4 Steps to Kickstart Your Organisation's Inclusion Journey!

Not sure where to start? Some key tips on driving inclusion in your organisation.

Why Focus on Inclusion?

The business case is clear for organisations to invest in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. But in order to reap these benefits, it's not just about hiring more diverse employees, it's about ensuring that your minority employees have a place at the table.

Ethnically diverse companies and gender diverse companies are 36% and 25% more likely, respectively, to financially outperform (from a total return to shareholders perspective) organisations that are of average diversity in their industry (1)

Companies with above-average total diversity had both 19% higher innovation revenues and 9% higher EBIT margins, on average (2)

During the pandemic, companies with more than 30 percent of board seats occupied by women delivered better year on year revenue than their less-gender-diverse counterparts (3).

McKinsey research defines the key elements of inclusion as: Equality, Openness and Belonging. Their social listening research, on employer reviews posted online, also shows that while organisations are making some strides in sentiment on Diversity: 51% Positive vs 31% negative. Sentiment around Inclusion is much less favourable: 29% Positive vs 61% Negative (4).

Are some organisations going for quick wins to increase the diversity of their workforce without putting inclusion first?

By taking an inclusion first approach to your DEI strategy, you are ensuring that any efforts in diversifying your workforce are effective and sustainable. If companies blindly hire minority employees into their organisation without focusing on inclusion and equity, it then becomes the 'job' of the minority employees to confront bias, behaviours and break down any barriers that exist in your system. It should ALWAYS be the responsibility of the organisation to ensure they are creating an inclusive space and equitable practices, it is NEVER the responsibility of your minority employees to fight to make these changes.

From a financial perspective - focusing on increasing diversity alone without building a solid bedrock of inclusion and equity - is a bit like pouring water into a leaky bucket!

So how do you start?

The Sum 4Ds to Kickstart Inclusion

The Sum 4D Inclusion Cycle is an implementation tool for ensuring that you are driving Inclusion in the right way. It is not a one time thing, as you move through your inclusion journey you will continue to repeat the cycle, as new information comes to light - as you learn more from your employees, build new data or as new DEI approaches emerge.

It's not a clean 'one way street' but it is important that each stage is as complete as you can get it right now before moving on to the next. By having a cadence that is continuously moving, an organisation is able to move forward with 'what they do know' rather than stalling action for fear of 'getting it wrong', with the reassurance that they have the mechanisms in place to continue uncovering and acting on emerging information. If there is one thing I have learned from working with DEI it's that there will NEVER be a time when you will have the full picture, as things are always moving and evolving. If you wait for that day, you will wait forever. So, it's important to work in an agile, collaborative and proactive way.

The Sum 4D inclusion cycle is iterative so you may find yourself jumping back to 'Dialogue' as you 'Develop' to ensure your plans are still aligned to the needs of your people, or you may find yourself jumping back to refining your 'Dream' as you learn more from your 'Dialogue'. You will also find yourself moving from developing knowledge and capability in the early 'Develop' stages to developing new processes, policies, practices and ways of working and each stage will become more richly complex, embedded and defined as you bring more people along the journey with you.

For this article, let's focus on what each stage of the cycle might look like if you are just starting out.

DATA

Even if you don’t yet formally collect inclusion data it is highly likely that some already exists. Data is all around us, it’s amazing when we open our eyes to what inclusion really looks like in practice, how much we can actually see for ourselves. Having said that, it's important to NEVER make assumptions about someone's characteristics, background, preferences or needs.

There are visible indicators of inclusion and exclusion everywhere, but if you haven't proactively done anything to drive inclusion in your workplace you can pretty much guarantee that your 'system' will be built to serve the majority.

Some key places you could start are:

• Engagement data. Even if you don't yet collect demographic data in your survey, your engagement data could tell you a lot about the current climate in the organisation, it can inform you of how easy/difficult it might be to open honest dialogue. Trawl through the comments for any indication of discrimination or exclusion, look at the numbers for trust, fair treatment and career progression. Do you see any patterns? Are there questions missing?

