Creating an Inclusive Workplace Culture

We’re delighted that Lucy Brown, founder of Diversity Dreaming, has authored this article for us. She’s answering a lot of frequently asked questions and revealing exactly where to start when creating an inclusive culture.

Why are businesses prioritising diversity, equity and inclusion?

Diversity, equity and inclusion are becoming increasing priorities for many businesses. This priority is driven by two distinct directions.

Firstly, external factors, such as the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the gap in experience between different socio-economic groups during the Covid-19 pandemic, and increasing legislation around pay transparency and reporting, mean that business leaders must begin to acknowledge and address impacts such as these on the workforce.

Secondly, in the midst of the Great Resignation, employees hold the power, and expect employers to create an inclusive culture that enables them to bring their whole selves to work; otherwise, they can simply move elsewhere.

However, moving the dial on diversity, equity and inclusion can take time, resources and often businesses are unclear where to start. With high inflation and the resulting increasing costs of living, some businesses are also struggling to find the budget to match the intent.

Why the current approach to workforce culture is not working

Many of you will have seen on social media the analogy that “diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance” i.e. diversity is about representation and inclusion is about being included or feeling involved. In its simplicity as an analogy it is useful to help people understand the difference between the two terms.

If we analyse it further, does it not also suggest that inclusion means that someone has to invite you onto the dancefloor? This suggests the need for allies to create the inclusive environment.

And if we bring equity into the analogy, i.e. ensuring everyone has access to every opportunity, it might also mean ensuring there is an accessible ramp, or that the dance is during working hours to ensure those with caring responsibilities can attend.

With a risk of overcomplicating this, the key reason for citing this is because we will never achieve an inclusive culture if this is how business leaders consider inclusion. This oversimplified analogy will assume everyone likes the same music, has no barriers to dancing, is comfortable in a crowd, and is happy to socialise.

This will not be the case within your workforce, not everyone will have the same positive experience, and so we need to create a culture where everyone can thrive.

Often the current approach for many businesses is to hire for a culture fit. Cultural fit assumes that the new hire will be able to easily conform and adapt to the culture that is pre-existing within the business. Having all employees align with the company values and approach to work is seen as a positive, but having a workforce that thinks and acts in a similar way, thereby lacking both diversity of thought and creating an environment that excludes those that do not fit the cultural mould is also a risk.

Cultures need to adapt and evolve with each and every employee and their unique contributions and perspective. Experiences need to be tailored to employees as individuals, not as a workforce, and benefits should be personalised to suit individual needs. Only then will employees feel like they belong, and organisations avoid the revolving door of diverse talent, something many are currently struggling with.

What would an inclusive business look like in practice?

For many businesses, the intent is there, but knowing where to start or what to prioritise can be a challenge. So, here are some initial, high impact ways you can accelerate your journey to a diverse, inclusive and equitable culture.

Look at what data you have: Understanding your baseline will ensure you can actually measure your progress.

This should be straightforward for gender and age. Look at the gender splits across all job levels and see if there are any ceilings for women. If there are, try to consider what is driving that and whether mentoring programmes or specific skills training would be helpful. Complete the same task again for age and ask yourself if the organisation encourages aging workers to continue developing or whether their trajectory starts to falter. Combining age and gender markers can also help you to see if you are lacking any specific demographic groups anywhere within your organisation. Typically, older female talent can leave in high numbers if there is insufficient workplace support when they experience menopause symptoms.

Be transparent in order to collect more data. Employees will often be more comfortable sharing data such as race/ethnicity and sexual orientation if you create trust and transparency around who will have access to it, what it will be used for and how it will help them. Having a clear communication plan is key.

Listen to your employees: Use your employee listening tools to guide your people strategy.

Introduce questions relating to belonging, engagement and culture into your regular employee listening tools in order to get a sense of how employees are feeling. Even better if you can split the results by demographic group to spot crisis areas sooner enabling you to mitigate the impact.

Do not forget the power of an exit interview. Often leavers can be less of a priority with organisations focusing on retaining current staff however this could be a mistake. Use exit interviews to your advantage to gather as much information as possible so you can understand what is and what is not working in your business. If you see trends emerging this can drive your people strategy to evolve.

Drive from the top down: Engage your leaders on the subject of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Often diversity, equity and inclusion are driven by employees that create employee network groups. These are fantastic but voluntary, and they should not be the only way to enhance the culture. Engaging your leaders to provide authentic messaging and to be real role models will have a big impact on employees. Executive coaching or training can be useful for key stakeholders.

Someone needs to lead on diversity, equity and inclusion. There needs to be accountability and they need to report directly to the CEO. In smaller organisations it may be that someone has other responsibilities too, but it needs to sit with someone.

Educate and raise awareness: Often employees are very enthusiastic to help, but have concerns around doing or saying the wrong thing.

Try to introduce simple, engaging training to bring everyone along on the journey. With cancel culture so prevalent in the media, people have concerns, especially straight white males. Providing all employees with the tools to have important conversations and to broaden their perspectives is so important. Some helpful articles to inspire you could be “How to set up inclusive and accessible events” or “How to use gender inclusive language”.

Not everything in the list will require a budget but it will require a commitment, as well as time and energy.

How we can help you

For anything you can do yourself, you’ve got this. Where you do need support, get in touch with us today on 0161 941 2426. We’re here to help.