While news feeds are dominated by stories of high-profile companies publicly walking back or cutting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, a majority of companies remain committed to DEI. In a March 2024 Gartner survey of 90 DEI leaders, more than 70% stated that they had not restructured, paused hiring, or rebranded their DEI programs in response to backlash. Only 10% of organizations made adjustments to their programs to be less legally risky.
But despite a commitment to DEI, many organizations are struggling to scale progress. According to a February 2024 Gartner survey, the number-one challenge for 53% of DEI leaders this year is the lack of business leader ownership for DEI outcomes.
Today’s DEI leaders are overwhelmed, and DEI efforts lack the necessary participation to sustain and maximize impact. Yet, it’s a key driver of progress. Organizations that are able to drive accountability and business leader ownership of outcomes can generate a significant return on investment. The February 2024 Gartner survey found that organizations where business leaders have high accountability for inclusion saw 49% higher inclusion, 40% higher engagement, and 14% higher performance among employees than organizations whose business leaders had low accountability for inclusion.
There are three critical components to ensure business leaders throughout the organization take ownership of DEI outcomes. And businesses who want to make solid progress on their DEI goals need to take the following steps.
1. foster commitment by contextualizing DEI to business objectives
While many business leaders value DEI as a separate function, only three in five DEI leaders say their company’s leaders believe DEI helps achieve business goals, according to the March 2024 Gartner survey. This lack of nuanced understanding is a barrier to commitment.
Commitment is gained through alignment and feasibility. Alignment enables leaders to recognize how DEI initiatives are a tool to achieve their own business priorities. It also demonstrates that taking action is manageable when leaders take the time to embed DEI seamlessly into existing workflows.
Helping leaders reframe DEI efforts as a part of broader business goals ensures DEI becomes part of their function’s daily processes rather than something separate. To foster a culture of commitment where leaders are expected to own DEI outcomes, chief human resource officers need to contextualize priorities, apply a DEI lens to daily operations and processes, and focus this work at the team level.
2. establish responsibility at all levels
Once commitment from their leadership is established, organizations need to set clear expectations with business leaders. Gartner’s March 2024 survey revealed that approximately one-third of organizations don’t have DEI goals, nor do they customize them by function or region.
For business leaders and employees to feel responsible for DEI goals, they need to be able to influence and impact the goal and the outcome. Holding individual leaders accountable for increases in representation can be challenging because of factors out of their control, such as hiring freezes and economic downturns. However, building goals around potential root causes of gaps can help achieve organizational DEI goals.
For example, if the organization’s aspirational goal is to reach greater levels of parity for underrepresented talent, then they should align responsibilities at each level to address potential root causes of the representation gap. Perhaps executives would be responsible for pay equity, managers would own modeling inclusive behaviors, and employees would be accountable for developing personalized DEI goals.
3: Promote leader action and accountability
Once businesses have established commitment and responsibility, they need to promote action and accountability among their leaders. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of HR leaders said they are lagging behind on leader accountability in terms of achieving DEI goals, according to the February 2024 Gartner survey.
Many organizations still rely too heavily on collective accountability, making organization-wide DEI outcomes everyone’s responsibility. But without an individualized path to success or the ability to hold leaders accountable for progress, it’s difficult to move DEI forward.
Our research found consequential accountability to be effective. This focuses on evidence-based DEI goal setting, customized strategies for business units, and consequences for achieving or not achieving outcomes. One example of accountability is embedding inclusive behaviors into the leadership competency model (that organizations should evaluate leaders against). Consequences for underperformance don’t need to be punitive—they can include offering additional support and resources.
DEI leaders will continue to maintain a critical role as subject matter experts, global strategy leaders, and strategic advisers. But if organizations want to achieve their DEI goals, they need to start by equipping and motivating business leaders to drive DEI outcomes.
