Now that the initial shock over George Floyd and others has settled, the pendulum is shifting in the opposite direction. This isn’t new to the civil rights movement. Affirmative action has met resistance before. But the risk to employers jumping ship on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is more costly than they think.

Critics believe DEI programs are discriminatory, but supporters and experts argue DEI is politicized and is not well understood. After creating new DEI positions, corporate leaders pledged to hire more people of color, removed branding perceived to be racist and invested in historically Black colleges. Violence against African Americans was largely met with public outrage, calling out systemic inequities in American society, including the workplace.

HR knows these are common sense values. A workplace that is truly diverse, fair, and inclusive can create a higher sense of belonging for employees, which results in better work performance and retention. Shaun Harper, a USC professor and founder, says “Leaders who are pulling the plug on DEI are doing so without understanding the long-term exposure to harm,” he said. “Doing away with DEI makes companies more–not less–susceptible to lawsuits, to costly levels of turnover among employees, reputational harm not only among employees but also among customers and clients and prospective partners.”

So how can we continue advocating for DEI without saying “DEI”? One way for HR to swing the pendulum with stakeholders is to provide transparency and awareness of diversity impact on company goals. Numbers speak louder words. Are your DEI initiatives connected to the numbers?

Through 2022, 75 percent of organizations having diverse and inclusive decision-making teams were projected to exceed their financial targets by Gartner.

How did we go from diversity, fairness, and belonging to discrimination? “What’s getting lost in the conversation,” says Daniel Oppong of The Courage Collective, a consultancy that advises companies on DEI, “is that the reason DEI was introduced to corporate America in the first place was because marginalized communities did not always have equal opportunities for jobs or feel a sense of belonging in corporate settings.”

“That is the genesis of why some of these programs exist,” he says. “It was an attempt to try to create workplaces where more or all people can thrive.” When we are talking about creating workplaces where all people can thrive, we are no longer talking about disadvantaged or advantaged races, but inclusivity for all.

Inclusivity dismantles the idea that one group is more superior or less superior because belonging is the common denominator. When you focus on belonging, you achieve unity rather than separation through our differences.

SHRM took that opportunity at evolving DEI. In a press release they said, “Effective immediately, SHRM will adopt the acronym “I&D” instead of “IE&D.” This strategic decision underscores our commitment to leading with Inclusion as the catalyst for holistic change in workplaces and society.” 

Inclusion is that sense of belonging you feel at your workplace, like you fit in. SHRM says when employees belong they feel comfortable to share their opinions, feel truly cared about and accepted, and not afraid to be themselves.

When the intended outcome is about being heard, respected, and understood, the answer lies in your workforce developing interpersonal awareness, so they can foster psychologically safe and trusted teams made up of employees who feel like they belong.

As belonging is a feeling that is largely up to direct managers to cultivate, it’s important to provide supportive material and resources for your leaders to develop their interpersonal skills. Your leaders set the overall tone, but HR can affect retention and turnover by providing this support.

When HR initiatives are disengaged or not developed by your leadership team, it’s more challenging for them to take hold, especially for employee engagement and behavior.

If DEI efforts are coming from HR, but falling short with adoption, there are other ways to give your leadership the skills to understand cognitive bias or how personal beliefs are formed to help them foster components like trust and fairness in their teams. Many companies with DEI offices offer training that teaches employees how to unlearn stereotypes against certain groups, respect each other’s differences, and hire people of color without overlooking them because of personal bias.

But unless your stakeholders understand the connection of these efforts on business initiatives, you will lose steam when public support dwindles, costing time, money, and creating a distrust for future HR driven investments.

Part of burnout is facing issues beyond our control to solve. Many HRs feel that employee engagement and inclusion are the responsibility of their direct manager. Although it’s true that employees feel that their relationship with their direct manager is more important than primary relationships in their life, HRs can have a significant impact with the right influence.

It’s important to have realistic expectations with social initiatives. Any attempts at change can make people uncomfortable. While these initiatives may be met with resistance, it’s an obstacle that should be expected. The issues we are facing reach back for decades.

Strategies that are owned by HR can still be influenced by DEI principals like removing bias from hiring and using models for data-driven recruitment without involving anyone else in the company. Diversio’s advice for data- driven recruitment is to use analytics to understand where bias might be creeping into the process. Analyze job listings to reach diverse audiences and anonymize data to remove potential identifiers.

HR has an enormous influence over the effort and it’s smart to consider backlash while finding alternative solutions to teach the values. Like the common recent trend is to remove the acronym DEI from job descriptions. You will have to adjust your strategy when faced with public support or backlash, but any sway of the pendulum doesn’t mean that you stop reporting on DEI analytics.

Determining the success of DEI initiatives can be challenging. It can be easier to measure demographics like diversity ratios vs. the level of psychological safety your employees feel.

Find strategic ways to start to collect this data. Feedback surveys are one of the most useful tools to reach out to gauge your efforts with employees. Our simple psychological survey from Patrick Lencioni’s 5 Dysfunctions of a Team can be used when HRs suspect psychological safety issues or just want to assess the comfort level of their culture.

Focusing on the things you can influence and control from your position will help you continue to advocate for DEI initiatives, even when they become less popular. If these initiatives are costly, bringing in transparency to the high costs of abandonment will help stakeholders stay well-informed and help you to keep DEI top of mind.

Although there can be a benefit in attracting talent with diversity and inclusive words and priorities, employees would rather you walk the talk. Employers cannot fake these values.

Language is becoming more polarized, so efforts to influence these values must change too. SHRM’s approach is to simplify and focus on diversity and inclusion. This helps to reinforce the message that it isn’t about promoting one race over the other, but about making everyone feel like they belong in our cultures. It isn’t about race, it is about who we are as individuals.

Focusing on solutions that impact those values through the guise of cognitive bias, interpersonal leadership development, and business viability in relationship to diversity are other effective ways to infuse the same principles.

HR should focus on what they can do. Provide the stop gaps that prevent bias from creeping in unknowingly, and continue to educate decision makers and stakeholders on the positive business impacts of achieving a more diverse and inclusive culture.

Cultures that are not psychologically safe and inclusive breed a lack of civility, political disagreements, and generational gaps.. When you are inclusive, you are welcoming to diversity and you don’t have to work as hard to create separate initiatives. Instead, influence your leadership team from the inside out.