People with Disabilities
    • For a short primer on implicit bias, consider this two-page worksheet on Addressing Unconscious Bias by the Iowa Department of Public Health
  • Many states mandate certain training for employees and supervisors
    • For instance, California has approved free online training on preventing sexual harassment and abusive conduct in the workplace
• Analyze available opportunities for training, both formal and informal
  • Provide cultural competence, diversity and management skills training, so that managers and leadership can:
    • Acknowledge and understand cultural differences
    • Adapt behavior to connect with others
    • Become aware of cultural biases and blind spots
  • Support development of cultural-specific affinity groups or networks – they must be open to all – even if focused on one particular identity or cause, and cannot be mandatory
    • Cultural differences may appear in: values, beliefs, traditions, experiences, word meanings, nonverbal and verbal communication, communication styles and languages
• Provide and encourage staff development and career ladders for all employees
• Conduct an annual census or survey of volunteers, employees, and trustees to document employment diversity with the goal of improving diversity and furthering your impact beyond grantmaking and programs
• Be aware that many organizations that add underrepresented employees may fail to adequately provide a sense of belonging (during onboarding, via training, and throughout organizational culture)
  • Provide cultural agility, diversity and management training
  • Rethink your onboarding, learning and culture-building processes and consider what inclusion looks like from the perspective of new employees

Consider cultural competency best practices for different communities that may be represented in your workplace:

• Asian American Pacific Islander communities 

• • • Do your AAPI Employees Feel Safe Coming Back to Work?
      • Don’t dismiss their fears
      • Make personal safety a priority
      • Offer bystander intervention training
    • Adressing Anti-AAPI Discrimination in the Workplace
      • Make sure employees’ voices are heard. Employers need to give employees a platform so they feel empowered to speak out whenever an incident occurs
      • Listen intently. Every time employees speak out, the organization’s leadership should hear them. Take their statements seriously and try to understand what they’re feeling
      • Ensure a clear path to resolution. Once leaders understand where employees are coming from, they should act, treating each issue seriously and with respect

• Black communities

• • • 6 Steps To Building a Better Workplace for Black Employees
      • Encourage employees to talk about race
      • Tackle systemic inequality, starting with the corporate culture
      • Support employees so that they can be themselves
    • 7 Ways to Support Black Employees
      • Reach out to Black employees
      • Provide supplemental support options and encourage employees to use them
      • Consider “diversity” and “inclusion” separately
    • 20% of White Employees Have Sponsors, Only 5% of Black Employees Do 
    • How organizations can support Black mental health

• Disabled communities

• • • Disability inclusion in the workplace
      • Many oversights, like holding a team event in an inaccessible restaurant or relying on people in a meeting to quickly read tiny text off a slide presentation, stem from both a lack of thought or lack of understanding of other people’s potential challenges 
      • Many disabilities aren’t visible, and employees are under no obligation to disclose them to their employer. That creates an unfortunate paradox — those with hidden disabilities have more control over whether or not to divulge them, but are unable to advocate for accommodations unless they do
      • Take the time to look over your copy, website, and marketing materials with a fresh eye. Be on the lookout for language that may exclude people, even if you think the meaning is clear
      • While it can seem nerve-wracking to open up a conversation about accommodations, it’s worth talking about. Many people are afraid to speak up for themselves and may be extremely grateful for the opening
    • Digital Accessibility
      • Use visual and semantic space. Space is an important visual design tool that helps us identify groups of related content and delineate unrelated content. Non-visual users benefit from “space” that is created using semantic markup 
      • Provide the right amount of space between lines of text. For most content work, the interline spacing (line-height) is applied automatically
      • Use clean typography. Avoid changing the typeface from that specified by the website 
      • Avoid using all caps. Readability is reduced with all caps because all words have a uniform rectangular shape, meaning readers can’t identify words by their shape
      • Don’t underline text. Reserve underlining for identifying links
      • Use left-aligned text. A consistent left margin makes reading easier
      • Don’t put two spaces after a period. Period
      • Support text resizing. Check how your content responds to enlarged text. Avoid using narrow columns of content because they will not respond well to scaling

