To uncover if your policies, practices and programs are equitable, it’s important to ALWAYS ask some  probing questions about organizational and departmental policies and practices. Consider discussing these questions at your next committee meeting and at ongoing intervals during the equity audit process.

• What is the ultimate goals for our stakeholders?
• Specifically, what are our goals when assessing our stakeholders?
• How many different approaches to an assessment are viable and realistic?
• How can we develop assessment practices that offer stakeholders meaningful opportunities to demonstrate their learning, their progress, skills, and understandings?

Graphic source: Captured from Multnomah County

Improving diversity is such a broad goal that it will be hard to gauge progress without first narrowing your focus on a few key metrics. Your metrics can include hiring, promotion, and retention of under-represented groups. It can also measure employee satisfaction and engagement. Here are examples of categories you can choose to measure (not an exhaustive list, provided as an example of internal measures of equity):

• Hiring — Percentage of hires by ethnicity who we extend job offers; and of those who accept the jobs (this could give us more information).
• Representation — Percentage of people with disabilities who make up your workforce
• Retention — Average length of time women of color stay at your company
• Advancement —  Percentage of people without a college degree who are promoted
• Job satisfaction and engagement — Percentage of people from the LGBTQ+ community who report being supported by their managers
• Employee resource group (ERG) participation — Rates of attendance per meeting
• Leadership — Percentage of women in executive leadership

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Step 1: Select Key DEI Metrics to Measure

Improving diversity is such a broad goal that it will be hard to gauge progress without first narrowing your focus on a few key metrics. Your metrics can include hiring, promotion, and retention of under-represented groups. It can also measure employee satisfaction and engagement. Here are examples of categories you can choose to measure (not an exhaustive list, provided as an example of internal measures of equity):

• Hiring — Percentage of hires by ethnicity who we extend job offers; and of those who accept the jobs (this could give us more information).
• Representation — Percentage of people with disabilities who make up your workforce
• Retention — Average length of time women of color stay at your company
• Advancement —  Percentage of people without a college degree who are promoted
• Job satisfaction and engagement — Percentage of people from the LGBTQ+ community who report being supported by their managers
• Employee resource group (ERG) participation — Rates of attendance per meeting
• Leadership — Percentage of women in executive leadership

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Step 2: Identify Stakeholders and level of input

The audit should include qualitative comments from underrepresented stakeholders that will help to highlight the disparities. When determining who you should contact to gain input from and help with the process of the equity, there are a few basic questions you should consider about all:

• Which social identity groups may be most affected by and concerned with the issues related to your policies, practices, programs and products?
• What level of cultural and intercultural representation is needed? This ensures the perspectives of different stakeholder groups, which will result in strategies for working within and across professional and personal cultures.
• Who will other trust to gather and/or provide an unbiased view?
• Which stakeholder groups should be brought to the discussion immediately, and which should be included in a longer-term educator equity coalition?

Those conducting the audit:

Leading an equity audit is not a task for a novice. Whether your audit will be conducted by internal staff or external consultants, you need a person(s) skilled in conducting audits and especially equity audits. Have a minimum of two experienced and skilled people on your team. One person with equity audit expertise, and one with expertise in organizational evaluation (sometimes a single person will have both). The evaluation expert needs to know how to design an equity study, how to gather and interpret data, how to present results, and how to make recommendations for change. With training, others with little to no experience can be a part of the team, but an experienced person needs to provide leadership.

Whomever is involved must have a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and bought-in to the concept of identifying and leading systemic reform.

Those being interviewed during the audit:

The audit should include qualitative comments from underrepresented employees that helps to highlight the disparities they experience. By asking the right questions, you can uncover practices and policies that “exclude” others from accessing or benefiting from policies, practices and program, OR, that hold people to inequitable standards of work.  Your equity audit can also uncover ways the organization can serve underrepresented groups of people better (employees and community members).  So it’s important to identify those that are NOT represented to find out why.

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Step 3: Determine format for engaging stakeholders

After stakeholder groups have been identified and invited, it is time to consider the most appropriate setting to engage each group to ensure that participants can engage in open dialogue in a space where they can feel safe and brave to share their input. Below are a few options you can use, based on the size of the group.

