4 diversity & inclusion best practices for 2025

Meaningful diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives are foundational to building a thriving company culture, fostering employee engagement, and driving innovation.

Encouragingly, businesses are making progress, with 28% rating their DEIB maturity as “advanced” or “expert,” up from 15% in 2023. But there’s still significant work to be done.

This article outlines four effective diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging best practices for your HR strategy this year. From creating targeted learning and development programs to rethinking performance reviews, these tips will help drive lasting change within your organization. 

It’s time to move beyond buzzwords and build workplaces where every person can thrive.

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Our comprehensive HRIS and people enablement tools are here to support your DEIB strategy.

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What are diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging (DEIB) initiatives?

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) initiatives are the efforts HR teams put in place to drive workplace diversity. Examples include diverse hiring and recruitment initiatives, equitable compensation benchmarking practices, and employee resource groups (ERGs).

DEIB isn’t just good for business — it is good business. Workplace diversity improves retention, boosts employee engagement, strengthens your reputation as an employer, and encourages team members to bring their authentic selves to work. In addition, companies with above-average diversity on their management teams reported 19% higher innovation revenue than those with below-average diversity — 45% of total revenue compared to just 26%.

Your initiatives may differ from other companies, but the main goal behind running diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives is universal:  to create a psychologically safe workplace where all employees can flourish and where unique perspectives, ideas, backgrounds, and ways of working are supported.
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4 top diversity & inclusion best practices for the modern workplace

The best DEIB initiatives go beyond tracking surface-level metrics like diversity headcount. If you want your DEIB efforts to drive meaningful change, consider implementing these best practices in your 2025 strategy.
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1. Provide ongoing DEIB training

DEIB training consists of educational programs and initiatives designed to increase awareness of diverse cultural, economic, social, and intersectional experiences in the workplace. Its goal is to create a more equitable and inclusive work environment where everyone feels valued and respected. 

Research suggests that DEIB training is most effective when complemented by other diversity initiatives — such as mentorship programs, leadership development for underrepresented groups, and inclusive hiring strategies, which target awareness and skill development over time.

Here are a few ideas for DEIB training and development:

• Microlearning sessions — Deliver short, engaging training on topics like unconscious bias, allyship, and cultural competence. Tools like Leapsome Learning can help you build DEIB training courses that suit your organizational needs.

• Scenario-based learning — Help team members understand the reality of workplace discrimination through empathy-building and situational exercises. For example, participants could be asked to identify biases in the recruitment process by discussing a scenario where a hiring manager makes unconscious assumptions about a candidate.

• Train-the-trainer models — Equip managers to lead DEIB efforts within their teams by providing comprehensive training focusing on current biases, adult learning principles, and facilitation skills. Only 13% of senior management at FTSE 100 firms were ethnically diverse in December 2023, making it all the more important to encourage DEIB engagement at every level.
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2. Create inclusive policies & practices

Enforcing diversity and inclusion best practices at the policy level is crucial to improving your DEIB program.

The measures you introduce should reflect your organization’s specific DEIB goals. Still, there are a key areas you should consider in your strategy:

• Flexible time off, work setups, and benefits — Offer inclusive family leave, mental health resources, and support to all employees. These should be standardized to reduce bias; compensation management and leave management software can support this by establishing clear policies and ensuring consistency across the company. These tools can also offer self-service capabilities, reducing employees’ barriers to accessing relevant information and carrying out processes like requesting time off.

• Equity audits — Regularly assess compensation, promotions, and development opportunities for inequities. Your performance management system should also integrate 360° feedback and goal progress so you have a fair, representative view of employee performance and ensure no one goes unrecognized for their work.

• Neutral workspaces — Design office spaces that are culturally inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities. Some examples include quiet rooms for meditation or prayer, gender-neutral restrooms, nursing rooms for breastfeeding parents, and wheelchair-friendly access. 

💡 If your organization operates with a remote or hybrid work setup, consider offering a stipend for all team members to set up their home offices in a way that makes them comfortable and empowers them to do their best work.

3. Run frequent diversity surveys

Surveys are a powerful tool for understanding how employees feel about your company culture, team dynamics, leadership, and DEIB initiatives. 

Diversity surveys can yield actionable insights HR leaders can use to refine initiatives and build stronger business cases for DEIB investment. 

For example, a diversity survey might reveal that while 60% of employees are aware of inclusive language guidelines, only 35% feel they’re applied consistently across internal communications. As a result, the HR team could launch a campaign to increase awareness and adoption of inclusive language guidelines.

