6 Measures and Outcomes – Lines of Effort

This strategy includes four critical lines of effort: Policy, Talent Management, Operations, and Culture. Each provides the structure needed for DEIA governance. Continuous quantitative and qualitative assessment across these lines is necessary to develop and evolve DEIA objectives, policies, and practices.

The Policy line of effort encompasses the processes established across the agency to ensure alignment with overarching guidance and directives. This line of effort promotes evaluating existing policies while providing an appropriate space to affect positive change that addresses existing and hidden barriers to effective DEIA. The Policy line of effort also considers equitable, transparent systems, processes, and accountability mechanisms that ensure the issues and experiences faced by underrepresented groups are factored into control measures and monitoring mechanisms to mitigate barriers.

A dedicated Policy line of effort enables an organization to develop a sustainable process, with roles and delegated responsibilities throughout the organization. This includes DEIA reviews of existing policies and guidance to identify potential barriers and ensure equity. DEIA-focused policy enables the organization to guide internal organization business offices and directorates to ensure all processes align with statutes, regulations, and directives. Policies that integrate DEIA considerations in advance create an inclusive culture.

Talent Management Line of Effort

The Talent Management line of effort refers to any initiative, effort, or process to recruit, retain, develop, and evaluate staff. This line of effort intends to remove equity barriers in all phases of the talent management lifecycle, promoting equal participation and representation across the agency’s workforce. The ability to measure demographic trends within the Talent Management line of effort is a key indicator used to measure the effectiveness of DEIA programs and initiatives.

A dedicated talent management focus enables the agency to develop recommended DEIA performance evaluation factors for all workforce levels. This line of effort also effectively informs the processes needed to evaluate and advocate for pay and award equity across the organization. Doing so enhances the organization’s ability to increase hiring diversity through partnerships with universities and professional organizations serving underrepresented groups.

Operations Line of Effort

The Operations line of effort encompasses opportunities to integrate DEIA into processes, systems, decision-making, and planning. Data collection, management, and analysis are critical to this line of effort. The infrastructure, tools, and data analytics to drive real-time transparency and shape policy, talent management, and cultural initiatives are also critical.

Positioning DEIA operations as a core line of effort empowers the organization to identify the data required to measure and assess DEIA throughout the organization. Some of these metrics include benchmarking existing data and tools, identifying data collection gaps, and addressing alternative data source opportunities. The organization continues its planning process by using automated data dashboards to monitor and display real-time demographic data. By prioritizing DEIA as a critical line of effort, the organization intends to be more transparent and accountable. This includes providing a centralized function to report ongoing DEIA progress to the public.

Culture Line of Effort

The Culture line of effort ensures the organizations’s core values are intentionally shaped, nurtured, and linked to specific behaviors that are compliant, actionable, and measurable. The Culture line of effort includes initiatives, plans of action, and processes supporting the linking of DEIA to culture and the integration of best practices into the agency’s functions and initiatives. These activities amplify institutional values, provide learning opportunities, promote and demonstrate signature behaviors, build inclusive teams, and develop intercultural competencies.

Strategically communicating DEIA challenges, opportunities, and successes enables the agency to operationalize the Culture line of effort to develop and conduct synchronized DEIA communications and awareness campaigns highlighting mission imperatives, culture, and values linked to the Culture Forward Maturity Model. The Culture line of effort creates a dedicated space to celebrate positive signature behaviors through applicable rewards/recognition, communications, and other activities. These engagements allow us to identify and remove barriers to advancing the values and DEIA-related principles and behaviors that characterize an inclusive culture.