DEI stands for diversity, equality, and inclusion in the workspace. It is a continually growing commitment that benefits employees and applicants, as well as the business. When a business adopts diverse, equitable, and inclusive spaces, it guarantees access to many talents from varying cultures and backgrounds. This gives your business a recruitment advantage, encouraging creative, innovative, and productive environments.

But what are some ways that you can apply DEI to your business? This post will go over some pointers on how you can build a DEI backbone for your business.

Create a diverse leadership team: This is where businesses fall short with DEI. They pull up all their employee information and see that they have people working from all different cultures and backgrounds, and then they think they’re good to go. They don’t go further and check their leadership diversity. A diverse management team makes it so that all your staff members feel included. This will also help avoid biases in any development, recruitment, or promotion decision.

Understand your data: Find out the little details of your data. Who is being promoted? Who has the highest performance? What’s holding a particular group back? Are there management issues? The answers to questions like these will help you better understand your business data.

Create transparent policies: When you understand your data, begin drafting anti-discrimination policies. They should list out guidelines, escalation procedures, and disciplinary actions for those that don’t follow them. Everyone in the business should know these rules. You could hold a group meeting to go over them as well.

Create a safe and supportive space: Create a workspace where your employees aren’t afraid to speak their minds and feel respected. Also, make sure you have an institutionalized process for dealing with any form of discrimination.

Age: No matter the age, employees should have opportunities for growth and development. If a young employee wants to upskill, do a training analysis on them and see which training program they should do. Promotions should be based on performance. There’s no reason to turn someone down because they’re young or old. If they have amazing performance, give them a chance!

Caregiving: Use flexible policies like caregiver leaves for people who have to take care of someone with a serious health condition, or even emergency monetary support policies.

Gender: Make sure women are given the same opportunities as men and address any differences in salary if there are any. Provide them flexible working conditions so that they feel valued and respected in their responsibilities outside of work.

Race and ethnicity: Create programs that empower minority groups. You can even provide certain recruitment opportunities.

Disability and accessibility: During recruitment, identify and accommodate disability and accessibility needs so that everyone can move around in your workplace.

Sexual orientation and gender identity: Create a work culture that accepts LGBTQ members as they are. Allow room for self-expression in your dress code and give same-sex couples the same benefits you may offer to heterosexual couples.