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50+ Ideas for Cultivating Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace Nobody’s ever said that diversity and inclusion work is easy. But having grown a team that recently hit a 50:50 gender ratio (an uncommon feat, especially in Silicon Valley), I can let everyone in on a secret: It’s not rocket science, either.

The key is starting. And the earlier the better – the longer you wait to build a diverse workforce and inclusive culture, the harder it will be in the future.

Perfection isn’t the goal. It’s better to take your first steps toward prioritizing this type of culture work – even if you don’t have the exact “plan” or resources in place – than to lose any more time *not* making your company the kind of workplace anyone can be proud of.

To help companies get started today, I’m excited to share over 50 of the ways we’ve invested in diversity and inclusion at Lever. Understandably, every team worries about headcount, budget, and bandwidth, but diversity and inclusion should – and more importantly, can – be a priority in resource-strapped companies.

So much of what it takes to cultivate a diverse and inclusive workplace is about approaching tasks every company has to do anyway, but in much more a thoughtful and deliberate way. Here's what we've done, and you can too:

2. State your commitment to building a diverse and inclusive culture in your job descriptions and careers page. One simple sentence can send a strong message to your applicants. 

4. Diversify your pipeline by actively sourcing candidates. Push yourself and team to go beyond the “obvious” sources and aim to send one email or set up one coffee per week with a different type of profile. You might end up uncovering a gem who may become a star employee months later.

5. Conduct blind screenings to minimize unconscious biases in the resume review process. Studies have shown that people with ethnic names need to send out more resumes before they get a callback, and that resumes with female names are rated lower than ones with male names when all other things on a resume are equal.

6. Ban “culture fit” as a reason for rejecting a candidate. When interviewers want to reject candidates for “culture fit,” or a “gut feeling”, it’s an indication that unconscious bias is at play. Challenge your interviewers to articulate a more specific explanation – it’s a great way to uncover hidden biases and have open conversations about them (never punish or shame people – we are all inherently biased a little bit!).

7. Explicitly request a diverse range of referrals. Challenge your employees to think beyond the obvious – past their three best friends that may or may not be all from the same demographic. Emphasize that diversity requires deliberate effort, and it’s something all employees can help with – by making introductions to great people they know, even if they don’t fit the “traditional” profile. It only makes the team stronger in the long run.

8. Invest in a structured interviewing process and training. This isn’t to say that you must stick to a strict script in your interviews – candidates often share important insights when conversations flow naturally – but structured interviews lead to higher-quality hires because they help reduce bias and “gut-feeling” hiring. By asking each candidate the same or a similar set of questions, you have a consistent “data set” to help boost objective decision-making. Structured interviews will allow your team to learn and improve your recruiting process faster, as well. 

17. Related, give visible recognition when employees do go above and beyond to pick up extra duties. Contributing to your workplace isn’t just hitting sales goals or shipping product - it’s also doing your part to make your company a great place to work, and it deserves props too.

18. Start an employee resource group. Lever’s ERGs include Leverettes (a group for female employees) and LeverHues (for LGBT employees). Provide a forum for open discussion, learning, and support – they’re a powerful tool for empowering underrepresented groups.

21. Run an unconscious bias training. Facebook released its unconscious bias training videos, here, which can be a good place to start in creating your own. The videos are designed to help people recognize their biases so they can start to combat them.

26. Hang a poster describing how every employee can contribute to an inclusive workplace. 27. Establish a mother’s room where nursing women have a private space for pumping breast milk. If you’re strapped for space, try converting a conference rooms into a mother’s room. When it’s not in use, you can still use it as a conference space.

28. Schedule team bonding activities during the day. When everything fun happens at 5 PM, working parents may not be able to participate!

29. Order swag in women’s sizes or from a non-gender binary shirt company.

30. Hold an international foods potluck as a way of appreciating different cultures present in your employee population and opening up organic discussion.

33. Invite a guest speaker from the D&I community to speak at your company. Especially if you already have regular talks on technical topics, or on leadership - just set aside a couple of slots for D&I!

37. Have a parental leave policy. Optimizely’s post on how they increased their parental leave policy from six to 17 weeks – along with the financial model they used to advocate the policy – is a helpful blueprint.

39. Hold office hours. If your HR team has the bandwidth, hold recurring office hours and welcome input around D&I.

40. Sponsor an event. Get other companies together to talk about D&I, what’s working and what isn’t working. Turns out all you need is something to drink and somewhere to sit for ideas to flow.

42. Have a performance review system. Standardized reviews help reduce unfairness in promotion decisions. If you’re not in a position to implement a formal review process, solicit 360 reviews, so managers at least have multiple perspectives.

44. Provide workshops for adjacent skills like communication and empathy for employees. An inclusive workforce is an emotionally intelligent one.

46. Check your office decorations. Make an effort to put up decorations, signage, or even fun company memories that promote the values you want your employees to feel or think.

50. Host a movie night. A movie night is another way to stimulate meaningful conversation without the commitment of reading a full book. The historical drama Selma was a good one, and so would be Hidden Figures when it’s available to rent!

If you’re interested in more content like this, sign up to follow the blog series I’m co-authoring with other leaders from Lever, including our CEO Sarah Nahm. It’s an in-depth, step-by-step blog series on how to cultivate diversity and inclusion within organizations.