How to assess your policies and programs with legal teams

Executive summary

Organizational leaders need to build robust and resilient talent pipelines, maximize their employees’ potential to drive productivity and innovation, and sustain the organizational values that enable positive and inclusive corporate cultures. These are non-negotiable business imperatives. And while the goals may be clear, the path to effectively achieving them in this rapidly changing landscape may be less so. Organizations that want to attract, develop, engage, and retain the best talent and most effective teams may be asking how to evaluate their programs and policies — especially those that may have once fallen under the umbrella of “DEI” initiatives. Catalyst can help.

This list of questions is intended to be a guide for working with your legal counsel, giving practitioners and stakeholders an opportunity to apply strategic, consistent decision making across a programmatic review of policies and initiatives in effect in your US operations. As you progress through the stages, you may find that you have already taken steps or asked some of these questions. Review and skip ahead as necessary.

This resource is a companion to the CEO Action Framework that guides Catalyst Supporters on a “finesse” response to ensure they can win the war for talent, win in the marketplace, and be a great place to work for all employees. These questions will help you put into action the Framework’s Catalyst’s Values, Open, Close (VOC) approach, helping you to drive impact where it matters and weigh critical considerations along the way.

Any review of materials or risk analysis should be undertaken in conjunction with legal counsel in order to protect privileged work and communications. Use these guidelines to help inform a discussion with your attorneys.

Stage 1: Determine which programs and policies need review

Goal: Get a handle on the scope of programs and policies that may warrant review in your organization.

You may have a pre-standing audit process to build from, or audit team to work with. If not, work with legal counsel to make a spreadsheet of which company and cross-functional initiatives and programs should be reviewed. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but think along these lines to get started:

Talent pipeline

Diverse slate requirements, formal recruitment or promotion goals by demographic, internship programs

Career development

Leadership development programs, mentorship and sponsorship programs

Workplace inclusion and culture

Employee resource groups, flexible work policies

Broader impact

Supplier diversity programs, board seat quotas

You may have generated a lengthy list but don't panic — you will organize it in the next stage.

Stage 2: Determine which programs and policies need more attention

Goal: Deftly assess which programs might need more immediate attention and adjustments.

In this stage, you will assess the level of attention you should give each program, and label each using a color-coded system as a sort of “heat-map” or internal scoring system. Based on your organizational priorities and preferences, you may choose to assign more weight to certain questions within this stage or across other stages.

The first step draws from the Meltzer Center at New York University, whose research on corporate programs’ legality and risk discusses three criteria it calls “the 3 Ps”: (1) conferred preference (difference in treatment), (2) to a specific group, especially a legally protected group, (3) that relates to a “palpable benefit” such as a promotion or development opportunity.¹

Does this program center on or otherwise demonstrate preference for certain people?
Does it exclusively benefit people from a specific group, particularly a legally protected group?²
Does the program confer an appreciable benefit, such as a promotion, increase in pay, or plum assignment?

Answering “yes” to all three Section A questions for a particular program indicates that it should garner increased scrutiny with a high priority — consider color-coding these red. Answering “yes” to one or two of the questions may indicate a need for attention, noting of course that all organizations need to assess their own strategic priorities and comfort levels — consider color-coding these yellow.

Does the program give an opportunity to level the playing field for all?
Does it aim to remove biases from the system that affect many different people?
Does the program address barriers that many employees might face?
Is this program open/available to everyone?

Answering “yes” in Section B is an indication that the program benefits everyone and may need less scrutiny — consider color-coding these green.

As you close out this stage of your assessment, your list should now indicate a distinction between programs likely to be retired versus those to be kept and possibly modified. In the next stage of the process, you will work with cross-functional stakeholders to confirm which programs should be retired and look across programs in the ‘keep’ category to evaluate where adjustments may need to be made – further distinguishing your remaining list between “maintain” and “modify” categories.

Stage 3: Finesse efforts in need of modification

Goal: Connect with cross-functional stakeholders and legal counsel to align on a strategy to maintain, modify, or retire programs and policies.

In this stage, you will determine which of the programs and policies you will maintain, modify, and retire, evaluate the scope and lift required of any proposed changes, and ensure that decisions drive toward your desired outcomes.

Given the range of criteria to be considered in this process, be sure to engage under legal privilege cross-functional stakeholders from HR, business, legal, communications, and ESG, for example, to gather the full scope of perspectives necessary for a holistic assessment process. Different ways to accomplish this are:

Assign relevant leaders to score criteria connected to their specific area of expertise.

Have a single leader complete the assessment and then seek alignment from expert stakeholders to affirm or adjust as needed.

Assemble a cross-functional team to complete the scoring as a group.

Choose the approach that best suits your organization’s culture/ways of working, and that is most likely to get you to a complete and balanced view while minimizing the introduction of bias, group think, or reactionary action over strategic consideration. It may also help to determine process and ownership for implementing the necessary adjustments at this time. Whichever method is chosen, ensure consistency in decision-making by considering the questions below, especially for programs marked as red or yellow.

Could the program be easily expanded to all employees?

Could the program benefit a non-protected segment of people, such as early career employees or one business line?

Could targets or quotas be changed to aspirations?

Do proposed changes still align with organizational values?

If a program is modified, will it still support positive organizational values, such as respect, inclusion, and collaboration?

A “yes” to questions in section A indicates a strong possibility for a path forward and could be quick wins in affirming your commitment to providing growth opportunities for all employees. A “no” to questions in section A indicates that modifications to the program will require deeper strategic thinking and planning.

Will a change or expansion to the program create redundancy in programs?

Will a change or expansion dilute the program's effectiveness, leading to minimal impact?

Will modifications be difficult to adapt or institute across different global regions?

A “yes” to questions in section B may indicate modifying will be a more complex process or that you should consider retiring the program. Depending on organizational factors, you may want to develop a different plan and timeline on which to finesse programs that fit these criteria.

As you close out this stage of your assessment, you should have an idea of what initiatives you can quickly adjust to preserve their organizational benefits. Prioritizing changes that are minor to implement but have major impact will give you the breathing room to tackle the more involved changes further along.

Stage 4: Consider next steps and downstream impact

Goal: Consider the downstream effects on financial impact, reputational impact, employee outcomes, and other considerations relevant for your organization that could result from maintaining, modifying, or retiring these efforts.

After completing the previous steps, you should have a strong idea of which initiatives and programs need the most immediate attention. Implementation will vary widely by organization, so these final questions are open-ended, intended to help guide your thinking as you shape the path forward.

How will these changes affect our employees?

What will the reputational impact of retiring or modifying programs be?

How will our organization communicate these changes and continue to demonstrate our commitment to organizational values? Internally? Externally?

How will these changes affect relationships with external stakeholders?

What will be the financial impact of modifying programs?

What opportunities have we created for new initiatives?

Appendix

See the Appendix: How to assess your policies and program with legal teams for a list of words and phrases you might be questioning and a process to help your organization determine how to best convey the concepts around inclusion.