We’re at a great moment in time where companies of all sizes are increasingly taking a proactive approach to integrating Corporate Social Responsibility and Diversity & Inclusion into their day-to-day operations, across every part of the business. Once considered “nice to have,” these initiatives have become a critical part of a company’s long-term business strategy for growth and success. But how do companies go about launching and communicating these initiatives internally? For some insight, I turned to James White, Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Lord Abbett, who shared his 100-day strategy for building your D&I initiative from the ground up.
White joined Lord Abbett, a private investment management company, in October 2018, as the company’s first leader on Diversity & Inclusion initiatives. In this role, White has been tasked with educating the company about D&I, developing an overarching vision and strategy, and putting that vision and strategy into practice via internal and external channels. Since joining, White now has an expanded role in leading the firm’s development of a Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, the perfect foundation for aligning D&I, philanthropy, environmental efforts, and other key initiatives into one centralized narrative for a more broad impact.
Align on the Vision
According to White, the key to a successful D&I initiative is making sure everyone is aligned on the overall mission and vision of the strategy. If leadership isn’t 100% bought into the vision, it won’t work. “In the early days, it’s not about a practice. Practice and methodology is how you drive the vision.” Coming to the table with an agenda too early without building relationships, assessing the readiness of the organization, listening, and setting the proper external social and political context won’t drive sustainable cultural change. Instead, the work will become a laundry list of random efforts with no contextual element.
And it’s never too early or too late to build out a vision for the company, says White. “Wherever the company is on the D&I spectrum, from early stage to mature, it almost doesn’t matter as long as the leadership is engaged. Map out where the company is on that spectrum and then, from that point, lead forward.”
For White and his work with Lord Abbett, the vision was twofold: building a better business through Diversity & Inclusion, and using the company’s influence and resources to do good. “Our vision revolves around purpose-driven work anchored in a broader Corporate Social Responsibility narrative,” says White. “My belief is that companies have a responsibility to leverage their resources, including people, time, funding, subject matter expertise, and influence to play a role in solving for some pretty big systemic social issues. By doing the right thing, we can generate both financial and social returns. In developing the vision, I thought, wouldn’t it be great for employees to feel a sense of purpose when they come to work, knowing that we’re having a material impact on some of the world’s greatest social and environmental challenges?”
Integrate the Vision into Every Part of the Company Through Education and Awareness
The next step in the 100-day plan, following leadership buy-in and approval is to show how the vision can be integrated into every part of the business.
“Although my role is positioned within Human Capital Management,” says White, “Every employee and every department in the company - Investments, Client Services, Technology, Community Involvement, Marketing - has a stake.”
Education and normalizing the language is a big part of a D&I leader’s role in the first 100 days and well into the first year, especially for a company just starting out in this work. “A lot of the coaching that I do is very practical,” says White. “Sometimes it’s helping people understand the notion of ‘allyship’ or identity - how do you understand how someone identifies, and how can you be respectful of that? For example, I’ll address the difference between ‘Black’ and ‘African American,’ or the gender binary of ‘he or she,’ and offer areas where we can make our language and policies more inclusive.”
“We need to demystify and reduce the fear if we are going to make progress,” says White. “Many of these conversations are driven through a celebration of the heritage months where we put a spotlight on the communities that are underrepresented at the firm. These are all simple, practical methods, and I think when you empower people to have conversations in the workplace that they are no doubt having at home, through basic education along with the integration piece, you start to see this work becoming a part of the cultural DNA.”
Build a Framework for Goals
Integrating D&I initiatives into a large company can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be.
“As with anything, you need a framework,” says White. “The framework that I’ve introduced to the firm is the UN Sustainable Development Goals.” The SDGs include 17 key goals from eliminating poverty and hunger and promoting gender equality to education and clean water, among others.
“In a preliminary assessment, we know that we are already having an impact on some of the Goals to varying degrees,” says White. ”We are considering how best to concentrate our efforts on a few select Goals and then, year-over-year, drive material progress while adopting additional Goals over time.”
Get the Word Out
Once you’ve outlined the vision and created a framework, invest some time in sitting down with employees individually, speaking at team meetings, holding a town hall-style conversation and visiting remote offices to spread the word.
“This is not work that you do outside of people,” says White. “This work is really about having conversations with people – including asking questions and doing lots of listening – about things that matter to them at the core. This work affects how people parent, whether people are good neighbors or bad neighbors, the conversations that they have with others outside of the office - so it’s not just about what happens within the four walls of our company. What we’re doing here has a far reaching ripple effect into all of our communities.”
These conversations, White says, can have a significant impact on the business both internally and externally. “Companies have a big opportunity to talk to their employees, their clients and their communities about who they are, their values, their priorities and commitments in the social arena,” says White.
Celebrate Small Wins as You Gain Momentum
It’s important to recognize that launching an impactful D&I strategy is not something that happens overnight, says White. In fact, it won’t happen within the first 100 days. But, taking time to implement clear measurement/tracking systems will help you celebrate the small wins along the way and this is a great way to keep people motivated, build momentum over time, and identify opportunities for growth. “It’s important to remember that progress in this space is slow and by drips so you need an engagement model that regularly communicates progress to drive momentum and then continue to build on that energy.”
“We’re still early in the game, but we will always looking at short-term, mid-term and longer-term measures,” says White. “Over the first couple of years, we’re going to do lots of storytelling around the small successes. For example, we recently achieved gender balance in our most recent Advisor Consultant class, with 52% of the class represented by women. This is a very exciting narrative. We know it’s going to take a lot longer to improve gender balance across the firm, but in the meantime it’s important to recognize and celebrate those gains along the way.”
“Diversity and inclusion are not just topics or issues to be discussed,” says White, “They’re questions to be answered. The traditional business case for diversity takes a back seat to the notion that these have become social issues to be solved for.”
“The employees, potential new recruits, clients and our communities have actually put the question on the table for companies to respond to,” says White. “And the question is, ‘Will you only focus on generating revenue, or will you choose, at the same time, to leverage your resources to try and solve for some of the world’s greatest social and environmental challenges?’”
Business has evolved and outside voices and influences are having more and more of an impact on decisions made in the social arena. Ignoring those voices can lead to negative consequences, says White.
“It’s a new day in this space. The work has dramatically evolved over the last 10-15 years. It’s a new imperative,” says White. “We have to reframe CSR and D&I, less programmatic and not as a marketing strategy, to making real material progress by infusing this work into the DNA of corporate culture. Businesses can choose the degree to which they go all in, but we now understand that there are material consequences in those decisions.”
