Positive Progress: 5 Tips for Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace
Workplace diversity and inclusion are crucial elements of a happy team. However, these factors can also improve your bottom line and make it easier to find investors, partners, and customers. Most people prefer to work with business owners who care about people, and having a mix of experiences brings new ideas to the table. Having said that, promoting inclusivity and diversity within your business isn’t always the easiest thing to do. To help you get started, we’ve gathered a list of tips for promoting inclusion in the workplace:
Lay a Solid Foundation
A diverse and inclusive team starts with a solid foundation. The unfortunate truth is that you’ll run into far more roadblocks to your goals if you haven’t put the work in at ground level. The good news is that there are many programs available to help you establish or build upon your workplace diversity and inclusion, and they provide proven strategies and roadmaps for making the changes you need to make.
Be Open to Remote Work
The next step is to become more flexible in how (and where) your employees get their jobs done. It has been proven that remote work is far more inclusive than forcing employees to be in the office all the time. It allows those who have extra needs to tailor their environment to their unique requirements. Studies have also shown that women with children and people of color also benefit from this type of arrangement.
Make Sure You’ve Got the Right Leadership Team
Your leadership team is going to be in charge of making decisions within your business. For this reason, it is important to ensure that you have a diverse and inclusive group of leaders if you wish to foster this type of environment within your workforce. Unconscious bias is a very real barrier to building properly inclusive spaces, and since it’s unintentional, it can be particularly hard to combat. The good news is that by having a diverse leadership team, you’ll be in a better position to avoid unconscious bias.
Ask for Employee Feedback
Ask your employees for feedback about their experiences and the working conditions in your company. While there will be certain things that must be done a particular way in order to maintain everybody’s health and safety, there are probably plenty of other processes that can be switched up to help your employees feel better within the workplace. While this may take some time and effort to implement, positivity breeds further positivity and improvement, so the upgrades should be well worth the cost.
Strive for Constant Improvement
Finally, even if you already have a robust diversity strategy, it is important to strive for constant improvement. Inclusive environments don’t magically appear. Rather, they’re deliberately built and take effort to maintain. Thankfully, the rewards will pay dividends both for your business and your staff. They should also help you create a positive feedback loop that leads to further advancements in the right direction – as long as you’re willing to put in the work.
Workplace diversity isn’t just a noble goal – it’s also a legal requirement in many parts of the world. The good news is that by being compliant with these rules and regulations, you’re helping to make the world a better place while also reaping benefits for your business. The tips above are a good starting place, but they’re not the only ways that you can improve diversity and inclusion within your business. So once you’ve put these ideas into practice, it’s worth speaking with a specialist in the field to see how else you can improve.