How startups can implement successful D&I strategies

Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) are key to startup success. Here’s a short, practical guide on how startups can implement an effective D&I strategy from one of the UK’s most influential diversity champions and women in tech, Perrine Farque. 

Startup founders are rightly focused on building the next Facebook, Instagram or Amazon. With so many startup success stories and with so many technological advancements, anything is possible. However, as an increasing body of research demonstrates, there is another often forgotten factor that drives startup success: diversity and inclusion (D&I).  McKinsey, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch and the Peterson Institute for International Economics all found that having a high percentage of women in a company’s senior leadership results in significantly better financial results. 

PRACTICAL POINTERS

Inclusive organisations are twice more likely to exceed financial targets, according to research from Deloitte. A recent PwC Survey also noted that approximately 85% of company CEOs that have an inclusiveness strategy said it’s “improved their bottom line”. Given that diversity is important for startups, where should they start? Here are some practical pointers:

1. Understand why diversity is important to your startup

The first place to start with D&I for your startup is to start with the why. Ask yourself why D&I are important to your startup. How will D&I help you to grow and scale your business? What is it about D&I that will fundamentally drive all the things you will do with your startup?

2. Articulate how diversity ties to your mission

Once you have done the work of articulating why D&I is important to your startup, you must work on how D&I ties to your mission. This is your opportunity to revisit or even create from scratch your startup mission statement. Your mission statement defines what your startup is, why it exists and its reason for being. At a minimum, your mission statement should define who your customers are, identify your products and services. 

3. Set diversity goals tied to monetary compensation

Approximately 90% of startup founders will not implement a diversity programme. Research shows that while 70% of startup founders think diversity is important, only 10% of startup founders will implement a diversity programme. We could speculate about why that is and whether it is because they expect someone else to take ownership. The point is that nothing will happen unless you set goals. Goals drive behaviour. Monetary goals drive behaviour faster. 

4. Appoint a diversity taskforce sponsored by an executive  

Once you have done the basics: understand why D&I are important to your startup. Incorporate this in your mission statement, setting diversity goals tied to monetary outcomes. You must set up a process to constantly monitor, adjust and improve your D&I practices. It would be naive to expect this initiative to be successful without investing more resources to monitor, assess, adjust and improve. 

5. Get real about how diverse and inclusive your startup is or is not

At this point, as you get started with your own D&I programmes, a good place to start is your own workforce. You should start by measuring how diverse and inclusive your workforce is today so that you can track progress as you start your own D&I journey.

6. Be a change agent: be accountable and hold your leaders accountable too

As a startup leader, you must create a D&I framework that creates a culture of inclusion and you need to personally buy into it and commit to it. Your support, commitment and accountability are essential elements to the implementation of a systematic process of inclusion at the workplace. In other words, you can’t say “we have a pipeline problem”, “there are not enough diverse candidates out there”, “we need to focus on revenue right now”, “we are too busy right now”. 

7. Proactively diversify your network

This is one of my favourite tips because it is so simple yet so powerful. You must make a conscious decision to diversify your network. You must seek the company of people who are different from you: different gender, different race, different age, different sexual orientation, different ability or disability. Proactively seeking to understand different perspectives will open your mind to different perspectives, new ideas and help you in your own personal D&I journey. 

8. Unconscious bias training

There is a lot of controversy about unconscious bias training and whether it is effective or not. As a diversity consultant in tech having helped countless startups with diversity trainings, here is my advice: Unconscious bias training works well when it is done in the right way. You can read how to do unconscious bias training the right way here.

9. Construct a diverse Board of Directors and Advisory Board

If you are serious about D&I in your startup, you must hire diverse directors and seek diverse advisory board members. Companies with diverse management teams achieve 19% higher revenue from innovation. This is about moving from intentions to actions. This is about moving from cheap talk and lip service and PR to concrete actions about diversity and inclusion. Diversity starts at the top. 

10. Join the Tech Talent Charter

Finally, you should become a Tech Talent Charter signatory. Tech Talent Charter brings together industries and organisations to drive greater inclusion and diversity in tech. The Tech Talent Charter  (TTC) is a non-profit organisation leading a movement to address inequality in the UK tech sector and drive inclusion and diversity in a practical and uniquely measurable way.  

In summary… the fact that you read this guide shows an interest in driving more D&I in your startup, which is a good place to start. I want to remind you that 99% of D&I efforts fail to translate intention into actions. You can make a difference by following these simple steps. I shared these tips based on my experience working in tech for over a decade. Read the full blog here.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Perrine Farque is an award-winning diversity, inclusion and equity advocate in tech who was nominated in the Top 50 Most Influential Women in UK Tech. She drove the strategy at technology companies including Facebook, PagerDuty, Pivotal, Nlyte Software and AvePoint for over a decade before setting up her own D&I consultancy – Inspired-Human. During her career, Farque spoke at many industry events including Dublin Tech Summit, WomenTech Global Conference, Women 2.0, Vault Platform conference and PagerDuty Leadership Summit. She has an extensive track-record of motivating and inspiring teams and creating a truly diverse company culture within Tech companies.