“Many of the initiatives submitted and selected in the past two years are internal and workforce-focused, underscoring the understanding that internal change precedes external impact.”
In 2022, the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the New Economy and Society launched its DEI Lighthouse program to highlight impactful corporate DEI initiatives. The first edition highlighted eight DEI Lighthouses while this second edition, launched in December 2023 added another seven initiatives.
What the organization is looking for are corporate initiatives that have resulted in significant, quantifiable, and sustained impact for one or multiple underrepresented groups.
What stood out:
- Five out of seven initiatives focused on gender diversity, equity and representation
- The five common success factors across DEI Lighthouses are:
- Nuanced understanding of root causes
- Meaningful definition of success with clear and quantifiable goals
- Accountable and invested business leaders
- Solutions that are designed for context, are scalable, integrate changes into key processes and equip and encourage employees to contribute
- Rigorous tracking and course correction with defined KPIs and the use of data and feedback to course correct
The report highlights the critical role of leaders to drive DEI initiatives and the need for an integrated approach to DEI versus isolated programs and initiatives. Take the time to read about the initiatives highlighted.
We’ve been saying that DEI is evolving and that that we believe that DEI done wrong is dying and will be replaced by DEI embedded into business strategies and practices in order to help organizations not only survive but thrive.
Building a Culture of Inclusivity: Season 4 coming soon!
Priya Bates, February 2024
Season 4 of our A Leader Like Me Podcast is coming soon and will focus on building inclusive cultures.
As the conversation continues on hashtag#DEI losing steam, we wanted to spend this season proving otherwise by highlighting organizations and leaders doing great work.
Yesterday, Advita Patel and I had the pleasure of interviewing Courtney D. Williams from the Obama Foundation. We have already planned interviews with DEI, hashtag#HR and hashtag#commspros from PepsiCo, Kellonova, Sodexo and more. This will be a fascinating season and each interview excites me. If you have a leader you would recommend for the podcast, please let us know.
I’ve said this before. DEI done WRONG and performatively is probably dying but the issues and intent that DEI best practices are designed to solve – like the importance of representation, compliance from a rights perspective, recruitment of future talent, retention of employees, reputation of your organization and delivering results don’t go away. All are impacted by creating a culture of inclusivity. We expect DEI practice to be embedded into business practices and are already seeing signs of this. Organizations and leaders will either lead, follow or be forced eventually and demographics and expectations change.
Listen in and get some different perspective and I promise you will be inspired by what is possible. We plan to launch this season in March so stay tuned.
In the meantime, if you have not heard our podcast, there are some great episodes from season 3 that you should take a listen to from thought leaders around the globe.
