How to Achieve Better Inclusion & Fight Inequality in the Workplace
In a recent blog post, we addressed how the business community needs to do its part to combat inequality—and why we need to elevate diversity and inclusion (D&I) efforts. In this follow up post, we wanted to take a deeper dive into exactly how companies can do that—particularly as it pertains to inclusion. Creating a diverse workforce doesn’t always translate to a welcome environment for every employee, and oftentimes trying to strengthen a workforce by hiring people of all backgrounds stops exactly there—at hire. To create a climate that equally values, celebrates and supports every employee, business leaders need to focus on what they’re doing within their office walls to make that a reality.
Below, we explore some steps that business leaders can take to strengthen their inclusion efforts and further eliminate equality in the workplace.
Recognize the Problem
You might be reading this quietly thinking about the D&I programs and protocols you’ve introduced in your company, but leaders need to step out from this “checklist” mentality and ask—are your efforts more than one-off implicit association tests or sensitivity trainings, PDFs of guidelines or optional resources at employees’ disposal, and are any of these things actually working? Business leaders may not mean to turn a blind eye, but get caught up in the many demands on their time and don’t realize that these initiatives may sit stagnant. In fact, in a global survey of C-level executives, an incredible 85% strongly agreed or agreed that their companies were bad at problem diagnosis—with 87% strongly agreeing or agreeing that these oversights carried significant costs.
It takes more than putting knee-jerk solutions down on paper, but rather doing the hard work to deeply understand the specific problems inherent in your workplace and having honest dialogue about next steps.
Create a Safe Place for Conversation
Once focus has been turned to the overarching problem, business leaders need to understand just how vast and nuanced it is. Inequality takes many forms based on gender, sexuality, race, marital status, religious beliefs, physical or mental handicaps and more—and workplaces need to cater to all of these differences. To do this effectively, companies need to create safe avenues for conversation that will reveal the unique needs of their employees. This could be regular surveys, one-one-one meetings between employees and managers or mentors, frequent discussion groups, virtual anonymous forums—whatever the vehicle, what they should have in common is that they are consistent, frequent and approachable. By giving employees different methods for expressing their concerns, companies can better understand the work they have ahead of them and find effective ways to surmount those challenges.
Make it a Priority Now & Always
This may sound simple, but oftentimes HR requests, although well-intentioned, can feel like just another “to-do” item, and one that isn’t as important to the actual work employees have been hired to do. When taking steps to identify the inclusivity gaps in the workplace, make sure to communicate that it is mandatory and/or just as important as their day-to-day work so those meaningful conversations and insights aren’t sidelined. It can exist within performance reviews in addition to regular day-to-day activity, with leadership constantly beating the drum. When leadership is steadfast and encouraging in their commitment to inclusion in the workplace, employees will be more inclined to follow.
Accommodate 360
As mentioned earlier in this post—inequality can touch everything in company culture, and bias can exist in many forms. Armed with feedback from their employees, business leaders can identify all of the ways in which they need to accommodate their employees—but should also be hospitable to all types of individuals now, whether they have spoken up or not, and into the future. This could mean creating dedicated spaces for nursing mothers or people to practice meditation or prayer, building non-Christian holidays into the company calendar for recognition, hosting international potluck lunches for people to share dishes from their culture, offering flexible hours and hosting mid-day events for those with child care responsibilities outside of the office, removing gendered language from official documents and forms, allocating budget for ergonomic equipment to cater to employees with physical limitations and more. Creating a culture that is welcoming to anyone within its network now and in the future, will only make your organization stronger.
There is no easy fix to inequality, and the more companies can listen, address and be proactive, the more welcome and respected their people will feel. Inclusion is hard, ongoing work, and these steps are meant to serve as a helpful jump-start. Have some great ideas or examples you’ve implemented? We’d love to hear them in the comments.
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