Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is about growing and retaining talented team members across different demographics. Companies generally understand the importance and value of DEI, but of the participants in a recent collaborative webinar with Oracle and Baker Tilly, roughly 75% came from companies with a DEI program that is still maturing.

 

How to approach diversity, equity and inclusion 

 

As Oracle’s Nancy Estell-Zoder, Vice President of Product Strategy, noted in the webinar, the COVID-19 pandemic created a culture of isolation that lasted for many months (and still lingers today). As a result, we all have felt a lack of inclusion in some way, shape, or form over the last 15 months. Perhaps more than ever, it is critical for organizations to empathize with this loneliness as they promote a culture of inclusivity and acceptance for all team members.

 

Here are the top three ways to define DEI success to ensure inclusivity and belonging:

  1. Utilize research methods:
    1. Quantitative: Measure whether your increasing representation of people of color, women, and other diverse groups – both in the firm as a whole and particularly at the leadership level.
    2. Qualitative: Ensure that everyone in the organization feels like they have an equal opportunity for success. Track which team members are being invited to key meetings and client outings, or whether team members feel engaged.
  2. Implement DEI metrics:
    1. It’s difficult to track the factors above, which is why Oracle launched Oracle Journeys. Oracle Journeys is an employee experience platform enabling HR teams to excel at their job while offering the level of regular guidance they need to support a diverse array of team members living their lives and doing their jobs in a variety of unique ways.
  3. Hire outside counsel:
    1. You may even need to hire an outside firm to take an unbiased look at your organization from top to bottom. With the right assistance and the right partners, your organization can get to where you want to be and where you need to be in time.

Ensuring inclusivity and belonging  

 

Beyond basic diversity metrics, Oracle offers various solutions to help promote diversity and encourage companies to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion. For instance, Oracle recently introduced Opportunity Marketplace to provide all employees at an organization with equal transparency regarding new opportunities. Additionally, Oracle’s Strategic Workforce Planning solutions allows organizations to create and compare scenario plans to easily identify skill/competency gaps and strategize how to close those gaps for business and workforce needs.

 

DEI initiatives are a priority business strategy encompassing many functions and initiatives for organizations of all sizes and types. Organizations must respond and evolve with programs targeting candidate pools, internal talent pools, and strategic workforce planning, to name a few. Admittedly, these cross-disciplinary initiatives are not the easiest to deploy, and measuring their success can be challenging.

 

This is where Oracle Cloud can be applied to enable these programs and provide for the data, metrics, analytics and benchmark comparisons to allow for deeper understanding and improvement over time. While DEI work is never done, Baker Tilly’s Theresa Nickels, General Counsel at Baker Tilly, offered a key lesson that she has learned in her years as a leader of Baker Tilly’s DEI platform. “Get comfortable with the fact that the pace of change will make you uncomfortable,” she said, and that “these changes take time.”

 

Learn more about how your organization can approach diversity, equity and inclusion from strategy to practical execution with Oracle and Baker Tilly.

 

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