Successful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives boost employee engagement, spur innovation, and increase the likelihood of meeting financial goals. But before launching any initiative, writing a DEI statement aids in aligning stakeholders and serves as a declaration of your company’s commitment to DEI initiatives.
Here we’ll define what a statement is, provide DEI statement examples, and help guide you through the process of writing your own.
A DEI statement outlines a company’s commitment to furthering diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. While no two DEI statements will look identical, they’ll usually touch on the role of DEI in shaping company values and the overarching ways that DEI manifests itself through company actions.
In most cases, a DEI statement will include the following:
To better contextualize the nature of DEI initiatives, let’s look to the statements put out by industry leaders. The following DEI statements can be found on each of these companies’ websites.
At Indeed, our mission is to help all people get jobs. While our backgrounds are broad and our talents are many, our best work happens when our voices are heard. Channeling our unique perspectives to make a positive impact on each other, our communities, and our world helps every Indeedian feel they #BelongAtIndeed.
Creating greater equity is one of the 6 company-wide priorities established by our CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, for 2021. This means increasing demographic diversity at Uber and becoming a more actively anti-racist company and ally to the communities we serve. Every member of the Executive Leadership Team is doing their part to make this a reality, especially making sure their entire organization is behind this. Increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion is at the core of the company’s strategy, and commitment to it starts at the top.
Netflix’s greatest impact is in storytelling. Stories like The Harder They Fall, Never Have I Ever, Love on the Spectrum, Yasuke, and Squid Game broaden representation, empathy and understanding. We create and connect these stories to people all around the globe – removing the barriers of language, device, ability or connectivity. Better representation on-screen starts with representation in the office. Our work has to be internal first, so it can impact what we do externally. We believe we’ll do that better if our employees come from different backgrounds, and if we create an environment of inclusion and belonging for them.
We’re dedicated to hiring diverse talent and ensuring that we treat you with respect and support throughout the interview process and once you join Slack. We embrace diversity and strive to create conditions that provide everyone with an equal opportunity to thrive. We offer several programs and initiatives to foster these values.
We take the broadest possible view of diversity.
We value the visible and invisible qualities that make you who you are.
We welcome that every person brings a unique perspective and experience to advance our mission and progress our fight for the health, education, and financial stability of every person in every community.
We believe that each United Way community member, donor, volunteer, advocate, and employee must have equal access to solving community problems.
We strive to include diversity, equity, and inclusion practices at the center of our daily work.
We commit to using these practices for our business and our communities.
Join us in embracing diversity, equity and inclusion for every person in every community.
We know that a diverse, equitable, and inclusive company is a more innovative and successful one. Across our workforce, products, and content, we embrace diversity of background, perspective, culture, and experience, and together with our partners, we have been working to fight injustice and inequity for decades. From bringing broadband and digital skills training to underserved families; to creating opportunities for underrepresented entrepreneurs; to amplifying diverse voices; we’re committed to leveraging our unique platforms to help create positive change.
Google is committed to continuing to make diversity, equity, and inclusion part of everything we do—from how we build our products to how we build our workforce.
Google is growing to fulfill that vision. In the past few years, we’ve doubled in size—today, we have more than 100,000 employees in 170 cities spanning nearly 60 countries. Operating at this scale brings an elevated level of responsibility to everything we do—including a workforce that’s more representative of our users, and a workplace that creates a sense of belonging for everyone.
Thank you for joining us on this journey.
To begin writing your DEI statement, you’ll first want to take stock of both your company’s mission and its approach to DEI. Your DEI statement shouldn’t reiterate your values verbatim or provide a laundry list of current and past efforts, but they will help to serve as a foundation.
From there, here are the steps you should take.
While your headline could be a blunt label like [Company Name] Statement on DEI, the best headlines provide a bit more specificity.
For example, Indeed’s headline reads, You belong at Indeed. This direct address immediately welcomes the reader, regardless of background, into the Indeed workplace. It also emphasizes the notion of belonging, which alludes to the company embracing different voices.
Based on our examples, you can see that DEI statements generally range in length from 50-100 words. While the content of each statement varies, there are some common threads running through several of them.
Some companies house their DEI statement under their About Us page, while others devote an entire page to diversity efforts. In most cases, the latter option will be the most effective.
On Uber’s diversity and inclusion page, you’ll find not only their DEI statement but also their annual People and Culture report, quotes from their Chief DEI officer, and links to pages that describe the ways in which Uber embraces workers from specific backgrounds.
When all is said and done, creating a DEI statement can seem like a relatively simple task; however, acting on its values can prove a bit more difficult. For many companies, hiring and retaining truly diverse pools of talent can be challenging, and even the most well-crafted DEI statement will do little to help. That’s why you should consider a data-driven solution developed by experts in the field.
Included is an AI-powered DEI data analytics platform that drives diversity in recruitment and hiring outcomes. By gathering and analyzing candidate data, Included delivers full visibility to the recruitment pipeline. Want to see DEI hiring trends? Or which recruiting sources yield the most diverse candidate slates? Included will show you all that and much more.
DEI statements are a great way to outline your org’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Included is the data-driven DEI solution that will help you act on that commitment.
