Best Practice of the Month: Ride the Coattails of Popular Programmes

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) work doesn’t always need to be labeled as such. Sometimes quite a lot of progress can be made towards EDI goals by hitching a ride on other programmes. If your organisation is in the midst of a safety campaign, for example, you may have an opportunity to talk about language diversity and address barriers to speakers of minority languages in the context of safety concerns. Launch of a push for innovation might be the occasion to highlight the role diversity plays in finding unexpected connections between ideas, leading to new products and processes, and educating managers about diversity of thinking style.
A number of companies—especially in the pharmaceutical and health care industries—have linked diversity and inclusion to their wellness programmes and community health care outreach. Because groups such as women or ethnic minorities are more affected by certain medical conditions and may have less access to appropriate treatment, the EDI function can act as the liaison between employee affinity groups or community groups and business units trying to target these constituencies.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives can be a particularly powerful partner in diversity and inclusion work. (A few companies have even housed the diversity function within the CSR organisation.) While the “business case” is the primary impetus for doing diversity in most U.S. and U.K. companies, in some parts of the world, doing the right thing is the stronger driver. The social justice and fairness aspects of diversity and inclusion are especially appealing to people in emerging markets such as China. (See SHRM’s study, Global Diversity and Inclusion: Perceptions, Practices and Attitudes.) In Africa, where AIDS is such a pressing social issue, EDI can be linked to the organisation’s education, treatment, or other community efforts to help deal with the epidemic’s impact. In recent years, the European Commission has been pushing strongly for organisations to create more synergy between diversity and CSR, particularly through the supply chain (including procurement and supplier diversity) and work/life reconciliation (managing working hours, and flexible working).
Making the connections between EDI and other initiatives and brokering partnerships with the functions responsible for them is one of the most important roles EDI leaders play in their organisations.