DEI: How to Build an Inclusive Climate in the Workplace
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Diversity in the workplace addresses the multicultural make-up of your company’s staff regarding age, disability, gender, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy, religion, or race. Diversity can be obtained through your recruiting or hiring practices and having clear-cut goals for increasing organizational diversity. Once an organization has cultivated an atmosphere of diversity, then it has to address inclusion.
Ideal defines inclusion in the workplace as a collaborative, supportive, and respectful environment that increases the participation and contribution of all employees. Inclusion is more about how well your team members feel they fit into your organization. Do they feel welcomed, a sense of belonging, valued, supported, or essential? All team members should feel this way, but sometimes marginalized employees feel that their organizations miss the mark because of bias or misinformation about their culture.
When companies actively value diversity and inclusion, they receive big benefits such as higher profits, lower expenses, and happier team members. Here are five ways for your organization to build an inclusive climate in the workplace.
Build Inclusion Through Education
Education and training are one of the most significant components of building inclusion in the workplace. Many companies are already providing diversity and inclusion training to educate their teams on unconscious bias and how to limit it in the workplace. Still, since most of our biases happen unconsciously, it may be necessary to provide ongoing training on bias and other diversity and inclusion topics. When companies offer ongoing training, there are more opportunities for teams to be aware of their shortcomings and more capable of embracing an atmosphere of diversity.
All members in leadership positions should be trained on how to handle diverse employees. They should know how to address employees based on their differences, and they should know how to make everyone feel valued. Those in leadership positions need to lead by example. Organizations should also strive to have diversity reflected among those in leadership positions.
Build Inclusion Through Listening
All employees want and need to be heard. Even with the best diversity initiatives in place, the make-up of those in upper-level management positions still tends to be white and male. With this being a current factor in many organizations, there should be a collective effort toward ensuring that all team member’s perspectives are included. This can be as simple as directly asking all team members to contribute to a discussion or to ask questions.
Organizations should be intentional about providing employees with feedback on what they are getting right and what could use work. It is also vital for companies to be open to having difficult culturally based conversations with employees. The best efforts should be made to respect and understand everyone’s differences, but the most important aspect of listening is its connection between team members. The power of listening to employees is that you do not have to know everything or have all the answers at the moment, but it shows care.
Build Inclusion Through Contribution and Collaboration
All employees want an opportunity for their ideas to be recognized, utilized, and valued. Sometimes there is a tendency for employees from marginalized groups to be shut out of ample opportunities. This is not necessarily on purpose. Sometimes teams have staff members who always have great ideas and opinions, so their voices may be heard and used more. The problem can arise when other team members feel their contributions are not as welcome or embraced.
Also, if your team does not see diverse perspectives being embraced, your organization will not communicate the value of an inclusive environment. Utilize as many opportunities as possible to let all staff members know that they were hired because they are capable and talented. This type of atmosphere allows employees to be comfortable enough to trust each other as a team to work effectively together.
Build Inclusion Through Recognition
All recognition and rewards systems should be fair and unbiased. Develop multiple methods of recognizing employees. In many cases, recognition is sales or profit driven. Behind the scenes, however, many aspects lead to exceptional performance. Organizations can incentivize behaviors that contribute to a productive team.
In addition, make sure that all facets of diversity are represented within your organization. Even if your group is not all that diverse, this will still help communicate that diversity and inclusion concerns constitute a significant value of your company.
Build Inclusion Through Respect
When new team members are hired, there should be an understanding that diversity and inclusion are a significant value of your organization. Discrimination of any sort will not be tolerated. Once this is communicated to newly hired staff members, be sure to back it up. Take reports of any issues or incidents concerning discrimination, prejudice, or bias seriously. Also, create opportunities to celebrate diversity within your organization. For example, organizations can acknowledge or honor multicultural holidays in the office or get employees to share culturally based meals.
Build Inclusion Through Goal Setting
The inclusion aspect of diversity and inclusion is an essential part of your employee experience. It takes place during the entire time that employees spend at your company. It is the component of your diversity initiatives that produce the beneficial results that organizations want and need. Hiring diverse candidates is an essential part of the equation, but do not forget to cultivate and nurture those candidates once they become part of your team.
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