“We often forget the ‘I’ in the D&I conversation. The challenge is in having a culture where all employees feel included. It’s a major investment to bring talent into your organization, so why bring them in if they’re not happy when they get here? You’ve got to get the inclusion part right.” – Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, SHRM CEO
Inclusion isn’t easy, and it doesn’t magically happen after you’ve hired a diverse workforce. It requires a diligent effort by employers, and it’s critical to engagement and retention. If your diverse mix of employees do not receive fair treatment, or opportunities to participate, collaborate and grow, they will leave.
Inclusive cultures are built on the foundational value that all employees feel valued for how they contribute to the organization’s success. It’s the necessary link to encouraging innovation and remaining competitive in an ever-expanding global marketplace.
While HR has often been the department that manages diversity and inclusion efforts, the commitment to building and maintaining an inclusive culture must start at the top, with a CEO champion, and permeate organizational culture.
In her blog post, 3 Ways to Promote Inclusion in Your Workplace, Namely Senior Director of People Operations Julie Li says that an important component of building inclusiveness is building relationships and that “It’s critical to facilitate relationship building with new hires and their teams. We often focus on the work to be done without taking time to get to know our co-workers as individuals. When we see each other as people and learn to appreciate our similarities and differences, it makes it easier for everyone to thrive.” Li also recommends continuous pulse surveys, new-hire buddy programs and resource/affinity groups as conduits to building stronger relations and inclusiveness.
Organizations can work on being more inclusive to help employees understand unconscious bias. Training can help employees to recognize that everyone has biases and to be more cognizant of their own. It can also shed light on and shape new perspectives on how bias affects not only their co-workers’ ability to develop and thrive in the workplace—but also their own.
How are you increasing inclusion in your organization?
Please join @shrmnextchat at 3:00 p.m. ET on July 25 for #Nextchat with Senior Director of People Operations for Namely Julie Li (@JulieLi8) We’ll chat about how you can make inclusion a foundation for engagement in your organizational culture.
Q1. What parts of Diversity & Inclusion are working—and what parts aren’t—in today’s workplaces?
Q2. How do you know if you have—or don’t have—an inclusive culture at your organization? What are the signs?
Q3. How can you make inclusion a part of your workplace culture so that it happens organically?
Q4. What gets measured gets done. How do you measure inclusion in the workplace?
Q5. What types of questions should be on a workplace inclusion survey?
Q6. What types of training or other HR resources have you used or do you recommend for increasing inclusion in organizations?
Q7. Despite increased Inclusion awareness and training, employers still face continued incidents of employee bias. What are the underlying limitations to Inclusion training programs?
Q8. What do you think the future of Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace will look like?
If you missed this #Nextchat, you can read the RECAP with all the tweets here.
Special Guest: Julie Li is the Senior Director of People Operations at Namely and is responsible for driving an exceptional employee experience by building strong processes around Performance Management, Compensation, Benefits, Learning and Development and Talent Management. Prior to joining Namely, Julie was VP of Global Diversity and Talent Management at Citi. She holds a Bachelor’s of Science from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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