Rethinking inclusivity

Advita was recently on the Another Door podcast talking about belonging, inclusivity and her brilliant annual conference ‘Unleashing your inner rebel’.

Embedding diversity and inclusion into the organisations culture is something that can’t happen overnight. To see change and achieve the outcomes needed, diversity and inclusion have to be baked into the organisation, in other words, "the way we do things here."

If organisations don't demonstrate inclusive behaviours and create environments where people can thrive, then colleagues are very likely to say it's tokenistic and performative – no matter how many emails or events you host that say you're committed to building a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Being inclusive is a must-have. Research conducted by McKinsey in 2018 showed that businesses that had a healthy balance of women to men were 21% more likely to outperform their competitors, rising to 33% for companies that had Black and ethnic minority employees.

Even with such strong data which proves the benefit of having an inclusive culture, many organisations still struggle to take appropriate action. Diversity does equal representation, but if you don't have inclusion, you can't drive innovation, encourage participation or even attract diverse talent, which means business growth won't happen.

How can you personally increase your awareness of the lived experiences of people who are different to you or different to the majority? We have to be willing to stretch ourselves to think outside of our comfort zones.

Have you considered people with disabilities or diverse ethnic backgrounds or socioeconomic status? It’s important that we consider the unique needs of every stakeholder, write objectives that hold us to account and produce content that looks, sounds and feels.

We need to build listening into our communication plans not just for measurement but to engage with colleagues on a human level.

It’s important to recognise that we all see and experience the world in different ways and therefore our seasoned practices, jargon or injokes could be isolating for others.

You may need to challenge the way things have been done before. Have gentle (or sometimes fairly stern!) conversations with people around the use of language they’ve adopted over time. Lead through authenticity and be open about your own journey of diversifying your learning and listening.