Heres How Corporate Leaders Can Make Meaningful Progress On Diversity And Inclusion – Forbes

Business leaders can take the initiative on promoting diversity and justice.

When the tragic murder of George Floyd set off protests against racism and injustice across the world, many leaders in business came forward to declare they stood by the African-American community and would work towards eliminating bias and discrimination within their own organizations. Many publicly stated Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) initiatives would become embedded within their organizational cultures to remedy what is a glaring lack of diversity in the upper echelons of the corporate universe. Across every industry, companies can do better. And the same goes for professional associations.

As the CEO of IMA (Institute of Management Accountants), my focus is on the finance and accounting profession, and how D&I can be promoted among the finance and accounting professionals who are the talent pipelines of organizations. Our membership comprises those currently holding senior leadership positions as well as those poised to succeed them. IMA has built D&I not only into its own organizational structure but into its overall mission in a holistic, all-encompassing way. We have made great strides, including having more than 50% female representation on our board for the first time in our long history.

I want to focus here not on IMAs own activities, but on what we have learned about best practices with regard to promoting D&I within organizations. The lessons we have drawn can help equip companies especially their accounting and finance leaders with the tools they need to successfully recruit and retain diverse talent. This is increasingly important in an environment where failing to do so is effectively leaving valuable skills and perspectives on the table, in addition to inviting reputational damage.

At IMA we recently published a synopsis of these best practices and how to implement them within organizations. It is called the Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit, which can serve as a guide for any employee or executive who wants to jumpstart a D&I initiative within their own organization. I want to emphasize this guide was conceived and developed before the protests. By proactively addressing D&I, IMAs organizational culture made talking about D&I issues safe for employees and constructive for the organization as a whole. Subsequent events have only reinforced the need for D&I initiatives to be a part of business operating models.

The challenge of D&I is straightforward: despite public commitments and in most cases earnest belief, there is still a lack of diversity at the top and feelings of frustration on the lack of progress by rank and file employees. By building an inclusive culture, leaders can ensure under-represented groups stay with organizations and can rise to senior leadership positions. In the IMA D&I Toolkit, we outline five key approaches that we used to measurably increase diversity at IMA, ones which can be replicated by other organizations:

1.Lead from the top. CEOs, board members, D&I committee heads and other senior leaders need to set the tone on D&I and lead by example. They need to be both frank about shortcomings and optimistic about setting and reaching goals, or else staff (and the wider public) will fail to take any commitments seriously. The same goes for transforming individual departments; for the finance function, the tone must be set by the CFO.

2.Create accountability. This means assigning a person to oversee D&I initiatives, one who will be held directly accountable for progress. If D&I is left to a committee or a junior-level executive, accountability will fall by the wayside.

3.Quantify D&I. Its crucial that each organization clarify and measure what goals are involved in making progress on D&I, including employee statistics and whatever other initiatives are launched. This is an area where finance and accounting professionals, under the leadership of the CFO, can play a key role.

4.Communicate initiatives, goals and successes. D&I should be a regular part of all organizational communications, whether is in annual reports, employee communications or marketing materials. This goes beyond optics. The goal is to communicate to stakeholders the importance of D&I and the need for everyone to participate in reaching milestones.

5.Build a diverse leadership pipeline. When it comes to both recruitment and internal promotions, ensuring diverse representation at the top of the corporate ladder should be paramount. Even as overall workforces necessarily become more diverse due to changing demographics, there remains a stubborn racial gap in leadership roles. Overcoming that gap will allow alternate perspectives to be factored into C-Suite decision-making.

Ultimately, organizations can and should use these guidelines to advance along what we call the D&I Continuum, from being merely compliant with legal requirements to fully incorporating D&I into business strategy, practice and mission.

As the leader of a global professional organization, I am especially concerned with adoption of these guidelines by accounting and finance departments and by CFOs in particular, who will play a unique role in transforming our profession to fully embody the principles of D&I. That said, leaders of all types must think about where they are falling short and how they can forge a new future. When it comes to diversity, injustice and lack of opportunity, there will be no excuses for inaction and all leaders must be able to point to concrete policies, goals and benchmarks for change.