No One Sees Your Intent. They See Your Content.

Diversity is not just a consideration during the hiring and onboarding process, and as I’ve stated before, it is not the sole responsibility of the HR team. Diversity and media initiatives go hand in hand. The image your business projects can impact your ability to attract job applicants as well as current and potential customers. The way the world sees your company includes its website, social media pages, trade publications and traditional media sources such as magazines and newspapers.

Before writing this column, I typed in keywords such as ‘leader’, ‘manager’ and ‘business’ at two of the top stock image sites, iStock and Canva. They have improved at integrating search results to better reflect diverse gender and race; though neither returned images including older individuals or persons who are differently-abled in the first several pages of results unless specifically requested in the search.

Next, I scrolled through the media feeds of several business associations and organizations. Despite promoting diversity initiatives in their mandates or value statements, a glaring lack of diversity is projected within their media.

This cuts to the heart of today’s theme: show, don’t tell.

An organization can talk about a commitment to diversity initiatives all they want. The way they choose to present themselves, their customers and the markets they serve through their use of media sends a clearer, often conflicting message.

There are two ways you can assess and overcome media blind spots.

Take a bird’s eye view of your media

Look at the company website and social media pages through the eyes of both a stranger and an existing client. First, focus strictly on imagery, then move on to the stories your organization shares or the customers you choose to highlight. Ask yourself who you see being represented.

Let’s say your association supports butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. When your blog focuses on the incredible talent required to make candlesticks, and your social media predominantly features pictures of candlestick makers, you are sending a very clear message to the butchers and bakers about how little your organization values them.

Your web content isn’t consistently posted on a whim. Invest the time and energy to plan out images, storylines and features. If you leverage stock photography which includes people, be intentional when searching and selecting images. If you are using in-house photos from a public event, take care to acquire and post pictures that reflect a larger swath of the attendees.

The goal is to have customers and potential customers or supporters view your media and see themselves consistently represented over time, not in every single photo or article.

 Look Who’s Talking

If you are a larger organization or a very active one, you likely have a shortlist of employees ready to handle interviews or provide commentary on current events. When was the last time you updated that list and why should you care? 

Imagine a company website that describes the organization as “empowering employees”, “committed to diversity” and “a champion of inclusivity”. Now imagine this company sending the same person to speak at every leadership event, to be quoted in every newspaper article and featured in every magazine spread for years. A gap develops between what the company is saying about their culture and what they are showing you.

Aim to build a roster of employees for media requests that is representative of subject matter expertise, experience and the real world. Try shining the spotlight on a variety of employees for features about your organization or to speak on panels. Diversifying your media presence provides tangible growth opportunities for your team members and increases the number of opportunities your company can accept. An added bonus is that, by walking the walk, your company becomes known as a resource for providing fresh perspectives at a time when media cycles grow increasingly shorter.

A word of caution

Avoiding a homogenous media presence means investing time, energy and intent to ensure your media involvement accurately reflects the people your company or product serves. It also requires steering clear of tokenism which reduces a person to what makes us view them as diverse. Token media representation is the magazine that puts a female on the cover once a year to celebrate International Women’s Day or the corporate social media feed that features their LGTBQ+ employees to recognize Pride – yet never highlights their professional contributions throughout the year.

Recognizing this is a somewhat subjective and difficult transition, there is one tried and true helpful hint: when in doubt, ask. I’ve asked others (and been asked myself) to review content to ensure the person is first and foremost represented.

Our aim is to connect people, not to check boxes.