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Five Strategies To Create A Culture Of Inclusion

Imagine you are the only woman in an office. You are in a mid- to senior-level role. You are surrounded by men. You work hard to have your voice heard, and you strive to create opportunities for everyone to succeed. You may feel like you are making strides, and you may feel lonely.

By now, organizations understand the creative and financial benefits of hiring for diversity. In former Citigroup CFO Sally Krawchek's SHRM article, “Diversity can Improve Business Results," she calls diversity of thought the antidote to groupthink, and argues that organizations with diverse leadership achieve higher results, greater client focus and greater innovation.

Once you hire for diversity, how do you embrace the new talent into an organization? How do you make these employees feel welcome and integrated in the team? You need to have user-friendly onboarding systems and a high level of touch as your new hires settle in. Most of all, you need to create a culture of inclusion. Here are five ways to achieve just that.

1. Commit With Purpose

In order to succeed at anything, you need to make a commitment. Leadership needs to create a clear purpose statement declaring their commitment to a culture of inclusion. Your purpose statement should state the what, who, how and why. Communicate and re-communicate this purpose enterprise-wide. Include FAQs to engage everyone with the purpose and how it benefits them individually, as team members and as an organization. Use graphics to show what an inclusive culture looks like at your organization.

2. Meeting Change

If the same people are in the same room all the time, you will yield the same results. Rotate who runs meetings; chances are you will end up with different people at the table. Actively mix up the routine to include more insights. Be sure to include a diverse group of people in meetings to inspire new approaches and ideas, and encourage healthy debate. Develop a monthly brainstorm session at the same time each month. Give everyone a chance to facilitate the brainstorm, to visibly demonstrate how bringing different people with different voices to the table can drive solutions to complex problems.

3. Leadership Matters

All leaders should model inclusive behavior and live the commitment. Leaders should actively be open to engaging with all staff, and deliberately include voices from different backgrounds and perspectives. Create and honor a zero-tolerance policy for disrespectful and un-inclusive behavior. Leaders should commit to promoting diverse employees, and ensure the leadership team reflects a culture of inclusion. Your leadership team should represent different backgrounds and, therefore, the voices of your employees and customers. Inclusion is not merely an HR mandate; it’s a leadership imperative. Leadership needs to visibly and authentically live the purpose.

4. Acknowledge The Biases

My friend Kristen Pressner, the Global Head of Human Resources for Roche Diagnostics, shares a story of acknowledging her own bias in her popular TEDx talk, “Are you biased? I am.” She encourages curiosity to recognize the “shortcuts” that happen in our minds -- the ones we aren’t even aware of, which sometimes do not represent who we really are or who we want to be. Kristen shares a fast, free and impactful approach to test ourselves for unconscious bias: Mentally flip the person with whom you are dealing with someone else to test for potential bias. If it feels wrong or weird to you, then you know it’s your unconscious bias coming to the surface. With that (now conscious) awareness, you are free to decide if it's something you want to address.

We all have biases, and it’s important to acknowledge them so behavioral tendencies can be headed off at the pass. Make a safe place for everyone to look in their full-length mirror and recognize their own biases so they can work on eliminating them. This can be as holistic as hosting training and workshops, and as personal as articulating and owning them one on one. Articulate how shifting the behavior will lead to better results. Recognizing one’s own biases is a great level set; everyone has them and can support each other in breaking them.

5. Embrace The Differences

Disrupting the norm poses challenges. There is safety in doing things the same way, with the same people, the way it has always been done. Use case studies and reward systems to show how unique approaches add value to the team. Acknowledge and recognize great ideas, wherever they come from. Celebrate and communicate with your employees how diversity and inclusion have impacted creativity, engagement and results. Make room for different religious celebrations, and encourage staff to share their cultural heritage with others. Actively create groups that support and connect employees through their shared backgrounds. Mentor specific groups within your organization to empower their ability to be catalysts through sponsorship.

Your organization is only as valuable as the talent it retains and attracts. This is why we are all charged with delivering a great employee experience. When you actively create and cultivate a culture of inclusion, you are decreasing turnover, increasing organic teamwork, decreasing loneliness, increasing connected culture and improving the employee experience for all. If you begin now to embody the change you want to see reflected in the world around you, you can start today.