How to Build an Inclusion Culture at Work
What is an Inclusion Culture?
An inclusion culture is an environment where its members feel welcome, accepted, and respected for who they are, regardless of their differences.
In a culture of inclusion, people feel a strong sense of psychological safety and are empowered to contribute their unique perspectives without fear of discrimination.
The Inclusion Culture Symphony
Creating an inclusive culture in the workplace is like conducting an orchestra. In a symphony, it’s not about each instrument but rather the diversity of sound that belies it’s foundation.
Just as a symphony is enriched by a diverse orchestra, an inclusive culture enhances teamwork, innovation, and creativity. It's a culture where everyone has a seat at the table, and their ideas are not only welcomed but also cherished.
Inclusion is not just a buzzword; it's about fostering an environment where every person, regardless of their background or characteristics, feels valued, respected, and empowered. It's the commitment to creating a workplace where all employees can flourish, knowing that their differences are not just accepted but celebrated.
6 Reasons to Create a Workplace Culture of Inclusion
Creating an atmosphere that promotes equal opportunity and fairness is crucial for various reasons. According to a Gartner study, an inclusive environment can boost team performance by up to 30%. Despite this, only 40% of employees report that their manager actively fosters such inclusivity.
If this alone isn't sufficient motivation to prioritize an inclusive culture, here are six more compelling reasons why cultivating an inclusive company culture is necessary for your organization's success.
Reason #1: Boost Employee Well-Being
In a study conducted by Deloitte and the NYU School of Law involving 1,269 employees in the United States, 61% of respondents revealed that they concealed or minimized aspects of their identity to assimilate. Of these, 74% reported negative repercussions, impacting their job performance and leaving them emotionally drained.
An inclusive work environment eliminates the need for employees to hide parts of their identity, fostering an atmosphere where they can be their authentic selves and feel acknowledged and supported. This, in turn, results in an overall improvement of self-esteem, confidence, and psychological safety.
When organizations prioritize the physical and mental well-being of their employees, the likelihood of experiencing extreme fatigue decreases by 3.1 times. Consequently, there is a 3.2 times higher probability that employees will express a strong intent to stay with the organization.
Reason #2: Reduce Implicit Bias
Inclusive cultures actively address implicit biases. These unconscious biases are assumptions we form about others based on characteristics like skin color, gender, or ethnicity. These biases can translate into discriminatory behavior rooted in prejudices.
Left unaddressed, unconscious biases can contribute to unfair advantages, favoring specific groups in areas like promotions or hiring, ultimately resulting in a homogenous team.
Through initiatives such as raising awareness, implementing training programs, and enforcing policies that outline expected behaviors, organizations can effectively mitigate biases in hiring decisions, performance evaluations, and overall workplace interactions. These proactive efforts create a fair and unbiased work environment.
Reason #3: Challenge Groupthink
Groupthink occurs when individuals within a group suppress their personal opinions to conform and avoid conflict. This tends to happen when opposing views are dismissed or ridiculed, discouraging team members from expressing perspectives that deviate from the group consensus.
Having a workplace where employees feel empowered to share diverse perspectives and challenge established is essential in mitigating groupthink. This is crucial because groupthink can lead to a loss of creativity, innovation, and adaptability to change as evidenced by the challenges faced by companies like Swissair.
For an extended period, Swissair experienced substantial success and financial stability and earned the nickname, “Flying Bank”. However, a sense of overconfidence among the leadership team led to several ill-advised decisions. These decisions included withdrawing from an alliance with other airlines that could have facilitated expansion and restructuring the board of directors.
The CEO eliminated industry experts from the board, only retaining politicians and financial professionals on the board. This left the board with members who share the same background and values.
The consequences of groupthink became evident as Swissair encountered financial difficulties, eventually leading to the declaration of bankruptcy.
Reason #4: Invest in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Inclusion cultures often translate their values into community engagement initiatives. By actively participating in and supporting diverse community projects, organizations can demonstrate a genuine commitment to social responsibility. This commitment, in turn, enhances their reputation and influence in the broader community.
Maintaining a reputation as an organization committed to both social initiatives and the well-being of its employees is crucial for attracting top talent, increasing customer retention and loyalty, and cultivating positive relations with stakeholders.
Visa’s financial inclusion program is an example of CSR. Through this initiative, Visa has made the commitment to provide payment accounts to 500 million people currently without banking services, aiming to increase universal financial access. By facilitating access to the financial system, Visa enables individuals and businesses to utilize secure and convenient payment and financial services, thereby promoting opportunities and strengthening economies.
Reason #5: Facilitate Cross-Generational Collaboration
Inclusive cultures bridge generational gaps by valuing the strengths and perspectives of individuals from different age groups. This facilitates effective collaboration, where younger employees bring technological fluency, while older employees contribute valuable experience and institutional knowledge.
Creating an optimal environment for intergenerational collaboration involves implementing policies that avoid ageism, creating diverse teams, introducing programs like mentorship, and organizing events that promote networking among individuals from different generations.
Reason #6: Promote Continuous Learning
An environment with high psychological safety correlates with elevated levels of knowledge sharing, whereas low psychological safety is inversely associated with knowledge sharing.
Establishing a workplace where employees are free to express their opinions without fear of retaliation and are actively encouraged to engage with individuals from diverse backgrounds requires the cultivation of an inclusive learning culture.
Knowledge sharing is integral to promoting innovation, nurturing a growth mindset, and instilling a commitment to ongoing professional development.
