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The Grassroots DEI Organizer Playbook

Chapter 1: Getting Started

Claire Veuthey
Better Programming

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Four colleagues gather with tablets for a meeting.
image from Jopwell Latinx Photo Collection, Vol I.

This is Chapter 1 of a larger playbook (in progress) for those seeking to do DEI work at early-stage startups.

In Chapter 1, we cover:

  • Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Belonging (we use DEI as shorthand for these terms through out the chapter)
  • A few arguments for DEI efforts: the ethical imperative, and the business case
  • Getting started, with either top-down or bottom-up approaches

I. Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Belonging

Diversity — a measurable fact

There is no single definition of what a diverse organization’s demographic representation should be.

It’s useful to think about whether or not your organization is appropriately diverse in terms of what makes sense for the organization’s function. For example, it might make sense for a men’s health magazine’s writing staff to be majority-male-identifying. On the flip side, there is no function-related reason why a ride-hailing tech company would have a majority-male management team.

The diversity of an organization can be measured by the proportion of individuals within the organization representing different identities.

Example: An organization that is 85% White, 10% Asian, 3% Black, and 2% Latinx could be said to be less racially diverse than an organization that is 20% White, 20% Asian, 20% Black, 20% Latinx, and 20% a long tail of other racial identities.

It’s also useful to measure diversity across teams and levels of an organization.

Example: An organization that has 50 female employees and 50 male employees could be called gender-diverse. However, if all 15 managers and all 20 engineers are men, then the organization has teams that are not gender-diverse and opportunities for leadership that are not gender-diverse.

There are many different ways to measure an organization’s diversity. Some prominent underrepresented groups are Black and Brown people, women, people with disabilities, formerly incarcerated people, people with alternative (non-college) educations, people from poor or working-class backgrounds, people who identify as trans and/or nonbinary, older people, among others.

Inclusion — Created by how people act day-to-day

Inclusion is built from diversity. An inclusive organization recognizes the value of diversity and consciously makes organizational space for diverse identities.

Example: A company’s CEO wants to take the management team for a team-building offsite and decides to do a hiking trip. The CEO, an avid hiker, chats about the idea with his friends the COO and CTO and they choose a physically strenuous hike that they’re all excited about doing. The CMO, who has no hiking experience and feels nervous about not being able to keep up, drops out of the trip at the last moment. This was not an inclusive event for the team and will only result in the CEO, COO, and CTO growing closer while the CMO is again excluded.

A couple of hotspots to watch out for inclusion/exclusion:

  • Meals — can everyone eat what the organization has provided? Do they like it?
  • Meeting dietary restrictions and serving food from different culinary traditions.
  • Being aware of religious or other fasting periods in terms of meal timing for food-focused events
  • Do tables form that seem to exclude specific groups?
  • Events — can everyone attend and find value in the event?
  • Don’t center every social event around drinking alcohol or competitive games.
  • Don’t schedule all social events after-hours.
  • Make sure the office housekeeping is shared/rotated (assuming that event admin duties are not a formal part of someone’s job).
  • Meetings : is everyone included? Can everyone be heard?
  • Is there a moderator whose role it is to make sure certain voices don’t consistently dominate?
  • Were all of the relevant stakeholders invited to the meeting?

Equity — The end goal of practices and policies

In an equitable organization, opportunity and reward are distributed uniformly across all identities. Equity is difficult to measure or achieve.

Example: Two engineers, one a U.S. citizen and one an immigrant, are at the same level in the engineering team structure, but the citizen’s yearly salary is $10K greater. When the new HR leader asks the manager why there’s a pay discrepancy, they justify it by saying the higher paid engineer has significantly better peer review feedback and has simply gotten higher performance-based raises over the past three review cycles, using the saved reviews as clear evidence.

Depending on how your organization assigns opportunity and reward, it can make it difficult to measure and compare how these are distributed and whether that distribution is equitable. In the example above, it’s difficult to argue that the more highly-paid engineer doesn’t deserve their salary, despite the fact that implicit bias likely influenced the peer reviewers and the manager in their feedback and decision making.

