Creating a healthy, vulnerable, inclusive team environment

In This Week’s Email

• What’s on our mind:?Creating inclusive team environments
• What we’re watching online:?Resources to share in your team
• Hustle Crew Academy:?Watch back ‘This is awkward: navigating bias at work’
• The latest episode of Techish:?Fresh takes on the latest tech trends

What’s the problem here?

According to?McKinsey,?“Companies have increasingly begun to regard diversity and inclusion as a source of competitive advantage, and specifically as a key enabler of growth".

Although companies have acknowledged the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, it appears that most are only solving half of the problem.

Diversity initiatives have helped employers recruit people of various ages, backgrounds and experiences. But it appears these efforts are done without considering a working environment that is tailored to the needs of people from diverse backgrounds.

In other words, they’re so focused on diversity that they forget about inclusivity.

Why focus on inclusion??

According to?Forbes?“When a company is inclusive, employees feel free to contribute their opinions and ideas; they believe their work has real value Thoughtfully combined, diversity and inclusivity result in increased employee job satisfaction, retention, creativity, and innovation, and this potent combo can even bring about a decrease in workplace conflict and stress.”

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)?found that in a working environment with inclusion as its core, employees from diverse backgrounds felt empowered to use their voices, enabling them to flourish.

Inclusion means greater access to different points of view, skill sets, creative visions, approaches, and experiences that are more likely to result in a company producing more innovative products and services for users and clients. Inclusion and?psychological safety?go hand in hand.

How to create a healthy, vulnerable, inclusive team environment

Creating a healthy, vulnerable, inclusive team environment is a deliberate approach that takes time and effort. The following steps will help you get started:?

1. Talk about what inclusion means for you and others.?Take the time to discuss and understand with colleagues ways to make each other feel valued and respected at work. This practice will help the organisation understand which behaviours may be hindering inclusion and what behaviours to adopt to promote inclusion.
2. Make sure all colleagues can participate regularly in team meetings and events. Think about how you can make sure all employees feel they can contribute regularly to team meetings and events.
3. Educate your leaders.?Executives and managers will be instrumental to your diversity and inclusion efforts. It’s important for employees to see that inclusive behaviour is a core element of any successful business.
4. Create an inclusion board. Consider forming an inclusion board with a dedicated group of 8 to 12 influential leaders who have demonstrated their passion and commitment to inclusion. Ideally, board members should be involved in goal-setting around hiring, retaining and advancing inclusive practices and be compensated for their efforts. “You need people who are going to make the time to roll up their sleeves” and do the work, says Jennifer Brown, author of?Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change?(Purpose Driven Publishing, 2017)?

What we’re?reading?watching online

This week we share resources related to the our theme of creating an inclusive work environment:

• How to Get Serious About Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace | Janet Stovall | TED
• The Power of Inclusive Education | Ilene Schwartz | TEDxEastsidePrep
• 3 Ways to be More Inclusive | Aduke Onafowokan | TEDxBonnSquareSalon
• Building a Psychologically Safe Workplace | Amy Edmondson | TEDxHGSE
• Why Good Leaders Make You Feel Safe | Simon Sinek | TED

Hustle Crew Academy

Thanks to the all 82 folks who joined us live for our webinar, ‘This is awkward: navigating bias at work’.

Hustle Crew team mates: Abadesi, Atiya, Benjy and Matty sat down for a candid conversation on best practices. Watch a clip below.

We didn’t get a chance to answer all the audience questions live so we’ll be doing that on social media in the coming weeks, be sure to follow?hustlecrewlive?on your go-to social media platform.

In the meantime you can watch back a recording of the webinar on Hustle Crew Academy?now.

Brand new #Techish, listen to the latest episode

In the latest episode, hosts Abadesi and Michael discuss:

• Are we vibing with Threads?
• Have we switched to Team Zuck now?
• The death of affirmative action
• Jonah Hill and using therapy speak for evil

Listen now

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on Instagram

Follow Abadesi on LinkedIn

Thanks for reading Hustle Crew Weekly! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.