Beyond Diversity Month: Transform DEI into Practice   

As a start-up founder, it’s important to prioritize Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in your organization’s culture, hiring practices, and business operations. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’s also essential for your company’s long-term success. 

Diverse teams are stronger teams. They bring a wide range of knowledge and experience to the table, enabling them to be better equipped to make informed, innovative, and creative decisions. Building a diverse team brings additional value to the employee experience. Creating a supportive and inclusive culture for all employees will make your team feel increasingly valued. 

However, building a culture of belonging and inclusion requires intentional effort, resources and time. 

Tactics for Workplace DEI

• Engagement: Implement regular check-ins with employees, focus on DEI training, and ongoing learnings (for group and individual upskilling). Celebrate diversity, equity and inclusion in your organization’s values and mission 
• Employee led: Empower your employees to create Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to provide support and create a safe space to express their authentic selves. 
• Seat at the Table: Seek out diverse perspectives and input when making important business decisions
• Hiring: Implement blind hiring** practices, and cast a wider net for job postings

Diverse teams are better equipped to understand and respond to the needs of a diverse customer base. You can also extend your DEI efforts beyond your employees to improve your customer relationship.  

Tactics for Customer DEI

• Relationships: Focus on building relationships with diverse communities by creating inclusive and culturally sensitive marketing campaigns, partnering with diverse organizations or influencers, and ensuring that your customer service team is trained to handle diverse perspectives 
• Feedback: Invest in user research and testing, and create customer feedback loops that prioritize the voices of underrepresented communities

Ultimately, prioritizing your DEI efforts will contribute to not only your short term success but also your company’s long term growth. As diverse founders of BurgeonHR, we can support you in creating DEI strategies that works best for your startup. Contact us here. 

** Blind Hiring: A process used to block out a job candidate’s personal information that could influence or “bias” a hiring decision.