We are all different, which is great because we are all unique. Without diversity life would be very boring.
Catherine Pulsifer Author of Change Your Life
Each week, at the Rotary Club of Cochrane, a member is asked to speak for one minute on how they have been influenced by one of the aspects of the Rotary Four Way Test.
The Four Way Test:
Of the things we think, say or do
1. Is it the TRUTH?
2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
This week, it was my wife Sue’s turn and she chose to concentrate on the 4th. point: Willit be beneficial to all concerned?
We have just returned from a Rotary Conference in Niagara Falls and the overriding message, coming from the leaders of Rotary is that all Rotary clubs need to focus on increasing membership. This is an area where our club has already introduced initiatives to address the issue.
Another aspect talked about, with regards to membership, is that it must reflect our community. This is certainly something that Sue and the other members of the Membership Committee are looking to address. As she said in her one minute talk, if we can make our club more inclusive and culturally diverse, it can only be beneficial to all concerned.
I believe this applies, not only to Rotary, but to all businesses and organisations. I wanted to find out how organisations go about achieving this and so I went to the HR.com website and found a whitepaper on this very subject, entitled Workplace Diversity and Inclusion: Emerging Awareness andBest Practices Report It is based upon survey of 450+ HR Professionals in Q4 of 2016.
The Introduction states: “Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) continues to be a key focus for organizations, big and small. While attention to the topic appears to be widespread across the market, the motivations that lead organizations toward creating and maturing a D&I program continue to be unique.
The purpose of this study is to better understand why organizations establish D&I programs, how D&I leaders feel about their program’s current performance, and what initiatives are being undertaken to advance their programs. One element that may be driving organizations is a growing awareness that workplace diversity produces bottom-line benefits to organizations committed to inclusion.
We are also beginning to see an emerging landscape around the concepts of diversity and inclusion that is more complex than we might have anticipated.
Some believe that diversity alone is the primary goal, one that solving the issue of diversity doesn’t guarantee an inclusive culture. Diversity is about whom you hire, but inclusiveness is about a work environment of trust and involvement.
Gallup has found that the employee engagement elements most strongly linked to perceptions of inclusiveness are, “someone seems to care about me as a person,” and, “my opinions seem to count” can be measured in terms of workforce demographics. Others believe this point of view leaves out the equally important
topic of inclusiveness. A recent Gallup article, for example, states the following: “Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.” - Mahatma Gandhi”
The paper is wordy and full of statistics and you might like to take a look at it, when you have time. However, for the purposes of this blog, I will share with you a piece from Sharon Florentine Senoir Writer, CIO..com, posted Feb 14, 2019:
Diversity and inclusion 8 best practices for changing your culture.
In it, Florentine quotes Sabrina Clark, associate principal at SYPartners, a consultancy that specializes in organizational transformation.
“A strong diversity and inclusion strategy can help your organization attract top talent and drive innovative results. Here’s how to launch a D&I initiative that works.
Research shows that even just the presence of physical diversity results in better performance and for companies that are data-driven, that extra performance boost can be extremely motivating,” Clark says. “It’s also the fact that companies that lack diversity are being called out publicly, and may even be losing business, not to mention falling behind when it comes to recruiting. Even Google is starting to show signs that their lack of diversity is affecting them.”
As 2018 research from McKinsey shows, greater diversity in the workforce results in greater profitability and value creation. The same holds true at the executive level, as McKinsey found a statistically significant correlation between diverse leadership and better financial performance. Companies in the top quartile for ethnic diversity at the executive level are 33 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile. When it comes to gender diversity, companies in the top quartile are 21 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile, according to McKinsey’s research.
While financial performance is a major driver of D&I strategies, some organizations launching diversity initiatives in the face of government compliance regulations or to address shareholder pressure, Clark says. “In the UK, for instance, companies are required to publish their diversity statistics; there’s also been increasing pressure from shareholders and boards,” she says.
Current employees and potential hires are also raising the stakes, says Jeff Weber, senior vice president of people and places at Instructure. “More and more, when we’re interviewing, candidates are asking what we’re doing about diversity and inclusion. And it’s not just diverse talent themselves, and it’s not just millennials or Generation Z — we’re hearing this from white, straight men in the Midwestern United States.”
Organizations are also realizing that making diversity and inclusion a business imperative will help them avoid tarnishing their reputation, Clark says. “They’re thinking ahead, which is great, about what kind of company they are, who they want to be, and what their legacy will be. It’s going to continue to be important, and the voices demanding it are only going to get louder,” she says.
SY Partners has been initiating these hard conversations and investing in diversity and inclusion right alongside its clients. The following eight best practices for diversity and inclusion guide not just SY Partner’s client consulting, but its own internal business strategies, Clark says.
1. Establish a sense of belonging for everyone
For each individual to bring their best self forward, a sense of belonging must first be established. Having a connection to an organization or group of people that makes you feel you can be yourself not only results in greater engagement and creativity in the workplace, it’s a psychological need.
But these changes take time, and they aren’t always linear, Clark says. “A client once told me that you don’t just fast-forward to belonging. You have to go through the hard work of focusing on diversity and creating that inclusive culture so you can get to belonging,” she says.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, either — that’s why it’s so important to share best practices and be open to trying new things. “The good thing is that as you’re working on diversity, you can also work on inclusion, and vice versa. It’s all interconnected,” Clark says.
2. Empathetic leadership is key
Diversity and inclusion are often treated as a single initiative owned exclusively by HR. But for real change to happen, every individual leader needs to buy into the value of belonging — both intellectually and emotionally. Only when the entire C-suite steps up to own diversity and inclusion will a company’s D&I practices thrive.