Ways to Create an Inclusion Culture at Work
💪🏿Promote Flexible Work Arrangements
The pandemic has caused 7 in 10 employees to reassess the role of work in their lives. This means that more people are demanding a flexible schedule that allows them to achieve a work-life balance.
Giving employees the autonomy to decide how and where they do their work results in favorable outcomes. According to a Gartner survey, employees with the flexibility to decide their work hours are 2.3 times more likely to achieve higher performance and experience 1.9 times less fatigue.
Offering flexible work arrangements empowers employees to customize their work environment according to their lifestyle and habits. This flexibility allows individuals to maximize productivity during their peak hours or take breaks to attend to personal responsibilities, such as picking up their kids from daycare.
🤔Invest in Emotionally Intelligent Management
Inclusion cannot be achieved without empathy. Empathetic management requires leaders to possess emotional intelligence. This means being able to understand the feelings and perspectives of their employees, approach a problem without making assumptions, and navigate challenging conversations without compromising trust.
From an analysis of 6,731 managers in 38 countries, it was discovered that managers who practiced empathetic leadership were perceived as better performers by their bosses.
With 70% of managers already feeling overwhelmed by their responsibilities, the approach to empathetic leadership should be simple, yet effective.
Firstly, managers should initiate conversations about empathy. While achieving sales targets is crucial, it's equally important to emphasize skills such as understanding, caring for, and developing team members. It can be as simple as checking up on a colleague regarding their project progress and directing them to the right resources if necessary.
An easy habit to practice is being an active listener. Effective managers must be good listeners to interpret the meaning behind what is being communicated. When team members feel genuinely heard, a sense of respect is fostered, leading to increased trust. Active listening should be practiced with employees at all levels of authority, including those on the front lines who can provide insightful feedback beyond the confines of the office.
Lastly, having the right mindset is a great part of embodying empathetic leadership. Managers should practice humility to normalize not knowing. This encourages a culture that makes room for mistakes and encourages growth.
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⚡Facilitate Diverse Interactions
Facilitate random coffee pairings between employees from different departments or teams. This informal networking encourages connections that might not happen organically.
With remote or hybrid working arrangements, establishing new connections becomes more challenging. Spontaneous encounters in the office or in-person networking events are increasingly rare. To address this, companies like Ernst & Young (EY) have turned to technology for innovative solutions.
EY collaborated with Ten Thousand Coffees as their virtual networking partner to help its early talent create connections within the organization.
Ten Thousand Coffees is an all-in-one platform for inclusive mentoring and networking. Its services include automatic matching of employees based on career goals or interests, connecting leaders with groups of employees for office hours, and building virtual communities.
This collaboration has enabled EY to foster employee engagement in the virtual landscape, creating opportunities for meaningful conversations and unique connections between new hires and senior leaders.
💡Increase Workplace Accessibility
Accessibility contributes significantly to an inclusive culture by ensuring that physical spaces, digital platforms, and overall environments are designed to accommodate the diverse needs of individuals, including those with disabilities.
To improve accessibility in the workplace, consider invisible disabilities. Accessibility needs to accommodate both visible and invisible disabilities. Hidden disabilities include a range, from chronic pain to learning disabilities or mental health conditions like depression or ADHD.
Another best practice is to offer accessibility tools. Equip your organization with technology solutions that enhance accessibility, such as closed captioning and live call transcription, available through platforms like Microsoft. Consider other avenues to integrate accessibility into processes. For instance, when offering learning modules, ensure they are available in various formats (video, text, audio) to accommodate different learning styles and disabilities.
Many organizations that have successfully created an inclusive environment for employees with disabilities implement disability awareness training. This is a means of education to boost understanding, sensitivity, and knowledge about disabilities. This training aims to dispel misconceptions, cultivate strategies for becoming allies, and promote the use of inclusive language and actions. It is crucial for fostering a culture of respect, awareness, and inclusivity.
Case Study: Progressive Insurance’s Inclusive Workplace
Progressive secured the top spot on Forbes' America’s Best Employers for Diversity list, determined through a survey of over 45,000 Americans in businesses with over 1,000 employees.
What distinguishes Progressive Insurance and positions it as one of the most highly regarded corporate cultures for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is its practice of supporting its commitment with tangible actions.
To encourage an inclusive culture, Progressive actively engages its workforce in initiatives such as Courageous Conversations and the DEI Speakers Bureau. These forums, led by facilitators, guide work teams in exploring biases, challenging stereotypes, and developing inclusive behaviors. Over the past year alone, Progressive conducted more than 260 sessions, creating an open environment that encourages individuals to freely express their opinions.
The organization places a strong emphasis on community building through its 9 employee resource groups (ERGs) with an impressive 43% employee participation rate. These ERGs play a crucial role in fostering a sense of belonging and connection among employees, which is increasingly important as the workforce continues to grow.
Reflecting its commitment to diversity, Progressive's hiring practices align closely with the demographic makeup of the U.S. adult population. Notably, 39% of its workforce comprises people of color (POC), mirroring the 38% POC representation in the U.S. adult population. This alignment shows Progressive's dedication to maintaining a diverse and representative workforce.
Additional Inclusion Culture Resources
Organizational development consultant Fred Falker delivers a compelling TED Talk introducing the Distance Paradigm.
This a fresh perspective on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and a practical approach to fostering connections with others.
Employer Assistance and Resource Network on Disability Inclusion (EARN) offers a detailed 7-step framework providing guidance on creating a disability-inclusive workplace.
📑21 point checklist to create an inclusive brand by GoHire
Explore this comprehensive checklist encompassing all aspects to consider when elevating your organization's DEI efforts.
