When people of all identities, cultures and backgrounds are accepted and valued, this makes for stronger companies and more harmonious communities. Diverse teams with diverse perspectives are more adept at understanding different ideals of perceptions, serving a diverse range of consumers and seizing opportunities. And at Loreal, a company with over 86,000 employees globally across 35 international brands with presence in 150 countries values DE&I as it fuels the innovation, inspiration and ambition that helps us to create the beauty that moves the world.
In a multigenerational workforce,we embraced DE&I since 1960s and ever since we just gone stronger and better by having enhanced partnership and collaboration across all functions, divisions, and teams. The duty is not just HR but everyone in the group.
For companies that are planning to implement DE&I into their culture. Firstly, strategic planning by having buy in for all the stakeholders and aligned to the global DE&I culture direction and objectives while decentralizing to the local markets. Next, instilling DE&I culture and mindset for all employees in their daily work with a sense of purpose. Most importantly, drive DE&I awareness in all brand activations and people decisions. Yes, DE&I is a strategic business enabler and the importance to walk the talk by taking DE&I into consideration in all organization policies and people decisions. And then to inspire and lead opinions for all DE&I practices. And in return, you will be able to build strong partnerships with external and internal ecosystems to impact employees, partners, consumers, and the local community.
We can look at using this simple concept with 5 pillars- AICER
1. Awareness
2. Integration
3. Community
4. Engagement
5. Re- awareness
Awareness- Obstacles to diversity are lack of awareness, perception of this as a financial cost. This is the key pillar to strengthen the understanding and education of your employees. A simple method would be to conduct DE&I awareness workshop, training and facilitation. And this could be conducted on a hybrid learning model, and it can start with the newcomers on their induction day.
“Obstacles to diversity are lack of awareness, perception of this as a financial cost”
Integration- Ensuring DE&I topics to be included for all business topics, brands activities and people decision- for example incorporate DE&I into your brand/ marketing/ digital training and activations that connect with the employees, communities and consumers.
Community- Form a committee with diverse champions in each dimension such as women in leadership, men in leadership, lgbt+, disabilities and other dimensions that matter to your company to drive cultural changes.
Engagement- With now Covid relaxation, host events are not an issue. Instead, you can host events that relate to your company mission and vision for example, Women international day and Pride Month or even have DE&I week with internal and external speakers to share about the best practices.This would enrich the employees from both internal and externallenses.
Re-awareness- With constructive feedback (Feedback culture), these would re- educate, re- design and also re- learn and re- train them on this important topic.
Basically, with this simple concept of AICER, you can start framing your DE&I objectives and this would help to instill an inclusive culture to your organizations. Lastly, to end off, I would like to share the simplified version of DE&I. Diversity is to invite people to the party, whereas equity is to ensure they are provided with the best fit shoes so that, inclusion is to invite them to dance.