AI-powered tools like Leapsome Surveys simplify survey response analysis and suggest next steps. To maximize effectiveness:

• Align on the objectives of your diversity survey — Define whether the goal is assessing employee sentiment, identifying areas for improvement, or measuring program impact.

• Design an inclusive survey — Assess the language, instructions, and questions to remove unconscious bias, gender coding, and discrimination. Ensure it’s anonymous and accessible to all employees so everyone feels comfortable sharing honest feedback.

• Make it actionable — Write survey questions that align with broader HR and company objectives. Then, gather survey data to inform decision-making and implement meaningful changes that advance your organization’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the short and long term.

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Leapsome Surveys help you collect and analyze employee feedback to drive meaningful change.

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4. Limit unconscious bias in performance reviews

Performance reviews should be structured to ensure fairness and mitigate unconscious biases; typical examples include affinity bias (favoring similar individuals), gender bias (evaluating employees based on gender stereotypes), racial bias (judging employees based on race or ethnicity), nationality bias (favoring employees from specific countries or cultural backgrounds), and age bias (assuming competency or adaptability based on age).
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Strategies to reduce bias in performance reviews

• Use a structured review process — Tools like Leapsome Reviews help standardize criteria and support holistic evaluations. We also recommend the 360° performance assessment framework to gather diverse, well-rounded perspectives on team member performance.
  
  
• Focus on actions and results — Performance evaluations should assess concrete performance metrics and achievements rather than subjective impressions. For example, rather than a manager saying someone “isn’t reliable,” they might note they’ve “missed several deadlines and delivered work that didn’t meet guidelines.”
  
  
• Manager training — Many managers enter their roles without targeted training on bias reduction. Ensure managers thoroughly understand your performance management framework and teach them how to identify and mitigate bias.

💡 Want to learn more about avoiding unconscious bias in performance reviews? 

Our playbook covers how bias affects assessments and what you can do to overcome it.

Demonstrating the value of diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging (DEIB) initiatives

With half of HR leaders facing budget cuts in the last year, securing buy-in for DEIB initiatives is becoming increasingly difficult. It’s crucial to demonstrate that DEIB isn’t just a nice to have — it’s a cornerstone of business success.To do this, you’ll need to show the measurable impact of your DEIB activities. Here are some questions your team should consider to facilitate that:

• How have we progressed toward our DEIB goals?
  
  
• How have our current DEIB initiatives positively affected our organization?
  
  
• What impact have our initiatives had on employee engagement and employee net promoter scores (eNPS)?
  
  
• How can we showcase the success of our DEIB efforts?
  
  
• What’s the ROI of our DEIB initiatives?

The stakeholders driving DEIB within your organization will inherently be curious about the “why” and “how” of your diversity efforts. If you can answer the questions above with clarity, it’ll help you get buy-in for your DEIB program.
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Drive diversity across your company with modern HR tools 

The question of how to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging continues to weigh on HR teams trying to do more with less. But by following DEIB best practices and leveraging data-backed insights to refine diversity policies, any business can unlock the benefits of DEIB.

‍DEIB initiatives come in many shapes and sizes — from providing DEIB-specific training across your entire organization to creating comprehensive policies that foster a fair, inclusive workplace. Whatever approaches you choose to implement, these measures can help your employees feel more fulfilled and better supported in achieving individual and organizational goals.

Leapsome is passionate about empowering HR professionals, managers, and individual contributors with the solutions they need to enjoy a safe and productive workplace. Our tools for core HR processes, surveys, performance reviews, learning, compensation, and feedback are built to elevate your people strategy and drive measurable impact across the employee lifecycle.

🤩 Build a meaningful workplace for all

Our holistic, people-first platform has the tools you need to support your DEIB initiatives. 

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Frequently asked questions about diversity & inclusion best practices

1. What are the benefits of running diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging initiatives?

Running diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives benefits organizations, as they drive innovation and improve business outcomes. For example:

• Reduced turnover rates — The Achievers Workforce Institute found that 40% of employees with a strong sense of belonging rarely consider looking for a job elsewhere.

• Improved recruitment and hiring — 76% of professionals consider workplace diversity an important factor when evaluating job offers.
  
  
• Enhanced performance and brand reputation — Businesses with DEIB teams are 22% more likely to be seen as “industry-leading companies with high-caliber talent.”
  
  
• Better financial outcomes — Companies with racially and ethnically diverse teams ‌financially outperform others by up to 35%.