How to Implement Inclusive Practices in the Workplace
An inclusive workplace is a work environment where every employee feels valued and respected. It is a workplace that welcomes and supports employees, regardless of their differences. In an inclusive work culture, employees are considered an integral part of the organisation where it is believed that differences in backgrounds and life experiences are a strength and not a weakness.
However, passive acceptance is not enough. Organisations need to actively work towards creating inclusive workplaces. They need to create strategies to address unconscious and conscious biases to foster inclusion in every aspect of the work environment. This goal can be attained by learning how to implement inclusive practices in the workplace.
Why is an inclusive workplace important
Creating inclusive workplaces offers multiple benefits. Here’s why an inclusive workplace should be the top priority for your business:
- Better employee satisfaction and engagement: Inclusive workplaces tend to create greater levels of employee satisfaction and engagement, resulting in enhanced creativity, better decision-making, and improved productivity.
- Innovation boost: Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace allows organisations to leverage greater innovation. Employees feel comfortable sharing ideas and views freely to enhance brainstorming processes.
- Talent retention: Companies that have inclusive workplaces and policies tend to attract better talent. Since employees feel satisfied at such organisations, the retention rate for top talent is also high.
- Reputation: Creating inclusive workplaces free of biases enhances a company’s reputation and brand value as well.
Ways to implement inclusive practices in the workplace
Here’s how you can implement inclusive practices in the workplace:
Establish leadership commitment
The leadership of your organisation must demonstrate a commitment to creating an inclusive workplace. Leaders of the organisation must articulate their vision for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and outline how this vision is going to be integrated into the company culture. To demonstrate commitment to inclusive practices, the leadership has to hold themselves accountable for DEI practices, allocate budgets for DEI initiatives, and set clear diversity goals.
Recruit and hire with diversity in mind
Inclusive practices must be implemented right at the beginning of an employee’s journey in the workplace. This means introducing inclusive practices in the hiring process. Organisations can redesign their recruitment processes to hire talent from diverse backgrounds. Blind resume screening is one way to foster inclusive hiring. Recruiters can use AI tools to blindly screen resumes, removing any identifying information like name, gender, or ethnicity to eliminate bias from the hiring process. Similarly, revising job descriptions to eliminate unconscious bias can also help promote inclusivity in the hiring process. For instance, instead of setting rigid criteria like ‘Fluency in English’, companies can emphasise skills like ‘Excellent communication skills’.
Conduct bias training and awareness programmes
Whether we like it or not, unconscious biases often impact hiring, promotions, and team dynamics. To create a truly inclusive workplace and counter such biases, all stakeholders must be educated on the key principles of diversity and inclusion. Companies can conduct awareness programmes that help employees identify and tackle these biases. Covering topics like unconscious bias, inclusive language, and cultural competence in the training process can help enhance empathy and sensitivity among employees, creating an inclusive workplace.
Set-up employee resource groups
Setting up employee resource groups or ERGs can help you better implement inclusive policies in the workplace. ERGs are voluntary employee-led groups that provide safe spaces where underrepresented employee groups within the company can share experiences and advocate for change. As a business leader, you must encourage the formation of ERGs and allocate budgets for ERG-led initiatives like skill-building workshops to create more inclusive workplaces. While ERGs offer a platform to employees for advocacy, they also serve as valuable resources for the management, providing them with key insights and recommendations on inclusive initiatives.
Normalise accessibility
A key component of implementing inclusive practices is ensuring that the workplace – both physical and virtual- is easily accessible to all employees. This means installing ramps, braille signage, and ergonomic workstations for employees with disabilities. It also includes introducing screen reader-compatible and auto-caption generating software for employees with sensory disabilities. Boosting accessibility in the workplace also means implementing more inclusive communication techniques like avoiding idioms that non-native speakers may not understand.
Review and adjust policies
Reviewing your organisation’s policies and procedures helps you understand if they align with the inclusivity objectives of the company. For instance, you can examine policy areas like recruitment, promotions, benefits, and performance evaluation to see if there are any potential biases. If biases exist, you can revise these policies in tune with your inclusivity and diversity objectives. Other than that, you should also check the effectiveness of your inclusive practices in the workplace with surveys. This will help you understand if the implementation of your inclusive policies is working or if they need further adjustments.
Summing it up
Whether you are a business owner selling products on online marketplaces or the head of an NBFC, building an inclusive workplace is not something you can achieve in a single day. Rather, it is an ongoing journey that requires long-term commitment, resources, and adaptability. Starting off with simple steps like establishing leadership commitment to inclusivity, making changes in the recruitment process to remove biases, normalising accessibility, and holding awareness training programmes can help you take the first steps to an inclusive workplace. Similarly, setting up ERGs and reviewing policies periodically can help you address challenges as they emerge head-on.