There’s something I’ve noticed over the years about organisational policies that exist in a silo, a bit detached from anything else in an organisation. These are often anti-racist policies, disability justice policies, environmental policies, or other policies which are grounded in a principle, and should be systemic and foundational, but often aren’t.
These siloed policies often sound like a manifesto or an essay more than a policy, and may have been drafted by someone with a clear commitment to the issue, but without the organisational power to integrate them into the organisation’s actual work. Or worse the organisation is just paying lip service to the issue, and wants something to be able to point at when the issue comes up.
These policies are often standalone, in that they don’t connect to anything more structural in the organisation, like:
- Decision making;
- Governance and structure;
- Budget and finances;
- Other internal policies where this issue is impacted and operates.
These siloed policies often feel a bit like the “We welcome applications from xxxx communities” statement at the bottom of a job advert (in an job advert that makes clear they’ve not done much more to actually welcome these communities). Or a day-long change to an organisational social media avatar as a form of solidarity (without any references to how the organisation supports that cause otherwise). These things might be nice, but in isolation, do little to shift an organisation’s practices.
Many of the groups I see working most on these issues—white supremacy, patriarchy, ableism, climate justice—don’t have policies explicitly named after those things, because that work is integrated into the organisational policies that matter most. What does being anti-racist mean when it comes to pay? What does environmental justice mean when it comes to procurement? What does disability justice mean when it comes to time off?
These more operational policies are the places where an organisation’s values often get practiced most explicitly, so when we think about these wider ‘principle’ policies, the question I’m often left with is: “How does it shape what we actually do, day-to-day?”
When these policies do exist, the best versions I’ve seen often serve as an index: “If you want to think about being anti-racist in your work, these are a bunch of the places we’ve thought about what that could or should look like.”
But I’m wondering what else good versions of these types of policies might look like? And what your experiences are of these kinds of policies?