How to Design Original, Impactful D&I Programming
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Everyone's talking about D&I initiatives these days, but the programs that start and stop with employee resource groups tend to fall short of their true goals. One of Lever's earliest employees shares how Lever built a D&I-centered culture, resulting in creative programs and philosophies that continue to anchor Lever to this day.
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How to Design Original, Impactful D&I Programming
- 1. How to Design Original, Impactful D&I Programming Lever Jennifer Kim @jenistyping
- 2. Once you’ve covered the fundamentals, what are you supposed to do?
- 4. Strategic D&I ● Unconscious bias training ● ERGs ● Head of D&I ● Diversity goals ● Referral bonuses for URM applicants → Work IF they’re part of a comprehensive D&I strategy
- 6. Our agenda 1. The context of D&I at Lever 2. A framework 3. Execution + examples Link to the Toolkit http://bit.ly/di-toolkit
- 7. ● Customer Success ● Product Operations ● Recruiting ● Employee Experience & Development ● Diversity & Inclusion Built & Led
- 9. I didn’t think I could belong.
- 12. 2. Framework To support your overarching D&I strategy
- 13. 1.Figure out where you are 2.Build programs for impact
- 14. In-depth guide in the Toolkit http://bit.ly/di-toolkit Part 1: Six stage framework 1Unaware 1 Unaware 2 Apathetic 3 Curious 4 Informed 5 Empowered 6 Advocating
- 15. Psychological safety Part 1: Six stage framework In-depth guide in the Toolkit http://bit.ly/di-toolkit 1Unaware 1 Unaware 2 Apathetic 3 Curious
- 16. Psychological safety Choosing courage over comfort Part 1: Six stage framework In-depth guide in the Toolkit http://bit.ly/di-toolkit 1Unaware 1 Unaware 2 Apathetic 3 Curious 4 Informed 5 Empowered 6 Advocating
- 17. CEO SalesEng CEO Part 1: Six stage framework In-depth guide in the Toolkit http://bit.ly/di-toolkit 1Unaware 1 Unaware 2 Apathetic 3 Curious 4 Informed 5 Empowered 6 Advocating
- 18. Look inwards Start small Build upon strengths Part 2: Designing programs In-depth guide in the Toolkit http://bit.ly/di-toolkit
- 19. Fight the urge to blindly copy! You know what’s important to your team + culture Look inwards Start small Build upon strengths
- 20. Look inwards Start small Build upon strengths “Passion is contagious. Get people in a room and start talking.” Dom DeGuzman, Twillio @Itshella_dom
- 21. Look inwards Start small Build upon strengths “What’s broken, and how can we fix it?” “What’s working, how can we do more of it?”
- 22. 3. Execution & Examples How we applied this strategy
- 23. D&I Taskforce Goal: design and ship programs, while upholding the high quality bar More Taskforce tips: http://bit.ly/di-toolkit
- 25. Examples Soundtrack to a Life Women in Sales D&I for Supporters More examples of programs http://bit.ly/di-toolkit
- 26. Soundtrack to a Life
- 27. Women in Sales Panel
- 29. Taskforce tip Involve members from the majority group as early as possible. http://bit.ly/di-toolkit
- 30. More tips ● You don't need a big budget - get scrappy! ● Pilot programs within teams and departments ● Programs don’t have to be explicitly called “D&I” http://bit.ly/di-toolkit
- 31. 1.Figure out where you are 1.Build programs for impact Look inwards, start small, and build upon strengths Unaware→Apathetic→Curious→Informed→Empowered→Advocating Tackle big challenges by breaking them down and focusing on one step at a time. More tips + resources http://bit.ly/di-toolkit
- 34. To hear more from Jen, watch her dynamic Summit session here: https://www.lever.co/resources/talent- innovation-summit/diversity-inclusion- forum Lever Jennifer Kim @jenistyping
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone, let’s start with a quick pulse-check - … has done an Unconscious bias training. OK, you can put your hands down. Again Show of hands... … established at least one ERG (Employee Resource Group). Hands down. And this last one, raise your hand if, at any point, you thought that … could do more on D&I, but felt stuck on what to do next. Great! A lot of you! That means you’re in the right place..So the big question is
- I want to share with you today our strategies for tackling that question. And hopefully, inspire you into action at your own company
- When it comes to D&I PROGRAMS, we need to put a greater focus on them being Original and impactful. Because it’s too easy to hire a bunch of consultants, throw money here, there, set big diversity goals -- only to get disappointed and criticized when the results aren’t there.
