How can HR can renew their organization’s DEI efforts

DEI practitioners have gone through the wringer the last few years.

Many companies started investing more in their DEI practices after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, only to be met by resistance and compliance challenges following the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action in higher education. Despite the whiplash, DEI hasn’t disappeared, but it’s largely been deprioritized: 49% of HR pros said DEI is “low” or “no priority,” an HR Brew survey found, compared to 36% who said it’s a “moderate priority” and 12% a “high priority.”

“We’re just so tired of the barrage, of having to defend it, of having to justify it…It’s tiring. It’s kind of like a marathon, where it just never ends, and it’s a long road ahead,” Joycelyn David, founder of the multicultural marketing tech startup Tulong Technologies and author of The Multicultural Mindset, told HR Brew.

How to reprioritize inclusion. Despite this “DEI fatigue,” David said HR pros can continue to promote cultural and inclusion work.

“What do you do when you get fatigued? You need to replenish. You need a refresh of water. You need electrolytes to replenish your system,” she said. “That is hopefully what…this idea of a multicultural mindset can be, which is a reframing that it’s not DEI anymore. It’s actually about driving business impact for what is going to be a very AI-driven future.”

David said she doesn’t use the “DEI” acronym when consulting companies on cultural and inclusion practices, because some leaders view it as a “four-letter word, unfortunately.” Instead, she suggested HR leaders position the work as “multicultural intelligence” (MQ).

MQ goes beyond employer-sponsored activities during times of awareness, like Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, David said. It’s about teaching leaders how certain identities and cultural backgrounds can impact the employee experience, and how diverse leadership and strategies can create a competitive business advantage.

This framework can encourage more business leaders to support inclusion practices, David said, adding that “maybe it’s a bit of semantics, but it matters, especially for leaders who need to tow political lines and are very sensitive, obviously, as things continue.”

It will be especially important for HR leaders to pursue, David said, as companies invest more in AI.

“Cultural intelligence is needed when artificial intelligence is taking off everywhere…You cannot learn cultural intelligence by googling it, or ChatGPT-ing it…HR leaders know this. It’s the soft things that happen that build up that MQ,” she said, later adding, “We, as leaders of people and human-impact industries, need to be focused on how do we foster better cultural intelligence and understanding in a borderless world like today.”