Delivering a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy Workshop
Clarkston recently partnered with an enterprise software company to develop and administer a comprehensive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE+I) strategy workshop to help the organization best leverage their internal DE+I Committee and develop executable goals and a roadmap.
The company was experiencing rapid growth simultaneously with sweeping organizational changes rooted in remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the changes affecting their people and a desire to focus on organizational culture, the Director of People acknowledged the organization’s DE+I committee needed guidance on best practices and how to best leverage the committee for organizational impact.
Before Diving into the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy Workshop
Before starting the workshop, Clarkston and the client’s key stakeholders aligned on delivering a customized DE+I lunch and learn for the entire organization, thus providing common language and understanding of core DE+I concepts. The lunch and learn also helped tie DE+I to the company’s core values, with the hopes of creating a culture of ownership, and re-introduced the DE+I committee to the organization to recruit new members.
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Clarkston took a collaborative and dynamic approach to workshop development by holding a focus-group discussion with key stakeholders to get a better understanding of the history of the DE+I committee, desired impact, and areas of organizational focus, as well as administering a survey to committee members to get a comprehensive understanding of strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. These discussions and survey responses became the input for an initial vision statement for the organization’s DE+I.
Through the strategic DE+I workshop, Clarkston was able to facilitate a discussion with and gain buy-in from the 15-person team on the DE+I vision statement for the organization, which will serve as the foundation to the goals and actions of the committee and the broader company. Based on the discussion, Clarkston was able to identify key recommendations for next steps to provide governance and operational efficiencies within the committee, as well as establish priorities and frameworks tying identified goals and actions to the organization’s areas of focus and newly formed DE+I vision.
Key Outputs of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy Workshop
- Developing foundational understanding and a common language for DEI amongst the organization
- Level-setting on as-is strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities as it relates to DE+I to understand “as-is” state and to develop a “to-be” vision.
- Ensuring a foundation for governance, ownership, and accountability for DE+I.
- Turning areas of focus into actionable, prioritized goals
- Developing a 100-day plan to gain momentum and execute
