ELEVATING DEI WITH 3C'S PHILOSOPHY

Inclusive leadership is crucial to help an organization become a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. With their engagements, leaders stimulate company culture and set the attitude for embracing diversity in the workplace. When leaders evaluate their organization on key factors tangled to progressing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), they feel that inclusion should be inculcated as a strong part of their organization’s vision and values. ?Diversity and inclusion is rapidly touching to the top of the list of priorities for HR and Business professionals.

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Embracing diversity and inclusivity at workplace is a lifelong journey for an organisation. There is no right way or one size fits all to elevating DEI metrics. As individuals and as a business, we must understand that we are all on a journey of experimentation and commitment. Businesses are not waiting for their government to regulate policies; instead they are committing to elevate DEI by triggering an inclusive growth-mindset for activating groups and amplifying diverse voices at the workplace.

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Diversity, equity and inclusion are on the top of mind for most businesses. Leaders considering hiring with diversity in mind ensure that there is a philosophy of inclusion and equity across the business for compensation, promotions and opportunities. To strengthen diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, it’s important to first understand what is DEI and how it will impact today and the future of our next-generation leaders.

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Diversity is the full range of human experience, traits and characteristics that make people unique. It comprises employees with different characteristics such as sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, political beliefs, religion, culture, and more. Equity aims to ensure equal behavior, access, prospect and development for people at the workplace and remove obstacles that prevent some groups from fully participating in society or certain jobs and industries. Inclusion is empowerment, building a culture of respecting differences and fostering involvement/ contribution.

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Diversity without equity and inclusion are meaningless, but true DEI in synergy can be a powerful force to drive your business forward. A famous quote by Allan Rufus says – “Your inner strength is your outer foundation”. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Workplace gives us an opportunity to work on the inner core of the business with an ultimate aim to achieve the objectives of the organisation. Before talking about any global strategies, it’s a good idea to do a personal inclusion and equity audit to influence the diversity and equity at workplace.

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Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Workplace can be fostered by continuously cruising through the 3C’s - Connect, Collaborate and Celebrate.

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CONNCET – Start with building a plan to get there and live out your plan in behaviors and actions

Knowing your workforce/ teams’ perceptions offers valuable insights to benefit you deliberately chart a way forward. It is very important to establish that CONNECT with your people by:

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1.??? Starting the Conversation

It is always difficult to find the right way to start with. Leaders need to initiate, set the tone, and send the communication clearly that they care about diversity, equity and inclusion. Leaders should reflect on their own experiences and consider what their teams could gain from leveraging more diversity.

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2.??? Challenging the unconscious bias

It is important to eliminate the tenure-bias, demographic-bias, behaviour-bias, personality-bias, as lack of sociological diversity exposes an organisation to enterprise risks.

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3.??? Using Gender-Neutral Language

Abstain from using gender-binary language, while addressing groups of people as it might hurt people from other genders like gender-neutral, transgender, etc.

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COLLABORATE – Get buy-in from the workforce by involving everyone

Start with a persuasive vision from the CEO that should be clearly communicated to the entire organisation with “Commit and Collaborate” approach for improving the diversity in the workplace. COLLABORATION will start with:

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4.??? Develop inclusive leadership skills

Leaders must exhibit their commitment to DEI through their words and actions, by creating an inclusive behavior, treat all employees fairly and respectfully, and actively engage with diverse perspectives and experiences.

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5.??? Language Training with Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Skills

Gender Neutral language training with Intrapersonal and Interpersonal skills creates self-reliance and develops better understanding between the team.

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6.??? Re-create core organisation values that reflects respecting the differences

Build a leaders community in the organisation who inculcate the core values in people by understanding all genders and respect the ethos, gender, religion, socio-economic status, abilities, lifestyle, opinions, perspectives, education, and a lot more.

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7.??? Integrate D&I into hiring practices and beyond

Diversity needs to become an integral part of the hiring practices. Diverse panels of interviewers should be established to select the candidates based on skills and experience. Hiring managers should be trained on unconscious bias and what can’t be asked during an interview/ meeting, such as aspects of an applicant’s personal life or religion. Reflect to connect two employees at random for coffee/ tea and talk about anything they want, which will eventually help employees across various places and departments get to know each other, build significant relationships, and create a culture of belongingness.

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8.??? Document best practices, processes and policies

An organisation’s policies and practices should be accessible the workforce at all times. Re-design/ Update the code of conduct regularly and outline the organisation’s approach to diversity and non-discrimination. Add a non-discrimination module into annual training calendar to emphasize its importance to the organisation.

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CELEBRATE – Celebrate DEI with inculcating the values, regular feedback mechanism and commitment to change

Enhancing a culture of DEI entails leaders to look inward, take actions as a team, use self-insights with a commitment, and create a platform on empathy, feedback, and psychological safety.

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9.??? Reflect the Culture and Commit to Change

Socializing calling-in behavior becomes important in this case and be attentive that this can feel uncomfortable at first. It can also be tough for the workforce if providing feedback is not part of the culture. The workforce may fear initially being penalized or have concerns about the reactions from others when speaking out. On this journey of striving for equality, the leader has to demonstrate empathy and psychological safety. Leaders must role model the actions they want to see in their teams and develop their own feedback receptiveness.

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10. Gather inclusion feedback regularly

You need to listen to your workforce/ organization. Add regular feedback events or town hall meetings to explore what is working and what is not. Speak to the mentors and make sure they have abundant opportunity to raise matters related to inclusion. Alternatively, organize one-on-one sessions between employees and their community members to guarantee they have a safe space to share their feedback.

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11. Build cultural events - Rejoice the diverse nature of the workforce. Cultural events/ activities can be anything from doing a weekly cook-out, asking each member of the team to prepare a special meal of their own religion/ state.

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Embracing DEI in the workplace requires you to continue this conversation. So, it’s important to discuss what your business and workforce explicitly need. And it’s important to remember that organizations that get this right will need to do experimentation, get things incorrect initially, and learn.

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Disrupting profoundly ingrained habits and biases can be hard initially, and involves deep-thinking and persistence by the leader. The deep philosophy of ensuing the 3C’s will eventually result in celebrating the efforts, inculcating values, acknowledging improvement, and inspiring oneself and others to be better together.