Top tips for creating a culture of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI)
Creating a diverse and inclusive culture remains at the top of the business agenda for many companies. According to a report by McKinsey in 2020, companies that invest in DEI outperform their less diverse counterparts and create more engaged teams, which is a crucial factor when it comes to employee retention. Here we look at top tips for creating a culture of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).
Your workforce should be representative of society and cognitively diverse; giving you access to a wide range of talent to help you build a more productive team – that’s quicker at solving problems.
Here’s our top tips to help your business create a culture with DEI in mind:
Understand where you are currently and where you can improve
Unconscious bias happens when we favour or discriminate against people because of influences, such as our background, experience, and environmental conditions, without being aware of it. But unconscious bias can have a significant impact on people-related decisions at work. Understanding what it is and how your company can mitigate it will help you address practices that may not have been considered previously.
The CIPD has an Inclusion Health Checker tool that can help you reflect on your current inclusion practices, but further ways to garner feedback include having conversations with your employees, using existing employee engagement data, and creating surveys to understand where room lies to improve.
Embed Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the top
Your leadership team plays a key role in filtering down essential messages and driving your company culture. Training senior teams to understand current challenges to DEI, and how the business plans to tackle them will ensure that one clear message is filtered throughout your organisation.
Use inclusive language
The global workforce is becoming increasingly diverse, and leaders need to be willing to demonstrate this inclusivity from the get-go. Inclusive language recognises that word choices can be used intentionally or unintentionally to include or exclude others. Using inclusive language is essential to help people who have been historically marginalised to feel included.
Deloitte’s The Power of Inclusive Language report shares some great top tips and guidelines to keep in mind.
Be transparent about the data you collect
Latest research shows genuine enthusiasm among British and Irish workers to contribute to diversity, equity and inclusion programmes by providing personal information. But organisations have neglected to build the trust needed to gather that sensitive data which a lack of communication and transparency has primarily driven. Companies should provide clear explanations of how any data will be used, including its need for it, and how it will support and promote inclusivity for all.
Becoming a more diverse and inclusive company is an ongoing commitment, but one that will strengthen your business and ensure it is fit for the future. Speak to a member of the hr inspire team today to see how we can help you.
We hope you found our top tips to create a culture of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) useful!