Here are some thoughts (non-exhaustive!):

Black employees are represented in the leadership at all levels and their voices matters for key decisions (and it is not due to tokenism, see points below).

The company leaders at all levels are confident to talk about race and are able to react appropriately to societal events.

Black employees have the same level of opportunities to progress their career than other groups and are assigned to high-profile projects (key to build experience and progress your career). The organisation has reviewed and regularly updated its performance framework to ensure it is best practice and mitigate as much as possible potential bias.

The acronym BAME is not used to aggregate data and employee experience, instead the organisation gather data for each ethnic group and have clear visibility on the Black employees’ experience (especially Black Women who face a double burden of both sexism and racism).

Black employees have safe spaces available to share how they feel and have a sense of community in the organisation. Also, the organisation is not asking its Black employees to share their experience in the workplace (without recognition of the effort and emotional toll) to then take zero actions!

All of the above points can be evidenced by the organisation via employee survey data, focus groups or relevant people data. In this way organisations can move beyond temporary initiatives that tackle symptoms rather than causes.

In our experience barriers to inclusion are hidden deep within fundamental policies, processes and practice, all of which need to be critically analysed to diagnose cause.

In making DEI central to their people strategy, organisations have an unprecedented opportunity to go beyond initiatives and viral moments and truly influence societal changes.