Most businesses have measurable targets they’re trying to hit. These can be objectives for marketing, sales, hiring, or other metrics important to organizational success. Setting goals can get real results, too. One study found that 65% of small businesses that defined benchmarks reached at least some of those targets in the past year.
There’s a psychology to this. Goal-setting can change the structure of your brain. It starts in the amygdala, the part of your brain responsible for your emotional responses. The amygdala evaluates how important the goal is. Then, the frontal lobe (that’s the part of your brain responsible for problem-solving) finds ways to make the achievement of your objective possible.
Your brain gets to work as soon as you create a goal, and many studies have shown that those who set vivid and exciting goals have a much higher chance of achieving results. Just by setting a goal, you’re closer to success.
If you have a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategy and want to see results, you may want to consider DEI goals for this part of your organization. After all, with your brain engaging right away, setting some inspiring diversity and inclusion goals can bring you closer to creating a strong workplace.
What Are DEI Goals?
DEI goals for companies are guideposts. They direct your action toward measurable change. DEI goals are important for a few reasons:
- They inspire you & your team
- They show your commitment to DEI
- They help you plan so you can see real results
- They translate ideas that can seem abstract — like inclusion — into something you can measure and address
- They can turn your DEI efforts from ad hoc measures to sustainable progress
To see the real power of diversity and inclusion goals, let’s consider what happens when you don’t have any set objectives. You try one initiative. You try another. Without a clear outcome in mind and a way to measure whether you’re getting better, you’re not moving toward a target. It may be hard to keep enthusiasm and momentum high.
With goals, on the other hand, you can make sure each step in the direction of greater inclusion and diversity is part of a larger objective. You create a sense of accomplishment and momentum, which can help you hit your next target. Instead of an ad hoc approach, you’ve got a DEI roadmap, with milestones you’re trying to hit along the way.
DEI Goal Examples to Get You Inspired
So what are some good DEI goals for companies and other organizations? Let’s look at ideas that might work for you.
Develop a DEI Strategy
If you don’t have one yet, your DEI strategy can be the container in which your DEI goals live. It can provide the structure and “big picture” idea of how diverse and inclusive you want your organization to be. Within that, you may have smaller goals on how to achieve your big vision for your teams. Creating a DEI strategy can include:
- Setting big goals for DEI in your organization
- Offering DEI training for leadership, management, & workers
- Re-evaluating operations & company processes, with an eye on DEI
- Gathering & benchmarking DEI data
- Conducting anonymous surveys to determine how diverse your organization is & how included your teams feel
- Making your workplace more accessible
Change your hiring practices
You can create a more welcoming experience for candidates and attract more diverse talent by taking a second look at your hiring and recruitment systems. Start by looking at your job descriptions and job ads. Where possible, weed out any language which may discourage some applicants. Use gender-neutral language. Include a DEI statement, explaining your commitment to a diverse and inclusive workplace, right in the job ad.
Next, you might want to set goals about where you recruit. Make it a goal to expand where you seek talent. This may mean working with a diversity-focused recruiter, attending different networking events, or creating more opportunities to hire internally.
Look at the selection process, too. Make sure your team is trained to make all candidates feel welcome and set up for success during the interview stage. Consider a system for reviewing applications that removes names and identifying information so you can avoid unconscious bias. Create a warm and humanistic way to let candidates know your decision and develop an onboarding system that makes new workers really feel part of the team from day one.
Create a DEI Committee
A DEI committee is a group of volunteers at your organization who helps drive change. These employees, ideally from different parts of your business, work together to find pain points, create initiatives, and make changes. They might develop a new onboarding program to make new candidates feel welcome, for example, or work to set up DEI training for all teams.
Your DEI committee needs its own clear goals, support from leadership, and a budget to do the best work possible.
Create Employee Resource Groups
Employee resource groups — or ERGs for short — are voluntary groups of workers who share affinities. You might have ERGs for veterans, for example, and for caregivers, women, BIPOC employees, and others, too. ERGs allow team members with commonalities to connect in the workplace. They can share experiences and ideas, support each other, and work on professional and personal development together.
Set Up Mentorship at Your Company
A mentorship program can support professional development at your company. For BIPOC employees, women, workers living with disability, and other employees, mentorship can provide more equitable professional opportunities by offering support and new connections. This type of program can help you create more diversity within leadership by allowing you to develop talent and promote internally.
What’s Next?
Now that you understand what DEI goals are and why they’re important, maybe you’re inspired. You’ve looked at some DEI goal examples and may be considering what could work at your company.
How can you turn diversity and inclusion goals into action and measurable change?
Diversio has an answer. We’ve worked with government agencies, portfolios, and businesses in many sectors. In our experience, we’ve found that setting the right goals starts with data, so that’s where we start. We gather, analyze, and benchmark data so the Diversio Insights platform can uncover hidden pain points and opportunities. Diversio reports let you review and share information easily with your team.
Our Diversio Dashboard then naturally guides to field-tested solutions. Using humanistic, real-world language and proven strategies, we help you set time-bound goals and keep you accountable so you can reach them. Diversio is the world’s first AI-powered DEI platform, so we bring you the advanced tools you need to create measurable change. From helping you find your goals to working with you to achieve them, Diversio is your holistic solution for measurable DEI change.
To see what Diversio can do, book a demo today.
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