“You have to make sure leaders are equipped to make the story their own, feel it within themselves and be able to explain why they care; why it matters, and why it should matter to their direct reports,” Clark says.
Part of this process requires tuning in to empathy; each person remembering a time when they were excluded, shamed, interrupted, and so on, so they can apply those lessons outwardly, she says. “Leaders have to feel it within themselves; then they can identify the relationship with feeling excluded or making others feel excluded. That’s a critical starting point,” Clark says.
3. A top-down approach isn’t enough
Top-down approaches drive compliance, not commitment. From senior leaders to frontline employees, every individual must see and understand their role in company culture. This means identifying differences in employee experience and values across the organization so that change can be made relevant for each person and knowing that lasting change must activate different parts of the system — top down, bottom up, and middle out — in different ways.
4. Quotas don’t automate inclusion
Hiring goals may boost diversity numbers, but this won’t automatically create an inclusive culture. Too often, leaders focus diversity and inclusion efforts disproportionately on the employee pipeline, but the employee experience continues far beyond an offer letter. To retain and nurture top talent, it’s critical to take an honest look at the end-to-end employee experience, with an eye toward creating conditions that promote inclusion on a daily basis and designing ways to measure the impact.
“What you must understand is that this emphasis changes everything,” Clark says. “From sourcing and recruiting to hiring, onboarding, to the daily aspects of work, team-building, culture, from successes and failures, performance reviews, succession planning, mentoring — everything.”
Organizations must adapt their processes to scale diverse and inclusive behaviors. For example, in meetings: Who’s invited? Who gets to speak and how often? Are you leaving out anyone whose input would be valuable?
“You have to look at everything through the lens of, ‘Have I created conditions where every person can contribute in their unique, meaningful way and feel safe and secure doing that?’ and if you find places where that’s not the case, having the courage to admit that and work to change it,” she says.
That also means understanding how your teams work best, and when tension and discord are actually beneficial. “Recognize that sometimes the easy and fast way is not necessarily the right way, and that sometimes teams function best when there is a bit of tension, disagreement, back-and-forth,” she says. “Obviously, you cannot let things devolve into personal attacks, but know the difference between a healthy, stimulating exchange of every person’s ideas and a situation where people are being disrespectful because of who another person is.”
5. Inclusion is ongoing — not one-off training
It isn’t enough to teach employees what it means to be inclusive. Like any form of behavior change, inclusion requires individuals to identify key moments in which to build new habits or “microbehaviors” (daily actions that can be practiced and measured). And when these habits are put into action in an environment that supports honest conversations and healthy tension, real change becomes possible.
“One way to do this is to identify change cohorts within the organization outside of the executive or management level,” Clark says. “Then, you equip them with the skills and information to help them champion change within their departments, teams, working groups. This is much more effective than one-off training sessions which don’t move the needle; you want people to incorporate these ideas and beliefs into their daily lives.”
6. Maximize joy and connection, minimize fear
People are wired to react with fear and distrust when their beliefs are challenged. While fear can be a powerful motivator, it also encourages people to narrow their perspective — the opposite desired effect for creating a more inclusive workplace. Finding ways to frame challenges through a lens of possibility — and elevating the power of shared experiences and storytelling to do so — creates greater potential for positive change.
“Then you can focus on creating moments that continue the momentum,” Clark says. “You need to not only point out where there’s room for improvement, but spotlight the moments of success and celebrate them. One of our clients decided to do a commitment tree; every employee wrote down their personal, individual commitment to diversity and inclusion, and they put those in a very public place so they could see signs of their progress and celebrate those.”
7. Forget ‘fit’ and focus on helping individuals thrive
The norms, power structures, and inequities in society can easily become embedded in an organization — optimizing to hire, train, and reward people who “fit.” Creating a culture where every individual can contribute their full potential requires investigating the systems and processes in your organization to uncover sore spots and blind spots, and then finding ways to reimagine them.
“‘Fit’ can be dangerous, because it can exclude,” Clark says. “You have to first be able to identify and bring to life your organizational values, mission and purpose, and define ‘fit’ so that it adheres to those. You have to define it differently,” she says.
8. Consider your brand
As in any transformation effort, brand and culture are intimately connected. The products and services you put into the world reflect your values — and your biases.
In the journey toward building a more inclusive organization, it’s important to consider the relationship between what’s happening inside and outside your company. What is your brand saying about who you are as a culture? In what ways is your employee base not congruent with your customer base? What experiences are being left out or misunderstood?
“We see the work with diversity and inclusion as a transformation that’s required here,” Clark says. “It’s not just an initiative or a program; it requires investment from the very senior-most folks to the newest person in the door, and it requires real behavior change. It’s about how the entire company operates and the individual ways of working, communicating, contributing and even just being in the world.”
Not only are these issues that need attention in the workplace, but for any organisation that aims to grow and reflect their community at large.
About the Author
Martin Parnell is the Best-Selling author of MARATHON QUEST and RUNNING TO THE EDGE and his final book in the Marathon Trilogy, THE SECRET MARATHON-Empowering women and girls in Afghanistan through sport, was released on October 30th 2018. He speaks on having a “Finish the Race Attitude – Overcoming Obstacles to Achieve Your Full Potential” and has written for, or been covered by CNN, BBC, CBC, The Huffington Post, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Runners World, Men’s Journal, Canadian Business, and Maclean’s.
In a five year period, from 2010 to 2014, Martin completed 10 extreme endurance “Quests” including running 250 marathons in one year and raising $1.3m for the humanitarian organization Right To Play. In 2016 he ran the Marathon of Afghanistan in support of Afghan women and girls running for equality and his film “The Secret Marathon” will be out in the fall of 2019. Find out more about Martin at www.martinparnell.com and see what he can do for you in the long run.
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