Diversity and Inclusion: Know What Works vs What You Think Should Work

What has become one of the biggest challenges for organizations in recent times, especially with Covid-19, is that all of them were forced to stretch above and beyond themselves in order to make sure that all the personnel within their organization felt included. For example, in the organization’s day-to-day activities and important decision-making processes, so that they felt they were still very much a part of the company, irrespective of their remote working scenarios.

Not to mention the struggles faced by human resource management teams who need to focus on their talent acquisition strategies to attract diverse candidates during this period as well.In order to dive deeper into the diversity and inclusion concept, we need to first be able to understand diversity and inclusion separately and then try to see them together as two sides of the same coin.

Any dimension that can be applied in order to differentiate groups and people from one another can be called diversity here. We are focusing particularly on Diversity in a workplace where everyone should feel respected and appreciated no matter their age, gender, ethnicity, religion or educational backgrounds that they may come from.

Each of the employees in an organization brings forth their own set of perspectives, beliefs, thoughts that might be completely different from another. The employers must make sure that this difference in background does not contribute to the employee’s loss/lack of opportunities.

How is inclusion different from diversity?

The efforts of an organization to make sure the recruited employee feels welcomed and also treated equally with others, is called inclusion. The more an employee feels valued for who they are and what they contribute to the organization, the stronger their loyalty towards the organization grows. The happier the employee is, the longer the employee stays. This is one of the core factors to keep the employees motivated and retention up.

Every organization comes with its own set of rules and regulations based on what they think are the best practices. But, it’s also important to stay relevant and up-to-date with the latest trends; you need to change your strategies according to different changes and challenges each year brings with it. This is very true with the challenges that 2020 has brought upon the entire planet.So, stay focused on the solutions to the diversity challenge rather than the failures that it has brought forth in the past decades, with major social and political changes especially during the trade wars up until recently.

So, what actually works?

Collecting data and analysing diversity trends over time has been one of the key ways that Diversity and Inclusion research enables us to design our future approach/strategies and projections. But, looking to the past need not be the only resource we use. In fact, 2021 is teaching us that we need to stay true and relevant to the present, as the trends change every week.

Another major factor is the workplace complaints about discrimination and harassment.Fifty percent of the time, the employees who complain about discrimination harassment end up facing employment challenges in their career. Of the fifty percent who have not complained some may have chosen not to do so for the fear of facing backlash. So clearly something is not working.

Trying to deploy various complaint systems could be one of the solutions, but not an end to the problem. It is also important to make sure to involve the managers of various departments from the very beginning in the whole process. There is no point in keeping the managers unaware of what is happening in the background for an entire year and expect them to magically start being conscious of the employees under them and their day-to-day problems.