Nurturing diversity, belonging, and inclusivity in the workplace

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are at the forefront of modern organizations, not just because they are ethical but because they provide optimum business outcomes.

Evolving customer expectations, increasing awareness, investor interest, and competition for talent are major driving forces for companies to focus on workplace diversity. Employees hold their employers accountable for enforcing DEI and are unsatisfied with the increasing gap between DEI commitment and impact.

An inclusive culture is a workplace environment that welcomes, appreciates, and values employees from diverse backgrounds and characteristics. It celebrates their differences and identifies unique opportunities to respect and motivate them.

When leaders respect employees’ opinions irrespective of gender, age, race, religion, physical ability, socio-economic status, and orientation, employees innovate freely.

Establishing inclusive workplace culture involves ensuring the psychological safety of employees and reinforcing positive employee experiences.

In an inclusive workplace, employees are encouraged to be authentic without judgment and marginalization. It helps build diverse teams with empowered and supported employees who utilize their potential to help organizations reach their objectives.

Organizations need different types of analytical workers, creative minds, conceptual thinkers, and detail-oriented individuals to drive productivity and new ideas. This can shape the workplace culture to support employees with different personalities, backgrounds, and cultures. The key characteristics of an inclusive workplace are:

• Diversity and inclusion throughout different organizational roles.
• Employee evaluation based on measurable behavior and competencies.
• Transparent company procedures and policies.
• Consistent employee interaction.
• A learning culture including robust mentoring programs.
• Comprehensive and accessible conflict resolution for every employee.
• Alignment of DEI initiatives with core mission and values.
• Implementation of best practices to adapt to the dynamic landscape.

Understanding the difference between diversity and inclusion is necessary to create a safe workplace for employees.

Diversity is a set of traits and characteristics that differentiate one person from another. This can be ensured by hiring people from different backgrounds with an unbiased hiring process. Employees must be hired based on their skills and performance, irrespective of gender, race, nationality, identity, and sexual orientation.

Inclusion in the workplace refers to the recognition of the presence, perspectives, and contributions of diverse employees. Every employee must be valued equally, and such policies must be integrated into the environment.

A diverse and inclusive environment makes every employee feel valued and supported, which increases employee engagement. Equity ensures that all employees are given the same career growth opportunities based on performance.

The best practices for implementing DEI initiatives for success are:

1. Understand the root causes

The first step to promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace is to understand challenges and their root causes. Interacting with employees and getting their feedback and opinions on what is important helps address diversity challenges.

• Organize a broad assessment with a companywide survey to understand the employee experience.
• Complete deep data analysis to identify problem areas and root causes.
• Continue to get feedback and input from the target population.
• Prioritize problem areas based on feasibility and urgency.

2. Define success with measurable goals

Improving organization-wide diversity and inclusion involves establishing an ongoing process with clearly defined measurable goals.

• Establish short-term and long-term goals.
• Create a cross-functional and diverse team that understands organizational needs and strengths.
• Clearly define organization-wide changes and inform employees of the purpose.
• Connect the changes to the end goal and organizational values.
• Encourage employees to understand what is in it for them and clearly define what to expect.

3. Develop deep commitment of executive leaders

Employees expect top leaders to be accountable for diversity initiatives and a supportive environment. Leaders are most likely to contribute to driving diversity and encouraging inclusion when they deeply understand how their behavior, biases, and values affect various stakeholders inside and outside the organization.

• Formally incorporate DEI goals into annual planning.
• Secure time and resources to drive such changes.
• Assume responsibility for outcomes.
• Check if inclusive leadership is being implemented at all levels.
• Self-assessments and multi-rater feedback can be used to gauge the level of inclusive leadership.
• Lead the desired change beginning with senior leaders and the CEO.
• Allocate sufficient budget, capabilities, and expertise to execute a diversity and inclusion plan.
• Establish a cross-functional team with experts and external partnerships to oversee this plan’s execution.

4. Design a context-based solution

With a concrete understanding of challenges and an execution plan, organizations must create impactful and context-based solutions. These changes must be easy to integrate into the day-to-day activities.

• Create scalable solutions to address the identified root causes.
• Integrate process changes to create a sustainable positive impact on the culture.
• Provide necessary tools for employees to be a part of the change.
• Encourage employees and hold them accountable for changes through necessary reskilling and upskilling for performance improvement.

5. Create a safe space

Employees should feel safe to discuss any discrimination that they have faced either personally or observed the same happen to others.

• Create a diversity and inclusion committee or community to handle DEI grievances.
• Ensure that the importance of DEI is cascaded top-down through training or regulation conversations on diversity initiated by the top leaders.

6. Track progress and apply course correction

Effective solutions are impactful only with continuous monitoring and tracking. Developing insights from such measures help organizations take corrective actions and increase the impact of diversity solutions.

• Define applicable diversity and inclusion KPIs with a clearly defined measurement strategy.
• Track metrics and milestones at regular intervals.
• Create scorecards to track progress toward higher-level aspiration.
• Monitor whether root causes are resolved.
• Measure outcomes and check those against goals.
• Collect both qualitative and quantitative data from the target population.
• Use the data to derive accurate insights and adjust the solution accordingly.

Organizations face challenges in prioritizing DEI initiatives because they need to be aligned with company objectives. The unprecedented shift in the work environment in recent years has further created turmoil in the workplace environment. Therefore, organizations must invest in creating an open-minded hiring and retention policy to eliminate conscious and unconscious bias, contributing to a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Mercer | Mettl offers a suite of assessments and hackathons for hiring and learning and development. The assessments are designed to promote workplace diversity, inclusivity, and equity. With a scientific approach and data-backed questions, these tests promote an unbiased evaluation for optimum hiring and L&D.