Five Tips to Enhance Inclusion and Diversity in the Workplace

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) are critical elements of every recruitment and retention strategy. They go hand in hand and therefore there Is No Diversity Without Inclusion.

Diversity refers to the traits and characteristics that make people unique while inclusion refers to the behaviors and social norms that ensure people feel valued in an organization irrespective of who they are or as what they identify themselves as. 

Glassdoor found that 57% of employees and 67% of job seekers consider diversity an important element of their workplace, which affects recruitment and retention. Additionally, in a recent Deloitte survey, 80% of employees consider inclusion as an essential factor in choosing an employer. 

However, most organizations identify as diverse but not inclusive though they may not know it. According to the CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the challenge is in having a culture where all employees feel included. Inclusion is similar to humility because everyone wants to admit they have it, but in reality, they don’t. 

The simplest view of D&I is to think of diversity as being similar to selecting people for a chorus who have different musical backgrounds, vocal ranges and abilities. The inclusion means making sure that those different voices feel heard and valued and that they contribute to the performance.

So, how can organizations create a culture of D&I?

Train your leadership on D&I – Leaders are monumental in promoting an inclusive workplace culture. This means structuring and scheduling D&I trainings, allocating resources and using language that advances inclusion.

Celebrate employee differences – This can be done in many forms of employee engagement activities in the workplace where the employees are invited to take part in what they hold dear to them. Also, having diverse opportunities for employee engagement is also a great way of celebrating diversity.

Listen to your employees – This helps to understand the employee’s experiences in order to develop specific strategies to promote inclusiveness. Being listened to is important to people so that they feel that they voice their concerns in a safe space. 

Hold more-effective meetings – This is because an employee’s daily experiences with co-workers are more telling about a workplace’s inclusiveness than anything else and meetings are the prime forums where employees interact.

Inculcate D&I in the company policies – This means creating policies which foster D&I so that they are included in the employee handbook henceforth becoming part of the organization culture. It is important to communicate the goals and measures of the D&I policy.