QuakeLab method: A series
Art by: Céleste Wallaert
There’s been an elephant in the room for a while now. For folks who work in the Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Belonging space, business has been booming since Summer 2020.
There has long been a demand for this kind of expertise, but that demand has grown exponentially in a small amount of time. This means that as an industry, we have an opportunity to make large strides because folks in decision-making positions have made the conscious effort to invest in equity.
Yet, the methods that have been used in this industry have largely been ineffective. Traditional approaches to equity and inclusion have tended to address only aesthetic challenges, namely, diversity in recruitment. The opportunity before us, then, is not only for the Diversity and Inclusion industry to grow — but to shake up the way we do our work.
What does that mean for us at QuakeLab? Two things:
We work really hard to make our work practical in its application and
We believe in keeping ourselves accountable to the communities we work in service of
At QuakeLab, we have been incredibly humbled to receive comments about the practicality of the resources and articles we share. This has meant the world to us, partly because it’s just really very kind, but mostly because the tangibility of our content is by design.
Diversity and Inclusion is at a turning point. Folks are paying attention, and we need to be ready to provide tangible, measurable and practical ways to effect change. Although incredible strides have been made by practitioners to ensure terms like ‘privilege’ ‘anti-racism’, ‘intersectionality’ etc. are commonly understood in the workplace, significant barriers remain to truly making the impacts in the workplace (and the lives of the folks who navigate it) that we want to see.
One of the greatest obstructions is the relegation of DEI work to a realm that has no physical body or power. This has meant that often folks express desire to do the work to build equitable organizational structures, but they have no idea what that even means. Beyond action-less policies couched within Human Resources, not a tonne of resources exist about how to practically build more equitable and inclusive spaces, specific to your functional area of expertise.
This is what we are intentionally working to build: practical resources that will help folks understand the ways they can begin designing inclusive, and codified structures from their desks.
It may seem counterintuitive as a for-profit business to be sharing these types of resources without a cost.
But it’s not - stay with me a little longer.
We spend a lot of time talking to clients about the importance of dismantling existing organizational structure in service of equity and inclusion. As an organization, we cannot replicate existing models of working while preaching the importance of reflection and redesign. Just because something is old, and just because ‘it’s always been done that way’ doesn’t mean we hold on to it -- especially when it causes a million tiny cuts to those who live in the margins of society. We take this seriously, and we appreciate that a lot of these harmful systems are deeply embedded into capitalist ideals of how one runs a business. These structures insist on a culture of ownership and hoarding of knowledge.
At the end of the day, the folks we are accountable to are not our clients, but the communities who we say we are working in service of. Because of this, we cannot hoard knowledge and new equitable ways of working for the purpose of ensuring sole ownership. When we learn how to do this work better, and we share that with you, you do this work better and make the world less awful for the folks who need it the most. Much like Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman’s Shine Theory posits: “I don’t shine if you don’t shine.”
The folks we are working in service of, they need us all to shine in this work. It’s not charity, it’s not a kind gesture, it is an urgent responsibility that we all have.
So over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing five articles that share a little about the ways we do what we do. This will include insights on some of our methods and techniques. These are the things we do, and the things we don’t do, and why. They’ll include.
How to: Building an internal DEI committee
Redesigning how we work: A low-key hiring case study
We hope you’ll be joining us for this ride!