• Other HR Data: Pay gap data, internal promotions, recruitment applications vs hiring, leavers/reasons for leaving, disciplinary/grievances. Is the data telling you anything? What is missing?

• Look at your decision making tables, committees and councils: Who do you see? Are they gender balanced? Are there people of colour? Different levels? Is it the same few faces? Are your social events inclusive? Are there areas of your workplace that are not accessible?

• Look at your internal and external communication, your employer branding and marketing channels - are they inclusive and representative?

• Look outside for credible data to build your business case: What are the financial and commercial benefits of an inclusive workplace? What are the key trends? What are the great organisations doing? What is the potential cost of doing nothing?

• What data is missing?

DREAM

Whether you are the CEO, a passionate Leader or HR Professional it’s important to understand and articulate what is driving you to build an inclusive future. Data and figures are of course paramount in gaining initial commitment, but finding shared purpose is equally as important in sustaining commitment. Being vulnerable is imperative in connecting to the heart and minds of others and to set the conditions for trust and open, unfiltered dialogue.

The DEI journey can be tough and at times, it can feel like you are taking steps backwards, so if people have a compelling reason, beyond the obvious business case, to want to make changes and persevere when the going gets tough it will reap rewards over the long term.

To be clear, when we talk about 'defining the future' here. It's not about building detailed solutions at this early stage, as you need to open dialogue to co-create solutions that deliver on what your existing and future employees need. It's more about defining your commitment or ambition to building an inclusive future for your organisation and your intention for doing so. How everyone should feel coming to work regardless of who they are (ethnicity, gender, LGBTQIA+, disability, neuro-diversity, age, religion, nationality or background etc.) Putting in some upfront effort and setting your intentions clearly will give people reassurance that you mean it and a reason to want to talk.

Some ways you can connect to hearts and minds:

• Understand and articulate your own 'why?' - both rational and emotional

• Build the business case/Get the key decision makers motivated and committed

• Draft a compelling high level vision - key word here is draft as you need to be willing to have it dissected and refined in the dialogue stage

• How does it live and breathe in your company vision and values? - Think not 'what we do' but 'who we are'

DIALOGUE

This approach will depend on your culture. Even in high trust organisations simply asking someone to share their lived experience can be daunting if it’s never been done before. As we have already established, it is NEVER the job of your minority employees to change the status quo. Nor is it your place to speak on behalf of minority groups. So how do you start?

There are two factors that your employees will consider when opening dialogue: consequence and action.

Consequence: Will there be a consequence for speaking up? Will I be perceived as negative or a trouble maker if I am sharing an 'unpopular' or 'uncomfortable' message?

Action: If I open up and share my experiences will anything actually change?

Don't expect that you can simply get people in a room and the conversation starts flowing. Some groups will feel more empowered and comfortable than others and some individuals within those groups will be more vocal than others. To be truly inclusive in this approach, it's important to create multiple channels so people can share both openly and anonymously, both in person or in writing, as a group or 121. Even analysing any nuances in the feedback you receive through your different channels will tell you a lot about your culture. Keep your channels for dialogue open and follow up on progress so that as more and more people see evidence of 'consequence' and 'action' play out, more trust will be built.

Some ways you can build dialogue in the early days:

• Be clear on intentions - why are you asking and what will you will commit do with the information

• Be transparent - highlight gaps, be honest about shortcomings, don't overpromise.

• Be aware of your biases, assumptions, be open-minded and really listen

• Share best practice ideas from other organisations for debate/discussion to test drive what might fit for them (Employee Resource Groups/DEI Committees/Employee Networks)

• Ignite awareness through storytelling. Your employees may not be ready to share their lived experiences but there are lots of fantastic experts you can engage to come in and share theirs. It's about diversifying perspectives and normalising the conversation.