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Step 4: Determine Impact Characteristics of Historically Excluded Groups

You will want to understand the disparate impact that may result from any number of demographics, economic, geographical, political, and environmental impacts. Impact characterization may include identifying impacts based on different sets of assumptions. The nature of the impacts, including descriptions of magnitude, direction, location, and range of influence, will need to be considered. Example is below:

Historically Excluded Groups

Although there are specific groups or identities who have been historically excluded in a majority dominated white, male-dominated, heterosexual society that has developed the systems that have created many of the inequities that are experienced today, it is also important to remember that there is diversity within each of these groups. All groups are not at risk of exclusion in every context. You may identify other people who have been historically excluded in a given context or in the work you are doing. This list is not intended to be all-encompassing, but we must pay attention to intersections of who we all are and how that affects how we experience our workplaces and society.

Historically excluded communities of people are:

• People of Color
• Native and Indigenous people
• Women
• People with Disabilities
• Immigrants & Refugees
• Minority Religious Groups
• Older Adults
• Youth
• People Living in disadvantaged economic communities

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Step 5: Identifying disparities/ask the right questions

Questions to ask BEFORE you begin – time to level set expectations and readiness

We’ll use guiding questions to ensure our focus is appropriate, and to evaluate individual issues in the equity lens framework. Before you get started there are questions you need to ask at the organizational level:

• Have we created a safe environment to participate in equity lens work?
• Are we aware of the ways in which our equity lens is impacted by our individual, institutional, and systemic biases?
  • Systemic (also known as structural) describes something that exists throughout a body or system. It is deeply engrained inequities at the highest level – ones that make up the policies that dictate the way we operate. These systems aren’t always written or spoken but are rules that are used to operate at a broad level to give privileges (intended or unintended). This is the overarching system, so think highest level, like industry level, government level, large corporation level.
  • Systematic describes an intentional, methodical plan of operating, many times because the SYSTEM dictates it. Systematic operations don’t create the systems, it carries them out.
  • Institutional can be as broad as “the institution of inequities. Institutions can could refer to societal norms, or specific department norms. These institutions can uphold discriminatory practices, unfair policies, or biased based practices that result in inequity.
  • Individual refers to the beliefs and attitudes that people hold within themselves. This can be because they have been taught and never challenged the systemic inequities in a conscious or unconscious way.
• Do we have structures in place to ensure that the work resulting from the equity lens is collaborative and transparent across the organization?
• What assessment mechanisms have we built into the equity audit that will allow for continual improvement of both the audit and the work resulting from it as we move forward?
• What are the specific ways that your organization’s equity audit is expected to reduce disparities and enhance equity, inclusion and access?
• Have we clearly articulated our expectations to all stakeholders? How are you going to get buy-in across the organization to conduct the equity audit?
• How have you ensured that your organization’s equity audit outcomes can help us transform your structures, environments, and selves?

Questions to ask about every policy, practice or program

In gathering data, there is specific information you’re trying to uncover. The IEDEIA team proposes that you gather a minimum of three components of data collection.

Representation – who is represented and who is not and for those not represented, why?

• To what extent is our organization offering a diverse and inclusive environment?
• Who is affected by content and current framing of this policy, program, practice, or decision? What are the potential impacts?

Decision making – who has input to help inform the decisions that are made

• How does this policy, program, practice, decision-making process, or decision increase equity, inclusion and access? How does it produce or worsen any disparities?
• Where are the decision-making points that affect outcomes?
• What decisions/actions may be reinforcing the status quo, implicit bias and current inequities?
• Who is being impacted by this decision-making process? How have stakeholders been intentionally invited to and empowered to participate in the decision-making process or practice?

Equity in policy, practices or programs – does everyone have the same access, been provided with equal opportunities, etc.

• What are the barriers to more equitable outcomes around this policy, program, practice, decision making-process or decision?
• What alternative action options could produce different outcomes?
• Which action will best advance equity and inclusion?
• What reminders, supports and accountability systems can be structured into routine practices to keep equity as a high priority?
• Where do disparities in people/community/policy/programmatic outcomes exist?
• Where do disparities in how we assess our policies, practices and programs exist?
• Have these disparities diminished or increased over time?

