Who We Are
The Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio (DCNEO) has proudly served our community for nearly 100 years. Founded in 1927 by religious leaders in Cleveland, the National Conference of Christians and Jews united citizens to combat the rise of hatred across America. Today, we continue this vital work under the banner of the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio, striving to create communities where all people are connected, respected, and valued.
The work of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) is currently under attack. The powerful and meaningful words that define our mission are being distorted and weaponized to advance a harmful narrative. We want you to know that we are not retreating. We stand firm, moving forward with courage and resolve to continue our work.
To start, we believe it is important to clarify what these terms mean. While the acronym “DEIB” may be less familiar, the underlying concepts reflect values that have been central to our communities for years and will continue to be despite shifting political headwinds.
Definitions
Diversity
is about embracing the differences everyone brings to the table, whether those are someone’s race, age, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, or other aspects of social identity.
Equity
is about treating everyone fairly and providing equal opportunities and access.
Inclusion
is about respecting everyone’s voice and creating a culture in which people from all backgrounds feel encouraged to express their ideas and perspectives.
Belonging
is about the feeling or experience of being accepted as your authentic self.
What Is Effective DEIB Work Really?
DEIB was created because people in marginalized communities have not always had equal opportunities or felt a sense of belonging in their schools, workplaces, and cities. The shifts that occur when the needs of marginalized communities are considered ultimately create spaces where EVERYONE feels valued and has equal access to opportunity.
DEIB policies and practices are frameworks for organizations that seek to promote fair treatment of all their members, particularly those who belong to groups that have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination because of their identity or disability. DEIB initiatives typically involve a mix of education and training, member support, and policy analysis.
Addressing Symptoms vs. Causes
In Practice
At its highest level of functioning, DEIB represents a range of practices that are integrated into a positively functioning community. They should not be separate initiatives but woven into how your community operates. In practice, DEIB does not only address the impacts of race and gender inequity. The identities people bring to work are complex and varied, and support for one tends to lend support for another. For example, the inclusive scheduling options a workplace implements for new parents serve to benefit employees with aging parents as well.
DCNEO offers many ways to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in organizations. Our programming and consulting services can help you measure feelings of inclusion, create systems for employee support, and reduce the impact of bias in your school or workplace. Discover what a partnership with DCNEO could bring to your organization by clicking here.
All these practices serve to support and uplift individuals to help them achieve success. To learn more about what DEIB looks like in practice, explore the following examples:
Increasing Diversity
- Recruiting Practices: Your organization is primarily White and serves a predominately Black/African American area. You have two Black/African American applicants for an open role who wouldn’t have heard about the opening except for the fact that you attended a recruiting fair at a Historically Black College or University (HBCU).
- Hiring Practices: You used to hold very informal job interviews. In these conversation-heavy exchanges, you often mistook interpersonal alignment with competency and alignment with the organization, hiring many people because they were a good “culture fit.” In your latest round of interviews, you implemented a more structured approach, and your final candidate was a reserved, analytical woman who was a strong fit for the role even though you did not connect with her as easily. Your new structured approach led to her selection.
- Marketing Materials/Diverse Representation: Your student golf club is mostly White even though your school is very racially diverse. You notice that there is a narrative in your school that golf is a “White man’s sport.” You start to advertise golf club meetings with flyers that have pictures of golfers of multiple races and ethnicities, and a few non-White students show interest in the club.
- Team/Committee Composition/Diverse Perspectives: Your city is opening a new playground and children’s center and wants to create a citizen-led advising group to help provide perspective during the process. When creating this group, they try to involve parents, nannies, teachers, and other caregivers with different income levels, work schedules, and other identities, so that the committee can provide as many perspectives as possible.
Increasing Inclusion
- Bringing Awareness: Your organization publishes an inclusive holiday calendar that includes non-Christian holidays. Sadhaav, who celebrates the Hindu holiday Holi has this holiday acknowledged for the first time in this space and feels like a part of his identity has been acknowledged as well.
- Learning About Each Other: You attend a workshop focusing on work style differences and collaboration. This helps you learn that your co-worker appreciates direct communication in the workplace, while you tend to lean into a more indirect style. This understanding allows you to better communicate with each other. DCNEO’s Fostering Inclusive Collaboration for Work Teams workshop facilitates this type of conversation.
