Companies that fail to engage their talent, particularly diverse talent, can experience symptoms ranging from increased attrition to reduced company revenue, poor pulse survey scores, and more. Low employee engagement isn’t a unique challenge. In fact, more than half of employees surveyed report that they aren’t engaged at work. Even worse, disengagement is contagious. In the United States alone, disengaged employees annually cost companies over $500 Billion (that’s billion, with a B). This means that companies are losing money every day because employees aren’t showing up to work fully. Where is the room for improvement and what are some of the potential benefits companies can expect to experience from well executed Employee Engagement tactics.

From lower employee morale to reduced productivity, if employees aren’t engaged it means the company is at risk of losing key talent or having that talent “show up” for work, without gaining the maximum amount of productivity and ideation that happens when employees are invested in their workplace because they have a sense of well-being and belonging.

Companies are at risk but there is room for opportunity

According to employees in the U.S., almost 70% consider themselves anywhere along the axis of “not engaged” to “actively disengaged.” That’s a tremendous loss in terms of productivity and a delay in reaching company business goals.

Employee engagement has room for improvement in most organizations: just 12% of businesses report being happy with current levels of employee engagement. This means that low employee engagement scores can result in leaders being viewed as lacking the strategic team insight that leads to full engagement.

A culture of Diversity and Inclusion makes workplaces better for EVERYONE

Employees’ positive perceptions of D&I practices are positively related to employee engagement for all employees, not just minority groups. Perceptions in this case are derived from the actual ‘policies and practices that make up an organization’s diversity practices’ – the tangible actions taken for diversity. This means companies taking steps to ensure impactful D&I practices are in place, will benefit across all demographics.

When it all boils down, companies with engaged employees achieve an average of 21% higher profitability compared to those with disengaged employees. This means that companies that succeed in engaging their employees have a strategic advance over the competition. There is ample research that can more than validate the fact that engagement drives profits, and that a culture of diversity and inclusion drives engagement.

Our team addresses these topics and more during our open monthly Q&As, as well as during our quarterly webinars. The cost of employee disengagement and D&I as a solution to those costs is a discussion worth expanding whenever possible. Finally, see expanded stats and some of our favorite approaches to empower a culture of Diversity and Inclusion that promotes company-wide engagement on page 18 of our Lead Inclusively Whitepaper.

Diversity and Inclusion can be instrumental in driving business performance. My team continues to expand its research and spread awareness on the business case for D&I, and if you are curious about this research, we invite you to download our Business Case deck to learn more. But that is beyond the scope of this article. Today we’re discussing why Diversity and Inclusion initiatives fail.

The challenge is that achieving meaningful results from your D&I strategies requires strong change management, the appropriate focus, and specific programs that appeal to your organization to build on their own momentum. Even the most well-intentioned organizations with a thorough awareness of D&I can misstep in their approach. Here are three reasons organizations miss the mark with their D&I strategies.

1. Leaders aren’t leading inclusively

Teams that have diversity but lack inclusion perform worse than even homogenous teams. In other words, you are better off doing nothing if your organization intends to attract diverse talent without ensuring its culture is inclusive. Culture is most impacted by leadership. If leadership doesn’t commit to being inclusive, then your organization has no chance of retaining its diverse talent and maintaining productive teams.

2. Employee engagement isn’t the best barometer of your success. 

There is a direct correlation between inclusion, employee engagement, and productivity. Unlike other D&I metrics, employee engagement is already actively tracked by most organizations, which provides a good baseline when tracking the effectiveness of new strategies.

However, engagement doesn’t tell the whole story. Looking at metrics around diverse employees’ attrition and advancement can also only get you so far. That’s why my team focuses on identifying where the talent pipeline is leaking and why. Are you seeing Asian American women fail to reach the director level? Do you even know whether that’s the case in your organization? These are the questions you need to be asking and answering.

3. Relying on “best practices”

The ultimate outcome of an inclusive culture and successful D&I strategy is increased innovation. While it is easy to get caught up in best practices that produce incremental change, companies that want to be the employer of choice are moving toward innovative “next practices”, and more than ever they are using Diversity and Inclusion to do so. My company, for example, is innovating by applying machine learning to automate inclusive behavior coaching for everyone. Work like this is extremely exciting in the opportunity it presents in affecting tangible change that we haven’t seen in quite some time. The most exciting part is my work is only one of many around that is passionate and ready to affect change. The future of our workplaces is more promising than ever.

We would love to discuss this topic with you and answer any of your questions at my open Q&A sessions. Our team also host complimentary quarterly webinars where we go in-depth on a variety of relevant issues. You can learn more, or sign up for updates on both events via our events page.

If you can not, or do not want to attend, we still want to hear your thoughts! Leave us your comments below! What are new innovative ideas you and your colleagues are exploring or using to affect change? Which parts of organizational culture change are you most excited for in the near future? What are other reasons Diversity and Inclusion initiatives fail?

Company culture is the personality of an organization and includes the company’s mission, expectations, and work atmosphere. Culture is largely defined by two elements: the formal culture (the intended experience as it is written on paper) and the informal culture (how it is experienced on a daily basis by those who are in the environment). What does this mean and how does it impact why diverse talent leaves?

The primary purpose of culture transformation initiatives is to align the formal and informal cultures so that the employee experience matches the company’s stated vision and values. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

For diverse employees, this alignment of formal and informal culture is especially important. A lack of this alignment is the main reason your company can’t retain diverse talent.

Why it Matters

Poor culture is correlated with high attrition:

A Columbia University study shows that the likelihood of job turnover at an organization with strong company culture (as defined by job satisfaction) is a mere 13.9%, whereas the probability of job turnover in poor company cultures is 48.4%.

Executives don’t understand their organization’s culture:

Fewer than one in three executives (28%) report that they understand their organization’s culture. They know that culture is important, but don’t necessarily understand what their organization stands for or how their organizational culture is defined, much less how it is perceived by frontline employees.

There is room for improvement:

Only 12% of executives believe their companies are driving the ‘right culture’. The remainder feels there is plenty of room for improvement.

The Opportunity

Strong culture increases talent diversity:

Building an employer brand and positive company culture helps companies hire the right people (55%), get a greater number of qualified candidates (49%), increase employee referrals (41%), and have more diverse candidates (32%).

Culture is critical to success:

94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.

To learn more about specific approaches and best practices in culture transformation, check out page 26 of our Whitepaper.

I am hosting a complimentary webinar on June 4th where I will go more in-depth on the topic of organizational culture and culture transformation. You are also welcome to join me June 19th for our open Q&A round-table to ask any other personal questions on this topic, or any other relating to HR, Talent, Leadership, Culture, or Diversity strategies.

CHECK OUT OUR LEAD INCLUSIVELY EVENTS PAGE TO LEARN MORE