A new model for engaging men with Inclusion and Diversity

With the news last month that a majority of men (53%) in the UK now feel that gender equality is discriminating against men, it’s clear that we need a new strategy for engaging men with I&D. While its clear to many of us that gender equality still has a long way to go, this understanding is clearly not shared by everyone. While I clearly do not agree with the majority of men, I do understand where this feeling is coming from and I will certainly doing more over the next 6 months to listen and understand further. Because unless we listen and learn, we are not going to be effective in creating change.

Irrespective its clear to me that we need a new model for engaging men which for me looks as follows:

1. SUPPORT - Supporting men in their everyday life. This might be helping them combat stress, supporting them as fathers or carers and/or anything else that might be worrying them right now
2. INSPIRE - Provide men with the skills and tools to be a better manager and leader
3. RECRUIT - Recruiting men to become better allies and/or agents of change

This model is clearly not revolutionary but it’s certainly not one that the majority of the? I&D industry has been following. If I look at the work many organisations and industries are doing, they often go direct to recruitment without first providing support or helping men develop the skills they need to become successful as allies and agents of change. To put it simply, your chance of recruiting men to create meaningful and sustainable change is close to zero when they either don’t understand the issue or don’t have the skills to be confident to make that change.?

So this is a call to organisations to tweak their strategies and activities so there is a far more balanced mix of support, inspiration and recruitment. Below are some examples to bring this to life:

Support

• Create a group for fathers within the overall gender network. If you would like additional support on this, do reach out to Elliott Rae or Han-son Lee
• Think about how you can better support men’s mental health
• Consider starting a Men’s Circle (you can get support from this from Andy’s Men’s Club or someone like Kenny Mammarella-D'Cruz)
• Bring in speakers like Alex Holmes or Josh Connolly to talk to men about mental health (either through us or directly)
• Deliver talks that also speak to the men. A good example of this was Lloyds who last year ran a talk called “menopause for partners.” This is a brilliant example of providing further support for men.?
• Offer therapy for all employees (Self Space offers a good corporate solution)
• On the basis that you have provided enough support for all historically marginalised staff already, then consider launching an employee resource group for men (Channel 4 has done this with the launch of the Shed)
• Ensure that you are marking International Men’s Day meaningfully
• Share our free Token Man Panel series which specifically has panels tackling male mental health and being a father in the workplace
• Update your parental policy so that it paternity leave is matched with maternity leave

Inspire

• Ensure that you are delivering Inclusion & Diversity training to everyone within the business (this is not unconscious bias training!)
• Deliver inclusive leadership training to all leaders within your business, with a focus on cultural intelligence, empathy and vulnerability
• Build a Cultural Intelligence programme which runs across the year. And while this may be aligned with Diversity days, do also programme outside these. Gender equity for example should not only be considered on International Women's Day
• Deliver training to help people get better and calling in and calling out
• Run a session with your men around the “The Things People Say” research we conduced in collaboration with Gill Whitty-Collins
• Inspire the men to become hackers
• Use International Men’s Day to inspire more men to lean in and develop their own skill. Or become a partner on Masculinity in the Workplace, our annual event to dedicated to engaging men with Inclusion and Diversity delivered in collaboration with The Hobbs Consultancy

Recruit

• Ensure that you have a male sponsor on each of your Employee Resource Groups
• Create a sponsorship (equity) programme in which senior leaders become sponsors to some of your historically marginalised staff
• Implement a co-mentoring programme to allow senior leaders to learn from those more junior in the organisation while those more junior people get to learn from the senior leaders
• Consider creating a male allies programme within your gender network. It’s worth noting that while you may be using gender to recruit people, allyship needs to be for everyone. So do consider all involving other employee networks. We are currently working with clients to support them so do get in touch if interested in finding out more
• Use our Men Leaning in Matrix, delivered in collaboration with Potentia Talent Consulting, to help men understand what more they can do to be better allies and agents of change

I do hope that this model provides people with a more balanced way of engaging men with Inclusion and Diversity. I certainly will be using it now for everything we do to ensure that we are delivering a more balanced programme of activity. Ultimately we are only going to succeed in delivering inclusive, equitable and diverse workplaces, if we work together to create change. But we can only do this, if everyone feels that inclusion is for them.

If you send me more examples of things you have done to support/inspire or recruit, then put them in the comments and I will include them in the piece.