Human Capital Management, Leadership

Tips: What You Can Do to Maximize Inclusion in the Workplace

Twana Harris / February 26, 2018

In the current social climate, it’s important not to lose what you’ve worked hard to gain. Stand Your Ground – Messaging:

Reinforce the Organizational Commitment to Inclusion and Employee Engagement
Reinforce the Organizational Core Competencies (e.g. Integrity, Respect, etc.)
Reinforce the importance/value of all Employees
Be Honest about What’s Not Working; Call it out appropriately and be intolerant of “excluding behaviors” (disrespect, bullying, racial/gender slurs, harassment, discrimination, inequity)

Keep Your Focus regardless of the Social Climate

Ensure a Healthy Organization: Check your practices and processes for inclusion.
Cultivate Cultural Intelligence: At all levels of the organization build the capability to understand, communicate and interact with everyone.
Create Psychological Safety: Allow employees to express their ideas and opinions openly and take risks without fear of negative repercussion.
Foster Belongingness. Employees need to be able to connect their own identity to the organization’s intrinsic identity to feel that they belong.
Encourage Authenticity: Conformity can stifle employee performance. Make it safe for people to contribute and progress at work without surrendering who they really are.

Reminder – Our Behavior:

Social and Cultural impact: Everyone has biases, preferences.
Many of these biases are unknown to us – they’re based in past experiences.
We all use heuristics (rules of thumb) to deal with cognitive overload; careful of stereotyping (positive and negative).

Reminder – Manage Your Own Biases:

Acknowledge biases (great and small).
Understand yourself and how you make decisions about people
Set-up a check-and-balance for yourself; second guess yourself or check-in with a colleague.

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