Allyship: Why making allyship an action is essential for human sustainability in the workplace

An ally means using your privilege to support colleagues from underrepresented or marginalised communities. Allies use their influence to amplify the voices to elevate and take action to help others in that group. Allies use their influence to amplify the voices to elevate and take action to help others. Research shows that in organisations where allyship is a priority, employees are 50% less likely to leave and are 56% more likely to improve their performance. Innovation rates, revenue rates and profitability rates are higher for these allyship-focused organizations.

Now organisations are expected to create an environment that empowers their employees to thrive, allyship has never been so important. This goes beyond profitability data, this is about organisations ensuring that action is taken to ensure that all employees feel as though belong, feel safe, have a share of voice, the same opportunities as their colleagues and all employees feel safe and confident to spot inequality and to be able to speak up.

So how do we make allyship an action? Training, confidence and the willingness to 'Learn. Unlearn. Relearn'. Our brains are wired to be bias and to be adaptive. We use prior experiences and knowledge to act as a basis for our decisions as a form or survival. The Neuro leadership SEEDS model explains this simply as:

1.Similarity: The tendency to view people who look or think like us more favourably than people who are different

2.Expedience: The tendency to rush to conclusions in an effort to minimize cognitive effort

3.Experience: The tendency to believe that how we see the world is inherently truer than someone else’s perspective

4.Distance: The tendency to assign greater value to those things that we perceive to be closer to us, rather than further away

5. Safety: The tendency to over account for negative outcomes instead of positive ones

When we deliver allyship programmes, we start by challenging our future allies to Pause, Prime and Normalise. Pause to humanise, empathise, recognise that your own experiences shape your biases. Prime to ready your brain to be prepared to counter bias and Normalise acknowledging and countering biases. Training on the types of bias, verbal and physical microaggressions we may spot, do and hear is crucial in building the knowledge and confidence for future allies. Being an ally isn't easy, it takes confidence and you will find many different types of allies. Some may like to be the cheerleader (Visible, Vocal and shining light in public forums and large audiences). Others may be the the Researcher: Hungry for knowledge about the lived experiences of the underrepresented groups. They want to listen, learn and understand the challenges faced by their colleagues. For some allies they are the Intervener: (Takes action and dives in, they call out poor behaviour and take opportunities to defend and educate whenever there is need to do so). Finding your style takes confidence, education and lots of practice - which is why organisations that are serious about human sustainability must invest into allyship training that is more than an online webinar / one off workshop.

Belonging delivers huge benefits for organisations. Better up found that belonging improved job performance by 56%, reduced turnover by 50% and resulted in 75% fewer sick days. But most importantly making allyship an action will not only foster brilliance in the workplace - it makes the world a more equitable world to live in.

Emma is the founder of Glow At Work: Fostering Brilliance in the workplace through human sustainability. We work with organisations serious about the resilience, wellbeing, belonging and personal growth of their workforce. Fostering brilliance through great training programmes and coaching - making the world a better place client by client.