When is it time to hire an internal DEI leader? (part 1 of 4)

A question that often comes up is - when should organization hire an internal DEI leader as a full-time employee? The answer to that question, as to most questions is… it depends. And there is no right answer.

However, at CCI we do have some recommendations.

First it is helpful to think about how DEI tends to evolve at organizations.

DEI ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Stage 1: Initiation/grassroots

Stage 2: Assessment and discussion

Stage 3: Strategy & commitment

Stage 4: Implementing and operationalizing

Stage 5: Integrating and developing

Stage 6: Innovating

In stage 1, initiation often comes from the “grassroots” level. Employees organize from within, often when things that have been bubbling under the surface for years come to a head after an inciting incident. This might be a toxic employee gone too far, a change in leadership, an employee survey with unexpectedly poor results, a PR snafu, lost business or funding, or any other number of internal incidents or events. Or, as we all know, it might be an external event such as the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in the summer of 2020 which lead to a racial reckoning for so many companies and organizations that weren’t previously engaged in DEI work, or not as seriously. Pressure might come from the outside too - from clients, customers, funders, communities served or other stakeholders.

Usually an organization will try to “DIY DEI” with employees volunteering their time to organize book clubs, discussion groups, and affinity groups or they might piecemeal together external workshops, conferences and trainings.

There is nothing wrong with starting out this way! But employees are often working hard trying to figure out how to get buy-in from leadership and across the organization, and efforts can get derailed or lose momentum as employees have to prioritize their “real” work.

This is often the point at which we get brought in as DEI consultants to help create a more strategic and sustainable approach.

But what about hiring an internal DEI leader instead? Wouldn’t that show more commitment? Wouldn’t that be better?

As I said, it depends, but considering that stage 2 generally involves assessment and discussion, it can be hard for someone to come in as an employee and do the kind of data gathering, truth telling, acknowledgement, educating and facilitation that is required at this stage.

It’s really all about power. Is an internal DEI leader going to be empowered to speak truth to power to their boss? Or is a consultant better positioned to do this work as an outside third party?

In our experience, there are significant advantages to an organization having someone come in from the outside, not least because a team of different facilitators with different perspectives, experiences and identities can be brought in rather than one individual. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a benefit to also having an internal DEI leader, or someone who carries this responsibility as part of their role. It’s much harder to only have someone internally - that is not a role, frankly, that I would be likely to consider myself, and we’ve been brought in as consultants by organizations after failed attempts to do so. Even a successful and well established internal DEI leader with a full team will continue to work with external DEI consultants as needed.

Depending on the size of the organization, it also may not be necessary to have an internal DEI leader at this point. We have found it usually becomes more helpful during or after stage 3 which is about defining the strategy and making a commitment to long term DEI at the organization, understanding that the effort needs to be on-going rather than “one and done.”

At the end of stage 3, we deliver a DEI strategic roadmap and implementation plan, co-created with staff from across the organization. This is the point, at the start of stage 4, that handing DEI over to an internal DEI leader or team starts to become a requirement as an organization moves into implementing and operationalizing. It’s hard to drive implementation from the outside without a strong internal team who is working day-to-day in the organization.

This handover can be immediate - our work may end at this point - or it can be gradual as we offer implementation support services. It can be tricky as roles shift and I’ll be honest, at this point we have been known to be so invested in the success of an organization that it’s hard for us to step back, but we’ve learned that it is necessary. If an organization becomes overly reliant on our services, we are actually getting in the way of what we want, which is for DEI to become an integral part of every aspect of an organization and its work. And as hard as it can be to let go, we’ve found it just as rewarding, maybe even more so, to hear of the successes our clients go on to achieve as a result of but after working with us.

Stage 5, integrating and developing and stage 6, innovating, are all best lead internally. In fact, I think they need to be lead internally, although, as I said earlier, external consultants can always be helpful to meet specific needs, for example for ongoing training, periodic employee surveys and interviews, iterations on the DEI strategic plan, DEI coaching, deep dives on specific topics and more.

Hopefully it helps to understand what the longer trajectory of DEI work at the organizational level could look like. Next week we’ll talk about our recommended process for hiring a DEI consultant, and then we’ll talk about hiring for an internal DEI role.

What stage is your organization at and what might some next steps be?

Banner photo by Tatiana Balletti on Unsplash

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