Benefits of an internal audit: Start establishing cycles of equity, inclusion and belonging Part 2:
If you haven’t read Part 1, the link is included. After I have reviewed the paper/digital side of things it’s time to tap into the lived experiences of people who work at and with the organization. The next step of an internal audit is in a small group or one on one interviews with the people who are working at the organization. Some people call these focus groups, but I like to call them “Empathy Interviews.” (Credit to Mariah Cone of Holonomy Consulting who taught me more about empathy interviews.) These are interviews that can be 1:1 or small groups (i.e. affinity groups based on gender, race, number of years at the company, disability, sexuality, etc). I call them empathy interviews because it’s really an opportunity for me to better understand the employee experience.
The specific questions asked in these interviews vary based on the outcomes we are seeking to address but general questions could include;
What brought that person to work here
What expectations they had and whether the organization did not meet, met, or exceeded those expectations
Sharing how each person describes the current culture
Are they aware of and can they share about their pathway to growth at the organization's expectations transparent
Is their job description clear and/or what happens as additional work is added to their plate
An experience where they felt valued.
Through these interviews, I extract the important inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion themes and integrate those into that larger report. I always check in these empathy interviews if there is feedback someone gives that could potentially single them out. We discuss their level of comfort in sharing that feedback and I offer ways I can share that feedback as a part of promising practices or changes that will support them that comes from me, the consultant, rather than falling back on someone who works at the organization. It’s an art form but it can be done in a really thoughtful and strategic way that allows employees to be honest and for my feedback to be chock-full of both strategic input and honest feedback that might be hard to hear. The next step after an audit is building a plan.
Now that an organization knows more about what’s happening internally we start to build into the strategic planning process how each area will not only be addressed but also how will progress be measured and how will we know if we’ve been successful at the change.
It’s in the everyday workings of our organizations that we are likely perpetuating systems of inequity, exclusion, and bias. That’s why taking the time to look inwards and have an outside source support an organization through this type of audit can help make the shifts needed for those systems to transform into part of the engine that drives equity, inclusion, and belonging.
