70 DIVERSEability Magazine www.diverseabilitymagazine.com
FEATURE
T
oday, business owners and talent manag- ers have unprecedented access to diver- sity, equity and inclusion (DEI) resources like never before. The economic imperative to focus on diversity in talent attraction and employee retention has never been more apparent. Businesses with diverse leadership outperform businesses with more homoge- nous leadership. As more and more compa- nies implement their own DEI initiatives, busy managers often dont know the true effectiveness and impact of their efforts on their employees and teams, including neuro- diverse employees and those with disabilities who often feel invisible. Unsurprisingly, in the ultra-tight job mar- ket, employees are taking long-delayed career leaps en masse in what has now been coined the Great Resignation due to unfulfilling work environments in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Job candidates are arming them- selves with strategically networked referrals and open-sourced data about prospective employers DEI initiatives to form the basis on a decision to apply. Recent surveys show that job candidates give more consideration to company culture than any other factor when choosing their next employment opportunity. These converging trends of access to resources for employers, employees and pro- spective job candidates bring us to ask some important questions: Does your DEI strategy craft a truly inclusive narrative about your culture and values, or is your DEI strategy merely signaling without honest intention? Does your company have a proactive DEI strategy, or is your approach to DEI simply reactive when situations arise? Luckily, there is a canary in the coal mine, working to ensure businesses can iden- tify potential DEI issues early and plan and build strategies accordingly, instead of reac- tively. The company is Dallas-based Kanarys, focused on providing the tools organizations need to create long-term systemic change around DEI. Kanarys co-founders, Bennie King, Mandy Price and Star Carter grew up in the Dallas
Developing a Winning DE&I Strategy
By Josef Scarantino
area. They attended the University of Texas, where they became friends, yet 20 years later, the three would come to call each other co-founders after experiencing inequity in the corporate workplace. Guided by data, Kanarys is on a mission to help companies identify opportunities to avoid common mis- takes when implementing and measuring DEI initiatives. While most businesses approach diver-
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