So long as your work centers outcomes, shifts systems, creates coalitions, and seeks to benefit all. Not all work that called itself “DEI” meets these criteria. If you’re unsure, I encourage you to first reflect on your own practices and where they might evolve to become more effective. FAIR is a new acronym to describe a new approach, one that centers impact over feel-good fluff. I invite any leader and practitioner with a similar approach to building healthier organizations to use FAIR if it resonates with you.

FAIR work is any work that applies the four principles—Outcomes, Systems, Coalitions, Win-Win—to improve fairness, access, inclusion, and representation for all. Are you collecting data on the effectiveness of your hiring process to identify and eliminate bias, rather than just lecturing your hiring managers and calling that a win? That’s FAIR. Are you creating a standard design process for your products and services that incorporates the perspectives of your users, rather than resolving exclusionary or discriminatory user experiences on a case-by-case basis further down the line? That’s FAIR. Are you encouraging your employees to work together with leadership to set respectful communication norms, rather than delegating this work to an underfunded and burned out Employee Resource Group? That’s FAIR. Are you framing flexible and remote work arrangements as benefits to all workers’ wellbeing and productivity, rather than using a narrow lens like “flexible work is for new mothers” that can foster resentment and frustration? That’s FAIR.

FAIR is how healthy organizations continually improve themselves. Rather than hiding their flaws behind shiny language, trying to “fix people” instead of improve systems, fractionating into cliques instead of working together to solve hard problems, or framing change in terms of winners or losers, FAIR gives leaders and practitioners the means to make real change in a time when trust is low and tensions are high.

Everyone wants workplaces where they can work and succeed free from discrimination, but the bundle of initiatives and programs commonly described under “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) may no longer be the best way to achieve this outcome. In recent years, mainstream DEI has not only become the target of conservative backlash, but also come under critique from practitioners and organizational change experts for inducing burnout, activating backlash, and most concerningly, failing to improve workplace outcomes or reduce discrimination.

What’s needed in this moment is a reset. Not simply a rebranding of DEI to be less controversial, but a reimagining of DEI to be more effective—in how we talk about it, how we do it, and what we achieve through it. FAIR is that reset.