- Visibility and Signaling: Your child’s teacher includes their pronouns alongside their name in their email signature and other locations. When you receive an email from them and note this, it causes you to relax as your child is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, and you feel that this teacher may use their pronouns correctly.
- Accommodation: Vegetarian and alcohol-free options are offered at work, school, or community event. Members who cannot or do not wish to consume meat or alcohol for health or religious reasons feel that they can more easily participate in the event.
Increasing Equity
- PTO/Scheduling Considerations: Your company offers floating holidays so that employees whose major cultural or religious holidays are not federally recognized can celebrate them with their loved ones. This allows Amna to celebrate Eid with her family.
- Changes in Process: Your school provides students with accommodations such as IEPs to match their diverse learning needs so that they can succeed in their education. Julian has ADHD and is able to have his tests administered in a location with minimal distractions. This allows him to succeed academically.
- Environmental Considerations: Your organization provides parents safe and private places within the workspace to pump breast milk. Tamara feels much more supported in her transition back to work than at her last job, where she had to pump in a restroom stall.
- Creating Pathways: Your university provides need-based grants and scholarships so that students with smaller safety nets can access education. Alex is a first-generation college student who is able to afford classes in part because of one of these scholarships.
Increasing Belonging
- Team Building: When your teacher assigns group projects, they always provide time for your groups to chat and get comfortable with each other, work through questions that help you understand each other’s strengths, and assign roles. You love these group projects because you feel like everyone is more engaged and prepared to contribute.
- Positive Communication Practices: When your team ends meetings you have all developed the habit of reiterating what has been decided. This helps avoid confusion on the team, especially since you have colleagues with different styles of processing information, different primary languages, and different communication styles.
- Check-ins: Your supervisor cultivates a relationship with you and hosts weekly check-ins. As a result, you are able to give each other feedback in a more timely manner. This practice makes an especially big difference when a supervisor and supervisee might not naturally have a close relationship.
- Recognition: On your intramural sports team, you have a practice of highlighting team members at the end of each game when they did something impactful or showed significant progress. This positive environment makes it feel easier to handle the unintentional exclusionary actions that sometimes happen between players.
Misconceptions About DEIB in Workplace
There are many misconceptions about DEIB; and we believe it is important to address and counter these falsehoods. Below are 3 of the most common misconceptions about DEIB and our responses to them.
DEIB Is Discriminatory
Considering equity in hiring should never mean selecting someone solely for their identity. Instead, it is a consideration of the ways applicants with marginalized identities are held back and a removal of those barriers to equal opportunity.
DEIB Takes Away from Merit
Success in the workplace is connected to many factors besides merit – such as social connections and class. Inclusive hiring practices actually aim to help people’s talent have more of an impact on their success than it currently does.
DEIB is a Waste of Money
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging initiatives provide significant organizational and financial benefits. Inclusive workplaces improve employee retention, reduce turnover costs, and enhance productivity.
A report in the Harvard Business review showed that companies that invest in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging initiatives reap substantial bottom-line benefits. High belonging was linked to an impressive 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days. For a 10,000-person company, this would result in annual savings of more than $52M.
Companies in the top quartile of representation of women (greater than 30% women in the workforce) are significantly more likely to financially outperform those with 30% or less of their workforce containing women. Similarly, companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity show a financial advantage over non-diverse workplaces. DEIB has a clear tangible positive impact on the financial outputs of an organization.
More and more consumers are intentionally seeking out business that reflect their values – and disconnecting from the ones that don’t. 75% of shoppers say a brand’s diversity reputation influences their purchasing decisions.
Cost of Waiting to Return to “Normal”
As political pressure against DEIB work mounts, some organizations feel that they would be better “waiting it out” and seeing how the political landscape shifts and settles with regards to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.
There is a real risk with this approach. Organizations waiting for a “return to normal” face the rising cost of:
- Deteriorating mental health as support for employees fades or wavers
- Loss of talent as employees realize their psychological needs aren’t being meaningfully addressed
- Decision paralysis as leaders operate from fear/confusion rather than clarity
- Loss of institutional trust among employees
These costs compound over time, creating organizational issues that persist long after external challenges subside.
If you are committed to creating and maintaining a community where your members feel valued and perform at their best, click here to discover what a partnership with DCNEO could bring.
Are You Ready to Spark Positive Change?
If you are interested in transforming mindsets at the place where you live, work, teach, or go to school, we can help!
