7 Easy, Low-Cost Ways to Further DEI Initiatives

Are the buzzwords of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) wearing off in 2023? While many businesses have made significant shifts towards more inclusive practices in recent years, worrying new stats suggest a slowing down of progress.  

iHire’s 2023 State of Online Recruiting (SOOR) report revealed that just 8% of employers prioritized diversity hiring in the past year. There was also a 27.6% year-over-year decrease in businesses that always included an EOE statement or DEI information in their job postings.

Multiple factors may contribute to this down-tick in prioritizing DEI, ranging from out-of-touch leadership to competing priorities. One of the most significant barriers is budgeting and cost.

However, with females running only 10% of Fortune 500 companies, continued LGBTQI+ workplace discrimination, and the still relatively untapped business benefits of diverse teams – it is important that businesses don’t lose momentum. 

Here are seven simple and cost-effective ways for companies to continue furthering DEI. All without needing to allocate a large budget. 

Why DEI Is Important

It is vital that businesses continue to lead change in the arena of diversity, equity, and inclusion. As well as continuing to tackle inequality and discrimination and creating safer and fairer professional environments, DEI initiatives also help businesses grow, innovate, and stay competitive in the long term. 

Focusing on diversity and inclusion can: 

• Increase revenue
• Boost innovation
• Create happier and more productive workplaces
• Reduce employee turnover

7 Easy & Low-Cost Ways to Further DEI Initiatives

Start applying these seven simple DEI initiative ideas to foster more diverse working environments without spending a fortune.

1. Use inclusive language 

Language matters. Adapting how you communicate across your company is one of the most affordable – yet impactful – steps you can take toward creating an inclusive working environment. This can range from avoiding exclusionary language to not using industry or company-specific jargon and acronyms.

Every company has multiple areas of communication in which it can modify its language to be more inclusive. These include:

• Employee communications 
• Training resources
• Job descriptions 
• Onboarding documentation 
• Benefits packages 
• Interviews 

Create a company language guide to help make your communications more inclusive. Guidelines may include:

• Using gender-neutral language.
• Asking workers for their pronouns.
• Defaulting to "they" over "he or she" in paperwork.

You should also be mindful of terms related to race and ethnicity, take care when choosing terms to refer to ability or medical conditions, and avoid using stereotypes. 

2. Leverage free resources 

If you don’t have the budget to create your own high-end DEI training program, consider making use of the many extensive free and low-cost resources out there, including:

• Online training
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Articles
• Quizzes. e.g., to identify hidden bias
• Specialized tools for employers

A simple free tool that can revolutionize your hiring process is the iHire Bias Breaker Feature™, which helps employers apply blind hiring techniques to reduce unconscious bias. 

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3. Adapt your leave and benefit policies

Inclusive language is one thing. But there are other ways that traditional policies for paid leave, insurance, and benefits can be out of alignment with DEI principles. Policies should take into account modern family and relationship structures, various religions, different races, all genders, and disabilities and physical limitations. 

Review your company policies against the following considerations:

• Does your parental leave or bereavement leave extend to same-sex partners? 
• Does medical insurance cover transition surgery? 
• Do you offer paid leave for all religious holidays? 
• Do foster children trigger the same parental benefits for workers as biological ones? 
• Do you offer OB/GYN benefits for women? 
• Do you offer fertility, surrogacy, and adoption support for the LGBTQI+ community?

4. Offer mentorship programs

One way to use your current resources to create more diversity in leadership is through establishing mentorship programs and other activities to promote inclusion in the workplace. Mentorship programs can connect employees from underrepresented groups with more experienced colleagues.

Encourage senior leaders to sponsor and advocate for the career advancement of diverse employees. This way, you can combat unconscious bias tendencies and help fast-track talent that faces more obstacles to reach more senior roles. 

5. Diversify your hiring practices

The state of online recruiting today is still unfairly biased against minority and underrepresented groups. Unconscious bias remains common against candidates based on background, gender, age, race, religion, ability, and other factors. 

Most modern recruiting processes now take place largely online, opening the door to several ways to combat these biases and diversify your hiring.

• Use tools for blind recruitment 
• Use quotas, particularly if your industry consists of one main demographic
• Give diversity training to your recruitment team
• Use inclusive job boards
• Use inclusive language on job postings and encourage diverse applicants

6. Get real feedback

One of the most effective – and free – ways to create tailored diversity initiatives specific to your company is to gather feedback. You can ask all teams, employees, and leaders to provide feedback on DEI efforts. You can do this through a Slack channel, anonymous survey, or simple email request. Use the feedback to spot trends and blind spots so you can make improvements and adjust strategies.

7. Set goals, revise, and report

One of the simplest ways to give more priority to DEI is to set clear goals and track your initiatives. You can begin with a diversity audit, identifying the areas in which you could use improvement. 

1. Define the areas that need improvement. 
2. Decide on the initiatives you will implement (DEI initiative examples include creating a mentorship program and updating the language in your benefits policy).
3. Create metrics to track them.
4. Track the metrics and create and share an annual or quarterly report. 

Working Toward More Diverse and Inclusive Practices 

It is crucial that companies continue to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion practices to help us create fair opportunities. There are plenty of initiatives you can begin to implement today that don’t require a large budget, from updating company-wide language to using free tools and resources. 

It can be helpful to first fully understand the State of Online Recruiting (SOOR), define the areas that could use improvement in your organization, and choose some DEI strategies to implement. As a business, being committed and creative will help you stand out from the crowd and allow you to develop and adopt more innovative DEI initiative ideas.