- The Kapor Center released a study on effectiveness of D&I. They found that _____ ===> it’s all important, but they shouldn’t be one-and-done programs. In fact, if they’re not part of a comprehensive D&I strategy, they can do more harm than good! “OK, but how do I come up with a comprehensive D&I strategy?” there isn’t one right answer - hopefully today, you’ll take away a place to start.
- There’s a lot of info coming, so to make it as easy as possible for you, I’ll be sending my deck, notes. I’m also including worksheets, case studies - so you feel like you have support and resources long after this conference! Here’s the link - it’ll come up throughout the presentation.
- Some context on why Lever focused on D&I early ______ First, let me give some context for why we started D&I at Lever in the first place.
- As an early hire, I’ve led many teams at Lever... I joined in 2014 as the second female employee after our CEO Sarah -- and as you can see, jumped around quite a bit. But… :) ====→ And yet, when I was interviewing with Lever 3.5 years ago, I thought there was NO WAY I could get hired. I just didn’t “see” myself in tech because in my head, startups looked like this
- Even the early Lever team skewed heavily white and male. The entire team was in engineering and design, Everyone seemed so “technical” - and here I am with my liberal arts degree. I didn’t go to Stanford or MIT, the truth is, ====> I didn’t think I could belong.
- In the beginning, I really felt like I had no idea what I was doing - I really felt like the engineers were speaking a foreign language to me - I would nod along, pretend to understand, and as soon as the conversation was over, frantically Google all the words I didn’t understand. A few months after, Lever also took a chance on hiring its first female engineer, Rachael
- As I got to know her, Iearned that like many women in tech, she was repeatedly passed over for promotions, _____ And the weirdest part was, ____. I WAS HORRIFIED. It’s one thing to hear generalized statistics about underrepresented minorities, and the continuing “diversity” problem – but when it’s someone in front of you,
- human being you care about, what seemed distant becomes much more personal. [ ] But this happens all the time. A lot of us - especially URM - it’s easy to feel alone. And when things get hard, you assume you’re just not good enough. But it’s when you start opening _____ ===> So she and I started talking. ___ 10 people, shape the future.. We formed ____ kept asking ourselves, “How do we make Lever more inclusive for every current AND future team member?”
- The main part of this talk is to show you what came out of those conversations and to open source our framework so you can make use of it. So the challenge with D&I is it’s such a big, complex problem. And when it’s that big, it’s hard to know where to start. So what should we do?
- this framework has 2 parts. First, you’re going to diagnose where your team is, to figure out what impact you’re going for. Then, build original programs to achieve that impact. The Rinse, and repeat.
- What do you do when you’re stuck at a big, insurmountable problem? You break it down to digestible steps and focus on one step at time. . When it comes to D&I, everybody has to start somewhere. We mapped these out 6 stages, I’ll explain each one. But here’s the key: Your new goal is to understand where your teams are so you can move them to the next stage.
- 1 -- We all start here - the difference ____ - You might hear,___ Characterized by Denial, breaking that down 2. Apathetic “OK, ___” This stage is so critical - “This is where ALL LIVES MATTER comes from. 3. Curious - this stage is all about “OK, We should do something ___. Key in this stage is exposure, feeding that curiosity ___. . If I had to guess, I would say plurality of SV is still here. [ ] And you can see, These early steps are all about psychological safety. - the elemental building blocks to trust.
- It’s these later stages - choose courage over comfort. 4. Participating conversation. “I see and respect differences.” Secure in own self. How? ____ Time and effort, learn, solid footing, confidence. Seek /challenge 5. Stage 4 internal → visible outwardly. Speak up, detractors. Admit biases. 6. Rally others. lead visibly. 1:1 scale to *systematic* Mature tone. Contribute to broader picture, help others with their journeys.
- Hopefully what seemed big and insurmountable now seems more digestible. Change is hard, but it’s a little easier when you focus on a concrete goal, which is taking it one step at a time. ---> CEO - gameplan. Sales 5, Eng, 1. ____ Issues - 4/5 gender, but behind. The key is meet people where they are. We don’t anyone to feel punished or shamed ___ 2, or “only” on 4. That’s where true inclusion comes in: Each of us ... all points of the spectrum.
