Enabling equity and inclusion through organisational culture

To cap our series, we will discuss the cultural changes needed to enable equity inclusion within an organisation.?

Many companies approach business with the financial bottom line being their only motivation. They often see the employee-employer relationship only as a give and take, transactional process – money in exchange for time and labour. As established earlier in this series, the world has become globalised. It is now commonplace to work in an intercultural setting. Such a change is the basis for the new requirement of diversity and inclusive cultures. For example, how do you define respect? It’s a complex topic with many correct answers. The definitions are also heavily influenced by culture. Organisations who successfully implement and sustain inclusive practices can create awareness, establish open discussion, and leverage differences. Doing so will help create a common meaning for respect, while engaging teams in sustainable collaborative practices.

What is an inclusive culture?

To start, we’ll re-examine the definition of an inclusive culture. Simply put, it is the values, behaviours patterns, rituals, and symbols within a group or groups of people which allows everyone to be equally included. Achieving this requires the fulfilment of the main pillars of Inclusion – every member of the organisation must feel that?they are treated fairly and with respect.?They must also be shown that they have value and belong. When these feelings are established, trust is earned and the needed feelings of psychological safety are earned. These sentiments are required for sustained inclusion, which also lends itself to sustained diversity. You cannot have one, without the other.?

Diversity without equitable inclusion will not last and inclusion without diversity creates tremendous gaps in areas such as perspective and capability, significantly decreasing innovation. Employees no longer want a transactional relationship with their employers, they want to work in an organisation that offers flexibility and humanity. A genuine approach which transparently creates a bridge between the financial bottom line and the need to treat employees well is the simplified need for organisations today. Any approach to DEI that is not genuine in its efforts to facilitate a human-centric atmosphere, will be transparent and will, instead, hurt the bottom line.

The business case for inclusive cultures

Beyond the statistics established in our previous articles, there are other benefits that can be seen from successful diversity and inclusive practices. Organisations with?inclusive cultures are seen as?being more likely to????meet or surpass financial targets, be innovative, be effectively reactive and achieve better business outcomes. The engagement of a wide range of perspectives is one big advantage that can be quickly felt through increased diversity. Furthermore...

To read more about Inclusive cultures, including barriers to them some lessons for your team, finish this article on our website!