This week in the UK is National Inclusion Week, an opportunity to champion everyday inclusion and a chance to bring a spotlight to Diversity and Inclusion.
Last week I wrote an article about why diversity and inclusion matters, where I highlighted both the moral and business case for more emphasis on making Diversity and Inclusion a priority as part of our modern day workplace.
The tricky part of Diversity and Inclusion is figuring out how to start. After all, the subject is quite a thorny one, and everyone will have their own opinions on what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. This fear of doing something accidentally wrong, or previous experiences of being burnt when trying to broach the topic often leads senior leaders to avoid the subject as much as possible.
Unfortunately, simply avoiding the issue is not a viable solution in 2020 – the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrates how critical it is for businesses to be able to have difficult conversations on these issues in a confident manner. Customers and Employees are expecting businesses to have genuine strategies to improve the situation in their own workplaces and for the wider public they serve.
This leads many organisations to develop their own Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. Naturally this is a difficult topic to avoid criticisms for tokenism, so how can organisations look at this in a holistic manner? Here are some areas to look at:
Recruitment
Organisations often start with a relatively homogenous workforce. Statistically they may find that they have an underrepresentation of women, ethnic minorities, disabled and LGBT+ staff. A natural starting point is looking at the talent coming through the doors. How many staff from diverse backgrounds are making it into interview? Are they even applying in the first place? Understanding the pipeline will help understand where the blockages are. It is then possible to take remedial measures.
For example, if there is a lack of BAME applicants applying, more outreach can be done to areas with a high BAME population. If you are then finding many are not making it to interview, look at your job adverts and see whether your requirements are genuinely open to people with different experiences or have been written in a way that has a certain type of person already in mind.
Inclusive Culture
You may have improved your recruitment practices, what happens then? Getting staff from different backgrounds through the door in of itself is not the solution – if your organisation does not make any shift to the culture or hold one that is inclusive, what you often find ensuing shortly after is some level of disharmony within the workplace.
Often where there is only one BAME or woman staff in the team with little efforts to integrate them, it can be very easy for these individuals to feel the odd one out. And whilst we would love to simply expect people to adapt to the people around others from whatever background, the reality is that we naturally gravitate to those who are similar to us.
So we need to build genuine efforts to make our workplaces inclusive, where it is open as possible for anyone from any background to come in and thrive. Culture takes time to change, and requires senior leaders to genuinely bring these conversations and hear people’s stories to start the conversation.
Some smaller wins include making team socials more inclusive (e.g. having breakfasts as well as the usual pub visits to include more people); build staff networks within your organisation to allow groups to come together and share their experiences; make your working practices as flexible as possible in terms of working hours and being output focussed in performance management rather than hours spent at the desk.
Retention and Progression
One area to be wary of is diverse staff joining then quickly leaving the organisation. This can be very frustrating when a lot of effort has been put into bringing these people in. Without genuine inclusion, people will often feel excluded and will look to the door rather than staying in the organisation.
Similarly, what often happens in an organisation is women and staff from BAME backgrounds tend to get stuck at the bottom. Often there are issues relating to pidgeon-holing and unconscious bias at play, where individuals are type-cast as unable to progress due to not having ‘leadership traits’ which are often built in the mold of its founders, rather than allowing different styles of leadership in.
Lack of opportunities is often cited as an issue, particularly for BAME staff. It would be a good idea to monitor how such staff are feeling about their prospects to get a good litmus test on how your D&I strategy is working.
Other areas to consider
Whilst not specifically on the subject of what should be in a D&I strategy, I did want to highlight a few more areas to consider:
Data
Data is absolutely paramount to understanding what is happening within our organisations. If you cannot understand why people are leaving within a year, it is vital you understand why. To successfully monitor a D&I strategy, you may need to overhaul your current HR systems with an ability to properly monitor application rates from different backgrounds. Exit interviews are also a vital way to understand why employees are leaving and an opportunity for genuinely honest feedback.
Engagement
Let’s face it. We’ve all seen dozens of strategies pass through our inboxes. Most of them are simply glanced over and little due regard is paid to them after a week or two.
So getting staff genuinely engaged in what you are trying to do is really critical. Building your support structures within the organisation through volunteers that are enthusiastic to the cause is really vital. Also remember that much of this strategy will be delivered by managers across the organisation, so if you have done little to tell them what they need to do, the chances of it actually happening are pretty slim.
One final reflection is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to a good Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. Each organisation will have its different strengths and challenges; some may find a high proportion of women and low proportion of BAME staff, others may find the reverse. So it is critical for firms to look at their own situation and build a realistic amibition of where they would like to further improve.
Those are my tips for creating a holistic Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. Are there any additional things that you would add?