Instead of focussing on individual instances of imbalance, it is easier to see inequity when you look at the larger picture. This is a luxury that small organizations and individuals without access to data on the organization may not have.

Example: The new HR leader looks at compensation data across the organization and compares similar employees in similar roles that are immigrants or U.S. citizens. They find that, across the organization, immigrants tend to be paid ~$3K less per year of tenure as compared to citizens. Taking this information to the executive team, they are able to convince the leadership to invest in an audit of their compensation policy.

As a company grows and changes, so will the reward and opportunity in its workforce. Organizations and the people who make them up must continually work towards equity as an end goal. It’s a learning process and a healthy organization should have a way to investigate and change its processes.

Belonging — An intangible quality of a “good place to work”

Do you go to work happy hours? Do you laugh at antics in your team’s IM channel? Do you eat at the lunch table in the office kitchen? Then you probably feel a sense of belonging in your workplace.

No organization has 100% participation in its events, but sometimes the voluntary participation is divided along the lines of workers who feel like they belong and those who feel othered within the organization.

Example: You notice that five team members who are ten years older than the next oldest employee at your company never attend a company happy hour. After talking with the office manager who coordinates the happy hour, you propose to move it earlier in the day so they can come, hypothesizing that the reason they don’t participate is that they need to get home to their families at a certain time. Despite the new time, they still don’t come, opting to stay at the office instead.

Creating belonging comes after diversity, inclusion, and equity. Each lay a part of the foundation needed for everyone in an organization to belong.

II. A Few Arguments for DEI Efforts

If you’re trying to jumpstart DEI initiatives within your organization, here are a few angles to argue for time, money, and engagement.

Ethical — It’s the right thing to do

“There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist. The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.” — Ibrahim X. Kendi

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.” — John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise.” — Marian Anderson

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” — Desmond Tutu

America has a problem with prejudice and inequality. Bigotry across a myriad of divisions is ingrained in modern American culture. Policies and practices that increase inequality across these constructed divisions are written into our laws. They have caused unjust inequality to persist in our society for centuries.

American companies, including those in the technology industry, reflect that larger American reality. They are not separate from America’s culture, laws, or society. Instead, they are important participants. As such, our companies have a problem with prejudice and inequality. What makes them different from that larger American reality is that we, their workers, have the power to change them and they can be changed faster due to strong centralized power-holders with the ability to take unilateral action (CEO’s for instance).

Our companies, teams, and products are fragments of the world that we can have outsized control on. By catalyzing change where we have control, we can be leaders of change on a larger scale. By doing nothing, we stand in the way of change. It is our duty to use the influence and power we receive from our roles in our companies to make those companies open and equitable forces for good in the world.

Resources — Ethical:

Studies

News/Commentary

Personal Press

Business — Diverse and inclusive organizations make for better businesses

This shows up in a number of ways: a) financial performance, through better decision-making, problem-solving and innovation, b) employee engagement and retention, and c) regulatory and legal compliance.

a) Financial performance, innovation, and decision-making, stakeholder empathy.

Research has shown the business case for DEI for years, yet it’s often the area where advocates see pushback. Some hiring managers or recruiters will resist DEI-oriented changes to hiring and recruitment processes because they don’t want to “lower the bar” — this phrase can be a telling sign, as it assumes that seeking to recruit and hire from diverse identities necessarily means bringing on less qualified individuals, and belies the structural racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry ingrained into organizational cultures and expectations.

In fact, teams composed of members with different perspectives — identities, training, geographic origin, etc — tend to outperform homogenous teams, as has been demonstrated repeatedly by research. Diverse teams may feel less familiar and comfortable, but for those very same reasons, members of diverse teams tend to do a better job of preparing, checking their assumptions, planning for alternative viewpoints, and expecting that reaching consensus may take some effort. All of this makes for better decision-making, and diverse teams have been shown to correlate with more innovative solutions and better financial performance.

The implications for these findings are profound, and in small startups, they are most obviously applicable to product, tech, and founder teams.

