How to Foster Diversity and Inclusion?
Diversity and inclusion are buzzwords that are becoming quite popular in today’s society, especially in the business world. It is an essential concept that should be embraced and practiced at all times, considering its benefits’ massive impact on the workforce, businesses, and communities. The workforce’s diversity is invaluable, and it has been proven time and again to increase productivity, creativity, innovation, and profitability, all of which lead to greater a quality of focus and richer performance. While it’s true that fostering diversity and inclusion is not a straightforward or simple task, the results are rewarding and far-reaching.
Here we’ll be discussing how to foster diversity and inclusion in the workplace, including why it’s important and the benefits it can offer.
Why is Diversity and Inclusion Important?
Diversity is crucial since everyone has a unique perspective and experience they can offer to the workplace. It is an opportunity to bring in different thoughts, experiences, and skills to solve problems that would have been impossible to solve with a homogenous team. Likewise, inclusion is the practice of creating a workplace that shows appreciation and respect to every person’s unique identity and values regardless of their age, gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, or religion. Building a diverse and inclusive environment leads to a broader range of perspectives, which can improve problem-solving and decision-making skills, resonates positively into workplace culture, reduces employee turnover, and also helps to draw in a wider pool of talent.
Tips on How to Foster Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
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Take Time to Create an Inclusive Workplace Culture
Building an inclusive culture should start with identifying your organization’s values and goals. Creating values through leadership that values uniqueness in all employees, just not merely tolerates it but embraces it, influencing other employees to follow in the same suit. The workplace culture should be one that empowers all employees to voice their opinions, encourages open communication, welcomes differences and makes every employee feel appreciated and valued. This inclusion can be achieved through simple initiatives such as flexible work schedules, allowing remote work, and establishing an open-door policy that allows the employees to communicate with their colleagues freely.
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Offer Diversity Training
Diversity training goes a long way in fostering a culture of inclusion. It helps to educate employees on recognizing and understanding their unconscious biases, how they can be a part of the problem, and the role they can play to create a more inclusive work environment. In-depth diversity training might include topics such as culturally competent communication or how to be an ally to different groups and how bias influences everyday decisions. Diversity training will also allow employees to know and align with the company’s diversity and inclusion policies.
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Embrace Workforce Diversity
Whether it’s hiring new employees or promoting within the organization, the selection process should always be geared towards diversity. This is achieved by encouraging qualified candidates of all races, ages, genders, abilities, sexual orientations, and religions to apply. These candidates will come with diverse cultural backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, which will enrich the workplace’s experiences. Positive results experienced are referred to companies’ expansion into new niches, resulting in the company’s growth.
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Promote a Collaborative and Inclusive Workplace
A collaborative and inclusive workplace strive to bring together employee experiences, knowledge, and skills that help solve problems faster and more effectively. Encouraging employees to share ideas and work together will fuel creativity and strategic alignment. This will also lead to team building and employees having more opportunities to share and learn from colleagues’ diverse past work experiences.
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Create an Inclusive Environment
An unreserved environment creates space where employees are free to be themselves and express their thoughts comfortably. Part of creating an inclusive environment is eliminating microaggressions, which can present stumbled growth in an inclusive environment. Contributing factors that are considered part of the microaggression are; publishing inappropriate jokes or graphics, stereotyping, or total disregard to individual and public identity expressions. Establishing clear policies and hosting regular trainings on communication can help break down these barriers.
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Hold Management Accountable
Diversity and inclusion must be modeled from the top, starting with leadership. Leaders must motivate and encourage people to inspire and drive them forward towards inclusion success consistently. They must be responsible for identifying ways to foster diversity in the workplace and hold those who do not support diversity accountable. They should take part in developing the team’s mission statement and value, which will help define, lead and insists on diverse and inclusion-best practices such as regular employee surveys and share your assessments.
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Encourage Employee Resource Groups
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are groups of employees who come together around shared backgrounds, experiences, or identities in the workplace. These groups allow employees to unite and collaborate on programs that lead to the positive impact of the workplace diversity and inclusion. ERGs provide a platform for employees to advance their personal and professional development, expand their organization’s networks, and provide feedback to management. It promotes a positive influence with the rest of the organization, helping to advance and build a diverse and inclusion-based workplace.
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Be Willing to Endeavor Through Discomfort
Creating and promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace may come with some uncomfortable conversations on racism, gender bias, and discriminatory experiences when implementing practices. Be ready for your workforce members to be uncomfortable when discussing such topics, as this is an opportunity to discuss them and take the chance to address the underlying issues properly. Leaders must, therefore, be willing to endure discomfort, encourage respectful communication, and non-defensive listening. Discomfort will pave the way for authentic, fearless conversations and result in finding solutions to separate challenges.
Why is Diversity and Inclusion not only a Person’s Issue?
Diversity and inclusion are key aspects of achieving an organization’s goal. Inarguably, diversity in business brings added value to companies by enabling companies to access alternative approaches, viewpoints, and solutions. The real key to this success is that it must be embraced by everyone involved, employees and management alike. Companies that foster diversity and inclusion in the workplace tend to have greater financial returns, enhanced innovation, better insights into constructing deeper relationships with partners and clients, a sound and loyal employee base, and an ideal representation concerning clients. This is why diversity and inclusion are not personal issues; it is a business matter.
Conclusion
Diversity and inclusion are critical aspects of any business success; it brings a worldview that reflects how companies address the challenges and opportunities that are present in today’s world. The rewards with fostering equality and inclusion in your workplace go way beyond the limits of the organization’s gains. Our workplaces are an essential part of society, and initiating diverse and inclusive measures can encourage a positive domino effect outside the workplace. The steps we take today can help build a better society and a brighter future. The tips mentioned above are not exhaustive, but they reflect the best practices that will support the promotion of inclusion and diversity. We are confident that with the best practices in adopting an inclusive and diverse culture in the workplace, the workplace will improve for the better.