How HR can spot performative DEI efforts

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) may just be an acronym to some companies, but it means more to those that have gone beyond performative efforts.

Rebecca Perrault, VP of culture, diversity, and sustainability at workforce management platform Magnit, has been working in talent strategy and change management for most of her career, with a focus on diversity and inclusion work for the last decade.

For companies that are actually dedicated to improving diversity and inclusion, Perrault told HR Brew, “[DEI] wasn’t just about putting out statements, or doing things that were performative, or maybe even that people could see,” she said. “But really background processes that would block bias, that would create equity, that creates fairness.”

Perrault sat down with HR Brew to share how DEI work has changed over the years and what is, and is not, a performative effort.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How has DEI work changed since you started your career?

Two thousand and twelve-ish is when I started doing the work…From 2010 to 2020, for that decade, it was very different than it is right now…It was about creating the business case, really talking to people about that business case. There was a transition from a focus on women to a focus on all different types of diversity.

There’s some research around “the iceberg of diversity,” where there’s a lot of things that are very visible that we see and we think of about diversity. But really, there’s a lot more…What’s visible is very small compared to what’s underneath the water.

It really wasn’t so much D, E, and I. It was more D and I at that point…How do we get more differences present? And, think about the numbers and the faces that are around, both the top of the iceberg and underneath? And then, how do we make sure that those voices are included?...So, that’s kind of the pre-2020, and then we get into what [we’re] more familiar with.

How is the work different now?

There’s not just a business case, but let’s also talk about [how] it’s the right thing to do. So, if the business case went away, would we stop doing this work? So, the business case is strong and it’s there, but there was this other emphasis of the moral case or the right thing to do that came about in 2020…There was a lot of emphasis on making a statement, and, in many cases, that could have been performative.

From somebody, like myself, who had done the work for a long time, [DEI] wasn’t just about putting out statements, or doing things that were performative, or maybe even that people could see. But really background processes that would block bias, that would create equity, that creates fairness. And, if those things weren’t done for the last five years, that’s where we’re in right now, where we’re seeing a little bit of that unraveling. Because, if there’s not just the performative…if you take that away, what was backing it up?

What are some examples of performative DEI goals?

I always was very skeptical when I saw organizations touting these big percentages that they wanted to change…So, when a company came out and said, “We’re going to increase [representation of marginalized groups] in the next year by 50%,” that always made me a little skeptical, like, how are you actually going to do that? What’s going to happen?

There’s definitely processes you can put in place that make an impact, but it’s just a pure numbers game…If you were growing at a normal rate, as a company, let’s say 4% a year…then increasing your representation of women by 1% a year would be a good goal, and actually still hard to do…Very few people, unless you’ve been doing this work for a long time, would realize that.

Did you foresee any of the recent DEI rollbacks?

I get hesitant with the big headlines [that] say, “Oh, so and so has rolled back this work,” because are they still trying to really make good progress? Is their intent still good? I want to be the optimist here that some things are still going on…That goes back to what I said in 2020. Was [DEI] just a statement, or did [companies] start to put in real work on making processes within their organization more fair? Were they creating a culture where people could feel safe telling their opinion? And, if those things were authentically in place five years ago, they’re not going to change overnight.