Take product: diverse teams are more likely to benefit from a range of experiences, and therefore have deep stakeholder and customer empathy. This empathy can help them develop insights that translate into designing better products. A diverse product team will think about accessibility in product colors, functions, and device and browser compatibility, and test accordingly, avoiding potentially exclusionary and embarrassing product roll-outs, such as the Google Photos app labeling pictures of Black people as gorillas. The benefits of diverse and inclusive teams apply to any team whose job it is to solve problems (read: every team.)

Bringing on different experiences and perspectives isn’t a new idea. In fact, it’s been an accepted and understood way to improve organizational knowledge and decision-making in companies for years: if a company plans to expand into new geography, it looks for someone with experience in that geography. The same goes for a new product line, technology, or industry.

Other stakeholders like investors and partners may also have expectations that may incentivize companies to have more diverse decision-makers. For example, in early 2020, Goldman Sachs pledged not to take companies public unless they have at least one “diverse” director on its board, with a focus on women. Procurement and other forms of partnership are also increasingly affected by growing expectations for diverse teams.

Resources — Financial performance:

Resources — Decision-making and innovation:

Resources — Stakeholders, including customers, product users, and investors:

b) Attracting, engaging and retaining talent

Companies with a diverse employee base and inclusive cultures also tend to be better at retaining their employees. While the coronavirus crisis has dramatically changed the global economic context, unwanted employee turnover is expensive, and the war for talent may become even more acute as organizations face pressure to keep costs down and retain their best performers. Employees who feel a strong sense of belonging and loyalty are less likely to look for opportunities outside of the company. Companies who focus on DEI in a substantive way will have access to a broader swath of candidates, including those looking for an organization that values DEI. In short, good DEI programs can help attract and retain talent, including through tough times, by helping companies make better hires in the first place, and keep prized talent from leaving. (Note, though, that inclusive hiring is difficult!)

Resources — Talent

c) Legal

Discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other protected categories is illegal. Federal law (Title VII) forbids employers from making employment decisions based on an employee or candidate’s protected status — the only exception is when employers have affirmative action plans.

While good DEI programs and culture don’t necessarily protect employers from engaging in discrimination, they can certainly help inadvertently building a homogenous and potentially exclusionary organization. The EEOC has concluded that harassment (a form of discrimination) is more likely to happen in workplaces that lack diversity.

Bringing on people who come from similar backgrounds is easy — we tend to like people who are like us (homophily.) But this may make it less likely that people who do not come from this background will feel welcome or included, creating a vicious cycle of homogeneity and groupthink.

Resources — Legal:

III. Getting Started

Top-down approach

Top-down means starting with the leaders of your organization. CEOs are largely responsible for creating organizational culture — why shouldn’t they also be responsible for DEI?

Starting DEI initiatives at the top has advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

  • Company leaders have the institutional power to quickly and unilaterally change policies and procedures
  • They have high visibility within the organization and their actions can almost immediately affect company culture
  • They can direct resources and visibility towards initiatives to help make them successful
  • They make hiring decisions at the highest levels of the organization and can hire in diverse leadership

Disadvantages:

  • Company leaders’ first priority/responsibility is generally the success of the business and they often don’t see how DEI relates to that responsibility
  • They are often the most time-strapped, difficult to reach people at the organization, making working with them challenging.
  • They can see themselves as in charge of the organizational culture and could try to take control of DEI efforts in an unproductive way.
  • If they are not supportive of DEI efforts, starting the conversation with them can result in future roadblocks to more grassroots efforts.

It is a good idea to start with a top-down approach if:

  • Company leaders are very supportive of DEI initiatives.
  • This often happens after an “incident,” be it internal or external to the organization.
  • There are specific policy or procedure measures that need to be addressed and ample evidence to prove it.
  • Company culture is so toxic that immediate action is required from management.
  • Employee retention is poor.

