In the modern world, there has been an incredibly valuable push to make society a more accepting place for everyone. The business sector is no exception to this as many companies strive to ensure that employees from every walk of life are represented and treated with complete and total fairness and equality. This isn’t something that’s always easy to do but it’s absolutely worth it if you want the best possible results from your employees and your business as a whole. With that in mind, here are some things that you can do to ensure a diverse and inclusive workplace.
Get to know your employees
If you want to make sure that you’re encouraging inclusivity in your business, the most important thing that you need to do is to get to know the people working in it. If you don’t know your employees, you’re never going to know what their needs are and how you can best meet those needs. What religious and cultural practices do your employees partake in and how can you accommodate them? Are any employees disabled and require additional support?
These kinds of questions should be tackled right at the start of the recruitment process. When hiring employees, don’t just think about what they can do for your business, but think about what you and your business can do to support them as much as possible.
We reached out to diversity and employee relations expert, Jason Greer. He shared, “if you want to build an inclusive workplace then go directly to your employees and get their perspectives on what the ideal workplace would look like for them. Mine the hidden ideas and perspectives of your employees and you may find that they hold the key to creating effective DEI practicing for your organization.”
Provide opportunities for feedback and communication
While you might have a valuable bird’s-eye view of the company as a whole, you’re just one person and there’s a good chance that there will be things that you miss when it comes to diversity and inclusion. We’re all somewhat limited by our own experiences. That’s why it’s so important to provide easy opportunities for feedback from your employees. Different perspectives are the only way that you’re going to be able to truly understand what it is that your inclusive workforce needs.
Hold yourself accountable
Making sure that you’re encouraging diversity and inclusion in all aspects of your business is, of course, essential. You need to make sure that you have a zero-tolerance policy on discrimination of any kind among your employees. But it’s also important to hold yourself to account when it comes to mistakes that you might make. Making your workplace inclusive is something that needs to come from the top down. If you’re not practicing what you preach then that’s just going to lead to more and more problems and it will make it impossible to create the kind of diverse and inclusive environment that is essential for a great business.
These things can often be a challenge and it would be unrealistic to suggest that there will never be any instances of you making a mistake and getting something wrong. However, inclusion and diversity are simply too important not to put the time and effort into getting things right and making sure that you course correct when something goes wrong.
Your inclusive workplace should be a welcoming and comfortable space for every single person in it, without exception.
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