Danny Dickerson, director of diversity and inclusion for the National Institutes of Health, has not been able to watch a commercial absent-mindedly for quite some time. “I can't look at a simple commercial without trying to look at the diversity. It drives my wife crazy,” he said during a panel session titled “Is Your Company Developing an Inclusive Culture?” at From Day One’s Washington, D.C. conference.

Dickerson chalks it up to a particular frame of mind among industry peers: if you instill the values of what you do, then your job is more than a job–it becomes a way of life.

In fact, there has been a push to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the day-to-day work culture, turning it into a movement with long-term effects. “We start with what I’d call movement,” said Tamar Becks, VP of diversity and inclusion at CACI International, a technology supplier to governments. “When you talk about the culture, and when you have a one-time compliance training session, it does not change how people think and act.”

There has also been an effort to expand the DEI umbrella. The letter A, which stands for accessibility, is now sometimes added to the acronym, and there is an added acknowledgement of class and background. “Background is important,” said Jo Linda Johnson, VP and head of diversity, inclusion, and belonging strategy and equity at Capital One. “I was someone raised in a single-parent household by a single mom. That informs who I am.”

In the media, this movement has a  sense of further urgency. At the Washington Post, for example, Krissah Thompson is a managing editor who oversees the DEI coverage beat, aligning it with the paper’s mission “to scrutinize power, and empower people.”

“In order to do that well, we have to have a newsroom that reflects many backgrounds,” Thompson said. “We’re continuing to strive to do that to make sure we really reflect the communities we are covering.”

Regardless of the industry, though, a good start is to abandon a perfectionist mindset when developing an inclusive culture. “What I try to do is share with my team that I am no means perfect,”  said Loren Hudson, the SVP and chief diversity officer at Comcast Cable. “The only person who can think that is my husband. I always evolve and change, and I want to make sure that that’s what they see.”

It Starts With Leaders

“So one of our things that we always say is that if we’re not taking care of a customer, we should be taking care of the person who’s taking care of the customer,” Johnson said. “We apply this to our leaders: as people, we all come from different backgrounds, we've had different experiences and learnings. So we want to make sure that we’re providing an environment where we support our leaders so that they can support cultures of inclusion, so they can support diversity hiring.” A good conduit? A monthly podcast, where a leader sheds light on a particular topic.

Leaders are a critical component in DEI efforts because although younger millennials and prospective Gen Z employees are more adamant about DEI, they do not constitute the whole makeup of a company. “I think the biggest challenge is that we do have DEI at a lower level but, as we move up, we don’t have senior leadership representing our workforce,” said Becks. “We’re creating the pipeline of future leaders, and because it was new, we developed employee resource groups (ERGs) in a way to develop future leaders. It’s a high-potential employee opportunity, and we assign each one a mentor and a coach, so that, after 18 month of serving in that role in a stretch assignment, we see them move and fill in that pipeline, and so forth.”

Harness Hybrid Work 

Capital One’s Johnson says that at her company the workforce has welcomed the hybrid environment. “That makes many more candidates available to you,” she said.  “It made people think long and hard about who is required in the office.” Johnson says that it made leaders and managers realize that everyone did not have to be treated exactly the same. “It’s an opportunity to be creative, strategic—that’s not an invitation not to be fair, it’s an invitation to be intentional.” And although the push to move people back into office buildings might be seen as a boon to the local economy, she urged leaders to reflect on whether or not it’s actually worth it. “Commuting, getting to work, scheduling–I am not sure I want to sacrifice the flexibility I gained in the past two years,” Johnson said.

“You give people autonomy until they prove they can’t handle it,” said Dickerson, who has a California-based chief of staff he absolutely would not want to lose. “It’s hard to backtrack now, after two years.”

Don’t Overlook Compliance and Data

“There’s a tendency to shy away from compliance requirements,” Johnson said. “I would proffer that without that you don’t move to diversity coaching, you don’t move to hearts and minds.” She says we refrain from putting that away as a tool to drive diversity, and therefore behavior change. “In addition to diversity coaching, there are also aspects of performance management,” said Johnson. This means having faith and trusting data. “We put out a deck leaders can use to talk to their teams,” she said. “You want to make sure the leaders have the information. Last year we launched [the platform] Workday, and they can pull their diversity numbers from there. Last, we put out our impact report, and it weaves in all pieces Comcast does, both internally and externally–it’s located on our corporate site.”

The Washington Post, similarly, has equipped managers with goals that reflect the company’s values on DEI. “And that’s been really important in driving conversations around performance,” said Thompson. “You know, what you don't measure doesn’t happen.”

Angelica Frey is a writer and a translator based in Milan and Boston.