How truly diverse, equal and inclusive is your company? There has been more talk about this issue in the past five years than in the previous 50 but the latest edition of the Inclusion Index, by analytics group Kantar, suggests that in employees’ eyes, companies have made little progress since 2019, before the pandemic. Luckily, there are things companies can do to improve their performance.
1. Ace the truth
Many managing directors know that they are not where they need to be when it comes to building a diverse and inclusive workforce. But they make the mistake of trying to remedy that with individual initiatives - by, for example, supporting pride weeks, celebrating different races’ festivals or events, and organising a seminar on neural diversity. These are all good ideas in themselves but they are not the best place to start.
You have to brace yourself and understand how employees from different genders, ethnicities, LGBT+ identities, demographic groups, social backgrounds and those with disabilities (mental and physical) regard your workplace. No matter how grim that feedback might be, at least you know where you really are and what you need to prioritise to improve.
You might even be pleasantly surprised - many surveys show that staff do recognise their bosses are trying to address the issue: Kantar’s study shows that 71% of employees felt their company was making an effort but almost half (46%) felt that more needed to be done. The fact that one in four employees from ethnic minorities reported that they had been made to feel uncomfortable at work is compelling evidence that businesses need to act sooner rather than later.
2. Don’t cherry pick participants
Because many managers are uneasy about their company’s performance on diversity and inclusion - and, quite possibly, their own - at the beginning of the process, they may steer activities away from employees with strong views on the topic, particularly those who have made critical remarks or complaints in the past. This approach is doomed to be counterproductive. What you really need, at this stage, is to get all the bad news at once. And these staff may be the very ones you need to lead a full and frank discussion around the issue, your performance and the company’s culture. That way you will be embracing your fiercest critics and not fuelling their resentment.
3. Use data evidence - quantitative if you can
The best way to measure your progress - and share that convincingly with employees - is to audit where you are and set targets. For smaller businesses, that might sound daunting but it is, for example, relatively simple to measure employee engagement across the workforce which tells you if you are really moving the dial.
4. Don’t delegate the issue
If you’re large enough, you can assign most of the responsibility for diversity, equality and inclusion to a senior manager. This will be about as useful as thinking you can achieve net zero emissions simply by appointing a head of sustainability (or, even worse, giving that title to someone whose in-tray is already overloaded). Your staff will want to see you, as managing director, setting the example. And if they think you are paying lip service, your programme will do more harm than good.
5. Recognise the complexity
In some national economies - Mexico, for example - the diversity and inclusion agenda is comparatively straightforward. Companies have made great strides by focusing on gender and ethnicity. In many more established economies - particularly Canada, the UK and the US - employers find themselves having to ensure that staff who identify themselves as asexual, non-binary or transgender. That is challenging and, if you want guidance, you could do worse than look to such bodies as Stonewall. What you can’t do is go through the motions while filing this aspect of the issue in a compartment of your brain labelled ‘too difficult’.
6. Don’t overlook disability
There is political momentum behind the need to act on gender, ethnicity and LGBT+ but Kantar’s survey suggests that the minority who feel most excluded at work are disabled employees, around half of whom believed that their career progress was being hampered by senior colleagues. That is a truly appalling finding and should give every managing director pause for thought.
7. Build diversity, equality and inclusion into your employer brand
Most private companies consider branding exclusively in terms of how they present themselves to their customers. But how you brand yourself to future employees is increasingly important - especially in a labour market where, according to various government estimates, there are around one million jobs left unfilled in this country. (Few recruitment experts expect the present labour shortage to ease significantly in the short to medium term.)
If your business looks, from the outside, about as diverse and inclusive as the Bullingdon Club, the private all-male dining club for Oxford University toffs like David Cameron, Boris Johnson and George Osborne, how are you going to attract the best and the brightest from different backgrounds? Or indeed, build a rapport with customers with different experiences? This is why so many experts say that companies need to focus on their culture. One often overlooked aspect of diversity and inclusion is the way good work is recognised and rewarded. More than half of women reported to Kantar that they had seen colleagues take sole credit for successes created through teamwork.
8. Think systemically
Putting a programme of initiatives at the core of your diversity and inclusion agenda would have been welcomed before the pandemic, and now staff are clamouring for more. According to that Kantar survey, they want to see systemic change - and by that they mean a more diverse and inclusive leadership, a different approach to recruitment and fairer attitude to pay and conditions. (The government estimates that white men earn 6.1% more an hour in the UK than men from ethnic minorities, that men earn 5.45% more than women and disabled staff are typically paid 13.8% less than their colleagues.)
Rising employee’ expectations are another good reason to use data, rather than relying on anecdotal evidence which more cynical staff may see as misleadingly selective.
9. Don’t indulge in tokenism
Appointing one woman, member of an ethnic minority, or individual from an LGBT+ background to the board is not going to convince staff you are seriously committed to making progress. It may have the unintended consequence of holding employees back - if women at a certain level in your company feel that they are all fighting for one senior management role allocated to their gender, they are less likely to collaborate and cooperate.
Kantar’s study shows that younger staff - particularly Generation Z and younger Millennials - are more likely to feel passionately about diversity and inclusion and if they look around the workplace and see, for example, that the next two levels in the company hierarchy are all white men, they are less likely to be reassured by your data showing that staff from minorities are more engaged at work than they were before the programme started. And no matter how good the intentions behind individual DEI events - workshops, weeks etc - staff might see these as box-ticking tokenism if that is the only tangible evidence of your commitment. As one black, female employee in the media put it: “I’m glad my employer is marking black history month but it’s not one of the top ten things I’d like to see change to make this a truly diverse and inclusive company.”
10. Don’t give up
You will find yourself facing conflicting pressures - after all, you still have to run the business - and the pace of change will be too slow for some and too fast for others. But you don’t really have an alternative. Kantar estimates that more than one in three staff from different backgrounds are actively considering changing jobs if their employer doesn’t buck up on diversity, equality and inclusion. Factor in the expense - and the hassle - of replacing such employees and you can see why your commitment makes sound business sense.