Last Spring, The Class hosted its first Partner Meet-up where we worked in small groups guided by facilitators from our community to discuss issues that we identified to be critical for the student living and real estate sector. 

One of these topics was DEI. For the unaware, DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 

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Alphabet Soup

It’s a phrase, much like ESG, which gets thrown around a lot. However, unlike ESG where each letter has a concrete meaning with little room to misinterpret, DEI can be tricky to explain as the understanding of D, E and I can be vastly understood in different terms. 

For example, does it show diversity when a university or an organisation has over 50 nationalities working for them? Is it really diversity when even though they may have different passports, they all had similar (privileged) life experiences and thus sort of predictably ended up in the same place? 

There is always a push for hiring more women, more people of colour, more differently-abled people in not just real estate and education but all sectors for the sake of diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity. However, it can be debated whether inclusion for the sake of diversity is really inclusion? Companies may hire someone as a “diversity” token, and in such cases, more often than not, the person is aware of it. It leads to self-doubt if they are being hired for their talent or for their gender and/or ethnicity. 

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Embracing Ambiguity

The trick to doing ‘DEI’ right, perhaps, lies in moving away from working with fixed definitions and embracing precisely the complexity that these terms embody. We reached out to those who were our facilitators at the Partner Meet-up workshop for the DEI topic to explore the fluid ways in which we can try and comprehend DEI to create a work environment and culture that has a positive impact on everyone. Here’s what they had to say:

Yoony Kim, Head of Public Policy and Communications at HousingAnywhere asserts that DEI is showing the willingness to accept ‘differences’ and see it as an ongoing learning process. She states:

To me, DEI means accepting the fact that there could be nothing common about 'common sense' and nothing general about 'in general', as every person has their own colour that is painted in multiple layers, whether it is nationality, education, experience and personality to name a few. Genuine curiosity to learn more (versus assumption) and genuine acceptance of potential differences (versus pretentious understanding) can be a good starting point. My takeaway from the session is not to set DEI as an objective or a goal, but as an embedded process to support individuals and organisations to become the best leaders they can be. It is a pathway of continuous learning about who we are and who we are not, rather than just focusing on who we want to become. 

For Leanne Hooper, Associate Director at Osborne Clarke LLP, the aspect of inclusivity is most critical to ensure diversity and equity:

To me, DEI is about creating an environment where people feel comfortable to be themselves, whatever that means to them. Consequently, the most important letter is the "I", if you foster inclusion then diversity and equality will naturally follow. I think a sensible approach is to communicate openly and ask more questions of our people so that we can understand what DEI means to our people rather than trying to impose a solution that we think fits.

Jerry Joostens, Student and Community Connector at The Student Hotel Vienna, echoes similar thoughts: 

DEI, in its full meaning, has always been highlighted with a paradoxical frame for me. When we can hold and recognise (and or sometimes welcome) the contradictions within inclusion, we will be better equipped to address the diversity dynamics in companies, organisations, societies, etc. My key takeaway from the sessions was the complexity of the words in itself, and how difficult it is to come to one conclusion for a “better future”. Either way, we can see that people are willing to better their organisations and that in itself is already a wonderful step in the right direction. 

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Conclusion

DEI with its ever-changing definitions, can seem like a landmine, and is thus largely spoken about with much caution. However, as the voices of the facilitators suggest, to be able to thoroughly embrace and practice the ethos behind DEI, one needs to be comfortable with precisely how it can be understood differently and done correctly in more ways than one.

We leave you with Leanne’s statement, which captures the point rather succinctly of the need to realise as a starting point:

DEI is quite a broad topic and it encompasses many different things to many different people. This really reiterates the need to communicate openly and ask more questions if we're going to create a genuinely inclusive working world.