Building a DEI plan: what actually works for HR teams

The environment for DEI work has changed significantly since 2020, but the core job has not. According to diversity.com's 2025 DEI Workplace Report, 76% of job seekers still cite a diverse workforce as a critical factor when evaluating employers. Companies with genuine inclusion practices are 70% more likely to capture new markets. The challenge for HR teams right now is doing this work effectively in a more complicated political and legal landscape.

This post addresses the three most persistent DEI questions HR leaders face: how to build representation goals that hold up, how to address discrimination and exclusion when it is happening, and how to approach pay equity in a way that produces real trust.

How to build representation goals that hold up

Representation goals work when they connect to specific hiring and promotion processes, not just headcount targets. Setting a goal without examining your interview design, job posting language, or promotion criteria means you will mostly produce the same results year after year.

Start with your hiring structure, not just your outreach

Before building any pipeline partnership, audit what happens once candidates are in the funnel. If your interview scoring does not account for how "culture fit" or "executive presence" gets evaluated, diverse candidates will advance at lower rates regardless of your sourcing volume.

Ask yourself who defines what "good" looks like for each role, and when your team last examined whether that definition is actually role-relevant rather than a proxy for familiarity. The scoring rubric used in debriefs is where most representation gaps get created and where they can be closed.

What to offer talent pipeline partners

HBCU partnerships, professional organizations for underrepresented groups, and identity-specific talent communities can be strong sourcing channels. Most of these relationships underperform because companies treat them as one-directional outreach rather than genuine investment.

When you contact a partner organization, ask what their talent pool wants from an employer. Offer something specific: resume workshops, mock interviews, or a clear account of what career growth actually looks like at your company for people with similar backgrounds. A transactional approach produces transactional results.

How to be transparent about gaps you have not yet closed

When employees or candidates flag a lack of representation, they are often asking a deeper question: does this company value perspectives like mine, and can people like me actually grow here? You may not be able to fix your leadership pipeline in one hiring cycle.

What you can do is answer the underlying question. Define clear growth pathways. Name sponsors who are invested in developing diverse talent. Be specific about what changes are already in motion. Transparency about a gap you are actively working on builds more trust than silence about a problem everyone can already see. Review how identifying exclusion patterns in your organization helps you intervene before they compound.

What to do when discrimination or exclusion is happening

Discrimination and exclusion persist in most organizations because the behaviors that enable them are not clearly named. Generic anti-harassment policies that prohibit "discrimination" without specifying what that looks like leave exactly the gray area where the most damaging behaviors tend to live.

Define prohibited behaviors with specificity

Your employee handbook should go beyond legal definitions. Specify what discriminatory behavior looks like in a meeting. What does exclusion look like during project assignments or performance reviews? What does retaliation look like after someone raises a concern?

When behaviors are named precisely, they are harder to dismiss as ambiguous. They are also easier to document and act on when someone reports them. The gray area is where injustice persists.

Specify the behaviors you want, not just the ones you prohibit

Most policies spend all their effort on prohibited conduct and almost none on the behaviors that make people feel genuinely seen and included. Specify what "inclusion" looks like in your organization at the meeting level, the assignment level, and the feedback level.

Spelling out the positive standard gives people something to work toward and gives managers a concrete framework for evaluating their own behavior. Pair this with building psychological safety so that employees trust that raising concerns will not cost them.

How to run a pay equity audit that produces trust

A pay equity audit is the most direct tool for knowing whether your compensation practices are fair. Many HR leaders avoid it because they do not want to be on the hook for fixing problems they find. But the gap exists whether or not you have looked at it.

How to structure the analysis

Compare compensation for people in comparable roles, controlling for relevant factors like tenure, performance rating, and location. Run the analysis across race, gender, age, and any dimension where bias has been documented in your industry. Work with your legal team to understand what protections apply to the data gathered.

If you discover a gap, you have two immediate responsibilities: decide how to address it, and decide how to communicate the findings. The fix may take time, but silence after the audit erodes trust faster than the gap itself did. Employees want to know you looked, what you found, and what happens next.

How to build equity into compensation going forward

A one-time audit will not stay accurate. Pay equity requires ongoing maintenance: structured salary bands, clear criteria for merit increases, and regular reviews of offer decisions. Reducing unconscious bias in compensation decisions requires the same audit discipline applied to performance ratings and promotion criteria, not just base pay.

Where DEI stands in 2025 and 2026

The political landscape for DEI work in the U.S. has shifted substantially since this post was first published in 2020. Federal executive orders in early 2025 rolled back DEI programs in federal agencies and created compliance uncertainty for private employers with federal contracts. Many companies have reduced the visibility of DEI language, with roughly one-third eliminating the term "equity" from public-facing materials, according to Harvard Law School's 2025 Corporate Diversity Disclosure Trends analysis.

What federal rollbacks mean for private employers

For private employers without federal contracts, the core legal obligations have not changed. Title VII, the Equal Pay Act, and state-level discrimination laws remain in force. What has changed is the political cost calculation that some executives are running.

HR leaders navigating this environment should separate legal compliance from program branding. A pay equity audit is still your best tool for managing litigation risk. Structured hiring and promotion processes still produce better outcomes. You can continue this work without the specific terminology that has become contested.

What the data still says about inclusion and business performance

Companies that maintain genuine inclusion practices, not just brand messaging, continue to see measurable advantages in retention, candidate attraction, and market reach. The evidence base has not shifted with the political environment.

76% of job seekers cite workforce diversity as a factor in their employment decisions
Diverse companies are 70% more likely to capture new markets
Pay equity audits remain the most defensible compensation practice in litigation contexts
Structured, bias-audited hiring processes produce better quality-of-hire across all groups

The audience for the business case has changed. The case itself has not. The questions that build an inclusive culture are still the right ones to be asking. See how AllVoices helps HR teams build the reporting infrastructure that makes inclusion work at the operational level.