How to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

How to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

If you’re one of the many organisations focusing on promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace this year, it can be tricky to know where to start.

Developing a diversity strategy can seem daunting, especially if you’re building it from scratch, as there are steps to take at every level of your organisation. Promoting diversity and inclusion also isn’t a quick fix – it’s a long-term commitment so it’s important to be taken seriously.

Read more: 5 Things to Consider in Your EDI Strategy

However, there are a number of steps you can take to get started when building out your strategy.

What steps can you take to promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace?

Listen to your team

To drive real change in your organisation, you need a starting point. The best place to start is to listen to your team and obtain feedback about how inclusive they feel your company culture currently is. This insight should be fed back to whoever is leading your diversity and inclusion efforts and used as a starting point to plan and implement positive changes.

You might choose to initially do this by sending an employee survey, giving your colleagues the option of responding anonymously. However, moving forwards you could consider offering a safe space where your employees’ voices can be heard without fear of being ignored or judged.

This could take the form of weekly or monthly meetings where employees can safely air any thoughts or concerns surrounding your company culture. Alternatively, your management team could adopt an ‘open door policy’ (if they don’t already) to listen to any thoughts or ideas from individuals within your organisation.

Lead from the top

If your senior team is serious about promoting diversity and inclusion in your workplace, they should lead by example and consider studying their own behaviours.

This could include looking at the diversity of your leadership team; if it’s not representative of your overall workforce then consider why. Are there enough opportunities for everyone within your organisation to progress? Do you have training and development programmes? Do your employees feel empowered by your leadership team?

Getting buy-in from your leadership team on diversity and inclusion initiatives is vital to driving change within your workplace.

Look at your policies

Take this opportunity to strengthen your existing policies surrounding discrimination and, most importantly, make sure any changes are communicated effectively to your whole organisation.

However, make sure your policies don’t exist just to ‘tick boxes’. If you’re really looking to make strides with promoting your diversity and inclusion efforts, you should think of it as a cultural change which should be embedded in the heart of your organisation, rather than just words written in a document.

Overhaul your recruitment processes

Greater diversity starts with recruitment. Assess every aspect of your hiring, from how you’re advertising your jobs to the likelihood of unconscious bias within your assessment and interview processes.

Recruitment technology, such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), can help you to boost your diversity efforts by anonymising applications to reduce bias, report on your equal opportunities data and more.

 

Looking to improve the diversity of your hiring process? Book a demo of Webrecruit’s own Applicant Tracking System, Webrecruit ATS by clicking the image below.

 

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