• Gender

• • • What Can I do to promote a culture of pay equity? 
      • Train Supervisors or Managers: Train managers on how to create a culture of pay equity. Train supervisors and managers on how to make valid compensation decisions or recommendations that are based on objective, job-related factors and not on an employee’s gender, race or ethnicity. Training managers promotes job satisfaction and morale among employees generally, and reduces employee turnover
      • Encourage Employee Communication: Encourage employees to communicate with one another regarding compensation without the fear of retaliation. Encourage employees to ask the employer questions about their compensation without any concern of retaliation or an adverse employment action. Similarly, employers should consider encouraging managers and supervisors who are communicating compensation decisions to employees to explain the basis for any compensation changes
      • Improve Workplace Flexibility/Change Subtle Drivers of Discrimination: Offer flexible work arrangements. Train managers to manage a flexible workforce and reorient workplace culture to emphasize results. Offer subsidized child care or back up child care. Review part time or flexible schedule policies to ensure that they reflect equal pay for substantially similar work on a pro-rata basis
      • Offer Paid Parental/Family Leave for both Women and Men: Offer and publicize paid parental/family leave for both women and men and actively encourage both men and women to use it. Smaller employers, who may not have the capacity to provide paid parental/family leave, should consider accommodating employee requests for family leave when feasible
    • Women in the Workplace 2021
    • How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

• Immigrants and Non-native speakers

• • • Culturally competent Limited English Proficiency and Low-literacy Services
    • Guidance on discussing immigration status
    • The Education of immigrant children 
    • The Strengths of Immigrant Students 
    • Best Practices for Serving English Language Learners and their Families

• Latinx communities

• • • US Latinos Feel They Can’t Be Themselves at Work
    • Most Latinos in the U.S. do not feel that they can bring their whole selves to the office. The vast majority of Latinos (76%) repress parts of their personas at work. They modify their appearance, body language, and communication style — all components of executive presence (EP), that intangible element that defines leadership material
    • Latinos at Work 
      • Making organizational culture more inclusive means understanding not only the diversity of Latino backgrounds, but also the variability in how Latinos relate to their backgrounds
        • Latinos inherit a complicated history of identity politics. In post-war America, many Latino families sought to assimilate into US culture—and thwart discrimination—by stifling signs of their heritage. Many parents avoided speaking Spanish inside the home, to prevent their children from having an accent outside. By the 1990s, many families favored multiculturalism in lieu of assimilation. Parents taught their children to embrace their “Latino-ness” and assert it with pride, precisely because it distinguished them 
        • The workplace includes Latinos of all generations, some of whom will assert their cultural heritage with pride and others who persist in seeing themselves as Americans first. As Millennials replace Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in the workforce, however, there is undeniably a tendency among Latinos to assert their roots. For this group, authenticity and self-expression are of utmost importance. Meanwhile, Latinos of earlier generations may find themselves under pressure to acknowledge and celebrate a cultural heritage they disavowed or never knew growing up
    • Advancing Latinas in the Workplace

• LGBTQ+ communities

• • • LGBT Inclusion, programs and policies
      • There are two main barriers to transgender inclusion in the workplace: 
        • 1) policies that do not cover transgender health needs 
        • 2) a lack of awareness and education on what it means to be transgender and to transition at work 
      • By tackling these two issues, organizations can minimize misunderstandings and tension that often arise between transgender employees and coworkers 
        • As of 2007, 25 percent of Fortune 500 companies protect their transgender employees by including gender identity in their non-discrimination policies, up from only 1 percent in 2000 
      • Employers can also support transgender employees by covering health costs related to gender transition
        • Inclusive health policies traditionally cover leave benefits for medical appointments and procedures, hormone replacement therapy, mental health counseling, sex-reassignment surgery, and other medical expenses
    • Creating LGBTQ inclusive workplace policies
      • Businesses should include sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression in their anti-harassment policies and harassment-prevention training. Proactive steps include:
        • Modernizing harassment-prevention training with realistic and representative scenarios, including those reflecting LGBTQ issues
        • Developing gender-transition resources for employees
        • Creating inclusive policies reflecting current nomenclature
        • Including LGBTQ demographics in diversity and inclusion data
        • Asking senior leaders to sponsor and support LGBTQ organizations
    • Ensuring workplace inclusion for LGBTQ employees
      • An employee should be permitted to use the restroom consistent with the individual’s gender identity. To require an employee to use a restroom that differs from the employee’s identified gender, or to restrict a transgender employee (and not others) to using only a single-user restroom may be considered discriminatory treatment. Employers may want to create single-user restrooms for all employees or offer gender-neutral restrooms to be used by anyone
      • Information about the organization’s policies and guidelines for LGBTQ-inclusive behavior and practices should be widely accessible for employees, supervisors and managers
    • What is deadnaming?
      • Deadnaming occurs when someone, intentionally or not, refers to a person who’s transgender by the name they used before they transitioned. You may also hear it described as referring to someone by their “birth name” or their “given name”
        • When you refer to a person who is transgender by their non-affirmed name, it can feel invalidating. It can cause them to feel like you don’t respect their identity, you don’t support their transition, or that you don’t wish to put forth the effort to make this necessary change
        • Completing a legal name change can help people who are transgender avoid everyday deadnaming when presenting their IDs, whether it’s at the hospital, at school, or at your neighborhood bar. However, attaining a legal name change can be time-consuming, expensive, and subject trans people to further discrimination
      • Institutions can develop a process to update their records with a trans person’s affirmed name without requiring a legal name change. This process should update records seamlessly across all of the institution’s databases to prevent confusion and potential deadnaming
        • If a legal name is required for forms or paperwork, create a separate space for people to put the name that they use in their everyday lives
        • Hire a trans-led organization to provide sensitivity trainings to staff and personnel

