It's been my experience that people often struggle to draft and implement policies in a way that serves their organization and moves the needle on their DEI objectives. This makes sense, given the complexity of the process of conducting policy review, making adjustments, and ensuring effective implementation.
With that in mind, there are a lot of challenges that can pop up along the way, each of which compounds the other. Let's take a look at common challenges (and solutions!) to developing effective DEI policies:
- Lack of Buy-In From the Top
Policy review requires time, attention to detail, and a willingness to implement new procedures. However, the leadership who have the power to make sure reviews happen are also not the ones who are most impacted by the policies themselves. This can lead to resistance from leadership to carry out a full policy review. This is an understandable form of resistance, but it won't serve you and may freeze progress toward long-term DEI objectives.
Solution: Have conversations with your leaders that highlight risks and benefits of policy changes. Be prepared to provide reasonable, feasible strategies based on the resources (time, financial, or otherwise) that are already available to your organization. You can't do everything at once, so start with the items that are most important, and generate a timeline that allows you to maintain a balance with your other goals and needs.
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Inconsistent Application or Enforcement
Sometimes, the problem is not so much with the policies themselves, but with an inconsistent application or enforcement of the policies. This could be the result of bias from managers, who show favoritism toward certain team members, or even leaders who tend to give more support or attention to certain departments. In this case, it's important to invest in anti-bias training, particularly for middle managers who are essential to smooth functioning of the organization.
However, inconsistent application of policies could also be due to a lack of awareness of what the policies are. It might sound strange, but policies are not always clearly communicated to all employees. This is particularly true in larger organizations, where policies might be long, bulky, and are mostly pertinent to HR.
Solution: In addition to anti-bias training, it's important to make sure your policies are accessible to all employees. This is an exercise in demonstrating transparency, as well as making it easier for team members to get questions answered without having to go through another person (or multiple people!). Further, it helps build trust in policy-makers at your organization; when people feel they're being respected and told the truth, they tend to feel safer and are more likely to stay engaged at work.
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Thinking About Equality vs Equity
A common challenge for many organizations is that they focus more on providing equal rather than equitable resources to everyone. Unfortunately, focusing on equality is not an effective way of creating equal opportunities because all your team members have different backgrounds, experiences, advantages and disadvantages. This, of course, can have disproportionately negative consequences for people from marginalized backgrounds and those who have less authority in the organization.
Solution: In order to create a more inclusive workplace, it's necessary to focus on equity-oriented policies. One key way of doing this is to build accountability mechanisms into your policies. This means that your policies clearly outline expectations for all employees, as well as outlining procedures and consequences for when those expectations are not met. Accountability mechanisms ensure that employees know how to fulfill their responsibilities, and also that leadership are held to a standard of supporting those in the chain of command.
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Intercultural & Legal Challenges
Intercultural challenges can pop up in any organization, big or small. However, for companies that operate in multiple countries, cross-cultural considerations may be more significant and perhaps more consequential to address.
Of course, every organization's policies need to be appropriate for their legal context, but this is also more complicated for multinational corporations, where policies need to be appropriate for legal variances from one country or territory to the next
Solution: It's definitely a good idea to consult with experts in these arenas. Obviously, adhering to specific legal context requires certified authority, but intercultural considerations are often difficult to identify and address without experience in the field. Experts in legal and intercultural issues will be able to ensure that your policies are appropriate to each area of operation, as well as remaining aligned with your organization's values.
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Unintended Consequences
Unfortunately, even when you take meticulous care, jumped through all the hoops, and think you have ticked all the boxes, there are still unintended consequences that pop up as a result of new initiatives. Further, as you continue to move the needle on your objectives, you may find that certain policies become outdated, ineffective, redundant, or even problematic.
Solution: While you cannot necessarily foresee all the consequences of policy changes, you can put monitoring and evaluation systems into place to help address issues as they surface. Monitoring systems describe ways in which employees (regardless of their status/authority in the organization) can document observations and provide feedback regarding the progress of an initiative or the impact of a policy shift. It's important to have monitoring systems so that people's voices can be heard and so that improvements can be made in a targeted, effective way.
Evaluation systems describe a scheduled process of reviewing existing policies and programs. This could happen at whatever interval(s) seem most appropriate in your context. Depending on how robust your monitoring systems are, how well-resourced your organization is, as well as what your specific DEI objectives are, evaluation systems might occur at different times. The key is to make sure you are consistent about carrying them out, and that the process for carrying them out is detailed clearly in your policies.
Want to learn how the right DEI training program can bolster your DEI policies? 
