When companies say they respect and champion DEI, why do they try to make you fit the company mold?

4 Comments

1. AnonymousOctober 18,2022 at 1:39PM UTC

   Because talk is cheap.
   It’s easy to make it a strategic goal, it’s VERY hard to operationalize.
   A way to push this: if asked for ideas for company professional development opportunities, ask for whole-company sessions with a facilitator on developing strategies for DEI beyond learning opportunities. Another way is to note when you are in a DEI situation and say out loud, this is a DEI situation, this is where both our resolve and inertia is tested, how will we respond now with DEI as a major element of our decision making process?

2. AnonymousOctober 18,2022 at 1:48PM UTC

   It seems to me like rather than working to include all cultures, ethnicities and lifestyles in DEI efforts, many companies will only focus on the hot topic efforts, often times to the total exclusion of the exisiting workforce. Whatever the media is touting as the latest minority group - be it raced based, orientation based, culture based, etc - the companies DEI efforts become all about that. To me, this is a failure of their efforts and really diminishes the value of true DEI efforts. There are companies that get it right, but more often than not, companies get it wrong by jumping on the latest bandwagon.

3. AnonymousOctober 18,2022 at 2:21PM UTC

   I don't see that companies are sold on DEI. They haven't accepted the fact that it's valuable. They pay it lip service but haven't accepted it beyond that.

4. AnonymousOctober 19,2022 at 1:31AM UTC

   Bc what they are saying is just for optics