- Once you’ve figured out where your team is and have an idea for what kind of impact you’re looking for, you can move into Part 2 Here are 3 recommendations for building programs
- First. look inwards. Fight the urge to blindly copy what others are doing - including Lever! You’re the one who knows your company and culture. You know what is important to your team, and what will resonate the most. Key is nobody has all the answers in D&I yet. Google/Facebook, ___ you’ll find what works best by looking inwards.
- To get creative, start small: Back in 2014, a friend of ours gave some great advice. This is so simple, but powerful. It’s no single person’s job to “fix” Diversity & Inclusion - but you can kick-start things, it’s as easy as scheduling a discussion forum and providing a basic guidelines. You’d be surprised how much you can do with just a little bit of prep.
- Third: build upon strengths. With D&I It’s easy to dwell in the negativity “Where are all the black and Latinx candidates??” “How do we get the press off our back?” Consider your job as amplifying what’s working, rather than fixing everything that’s broken.
- Ok, in this last part, I want to show you the execution of this framework with concrete examples. Again, I want to stress that each company is different and this is just how it was done at Lever, might be very different for you – but hopefully it’ll spark some ideas, or you can improve upon what we’ve done.
- FIrst, WHO b/c… ___. Rachael & I formed the taskforce when we were just 10 employees, and were joined by ==⇒ other D&I Advocates as we grew. The Taskforce is all about while ____. We wanted a more centralized group separate from ERGs. ___. Taskforce members in return, get professional development coaching. Here’s how it runs. ____. 2 cycles, temporary commitment, brainstorm… Here’s one example of a particularly busy period!
- I also encouraged them to pick which stage they wanted to tackle and which area of D&I. What you don’t want to happen is, ____. It’s really important that D&I doesn’t become equivalent to “gender issues.”
- The Taskforce was the WHO, I’ll show you now WHAT we did. I‘ll explain 3 programs in particular.
- Denzil is passionate ___ wanted a forum. ___. We came up with ___, all about the early stage - ½, helping people feel comfortable being exposed to other perspectives and life experiences. Here’s how it works: contribute __ listening party that invited you to step inside that person’s experience. S__ empathy is a core tenet of D&I, leveraging the power of music to build your community. In this session, people laughed… learned. Not only did we get an awesome playlist out of it, it was an incredibly powerful session that hopefully helped move people to 2 or 3.
- Christine from Sales… seen… knew she cared, but… Together, we noticed the topic… Lever’s largest team. We organized an event inviting women in sales from all over the Bay Area. Christine Panel. What Christine was really proud of though It signaled to Christine and many others that people really care, and it sparked more conversations about the experience of women and other minorities in sales teams long after the event.
- Early on, we noticed ____ majority group - namely, straight, white males. We realized a lot of folks were holding back because they didn’t think D&I was for them. So we designed a session that was targeted toward Stage 1, 2, and 3. We framed it as “no stupid questions” to create a truly welcoming space, even if you’re a beginner.
- Get a straight, white man onboard. DO IT. It actually makes people wonder, “why is that person involved in D&I? I thought it was a lady issue / just the minorities. If he’s involved, maybe I should be too?” This signals to the team D&I something that the whole team all should care about, and Tim’s involvement from the very beginning for us, had a HUGE impact.
- === === Don’t feel like you have to launch huge company-wide initatives. === Last tip
- I hope hearing our story ….. You understand the strategy now, and here’s a Final plug for to download the D&I Toolkit - implementation! I’ll leave you with one final thought. This work is more important than ever -- world. Need you to step up. If you’re a ___ your expertise ____ We can’t solve the huge problems overnight, but you can make a difference starting now within your immediate environment.
- And if you want a place to start - try asking yourself -- Who is your Denzil? Christine or Tim? Which of your colleagues are just on the verge of becoming advocates, and they could blossom with just a little bit of encouragement from you? And if you’re stuck and need to find motivation, ask yourself :”Who am I doing this work to build an inclusive environment for?” [For me, it’s this team.
- I know a lot of you, as team builders, feel the same about your community of colleagues.] I hope that you’ll remember that you can make a lot of impact. You just have to start.