When we speak with EDI leads we find they are facing common challenges. These include overwhelming workloads, performative buy-in, and plateauing outcomes.
While some of this can be attributed to broader social and environmental factors, much more can be traced back to how we design and organise our practice.
Frustratingly, as EDI practitioners, we are often asked to undertake compliance-led demographic work that meets the requirements of law, regulation and funders. However, a compliance approach has been found to have little positive impact and can be rife with unintended outcomes. For example, in 2023, Kalev’s paper outlined how diversity training focused on legislation is more likely to have a negative effect on bias.
Fortunately, the research is clear about the types of work that have higher success rates and fewer unintended outcomes. We can consider them as strategy, context and coproduction.
- A value-led strategy, where EDI work is tied to and measured against the business’s practised aims, rather than treated as a standalone item, is key. We use much of Mazzucato’s mission-led thinking, employing EDI as a diagnostic to organisational problems. Crucially, this enables us to prioritise work while developing its value, which is vital in the fight against overwhelm.
- Secondly, context-driven, not trend-based, no one EDI project works everywhere for everyone, nor should it. However, creating work that understands your context in terms of maturity, climate and root cause of problems consistently leads to strong outcomes, including increased buy-in.
- Finally, coproduced work that considers both power and its absence in design is vital to creating effective outcomes that land the first time successfully, increasing ongoing impact.
If it’s a quick win you need to meet those compliance demands, we understand, all things in time.
You can still maximise your chances of achieving change by looking at the findings of Mor Barak’s 2016 meta-analysis, which reports both positive and negative outcomes when using a diversity-representation framing, but consistently positive when based on ideas of inclusion.
For those of you with the resources and ambition to do more, we have created a diagnostic to help you understand how effective your work is likely to be, in line with current research.
Complete the diagnostic (it takes around 5 minutes) for your bespoke report with recommendations on next steps >
Recommended learning: You may find our Masterclass in ‘Understanding Your Environment: The Fairness Diagnostic’ useful. This half-day session teaches how to diagnose how fairness is experienced across your organisation and use this to guide defensible decision-making.
Browse Masterclasses here https://thecobe.co.uk/masterclasses/
