What do you do if your organization lacks inclusivity and diversity?

Taking stock is the first vital step in my unique Tribe5 Diversity & Inclusion? methodology. It’s crucial organisations gather data and insights into their people, customer, and community experiences. While statistical analysis provides valuable insights, it should be reviewed in parallel with real-life experiences, this might include considering questions such as do your employees reflect your customer base, and how are you nurturing future talent through collaborations with local education providers. Each interaction offers valuable data points, offering opportunities to identify gaps & create action plans. Transparency is vital—don't shy away from the truths your data reveals see it as an opportunity for improvement.

Firstly, I would conduct a thorough assessment of our current policies, practices, and procedures to identify any barriers to inclusivity and diversity. This would involve reviewing our recruitment and selection processes, training programs, and employee development initiatives to ensure that they are designed to promote inclusivity and diversity. I would even go a step further as to conduct a DEI survey to get feedback from employees to identify gaps that exist and decide on how to fill those gaps in order of priority.

I would work with our leadership team to create an action plan that outlines specific strategies and initiatives to address the identified gaps and improve inclusivity and diversity. This would involve setting goals and targets, identifying key performance indicators, and allocating resources to support the implementation of the plan.

At our conscious level, we are open minded, non-racist, non-judgemental, tolerant people. Subconsciously, it is very different narrative. We don’t trust people who look different to us. We overestimate the value of people who are tall. We underestimate people who are short. We consider fat people lazy, women as emotional. Nobody consciously thinks that way but its our subconscious that determines the majority of our actions. So, zoomed out, what do we loose and have to say goodbye too if we become more diverse and inclusive. Something is always lost during a change. Secondly, what are our subconscious detractors that are holding us back from expanding our tribe. And lastly, who benefits when we become more diverse and inclusive.

I would implement the action plan or strategy and regularly monitor and evaluate our progress toward achieving our goals. This would involve collecting and analyzing data to measure the impact of our initiatives and making adjustments as necessary to ensure that we are achieving our desired outcomes.

All of the above steps describe a program - someone is held accountable to make something happen, and teams, task forces, projects, presentations, workshops all get created and with any luck, measured. All very important, but this approach almost guarantees that change depends on a subset of the organization, and does not immediately enable individual leaders. Leaders interact every day with their employees and their teams. If you want to be more inclusive (because there is no ‘end’, no finish line to this), begin or strengthen your own practice. Examples: Do each of your employees know what you value about them? Do you listen without interrupting in meetings? Do you recognize great work in a timely manner? Do you show vulnerability?