Steps towards starting the conversation top-down:

  1. Identify the leader you want to approach for support on DEI initiatives.
  2. Gauge the best argument for convincing them to execute on the initiative (Ex: ethical / business case / other).
  3. (Optional but highly recommended) Find a partner to collaborate in pushing the initiative.
  4. Schedule time with the leader and present your argument and specific initiative to them.
  5. Make it as simple as possible for them to understand how they can help.
  6. If they are on board, schedule a future time with them during that first meeting to execute on next steps.
  7. If they are not on board, proceed to the bottom-up approach.

Bottom-up approach

Bottom-up means starting the conversation about DEI with other interested people at your company, no matter their function or seniority. You don’t need People Ops/HR to lead DEI work at your company!

Starting DEI initiatives from the bottom-up has its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages:

  • Start with those who are already on board, or at minimum, curious: you’ll be able to educate yourselves and support each other in your growth
  • Fit for purpose — start where your organization may be most receptive: DEI flows easily from company-wide activities like celebrating Chinese New Year or Pride.
  • Grassroots DEI efforts may be less formal (and perhaps less scary to others) than those led by HR or Legal.
  • A big part of founders/leaders’ priorities is hiring and building a great organizational culture. DEI initiatives fall squarely in that realm and so may slot easily into existing initiatives.

Disadvantages:

  • At small organizations, founders/leaders exert disproportionate influence, both formally and informally. If your efforts are only grassroots and leadership and/or HR do not take up the mantle, your efforts may lack credibility and stall.
  • No access to company resources like time or money
  • The effort takes time away from working on your role
  • Resistance from management could put your career at risk at the company

It’s a good idea to start with a bottom-up if:

  • You’re not in a leadership, HR, or hiring role.
  • You’re not certain that your organization has a problem, but you care about the organization and want to do your best to help address issues early on.
  • Your founders/leadership/HR are not taking initiatives in DEI work.
  • You find some colleagues who are interested in DEI work, too.

Steps towards starting the conversation from the bottom:

  1. Find allies: have you had great conversations about DEI with colleagues? Do you think you might be able to benefit from multiple perspectives on and share the work of DEI within your organization?
  2. Take the time to educate yourself, both on the issues and your own company: do you know where open roles are posted? Are job descriptions written in a biased way? Are most (or all?) of your new hires made by referral? Are referred candidates and non-candidates evaluated in the same way? How is performance evaluated across functions and seniority levels, and how does compensation align with performance? Note that your investors portfolio operations/platform team may be able to help provide some comparative/baseline information for compensation, recruitment, and retention trends among other startups in the same stage, though you may want to check with your founders before contacting your VCs directly.
  3. Start small and test it out: if you can, sneak in a conversation on DEI into an existing event or initiative.
    Example 1: Stride Health hosted regular “Credo” presentations over lunch, where colleagues volunteered to talk about themselves outside of work to get to know each other better.
    Example 2: Take it upon yourself to spread the word about job openings at your company to reach new networks and demographics. Offer to help your hiring manager colleagues think through their job descriptions and run them through Textio or other tools that help identify biased language or requirements. Do you really need someone with two years of consulting experience, or are you looking for someone with deal experience? Try to think creatively about how else someone could have acquired that experience so you don’t box yourself into recruiting candidates from groups that may already be well-represented at your organization.
  4. Gauge the response: Are your leaders/HR team enthused and excited about the response to your initiative? If so, try to move to a top-down approach and partner with your founders/leadership to bring more focus and resources to your company’s DEI work.

By Claire Veuthey & Stoddard Meigs, members of the Grassroots Diversity Advocates group. Thanks to Cynthia Overton, Tade Anzalone and other DAs who reviewed earlier drafts. We welcome feedback, comments, and suggestions for improvement.

Keep reading:

Chapter 2: Events

Chapter 3: Internal Initiatives

Chapter 4: External Initiatives

Chapter 5: Measuring Success

Diversity In Tech
Diversity And Inclusion
Startup
Women In Tech
Work

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Claire Veuthey
Better Programming
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Written by Claire Veuthey

85 Followers
Writer for

Principal @ Rizoma Ventures. ESG & impact advisor, investor, and operator.

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