Building the Foundations for Remote DEI: Culture, Talent, and Accountability
by Stephen Pham
Whether your team switched to remote work because of the pandemic or you’re part of an organization that has always been remote, anyone who has participated in a virtual engagement knows it’s challenging to build deep connections across participants, let alone engage in real conversations. But the dynamics of remote work should not inhibit diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts — we need to understand the challenges of virtual environments, design ways to foster and strengthen a strong culture, and work to advance DEI in all organizations, remote or not.
Though we’re excited to move into the next phase of our community, the Remote DEI Collective (RDC) is building on significant work from the last phase of our work from 2020–2022. The phase started — after the widespread shift to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic — when the RDC, led by The Learning Accelerator, quickly grew to 12 fully or partially remote education organizations. Regardless of our organizational contexts, we all experienced challenges around giving and getting feedback, addressing microaggressions, navigating conflict, growing talent models, and mitigating white supremacy culture — all of which are not unique to remote organizations but, if unchecked, can be easily ignored and worsened across distributed teams.
To learn alongside each other, the RDC partnered with Promise54 and Candace Stanciel to support us in our learning. Through monthly, virtual collaboration sessions, the community came together to share challenges, suggest strategies, and grow our collective knowledge and skills around remote DEI work. Those conversations left us with a few key takeaways:
1. It’s paramount to develop strong relationships and foster a trusting culture that enables teams to navigate conflict.
We started exploring how to make non-verbal communication explicit in remote communication. As we dug into this topic, we realized that the organization needs to establish a culture of trust to engage in uncomfortable conversations that [are] needed to advance DEI.
-Tripti Thapa, Deans for Impact
A strong team culture is critical to all DEI work — it ensures teams can engage in difficult conversations, identify growth areas, and work collaboratively to improve. Though culture should always be intentionally developed, it takes additional creativity to strengthen a team’s culture, especially with the lack of organic relationship-building, constant proximity to teammates, and access to non-verbal cues in conversations. To build culture and foster trust, remote organizations should focus on making space for connection, developing a feedback culture, and normalizing conflict and disagreement. By creatively using technology and developing explicit team agreements that are tailored to virtual dynamics, remote organizations can foster a culture that is conducive to collaboration, learning, and DEI work.
2. People are at the core of all organizations, and talent systems need to be designed equitably.
Our talent philosophy is part of our larger organizational identity work. This year, we’re doing awards tied to our talent philosophy for staff members who exemplify each of the philosophy’s core principles.
-Brittany Mauney, Gradient Learning
Particularly after the “racial reckoning” of 2020, employees started interrogating whether they were treated fairly and equitably in the workplace. In order to maintain strong talent and advance DEI as an organization, companies must ensure their internal systems align with their (espoused) values. To do this, organizations should develop a values-driven and DEI-focused talent philosophy and align all talent management systems to the strategy. Though all organizations should have a talent philosophy, remote organizations should particularly design talent systems based on the needs of a distributed organization, such as practices that mitigate biases due to the lack of proximity or systems and policies that account for differing regulations across states. By starting with the talent philosophy, leadership and HR teams can ensure talent acquisition, onboarding, compensation, performance management, learning and development, and growth structures all align with the DEI-focused philosophy, are implemented consistently and fairly, and stay competitive to ensure strong, remote talent.
3. Create accountability structures to ensure the organization fully commits to DEI work.
The multi-year action plan was super helpful as a process and a great way to build on work we had already done as a team while filling in some gaps that we hadn’t tapped into yet. Now we have a long-term plan that can guide our short-term & annual choices.
-Kristen Vogt, Next Generation Learning Challenges
To make meaningful progress and move past discrete and disconnected DEI activities, organizations need to develop a company-wide strategy for which all team members, particularly leadership, are held accountable. Though low-lift activities like book clubs are great for getting momentum going, DEI needs to be integrated across an organization in order to achieve real transformation. To do this, organizations should develop multi-year action plans, designing org-wide goals, strategies, and indicators based on data-driven needs. With these plans, organizations can determine the appropriate capacity and resources for the work, design different opportunities to engage teams and advance DEI across the organization, and ensure the strategy is designed sustainably, enduring any key staff changes to come.
Though we deepened our understanding of remote DEI, there is still so much work to be done. As the RDC moves into its next phase, we plan to extend the past work by focusing on power, which is at the crux of all (in)equity. By examining how organizations might equitably share power and inclusively make decisions, we hope to continue on our journeys toward equitable and liberatory systems — ultimately, for the kids and communities we serve.
About the Author
Stephen Pham is the founder of the Remote DEI Collective, was previously a Managing Director at The Learning Accelerator (TLA), and is based in Portland, Oregon. @stephenqpham
Remote DEI Collective
The organizations that contributed to these insights include:
2Revolutions
Deans for Impact
EdTeC
Gradient Learning
Illustrative Mathematics
PowerMyLearning
Next Generation Learning Challenges
The Leadership Academy
The Learning Accelerator
Throughline Learning (fka Highlander Institute)
Transcend Education
Transforming Education