• Blend open discussion with option for 121 follow up and anonymous feedback channels

• Don't take a 'one size fits all' approach

Regardless of budget there are a multitude of options to get started. You could invest in an inclusion survey or speak to your existing engagement survey provider to upgrade to include demographic data or DEI questions. (Be sure to engage a legal partner to seek advice should you want to collect any identifiable sensitive data).

For collecting initial anonymous data, it doesn't have to be complicated, even a simple generic link to a survey monkey or similar tool would suffice at this early stage to give employees a place to share anonymously. What is most important to your employees at this early stage, beyond a fancy 'all singing, all dancing' solution is your clear intention, your commitment and your openness to including them in shaping your journey. So invest your budget and efforts where it really counts!

DEVELOP

At this first 'Develop' stage it's all about building the right behaviours. There are some brilliant models that detail what it means to be an inclusive leader, and some of these capabilities may already exist in your language, manager competencies and training but your organisation is unique.

Including others in the design process is a great place to start. This not only ensures that you know which are most important to your employees, but it also helps you create a common language and set clear expectations. It defines inclusion in practice in your organisation and helps to build a common understanding of how leaders should behave and how employees should expect to be treated.

Define

• Create an open invitation to focus groups/workshops to define your Inclusive Leadership capabilities and the core competencies. You may need to encourage some groups or levels to take part to ensure you have good representation from across the business.

• Don't start with a blank page but equally don't be married to a design. Research some tried and tested Inclusive Leadership competency frameworks to kickstart your discussions and let your attendees 'try them on for size'. Once you have compiled your feedback - pick out the best of the best.

Measure

• Eventually you will want to bake these into your regular feedback and performance cycles but to get an initial measure, it's a good idea to do this anonymously. Using a 360 question format starting 'My manager...'.Will ensure that you can keep it anonymous for everyone and not put a particular manager 'on the spot' as these are brand new ways of working yet to be embedded. Although, you could include some demographic questions to pin point level, department, location etc. so long as this is not going to make anyone identifiable.

Embed

• You are now ready to design and deliver your development. Use your data to pinpoint the key gaps and prioritise these. Test drive your solutions with some of your key contributors so far to gain their feedback.

• It's important to share the findings of your research and gap analysis within your sessions so your leaders are aware of where they are and where they need to be. Where they already demonstrating inclusive leadership behaviours and where they need to focus. Be transparent about what changes you expect your leaders to make, by when and how you will measure success. Welcome feedback to ensure that your programme is delivering what they need to make these changes. Always keep the feedback loop open and refine as you go.

• Blend facilitated group sessions and conversations with coaching and mentoring to ensure that you programmes are inclusive and collective learning is ongoing.

• Start at the top! While leaders are learning together and refining their own behaviours, it is imperative that they are seeing commitment and role modelling of these behaviours from above to sustain their own effort.

To Sum it up!

By following these steps you will have made huge leaps in: defining your ambition and intention, understanding your gaps, opening honest and transparent communication and defining shared success. But, most importantly, you will have done this together with the right people around the table.

As you move to your next turn of the cycle, you will have gained such rich insights from your employees and leaders about what is important to them. You will also have gained some initial insights to pinpoint inequities in your systems, processes and practices and be well on your way to building a detailed action plan going forward. You will have built a climate of trust and openness and have the ingredients of an inclusive strategy with your employees' needs at the core.

If you would like to see how Sum can support you with your inclusion journey, click the 'Get Sum' button above to arrange a confidential, no obligation chat.

References & Links

1. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Lighthouses 2023, McKinsey & Global Parity Alliance. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Parity_Alliance_2023.pdf

2. How and Where Diversity Drives Financial Performance, Boston Consulting Group, Harvard Business Review 2018 https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-and-where-diversity-drives-financial-performance

3. Lessons from the Pandemic - Board Diversity & Performance, Board Ready https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/61d633fd6b59246c2dc62e98/6271a21dc04d2e13529daa84_BoardReady_Report_Final.pdf

4. Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters, McKinsey & Co 2020 https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/diversity%20and%20inclusion/diversity%20wins%20how%20inclusion%20matters/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters-vf.pdf