In recent weeks we’ve shared our agency’s commitments to racial equity in a five-part blog series. We’ve written about how we reformed programs to remove systemic barriers; increased our engagement and outreach; directed dollars to targeted communities; and made equity essential to everyone’s job at DEED. We know in order to do our best in living out these commitments and building an inclusive workforce in Minnesota, we must start within our own agency. Here’s how we’re advancing equity and inclusion within our organization to build a culture of belonging – which equips us to provide culturally responsive services to all Minnesotans.

Our Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity (ODEO) has partnered across DEED to integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) into everything we do. We created clear strategies, developed leadership and employee-led workgroups, invested resources, and implemented accountability systems to advance our DEIA goals. The three primary pillars of this work include culture, talent, and education.

These key focus areas are broken down below and include a few examples of how we are creating a culture of belonging for our employees:

Culture – We want to build a positive internal culture that makes DEED an extraordinary place to work by supporting employees, valuing everyone for their unique talents and perspectives, and fostering a shared focus on DEED’s mission, values, and goals.

• We created new positions such as the Head of People & Culture, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coordinator, and a Learning and Development Manager to support DEED staff and create a positive work environment. We know supporting our employees allows us to serve Minnesotans even better.

• We formed community spaces to hear from employees and address societal issues that are weighing on our minds. These include Community Reflections, Critical Conversations, Listening Circles and monthly “Culture Corners.” Hearing from many voices and providing employees with the support they need helps foster a deeper sense of belonging.

• We have open conversations about identity (race is one example) and other DEIA related topics in our monthly Diversity Spotlights, all staff town hall meetings, and small group discussions. When we learn together and have open dialogue, we continually improve how we work for Minnesotans.

• We created a monthly community of practice with our managers & supervisors to learn and share best practices for leading people and teams. People leaders are critical to shaping culture, so this consistent space to learn and grow together is important.

• We work with our employee-led Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee to integrate messages and resources in agency-wide communications to celebrate various holidays from across cultures and communities plus significant historical dates to help all employees feel seen and appreciated at DEED.

Tiffany, co-chair of DEED’s DEI Committee, with DEED Commissioner Steve Grove

Talent – We want to attract talent from underrepresented communities, diversify leadership, and retain a workforce that reflects the Minnesotans we serve.

• We set and met goals to attract more diverse applicant pools and hires, including manager and supervisor positions. Currently, our workforce diversity matches our leadership diversity at 17%. This is not our end goal, but we’re making progress.

• We also set a retention goal to retain at least 75% of newly hired BIPOC employees for at least two years, and early data shows DEED leading the executive branch at 94%.

• To achieve our goals, we’ve made our hiring process more inclusive by integrating evidence-based DEIA practices to eliminate bias wherever possible.

• We started to include our commitment to DEIA in all job postings and include cultural competency qualifications for positions we post.

• We are enforcing accountability by adding an Inclusive Behavior Responsibility Statement to all position descriptions, and rate employees on how well they practice DEED’s value of Creating Inclusion during annual performance reviews.

Education – We’re supporting DEED employees in learning and expanding essential skills to advance economic equity in Minnesota.

• We redesigned new employee orientation with a session on ‘Living DEED’s Values’ that takes a deep dive on what it means to be inclusive and what we expect of every DEED employee.

• We offered agency-wide learning sessions about systems change work and targeted sessions to people leaders on creating psychological safety.

• We developed an Equity Framework to help employees assess the impact of their work on diverse communities, and require each of these questions be answered when making a recommendation to the Commissioner’s Office:

1. Does this help to provide opportunities for employees and clients who have been historically underserved, underrepresented, or disadvantaged by the current system?
2. Does this help to eliminate barriers based on gender, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, national origin, geography, color, disability, age, or other protected groups?
3. Did we involve stakeholders who are members of the communities affected by the actions as part of our design, analysis or review?

• We launched an Intercultural Skills Development Program to help people managers lead diverse teams, center equity in decision making, and ensure we are providing accessible and culturally responsive services to all. The program includes:

1. Working with all managers and supervisors to take the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) to understand their strengths and growth areas.
2. Each leader has a one-on-one debrief to help them create a personal Intercultural Development Plan with support from a Qualified Administrators of the IDI.
3. Employees then own their learning and can intentionally focus on competencies that are necessary to their intercultural development.

These strategies help us lift up and leverage diversity at DEED so we are more collaborative and creative. As we work to openly understand each other and grow in our cultural understanding, we strive to be proactively anti-racist, and equip ourselves with the skills to provide the most culturally responsive services to all Minnesotans

We believe race should not be a predictor of a Minnesotan’s opportunity to thrive, and the past three years have only further emphasized the need to eliminate racial workforce disparities and expand economic opportunities. In short, we are not looking to return to where we were prior to the pandemic, but rather striving to transform the systems that guide who gets what and how – then changing them to meet the vision embedded in our mission statement: To empower the growth of the Minnesota economy, for everyone.