There is no denying that a diverse workforce (in terms of race, age, nationality, religion, gender, and sexual orientation) can bring new perspectives and viewpoints to the firm. Both components help companies develop excellent new products and innovative ways to facilitate customers.
The recent report from the Top 5 Diversity Workplace Statistics demonstrates the advantages of diversity and inclusion. Some of them include better decisions, higher revenue, more innovation, and a higher rate of employee retention. Not only this, but a company with diverse and inclusive cultures also has a higher job acceptance rate when they make offers to competent candidates.
Therefore, many companies are looking for practical ways to embrace initiatives, tools, and policies that can help them increase the levels of diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
Here we have listed a few ways companies and organizations can use to support and promote diversity and inclusion in the work culture.
Ways to Promote Diversity and Inclusion
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Be Vigilant of Unconscious Bias
Building awareness is undeniably the most important step towards change. Educating workers and helping them understand how their unconscious bias can undermine efforts to embed diversity and inclusion.
It is essential for companies to not only build awareness or address bias but also for leaders and managers to review, analyze, and question their own personal assumptions and biases.
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Conduct Diversity and Inclusion Training
Diversity and inclusion training can play an important role in helping employees understand what cultural differences are and how they impact people’s performance at work. It covers everything from communication styles, concepts of time to conflict dealing, and self-identity. Companies should offer diversity training, which is optional as they are more effective as compared to when they are mandatory.
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Communicate the Significance of Managing Biased Behaviors
While building awareness is your first step, employees and workers need training and relevant tools that can provide guidance and direction on necessary actions to move forward.
Joelle Emerson, in her Harvard Business Review, states that defensive behavior is one of the common concerns associated with diversity and inclusion training. Companies must design effective training to reduce defensive behaviors and explain to people that it is a common phenomenon.
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Mix Up Teams
Companies can design activities that encourage diverse cross-section talent to participate by mixing them up with other coworkers is another great way to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Moreover, it allows improved perspectives that can spur creativity in teams.
If a team in your office is homogeneous, make sure to invite guests with different cultural backgrounds, gender, or age, to put in on the initiative.
Bottom Line
All in all, becoming diverse and inclusive in the workplace should not be a trend, but it must be a standard. The given ideas are excellent to make a workplace more welcoming towards a diverse workforce and inclusive culture.
