How can you build a more inclusive and diverse accounting team?

1 Assess your current situation

The first step to building a more inclusive and diverse accounting team is to understand your current state of affairs. You can use various tools and methods to collect data and feedback on your team's composition, culture, and performance. For example, you can conduct surveys, interviews, focus groups, or audits to measure the diversity of your team across different dimensions, such as gender, race, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, or education. You can also evaluate the inclusiveness of your team by examining the level of engagement, satisfaction, belonging, and retention of your team members. Additionally, you can assess the impact of your team's diversity and inclusion on your business outcomes, such as revenue, profitability, innovation, or customer loyalty.

2 Set clear and realistic goals

Based on your assessment, you can identify the gaps and opportunities for improvement in your team's diversity and inclusion. You can then set clear and realistic goals that align with your vision, mission, and values. For example, you can set goals to increase the representation of underrepresented groups in your team, to enhance the participation and contribution of all team members, or to leverage the diversity of your team to generate new ideas and solutions. You can also set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) objectives and indicators to track your progress and evaluate your results.

4 Monitor and adjust

Building a more inclusive and diverse accounting team is not a one-time event, but a continuous process that requires constant monitoring and adjustment. You need to collect and analyze data and feedback on your team's diversity and inclusion on a regular basis, and compare them with your goals and objectives. You also need to celebrate your successes and recognize your team members' efforts and achievements. Moreover, you need to identify and address any challenges or issues that arise along the way, and make necessary changes or improvements to your strategies and actions. By doing so, you can ensure that your team's diversity and inclusion are not only maintained, but also enhanced over time.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?