Could DEI initiatives solve staffing issues?

While many organizations and their leaders understand diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are important to their teams and should improve their bottom lines, some aren’t quite sure where or how to begin. That’s a problem for companies focused on success, because studies show groups that consciously employ DEI efforts have less turnover, more productivity, and experience higher levels of achievement, which sometimes reveals itself in higher revenues.

Research conducted in June 2020 by Catalyst, “Why Diversity Matters,” shows key effects of DEI in the workplace:

• Thirty-five percent of an employee’s emotional investment in their work and 20% of their desire to stay at their organization is linked to feelings of inclusion.
• When companies establish inclusive business cultures and policies, they are 59.1% more likely to report an increase in creativity, innovation and openness and 37.9% more likely to report a better assessment of consumer interest and demand.
• Teams that include cognitive diversity solve problems faster and produce more and higher-quality intellectual property, such as patents.

So how should accounting leaders implement DEI strategies?

“As with any journey, the first thing to understand is where you are so that you know where to go,” said Cari Weston, CPA, CGMA, executive director for the Center for Accounting Transformation. “Any map telling you where and how to get where you want to go is useless if you don’t know where you are.”

“D&I is about culture change and, as humans, we’re not necessarily open to change,” said Jina Etienne, CPA, CGMA, principal of Etienne Consulting and chair of the National Society of Black Certified Public Accountants, “So, part of what’s creating problems around change is our resistance to change.

“The other part of this is it seems the conversation is binary. ‘Either you support D&I or you don’t.’  ‘Either you’re racist or you’re not.’ ‘Either you’re a feminist or you’re not.’ For all of these conversations, it’s a spectrum not an either/or. We need to open up the dialogue to recognize all of those points in between.”

“We’ve seen a lot of research on the positive effects of DEI initiatives in the workplace, but we feel like additional research must be conducted with respect to the accounting profession,” Weston said. “By understanding where we are as a profession, we can collaborate on the best strategies for moving forward and on the tools and resources needed.”