Sample policy, practice or program questions to ask

Based on the policy, practice or program you are auditing, you will need to develop specific questions to drill down even further. Think about the impact characteristics above.

• Have you developed questions that uncover why there are inequities associated with this issue?
• How did the inequities arise?
• Are they expanding or narrowing?
• Who is currently most advantaged and most disadvantaged by the policy, practice or program?
• How are they affected differently?
• What quantitative and qualitative evidence of inequality exists?
• What evidence is missing or needed?

As you begin to develop your questions, below are a few examples of types of questions to ask based on your area of focus, and where you might go to uncover this information:

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Step 6: Conduct root cause analysis

Now that you’ve asked all the right questions, you can look at the adverse impacts or unintended consequences that resulted.  The IEDEIA team recommend s utilizing a root cause analysis to better understand causality. In this process, remember to use disaggregated data because the experience of one identity group might not be the same as another’s. The identification of sub-groups can bring to light nuances of similarities and differences that make such broad groupings misleading.

Now is the time to check assumptions and be curious. B considering a situation from the perspective of people who are or who have been excluded is a key step in promoting equity and inclusion. It is an ongoing learning process for everyone. The goal of the root cause analysis is to:

• Move past the obvious systems of inequities and continue to ask WHY, until you can determine the root causes of inequitable access.
• Determine data points as well as measures for short- and long-term outcomes.
• Then develop a theory of action that will move to permanently enhance equity.

2 approaches the IEDEIA team likes to use are:

5 Whys Approach

Ask “why?” five times. Your team will decide on the first “why” question to start with, and then the facilitator should lead the team in asking a sequence of questions four more times. Make sure the answer to each question is based on factual data instead of disputable group opinions. Note that the number five is just a rule of thumb but it’s very possible you may need to ask more than five questions to identify the root cause of the problem. It’s also possible that you could need less than five questions to identify the right answer. The idea is that you should end this step once you’re no longer coming up with practical answers. Below is an over simplified example of how the 5 whys can work.

You can also search resources for the 5 Why root cause analysis here:

Websites

• The 5 Whys of Lean
• Powermoodle – 5Why Root Cause Analysis

Fishbone diagram

First you will brainstorm the causes of the inequities you have identified. Then transform the brainstormed causes and categories to a fishbone diagram.

To conduct the fishbone diagram, do the following:

• Agree on a problem statement (effect). Write it at the center right of the flipchart or whiteboard. Draw a box around it and draw a horizontal arrow running to it.
• Brainstorm the major categories of causes of the problem.
• Write the categories of causes as branches from the main arrow.
• Brainstorm all the possible causes of the problem. Ask “Why does this happen?” As each idea is given, the facilitator writes it as a branch from the appropriate category. Causes can be written in several places if they relate to several categories.
• Again ask “Why does this happen?” about each cause. Write sub-causes branching off the Continue to ask “Why?” and generate deeper levels of causes. Layers of branches indicate causal relationships.
• When the group runs out of ideas, focus attention to places on the chart where ideas are few.
• This diagram doesn’t have to be perfect on the first try. You may need to create several different versions over time. In fact, you may wish to save different versions of this diagram.

You can also search articles, case studies, and publications for fishbone diagram resources.

Books

• Business Process Improvement Toolbox, Second Edition
• The Quality Toolbox, Second Edition

Articles

• Quality Nugget: Creating Ishikawa (Fishbone) Diagrams With R(Software Quality Professional) A fishbone diagram connects causal links in major categories with an outcome, or effect. This article explains how to make one with the Six Sigma package in R.
• Fish(bone) Stories(Quality Progress) The method behind the fishbone diagram is older than many of its users. The authors explore how digitizing one of the seven basic quality tools—the fishbone diagram—using mind mapping can significantly improve the tool.

Equity root cause analysis worksheet

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Step 7: Prioritizing Equity Ares of Focus

After stakeholders conduct a root-cause analysis of the issue(s) and disparities that have been uncovered, you need to prioritize what you’ll work on first. In so doing, they exchange perspectives that will inform shared priorities regarding equitable access. Use the Equity Prioritization Worksheet  to determine the priority levels in all areas. Although the prioritization worksheet developed by the IEDEIA team has the following categories:

• Mission and Values
• Social identities
• Organizational Brand
• Community Relationships
• Company Financials

However, please add all categories where you have conducted an equity audit.

