Ask Holistic: Should You Have Term Limits for DEI Committees?

A lot of folks ask us if we should have term limits for DEI committees. The answer is unequivocally yes. Here’s why:

Term Limits Reduce a lot of pressure

It’s always difficult to know when you’re going to start something, but it’s even more difficult to know when you’re going to end something. Often times people to sign up for diversity committees feel like they’re making a lifelong commitment. They don’t need to. By putting a finite time on it, they know how long her commitment is, and they know how long they have to get things done.

Term Limits Foster Equity

If you have term limits, then you reduce this idea of people feeling the need to be on the committee forever on a volunteer basis because they care about what’s going on the most in the organization. In other words, one of the biggest problems that we’ve seen with the DEI committee says that the people who choose to be on the committees are the people who are going to be the most directly and positively affected by the organization becoming more diverse and more inclusive. And as a result, we end up in this vortex where people are volunteering to do the hard work of diversity, equity, and inclusion because they’re afraid that if they don’t do it, nobody else is going to do it for them. By putting in place term limits, we create an environment where they don’t need to take on this additional burden.

Term Limits Demonstrate Organizational Commitment

If the organization commits to filling these positions and finding new folks to join the committee, they are showing that they care about the committee and they care about creating the committee in a sustainable fashion. No longer is it, ‘Let’s get together a bunch of people who care a lot about diversity, equity, and inclusion and see what they can do.’ Instead, it becomes ‘how can the organization put together a committee that can last forever, as a demonstration of our commitment to taking on the responsibility of finding great people to be on this committee and making sure that it persists well in the future.’

Term Limits Foster Fresh Thinking

All these different organizations are bringing on all these interesting and diverse people. Our aggressive hiring for diversity was having quite a bit of success. Why would we wait for a year or two years to hear those people’s voices on the DEI committee? Why should they have to fight their way in? If your organization has term limits and they’re constantly looking for new people to be on these committees, by definition, we’re going to start to look at some of the newest people within the organization, and that is going to foster a lot of fresh, innovative, and exciting things.

Term Limits Offer Great Development Opportunities

The person whose term is expiring has an opportunity to do something else for the organization and continue their professional growth. The person who is joining the committee is getting the exciting opportunity of being on the DEI committee and being able to make some positive contributions. By putting a limit on the amount of time, we’re forcing some level of cycling, some level of churn, some level of growth. This is a good thing.

Term Limits Reduce the Trauma of Somebody Leaving

When we’re seeing a person who meets an inclusion standard or a person who is otherwise heavily involved with an organization’s DEI committee leave, it’s traumatic for a number of reasons, including that they were carrying a lot of water on the DEI committees. By having term limits, we reduce the potential impact of somebody leaving and also creating a hole within the DEI committee. Because we’re not just expecting people for life and then expecting that they’re going to continue to serve on the committee until they leave, we’re more likely to have a plan in place for the continuity of these committees than we would be if we just randomly and continuously added to the committee.

So, do it. Put in place a very basic policy that you can use to ensure that term limits will be something that can support you with your DEI committee as well as with your employee resource groups. Your organization will be better for it, and it would benefit the DEI mission considerably.