Focusing on Diversity Without Inclusion Is Not Enough

I just love the quote from Verna Myers: Diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance.

Companies have been focusing on diversity for a while now. They have been trying to hire more people from diverse backgrounds and promote them to higher positions.?

However, operating solely on that initiative is not good enough. What they should be doing is focusing simultaneously on diversity and inclusion - making sure that the people they hire feel genuinely included in the company, and ensuring their voices are heard.

?So why is inclusion so important??

The key is to create an environment where everyone feels comfortable and respected, regardless of their background or identity. When employees feel included, they are more likely to be engaged and productive at work. Additionally, they are more likely to stay with the organization long-term and recommend it to others.

Unleashing the full potential of diversity

Diversity in teams can boost creativity, and gender diversity was shown to contribute to collective creativity.?

?A new and exciting study from Balazs Vedres and Orsi Vasarhelyi has shown that gender diversity requires inclusion to lead to measurable benefits in creativity. The researchers found that gender diversity without inclusion does not contribute to creativity, while inclusion together with diversity results in significantly higher levels of creativity in video game development teams. The results suggest that to unlock the creative benefits of diversity, developer firms need to include 23% or more female developers and include them in their team’s network.?

Challenges

It is no secret that women are not always promoted at the same rate as men are within organizations. A number of factors contribute to this phenomenon, including, but not limited to: The so-called "old boys' club": This term refers to how several organizations are still dominated by men, who tend to promote and mentor other men without even realizing it.

Unconscious bias against women is still a pervasive problem in the workplace. Our organizational network analysis projects show that men turn to other men for advice 40% more often than women. Whereas it is not a matter of gender for women when they choose whom they turn to within the same setting.

Women are also still under-represented at the top levels of organizations. So if you add this up, it should be no surprise that men will have stronger visibility when considering promotions. The decision-makers (primarily men) will have more connections with other men, which will induce an unconscious bias towards selecting men to get promotions.

This creates a vicious circle from which it is generally very difficult to escape. You have more men on higher levels of the hierarchy, connected to more men who will, at the end of the day, select more men for managerial positions.

Conclusion

When it comes to workplace diversity, inclusion is just as important as representation. Without inclusion, diversity initiatives can fall flat and even do more harm than good. A lack of inclusion can lead to feelings of isolation and exclusion among employees, which will damage morale and productivity. Therefore, companies need to focus not only on increasing diversity but also on creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and respected.

?While diversity can be measured in simple ratios, the question is, how do you measure inclusion?

The answer is Organizational Network Analysis, a methodology that maps collaboration and communication between people, teams and different parts of an organization. It helps uncover silos – to understand connectivity gaps of teams and business units -?and pinpoints bottlenecks and collaboration overload. With ONA, you can identify how different groups are mixing, bonding and giving access to informal leadership to employees from diverse groups. How different groups are being included.?

?If you want to improve diversity and make it sustainable in your organization, focus on inclusion that will create diversity. While measuring inclusion with tools such as ONA can help to tackle unconscious bias by making it visible.