As part of your DEI journey, it’s important to provide a forum for employees to ask questions and voice their concerns. Below, we’ve provided sample responses to common inquiries and pushback. We encourage you to engage in the difficult conversations and please reach out to HR if you require additional support or resources.

How we treat each other in our workplaces matter. What are the benefits associated with a respectful workplace and what can you do to help create a culture of respect?

Respect is a prerequisite for a healthy, inclusive and professional workplace where all employees feel appreciated, valued and safe. We can help create a culture of respect by thinking inclusively with our heads, supporting respect and inclusion with our hearts, and acting respectfully with our hands.

Allies play a very important role in creating inclusive workplaces, yet it has become more difficult in the virtual environment. Disconnecting from the physical workplace has posed new challenges and introduced new emotions. Everyone, from leadership down, can play a role in maintaining an inclusive culture – even while online. So, when you’re ready to step into the role of ally, here are some things you can do to ready yourself and increase your effectiveness.

Social justice issues are now more pervasive than ever before in the workplace. Today’s leaders should aim to tackle social justice issues in a way that moves their culture forward while helping retain key talent. Here are five things that leaders can do today.

This 2 hour virtual training is designed to help employees at all levels recognize their individual positions of privilege and how they can leverage that privilege on behalf of others and in efforts aimed at creating more fair and equitable workplaces.

Elizabeth Lesser suggests a new strategy for bridging the gap between individuals and groups. Having lunch with those you may disagree with opens the door for productive conversation and growth. Understanding leads to a lack of contempt that breeds change and action.

The Bystander Conundrum: How to Be an Effective Ally is a two-hour training designed to help employees across the organization recognize and understand how they can further diversity and inclusion as an ally.

This 5-minute microlearning explores gender and why pronouns matter.  Consider using the below facilitator guide to host a dialogue session after watching the video.

This tool is designed to help you assess the effectiveness of your DEI leadership capability.  Upon completion, you can assess your results using the self-scoring guidelines.

As diversity practitioners we are in a constant and never ending search for diversity champions – those in our organization who have the power, the influence and quite frankly the budgets to help drive our vision of inclusion. I might argue that the search is actually not the hard part. Every individual is a diversity champion in the making.

Out & Equal’s Pronoun Guide provides strategies for inclusion in the workplace.

Using someone’s correct personal pronouns is as important as remembering and using someone’s correct name. If this seems unusual, unimportant or unreasonable to you, then you are most likely coming at this from a place of privilege. Your assumed pronouns are aligned with how you identify and therefore are not a point of stress or concern – ultimately, they are in fact unimportant to you. But for nonbinary, transgender or gender nonconforming individuals, personal gender pronouns are immensely important and can be an enormous source of anxiety.

MyPronouns.org is a practical resource dedicated to the empowering and inclusive use of personal pronouns in the English language. This website will help you understand why and how to use the pronouns someone goes by. In particular, we are focusing on pronouns used to refer to a singular human in the third person.

Language surrounding identity is constantly evolving. And while using non-binary pronouns might at first be challenging, using someone’s personal gender pronoun is as important as using their correct name. It takes awareness, understanding and practice. Here are some tips for getting it right.

Why is it so important for us to know someone else’s gender? We live in a gendered world, but for Audrey, gender is fluid at best, an uncomfortable construct for most of us. Is there a way to be less reliant on gender in our interactions with people?  Use this Ted Talk and Discussion Guide to host a conversation with your team.

Use this Take Fives as a quick and easy way to infuse conversations about diversity and inclusion into everyday meeting agendas.

The article revisits the question are diversity and inclusion efforts unfair to white men from the perspective of equity.

If you are in a situation where you have privilege, you have an opportunity to leverage that privilege to help and support others. Leveraging our privilege is a great way to serve as an ally. Allies can help amplify the message, break down barriers and secure support of the masses. Here are some things you can do to leverage your privilege as an ally.

Power from unearned privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape or to dominate. It is important to note that privilege is not necessarily a bad thing – just unfair. Privilege used positively can actually be leveraged to support the advancement of others and to benefit the organization as a whole.

Baratunde Thurston explores the phenomenon of white Americans calling the police on black Americans who have committed the crimes of … eating, walking, or generally “living while black.” In this profound, thought-provoking, and often hilarious talk, he reveals the power of language to change stories of trauma into stories of healing — while challenging us all to level up.

The presence and visibility of a movement can often lead us to believe that progress is inevitable. But building power and changing the system requires more than conversations and retweets, says Rashad Robinson, the president of Color Of Change. To create material change in the racist systems that enable and perpetuate violence against Black communities, Robinson shares how we can translate the energy of global protests into specific demands, actions, and laws — and hold those in power accountable to them.

In this powerful talk, psychologist Jennifer L. Eberhardt explores how our biases unfairly target Black people at all levels of society — from schools and social media to policing and criminal justice — and discusses how creating points of friction can help us actively interrupt and address this troubling problem. 

A more equal world starts with you. Citing a formative moment from her own life, equity advocate Nita Mosby Tyler highlights why showing up and fighting for others who face injustices beyond your own lived experience leads to a fairer, more just future for all.

Tips for understanding positions of power and privilege and how to leverage in support of goals and the success of others.

For the first time ever, we have five generations in the workplace at the same time, says entrepreneur Chip Conley. What would happen if we got intentional about how we all work together? In this accessible talk, Conley shows how age diversity makes companies stronger and calls for different generations to mentor each other at work, with wisdom flowing from old to young and young to old alike.

Justin Baldoni wants to start a dialogue with men about redefining masculinity — to figure out ways to be not just good men but good humans. In a warm, personal talk, he shares his effort to reconcile who he is with who the world tells him a man should be.

Looking to get ahead in your career? Start by being respectful to your coworkers, says leadership researcher Christine Porath. In this science-backed talk, she shares surprising insights about the costs of rudeness and shows how little acts of respect can boost your professional success — and your company’s bottom line.

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.