• Muslim communities

• • • An Employer’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices
      • Muslim practices are, in legal terminology, bonafide religious beliefs, and those who practice them regard them as compulsory religious duties. Observances such as prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, and religious celebrations are long held practices of members of the Muslim faith. Such expressions are protected by federal law
      • Employees who have flexibility in taking breaks may schedule them to fit their prayer times
    • Five Tips for Supporting Muslims in the workplace
      • Invest in understanding
      • Practice inclusive scheduling
      • Respect gender boundaries
      • Accommodate dietary needs
      • Show compassion
    • 3 Steps to Make Workplace Religious Accommodations for Islamic Prayer 
    • How leaders can better support Muslim women at work 

• Native American communities

• • • A Guide to Recruiting Native American Employees
      • Native Americans are diverse and have different backgrounds, traditions, experiences, and viewpoints. There is no single Native culture, experience, or description. Each tribe/nation has its own culture and history, and individuals relate differently to their communities and cultures and hold different viewpoints
      • While Native Americans share many experiences and issues with other underrepresented or marginalized communities, make sure Native American experiences and perspectives are understood from their points of view
      • It’s always best to refer to a person’s specific tribal affiliation(s) rather than a more general term
    • Ways to support and hire more indigenous workers
      • Recognize cultural differences
      • Recruit at tribal colleges and vocational schools
      • Consider dropping the degree requirement
      • Attend Indigenous hiring events and national conferences
      • Create your own pipeline
    • Creating an inclusive workforce for Native Americans
      • Indian Preference – It is not a violation of the equal employment opportunity clause if a federal contractor maintains a publicly announced Indian employment preference if it is working on or near an Indian reservation 
      • Collaborate with Tribal Employment Rights Organizations
      • Coordinate with Tribal Vocational Rehabilitation Agencies
      • Network with Tribal Colleges and Universities 
    • American Indian Leadership
      • Several independent foundations have made significant efforts to either support or create initiatives to strengthen Native leadership
      • Nonprofit organizations serve an integral role in perpetuating traditional forms of American Indian leadership, whether it is related to community service projects and/or providing capacity building training to grassroots tribal leaders
      • Collaborate with Native communities and organizations on creating a long-term vision of the initiative, focusing on community investment and participation. Obtain commitment from the tribe(s) and/or partnering organization(s) to ensure successful long-term program outcomes 
      • Be willing to develop long-term relationships that will take time to build in American Indian communities. Work in tandem with program partners to strengthen trust and belief in the vision of the program
      • Provide seed grants to tribes and/or organizations before a program begins, in order for participating representatives to conduct necessary assessments of the targeted program participants/communities
    • Recruiting retaining and supporting the advancement of indigenous people 

• Rural communities

• • Debunking Three Myths About Rural America 

• Does your organization have clear strategies for increasing the diversity within your grantmaking organization?
• How could the values of your organization be better achieved through inclusive employment and board-selection practices? 
• Are there barriers in the hiring process that screen out otherwise capable candidates?
• What value do you place on a candidate’s knowledge of, and experience in, the community served by your organization?
• Are the perspectives of the community served reflected in the organization’s decision-making?