​Good evening, everyone:

Amy shared with me an article from last week’s edition of Crain’s with an eyebrow-lifting headline: “DEI Officers are overloaded and, on the outs,” by Jack Grieve. The overburdened part could hardly be a surprise – in light of the inherent complexity of helping steward an organization’s DEIJ efforts . . . withstanding the assaults on DEI from various quarters . . . weighing the uncertainties created by the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision invalidating Harvard’s affirmative action program . . . and so much else.

But the “on the outs” piece was unsettling. It read as if DEI were something of a fad, no longer able to hold people’s interest. Or, as if the assaults on DEI were undermining the imperative of fortifying our nation’s embrace of racial equity. Or as if efforts to promote respect, tolerance, awareness, and celebration of difference could somehow be traded out for some different set of values.

The article, it turns out, contains elements of all these things, but focuses on the challenges that the role of chief diversity and inclusion officers face. It opens by saying:

Just two years ago, the role of chief diversity and inclusion officer was the single fastest-growing position in the C-Suite, as documented by LinkedIn. Now, many of those same officers are leaving their jobs.

Appointing a director-level position in charge of DEI had become a go-to symbol of an organization’s commitment to diversity in the workplace after the police killing of George Floyd and the nationwide reckoning that followed.

he article proposes several reasons for this.

First, organizations failing to provide sufficient support for the DEI staff in the long term.

This could result in expectations being raised without adequate resourcing to meet them.

Second, legislature, legal, and political backlash.  

No need to embellish on that.

Third, personal burnout.

Under the best of circumstances, the job is strenuous and emotionally demanding. The role entails not just sensitive, even traumatic, engagements, but can also require extensive conflict management. Coupled with inadequate organizational support and external backlash, it is a job that can  extract high personal and professional tolls. One analyst noted that the rate of DEI-role attrition is twice that of non-DEI-role attrition.

And fourth, in difficult economic times, some organizations view DEI as a loss leader, and cut.

None of these responses is an acceptable outcome for Kresge. Indeed,  I hope that we at Kresge have followed a path that is the antithesis of them – that DEI has become an integral part of our organizational DNA. Our Equity Task Force has done a superb job of articulating, socializing, and operationalizing our five-part DEI framework:

• Kresge as an employer (i.e., how DEI animates our hiring, retention, professional development, and promotion practices);

• Kresge as an economic entity (i.e., how DEI factors into purchasing, contracting, investing, and other economic activities);

• Kresge as a community citizen (i.e., how DEI shapes our relationship with our hometown);

• Kresge as a community (i.e., how DEI permeates our values, norms, and behaviors as an organization); and

• Kresge as a funder (i.e., how DEI is reflected in, and guides, our grants, social investments, and other program activities).

These efforts, in my view, stand in stark contrast to the dilemmas identified by Grieve’s article. Indeed, Amy observed to me that the last sentence of the article is far more reflective of our commitment at Kresge, in which a leading corporate HR consultant states: "We are in this pressure cooker moment. Instead of saying, 'Dissolve DEI,' it [should be] 'Evolve DEI.’ In that version of the future, even with mounting backlash, DEI does not disappear; it becomes the way we work.”  Embedded in all we do; not bolted on.

‍

Rip

‍