Read on Twitter
Happy #BlackHistoryMonth 
, Company Leaders! It’s a great (aka absolutely requisite) time to check in on those antiracist commitments you were revved up about 8 months ago. You’ll most likely benefit from reviewing these antiracism change management ABCs.
/1
, Company Leaders! It’s a great (aka absolutely requisite) time to check in on those antiracist commitments you were revved up about 8 months ago. You’ll most likely benefit from reviewing these antiracism change management ABCs./1
A is for accountabilities. Have you prescribed clear swim lanes for who owns & drives your company’s DEI efforts? There should be distinct roles for each player who will drive the collective action required to disrupt the status quo. Common accountability pitfalls include:
/2
/2
- Dumping inordinate responsibilities on your Black ERG, which should be protected as a community for belonging and fellowship (Ex:Outsourcing insights on how to make your product and services more inclusive to your Black ERG members, none of whom are in tech roles)/3
- Deferring antiracism efforts to your DEI leader/team without accountability from the business (Ex: The DEI team is listed as the owner of all-DEI related company goals and your leadership team owns none)/4
- Overly relying on your people/ #HR functions to execute on antiracism efforts without accountability from the business (Ex: a hiring target that doesn’t capture KPIs or SLAs for hiring managers and interviewers)/5
- Setting company wide DEI OKRs without drilling down to the group- and team-level goals that underpin them/6
Check your RACI, DACI or [fill-in-the-blank] project framework (Like, now. Go check it!) to verify that the work of antiracism is shared and pragmatically operationalized within your org./7
B is for balance. Cool if your Black headcount has increased since last summer (ours has and I’m really excited. more to come) but if that is only true in your lowest wage and/or highest turnover roles, you have work to do to balance representation throughout your org./8
@adblanche's work on this is the real deal./9 https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/introducing-the-balanced-teams-diversity-assessment-tool
C is for checks. Yo-Yo Ma says that music is what happens in between the notes. I've always loved the imagery of his observation and I see its parallels to the practice of antiracism. I see antiracism as what happens in between the lines of a policy or protocol./10
This means that every individual who’s involved in making or approving people decisions, big and small, must use each instance as an opportunity to shore up all the little gateways for racism that can happen when we're moving fast and/or not thinking critically./11
Here’s a sample of what this looks like at Upwork:
- I review every single job description before it’s posted externally and reject the ones that include more than the essential criteria and/or use proxies that aren’t predictive of skill or expertise/12
- I review every single job description before it’s posted externally and reject the ones that include more than the essential criteria and/or use proxies that aren’t predictive of skill or expertise/12
- Each manager pushes & probes to elevate or dismiss low-quality (non-specific or vague) feedback about their team members
- Our comp leader & CPO review the specs of every job offer & adjust as needed within our pay bands to ensure new hire and internal pay equity
/13
- Our comp leader & CPO review the specs of every job offer & adjust as needed within our pay bands to ensure new hire and internal pay equity
/13
- HR, Comp, DIBs & Legal review promotion and pay increase requests each cycle and recalibrate them with dept. leaders to ensure equity within depts. and companywide
/14
/14
- Our Talent Solutions program managers curate talent shortlists & don’t submit them to clients until they represent the global diversity on Upwork
/15
/15
Antiracism is highly tactical. It begins, not ends, with a corporate donation or social media campaign.
There’s no time like February to accelerate the work of antiracism within your org.
/16
There’s no time like February to accelerate the work of antiracism within your org.
/16
If you can’t get in gear during the shortest month of the year, it’s time to reevaluate the strength of your convictions./17 https://time.com/3707793/chris-rock-black-history-month/
PS - If you have experience activating this type of change, apply to join my team!/end https://careers.upwork.com/jobs/4216575003
