Taking Action at Work Part 2: Retaining Your Diverse Team

Read part one of this series: Taking Action at Work: Bringing People In.

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Ok, let’s say you’re doing a great job selecting BIPOC team members as a part of your recruiting methods.

Are they staying at your organization?

No, really. Think about everyone who has left. Try not to tell yourself that they “left for an opportunity they just couldn’t turn down” or that “they weren’t a good fit” – or, one of the most eye-roll-inducing excuses I’ve heard, “She was just kind of a strange girl.” [Read: Black girl, “not like us.”]

What do the patterns look like in your organization? Are BIPOC, people with disabilities, women, or other equity-seeking groups departing at a rate that is higher than your white colleagues?

If you find it difficult to find data on who has left, look at who has stuck around: what are the demographics of your longest-standing team members?

Look hard at your statistics. Yes, this applies to small teams, too. 

Retention is an important testing ground for inclusive environments. 

You might be tempted to throw cultural competency or diversity training at the problem. 

That’s not going to work. In fact, it’s going to make things worse.

What will fix your problem is understanding the gaps and barriers - systemic, process, culture, seen and unseen - in your organization, and then doing the work to embed inclusion and belonging into the structure of everything you do.

It sounds like a lot of work. It is. But it’s doable. QuakeLab’s Design Thinking + Inclusion workshop is made precisely to guide you through this work with measurable results. 

If you’re starting the difficult work of critically assessing what’s up with retention at your organization, here are a few tips: 

Understand the impact of your work environment. Traditional models of work aren't traditional because they are good. They are traditional because they are old. 

Explore different models that align to your organization’s values, your team's needs, and the reality of their lives. This might include:

    1. A four day workweek;

    2. Flex hours;

    3. Flexible working arrangements.

  1. Think about how your physical office space welcomes and excludes. Do you have gender-neutral bathrooms? A prayer room? Sanitary products available to your staff in the washroom? Easy waste disposal next to all toilets? A private place for breastfeeding and pumping? Accessible rooms, doors, hallways, and facilities? When you plan events or off-site meetings are you ensuring those venues also meet the needs of your team?  

  2. Budget for inclusion. Start now for the next fiscal year. You know you need to. If you’re not budgeting for inclusion, it’s only a matter of time until you’re called on this. Maybe 2021 is the year you invest in an accessible workplace? The year you incentivies belonging initiatives in your organization? You need your budget in place before you even start having these conversations. 

  3. Establish pay transparency and parity. All employees should know the range of pay for each professional level within your organization, and you need to do the work to ensure equity across and within all pay bands.

  4. Build guidelines for compensation and promotion. Ensure there is documented clarity across your organization around processes, expectations and assessments.

  5. Be a visible and active participant in your community. Engage with BIPOC organizations, consultants, and communities to craft guidelines for engagement and outreach methods for hiring. If possible, carve out resources to support community based organizations. 

  6. Create an internal process for responding to significant local or global events. Coping with the state of our world can be difficult at the best of times. You need to understand how events in your community, country, and our world impact your team, and have a process that allows your staff to feel supported and like they have the freedom and space to process events that impact them. Regularly remind staff of any mental health, employee assistance programs, or counselling benefits available to them.

It’s critical to build systems and mechanisms (before a global pandemic or mass unrest) that serve to care for your racialized team members in moments when they are statistically and historically known to be hardest hit by crisis. This could include:

    1. Access to an emergency fund to support immediate needs;

    2. Time off that isn’t taken out of sick days or vacation days and doesn’t require overwhelming amounts of paperwork or approvals;

    3. Safe spaces to collectively discuss coping with the state of the world;

    4. Opportunities to put forward recommendations in organizational responses.

This is not a comprehensive list. 

But it’s a place for you to start. 

And if you want to go further, contact QuakeLab. Join our mailing list to receive regular tips and articles like this straight to your inbox. 


QuakeLab is a full-stack inclusion and communications agency that provides the tools, expertise and methods to take your vision for inclusion from idea to action. We engage a team of functional experts in areas which include human resources, finance, web development, branding, user experience design, business management, and more. When you hire QuakeLab, your outcomes are founded in best practices established by leading practitioners and experts. 

Sharon Nyangweso