Many organisations face the issue of either finding their EDI programme stuck, moving at a snail’s pace or getting pushback from staff out of overwhelm or frustration. Why might this be?
Well, there are many reasons why this might happen, and each organisation’s situation will be different. Differences come from different strategies, objectives, leadership motivation and intention, funding and resource issues, etc.
Some general questions can be asked to help identify some of the foundational issues that can be addressed. These include:
- Setting achievable goals
- It is important to understand what you want to achieve from the EDI programme you set in place. What does greater inclusion look like for your organisation? How will you know you’ve achieved that?
- What are your target areas for improvement or change in the arena of EDI? It’s not possible to do everything all at once, so where are you prepared to start? And how will you progress from there?
- Why have you set these particular goals over other possible goals?
- Is everyone in the organisation clear about what goals have been set? What do these goals mean for the organisation, their departments, their work and contribution? Without real clarity in these areas people will at some point lose their way.
- Ensuring two-way communication.
A client recently shared with me that their EDI programme had become stuck.
Staff had become frustrated, overwhelmed and appeared to have lost motivation for EDI.
The programme included having had a number of guest speakers, training sessions to gain knowledge on various topics and people’s lived experiences. This had gone down well and provided great opportunities to learn. However, movement on EDI had now become stuck. I asked the following questions:
- What has been done with all the information that has been received from the sharing of the guest speakers and trainers coming to the organisation?
- What listening to employees and gaining their feedback on the programme so far has been undertaken?
The response was that nothing like this had been done.
An important point that is often overlooked, is that EDI is an organisational change process. Just as with any other change programme, communication is hugely important. Consultation throughout the process provides information and allows everyone to be heard and valued, when done right.
Communication should be a two-way process, or it will not be effective. So, the other side of having trainers and guest speakers come into your organisation and share experiences, knowledge and information is getting feedback and using this feedback to assess understanding, gain ideas and review and adjust the strategy.
In most cases, organising independently facilitated conversations or discussions at this point will prove a far more productive and effective approach, encouraging honest open feedback from staff.
So if your EDI programme appears to have slowed down or feels stuck, it can be helpful to go back to the basics of your starting point and explore these points objectively.
Get in touch. I will be happy to work with you and your organisation to provide you with objective and independent facilitation and consultation to get your EDI programme moving forward again.
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