Part 4: How do you assess race equity in the workplace?

In my last blog, Steps to Advance Race Equity in the Workplace, I shared the Wholespire strategy for integrating race equity into its operations. I also provided a timeline of how Wholespire got started and remained committed to incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and race equity into all aspects of its work. In this post, I’ll explain one of their key steps toward advancing race equity in the workplace: completing an assessment.  

What is an assessment and why is it important?

Wholespire trains youth advocates through The Healthy Young People Empowerment (HYPE) Project® to identify, plan, and implement healthy eating and active living projects.  The HYPE Project curriculum features a session that teaches youth the importance of assessing their focus area before starting a project so that they can have a clear understanding of the problem, whom it impacts, and how it shows up in everyday ways. This is the same approach Wholespire used when planning its Race Equity and Inclusion (REI) strategies. They used several assessments to gather baseline data and provide guidance on goal development. Eventually, they will be used to help evaluate the work.   

As a woman and a person of color, I personally find assessments to be a useful resource because they can help get everyone to a similar understanding of what problems exist. Now, if you are only looking for obvious examples of inequities in the workplace, such as hate speech and racial slurs, it may be hard to recognize where race inequity or racism exists in your organization.  This could lead organizations to falsely believe that they should not have a plan to continuously assess and address equity within their organization.   

In my last blog, I provided examples of the inequities that people of color may experience in the workplace related to raises, promotions, and other income; equal pay; and a sense of belonging that are more subtle. Assessing can help us identify these more subtle examples. 

Creating an Assessment

Wholespire really wanted to use the REI Workplace Guides to help guide their REI efforts because it was created by local partners, being used by other organizations in South Carolina, and Wholespire staff participated in its development.  Staff didn’t have much luck finding an existing assessment that would measure the indicators found in the REI Workplace Guides, so they created their own based on the guide’s 36 indicators. They also adopted and modified various other assessments that will be explained later in the blog.    

Small non-profits may struggle with the time commitment required of a single full-time staff to create and modify assessments. Therefore, Wholespire sought assistance from a former HYPE team at Lexington School District One’s Center for Public Health and Advanced Medical Studies at White Knoll High School to help develop its REI Organizational Assessment.  

They chose to collaborate with high school students and HYPE alumni because one of long-term goals of The HYPE Project is to expose HYPE alumni to careers in public health and other aspects of community health improvement. They turned to the White Knoll High School HYPE alumni based on their successful HYPE project, the Fast Break breakfast program, and the advanced learning program. Staff were confident that the students would grasp the concept of assessment and accept our challenge. After all, they learned about the importance of assessments during their HYPE training.  

The infographic below highlights the six assessments Wholespire used to establish goals and action steps for integrating race equity into the workplace.