Common Pitfalls To Avoid When Assembling DEI Task Forces

But there is still much work to be done. For all the strides that have been made to promote diversity and inclusion in employment, marginalization and discrimination continue to be all too commonplace. For this reason, the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement has gained increasing force in the business world, shaping company policies to help businesses, at last, achieve the equity aims for which they purport to strive.

That does not mean, however, that the work is easy. Supporting DEI initiatives can be a laborious, time-intensive, and emotionally taxing endeavor due to the extreme importance of the work and the many obstacles that often still lie in its path. This means that employees who find themselves charged with advancing and ensuring DEI initiatives may easily find themselves overburdened and burned out. 

This article describes the best practices you can implement today to avoid the common challenges associated with managing DEI programs. The article focuses in particular on the common pitfalls you will want to avoid when assembling your DEI task force.

Draw From a Broad Pool

When you’re assembling your DEI task force, one of the first and most important things you need to do is ensure that you’re casting a wide net when selecting candidates for the initiative. To be sure, corporate leadership should be represented in your diversity programs because of their significant role in establishing and enforcing company policies and practices.

However, the DEI task force should most assuredly not be dominated by corporate leaders. You’re going to need to draw on the perspectives, insights, and experiences of staff at all levels, from interns to executives, if you want to cultivate a truly equitable and inclusive environment.

This also means that all departments should be equally represented. If your DEI task force is comprised primarily of the human resources (HR) department, for example, you are likely going to miss out on invaluable information that could be gleaned from other divisions. This is why robust interdepartmental communication must be a core attribute of your DEI initiatives.

Avoid Overburdening Your Team

When you’re assembling a DEI task force, it’s imperative that employees from all departments and at all organizational levels be equally represented. It is even more important that employees who derive from communities that have been historically marginalized in the labor force represent as large a segment of the task force as their white, straight, male counterparts — if not larger.

Ideally, female, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and senior employees, as well as employees with disabilities, would take a strong leadership role in the DEI task force. The problem, however, comes when one automatically assumes that an employee who derives from one of these traditionally marginalized groups will want to join, let alone play a leadership role in, a DEI task force. 

When employees are already grappling with the challenges of managing a demanding workload, as well as home and family responsibilities, the burdens can be overwhelming. No employee is immune from the risk of burnout, particularly in the post-pandemic era, when workers are contending both with the aftermath of the crisis and with continuing economic volatility stemming from it.

To assign diverse employees to a role on the DEI task force, which they did not seek out for themselves, is to risk amplifying the professional and personal burdens they may be facing. There is evidence, for example, that minorities may be at greater risk for burnout than the general population, due principally to the additional burden of contending with explicit and implicit bias in the workplace.

What this means, ultimately, is that diverse employees should be invited and welcomed to join the task force and to define for themselves their level of engagement with and leadership of the task force. But they should not be expected to join or lead simply because of their diverse backgrounds. Such an expectation in and of itself could represent a form of implicit bias.

The Takeaway

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) task forces play a critical role in promoting true equality in the workplace. This does not mean, however, that assembling an effective DEI task force is easy. There are a number of common pitfalls that must be recognized and avoided to ensure that the DEI goals for which the task force was created do, indeed, come to fruition. 

This includes ensuring that you draw from all departments and organizational levels when assembling the task force. It also means that employees belonging to traditionally marginalized groups play a significant and, ideally, leading role in the task force. At the same time, however, it’s also critical to avoid the automatic assumption that a diverse employee would want to participate in or lead a DEI task force to prevent implicit bias and mitigate the risk of employee burnout.