Equity prioritization worksheet

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Planning for equitable access requires effective stakeholder communication. Without strategic communication, it can impede people accepting the outcomes of the equity audit. Communication is not a one-time activity, but instead should take place at various critical checkpoints all stages of equity audit/lens planning and implementation and should begin on Day 1.

Examples of key communication checkpoints

• Beginning – to help stakeholders understand what an equity audit/lens is and what it entails
• When the team is formed – to introduce everyone to who will be participating, and why they were selected
• Ask for input in identifying the components that should be assessed
• Provide an update in measuring progress that is being made
• Thank people for participating and giving input
• Communicate the outcome of the equity audit/lens

A strategic communication plan helps keep track of the many aspects of communication with stakeholders, and the broader community, to ensure they are informed about the steps and progress with addressing equitable access. The communication plan includes five steps:

1. Identify audiences for communication
2. Identify communication goals
3. Identify communication method
4. Develop key messages for communication
5. Monitor the effectiveness of communication

Communications Planning Template

Building Communication Loops

A critical piece of the communication planning is to develop communication and feedback loops. Feedback loops provide stakeholders directly affected by a policy, program or practice with the opportunity to focus on its impact and potential areas for improvements. Some of these mechanisms for communication can serve the purpose of sharing progress and celebrating milestones with stakeholders, communicating opportunities for continuous improvement, and how to provide feedback. A few ways to initiate continuous feedback loops include:

• Website
• Online platform (e.g., website, Google Docs) to make materials (e.g., agendas, minutes, handouts, datasets) available to participants or consideration
• Dedicated e-mail address
• Stakeholder feedback meetings and events
• Annual surveys to stakeholder groups
• Group forums to share measured progress

The measures of success that you gather and communicate through these feedback loops is intended to be done continuously over time. Communicating and celebrating small changes as they happen will be key to maintaining momentum and support for the work.

Questions to consider when developing communication checkpoints

1. Have we considered all possible audiences? Who has been historically excluded?
2. What specific communication strategies ensure historically excluded groups are heard and reached? (e.g., working with community leaders, direct outreach, bulletin boards, community newspapers, social media).
3. How do the messages we are communicating foster inclusion, respect, and equity?
4. Are the messages we communicate inclusive, respectful, truthful, and equitable across all audiences?
5. Are there concepts or terms that may be culturally specific and need to be changed to make them more accessible?
6. Is the medium easily accessible and understood by the full diversity of our audience? (e.g. plain language, accessible formats, graphics, multiple languages, both online and print, phone messaging and voicemail).
7. Have we considered what populations will be missed by only using certain methods? (e.g. online, email or social media communications) Do we use successful approaches?
8. Have we considered if there is a budget or alternative resources for translation services?
9. Do images represent the full diversity of employees and communities? Ask…

1. • Do they capture the diversity within specific communities of people?
   • Will the people portrayed in the images relate to and feel included in the way they are represented?
   • Is everyone portrayed in positive images that promote equity and break stereotypes?
   • Consider: who is active and passive, who is at the center, and who is serving and being served.

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A few of the answers that will be discussed are:

• How will we track  metrics against your organization’s stated goals?
• How will you clearly communicate progress to your stakeholders and community?

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If a change is to be effective, it will generate questions. Recognize that not all questioning
is “resistance” (though some will be). Wanting to understand before committing to change
is a good thing. This is especially true for equity changes. There are two major ways of decreasing resistance to change: increase the tension of not supporting the change (for example, document thoroughly the need for change) or decrease the tension related to trying the new way (for example, determine the concerns of the resisters and respond with appropriate actions).

Perhaps change is seen as disruptive and negative, something to be avoided. Questions, reluctance, and other forms of “resistance” can be a barometer of the potential impact of the change. Knowing the source and type of potential resistance can help you respond positively rather than defensively. We always say that objections and resistance can be an indicator that you need to address a need of your stakeholder(s).

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