Forecasted DEI Trends for 2023

The New Year offers the perfect moment of reflection for taking stock on your DEI strategy with fresh eyes to examine what is working in your organization and to amend what needs adjustment. Here are some forecasted trends for what you can integrate into your DEI framework in 2023.

Adopting the 4 Day Work Week – The 4 day week is a reduction in the work week from a standard 40 hours to 32 hours for the same pay and benefits. Although opting out of hustle culture sounds counterproductive to business, this re-envisioning and reducing of work hours has been proven to improve the well-being of employees and employers as well as their work output. This shift provides an opportunity for employees to level out their work-life balance and can be transformative for many struggling with mental health, chronic illnesses, and disabilities.

Tracking Your DEI Progress With Data – Developing measurable goals and collecting data on the progress of these targets is incredibly effective in bringing your DEI strategy to fruition. It’s also a step that many organizations try to bypass. One way to measure and show the evolution of your organization in the realm of DEI is to decide on what your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will be for metrics related to diversity in hiring practices, representation, retention, ERG participation, accessibility, and leadership. Another option for DEI data collection process is to develop surveys or utilize a confidential forum for employees to provide qualitative insights on demographics and what they need in the workplace. This provides key feedback on how to go about improving organizational diversity and inclusion.

Put a Whistleblower Policy in Place – A whistleblower in the workplace is an employee who reveals information about the misconduct of another employee(s). In order to protect this employee from retaliation, a whistleblower policy is essential. All employees should be trained on the options available for reporting misconduct, one of these being anonymously. Instituting a whistleblower policy helps foster a culture of transparency and accountability where employees can trust that there will be justice for any harms committed. A well-crafted whistleblower policy integrates transformative justice (TJ) principles to not only address incidents when they arise, but to also transform the conditions that allowed for it to happen in the first place by creating a correction process that facilitates learning and growth.

Post-Training Discussion Groups – DEI education goes beyond a singular training session or workshop. Each employee has a different level of awareness of DEI work as some are encountering these concepts for the first time and for others it is their everyday lived experience. Offering post-training discussion groups to employees who want to deepen their understanding of how to put this knowledge into practice allows more momentum to build around your DEI strategy as people engage with it in a more sustainable manner that creates substantial and tangible change.

Creating a Dedicated DEI Budget and Committee – Allocating specialized resources and support to the execution of your DEI strategy is imperative to it’s success. If DEI work is something you truly prioritize as an organization, it should receive the same level of investment as other critical strategies. This investment can take the form of allocating a budget, a DEI officer, and a committee to support the officer.