After being rejected the first time I was up for promotion because my maternity leave interrupted my required three-year consistent sales and delivery performance, I was promoted the second time around, and as soon as I was over that hurdle, I was determined to change our process. I had seen so many talented women get stuck or leave the firm over the ten years I had been there, and our firm, employees, and clients were suffering as a result. But I was in an organization that felt it had figured out the “magic formula” for getting the “right” people to the partner level. How could I really change that?

Data show that the vast majority of people leading and directing AI work, engineering AI products, and doing AI technical design and testing are male. In fact, a higher percentage of women are in C-suite roles than in any of these roles. This creates a massive risk for bias because there is a huge gap in female perspectives in all of these activities.

This post is an excerpt from Do DEI Right, focusing on some of the cultural elements you need to have in place as your foundation for your investments in equity and inclusion work to pay off. Without these, you are putting pressure on top of a cracked foundation, and it will buckle.

There has been a lot of conflicting messaging coming out about the employment numbers, so I decided to dig in and see what is happening for myself. What I saw gave me pause, not just for the state of the job market and unemployment, but also for what leaders need to be doing to address the impact on their employees.

In this video, Michelle shows how Equity At Work analyzes HR data, industry benchmarks, and other inputs to help you understand your organization’s demographics, identify opportunities, and set realistic goals for your DEI programming.

Edelman's report highlights a retreat into insularity we should all be deeply concerned about.

Across the US, ICE raids are wreaking havoc. Violence, fear, outrage, and major mistrust are everywhere. And with ICE coming into workplaces, retailers, and restaurants, employees are feeling frightened at work. With the broad racial profiling that is occurring, even those who are legal citizens are rightfully in fear of being wrongfully taken by ICE. And there is additional fear for family members and friends who may not be legal citizens at this time. As employers, it is critical to not only have clear policies in place for handling these raids but also to ensure employees have safe spaces to raise their concerns.

Let’s start here: just about every company offers benefits of some kind. Maybe you run a restaurant and offer an employee discount. Maybe you run a small marketing firm and offer health insurance. Maybe you’re part of a large engineering firm and you offer a hybrid work environment and childcare reimbursements. While pay is absolutely the most critical part of employee compensation, benefits are important and they definitely play a role in how employee think about your organization as they consider whether it’s a place they might want to work.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be an incredible tool that helps power an organization’s capacity as it designs, develops, and implements robust and effective Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) strategies and initiatives. AI has valuable DEI applications throughout the organization’s operations and across the employee lifecycle. There are, however, numerous challenges to effectively applying AI in DEI work.

In today’s environment, ERGs are under fire. Critics of ERGs describe them as unnecessary, exclusionary, and discriminatory; they argue that ERGs offer employees who share certain characteristic advantages in terms of professional development and career advancement, and that employees who do not share that characteristic are denied those opportunities. In response, some organizations have shut their ERGs down. Other organizations have taken a different approach, keeping their ERGs going but making them open to all employees.

While much of the focus in current discourse has centered around the risks of continuing DEI efforts, a new report from the NYU School of Law Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and Catalyst shows that there are also significant risks to retreating from DEI.

Michelle Bogan Feferman, Founder & CEO of Equity At Work™, was interviewed as part of the NTT Experience Center Podcast Series on AI Innovation. Watch and listen to the podcast here.

In the last two newsletters, we have shared about the challenges presented in today’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion environment. It seems like the only constant is change, and that can cause a feeling of whiplash. We recommended starting by optimizing what you already have in place and then shoring up your DEI business case. The third step is to ensure that you have effective internal communications.

With all the whiplash in the US related to DEI, it can be hard to know what to focus on right now that will bring your organization value. When you provide clarity on what you are achieving through your DEI work, a lot of the noise about DEI automatically fades into the background.

The current environment around DEI is marked by a pronounced level of uncertainty, which can cause a kind of paralysis to set in - unsure of where we stand and with the future unclear, what do we even do?

The following best practices are learnings from all of my years of doing DEI work.  They are the tried-and-true methods that form the foundation of all of Equity At Work™’s work.

Late last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Virginia, allowed the Trump Administration to enforce two of its Executive Orders related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Organizations funded by and/or doing business with the federal government will need to ensure that all of their DEI programs and initiatives are compliant with all federal anti-discrimination laws.