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Inclusion: the importance of a comprehensive approach
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Change
Inclusion has numerous benefits: for employees, the company, and society. The more diverse and balanced your workforce, the stronger it will be. By bringing together different profiles, you create a breeding ground for innovation and performance.
How on earth do you start?
"All well and good," I hear you thinking. "But how do I get started?" Unfortunately, there's no clear-cut guide. After all, an inclusion policy must be tailored to the company, the current workforce, and the talent you want to attract. But a few tips can help you develop a policy tailored to your organization.
In any case, be aware of unconscious biases. Everyone views the world or a given situation from their own perspective. So keep in mind that a policy or certain action points may not be interpreted or experienced in the same way by everyone.
When developing an inclusion policy, it's best to establish a (diversity) team comprised of stakeholders from various levels of the organization, including management, HR, and HR Business Partners. It's best to start by assessing the situation before taking action. Map the current situation and paint a picture of diversity within the organization. This can be achieved through process analyses and qualitative research.
- Where are you today?
- How diverse is your organization?
- What are you already doing to promote inclusion?
You can also collect data to determine your performance on specific parameters, such as the gender distribution in certain sectors. Gather feedback from current employees and certain minority groups to determine what questions or challenges they face regarding diversity and inclusion; this can be done through in-depth interviews or surveys.
Gather all the feedback and try to understand the different perspectives as best as possible. Then define what inclusion and diversity mean for your company, where you want to go, and communicate the benefits.
From roadmap to action plan
Once the vision is clear, you can develop a roadmap for the coming years. To foster anchoring and support throughout the organization, it's important that representatives from the various levels, departments, and domains are involved from the outset.
This roadmap should not be a static document; there should be room for evaluation and adjustments.
- Define your why.
- Ensure your vision is anchored in your purpose and corporate culture, and that the added value of inclusion is incorporated into a concrete business story.
- Define principles and concrete actions for the coming year.
- Schedule evaluation moments and determine which parameters or results you will evaluate.
Formulate the concrete steps into a clear, multidimensional action plan that effectively strives for inclusion. You can also draw on external expertise from specific representative organizations for this purpose.
The importance of involvement
Inclusion concerns everyone and must be embedded in the organization. Therefore, it's crucial to involve everyone in the search for solutions. This means not just top-down or bottom-up approaches; both approaches must be willing to challenge each other. Governance is essential for making important policy decisions, but a solid foundation is also needed for a practical, inclusive work culture. HR Business Partners—as SPOCs—play a crucial role, both in implementing initiatives and in providing feedback from the field.
Does everything always go smoothly?
Absolutely not. That's why a learning culture and an open environment where management and colleagues are genuinely there for each other and where everyone is treated equally (regardless of ethnicity, age, or gender) are fundamental building blocks for an inclusion policy. So, regularly evaluate where you stand, how employees feel, and be willing to adjust your policies and actions where necessary.
