DEI and Organizational Culture
by DONNA COLES
What DE&I Means To Organizational Culture
The conceptual function of organizational culture is to define the organization. It’s what the organization is known for. Some examples are:
a. Pleasant environment?
b. Tense environment?
c. Differing employee experiences with the organization’s leadership?
d. Perceptions of leadership fairness?
e. Inclusive?
f. Exclusive?
g. Sense of community?
h. Identified outsiders in the employee group?
i. High employee self-perception of contribution to the organization’s success?
j. Fairness in access to opportunities?
k. Favoritism?
l. Adherence to quality standards?
m. Acceptance of inferior performance?
n. Employee and customer loyalty?
o. High turnover and low retention?
Your organization is a community. Some of our large corporations operate like small cities with concierge, free fitness center, free snacks and lunches, childcare, accommodations for pets, and other employee amenities. Those organizations often have a reputation of being employee friendly cultures. And employees seem proud to work there. Very often, in those environments, employee commitment to quality is high.
However, recently added components of employee diversity, the remote and hybrid workers, are often overlooked. Organizations should review accommodations for remote and hybrid workers – and make accommodations for their return to the in-office work environment.
Assessing aspects of your Organizational Culture
When anyone enters your organization’s doors or engages with your representative during the workday, there is likely an assumption that your employees adhere to the organization’s culture, such as:
acceptable behaviors,
levels of performance,
interpersonal mores, and
customs particular to the organization’s social environment.
Each of these aspects of culture are what make the organization unique. That uniqueness is often communicated to newly-hired employees during onboarding. The process of onboarding is intended to acculturate new employees and provide them with the necessary knowledge about the organization to become successful employees. Onboarding communicates expectations regarding adherence to the organization’s mission, values, and the behaviors that exemplify successful membership in the organization. New employees are expected to represent the organization’s values and become accepted insiders.
Does your leadership team know what is involved in your new-hire onboarding? Consider including information about your organization’s DE&I commitments in your communications to new employees. What is known is that onboarding won’t change worldviews but it will communicate directives for acceptable behavior and performance. It describes the organization’s culture.
Organizational culture is what we experience. It’s the sum of the organization’s attitudes and values -- and the observable behaviors that result from them. Aspects of your organization’s culture can be tangible, such as designated parking spaces, policy manuals, physical layout, and physical upkeep. Or intangible, such as shared routines, the presence or absence of a simple greeting, and acknowledgments of successes and losses.
Here are some additional common aspects of organizational culture. Take a closer look at your organization’s subtle and not so subtle messages to those who enter your organization’s doors.
Leadership
Whether they are subtle or not so subtle, there are ways that your employees at every level come to experience your organization’s hierarchy, leadership, and management approaches. Leadership drives business and is substantially responsible for employee engagement, disengagement, and departure.
How are resources managed?
How are decisions made?
How are problems solved?
Who are the problem solvers?
Does equity exist across the organization regarding ethical conduct?
Do employees aspire to leadership positions, or do they jokingly denounce promotion to their management teams?
Do employees seem embarrassed by the thought of becoming a part of the management structure?
Does the divide, known as “Us versus Them” impact the relationship between employees (“us”) and management (“them”)?
After promotion to supervisory positions, do employees represent management, or do they continue psychological membership in “us”?
Employee empowerment
Facilities management
Inclusion
Interpersonal dynamics
Formal designations
Values and purpose
Managing milestones
Importance of relationship versus task focus
Sense of belonging
Life balance
DE&I commitment
Accountability
Each of these factors, separately and in combination, plays a central role in shaping your organization’s culture. That is what makes it unique.
It helps to know your organization’s culture. You can then explain the culture to newly hired employees and prospective stakeholders. You can treat the acculturation to your organization as you would the acculturation of a tourist to the mores of another country.
Excerpt from “A History and Future of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the U.S.”
© 2022 D. Coles
More about Donna
My career has included lots of preparation, wins and losses, and promotion to leadership/executive roles. And now in my coaching and writing, I share what I know with an emphasis on continual improvement and stewardship for effective leaders.