Earlier, I wrote a post about Google’s Project Aristotle and
how its results show how the modern era of diversity and inclusion in the
workplace helps to create and maintain high functioning groups. The value a diverse and inclusive workforce
brings cannot be overstated. As I discussed in my prior post:
The
value of diversity and inclusion efforts has been recognized and reinforced by current
research. For example, a 2015 Bersin by
Deloitte study found that companies that link diversity and inclusion
efforts to business goals statistically outperform their peers. And
Millennials, the up and coming labor force, place a high value on working
for companies with a strong focus on diversity initiatives and inclusive
environments. Simply put, diversity and
inclusion make for successful workplaces, both in the present moment and
looking towards the future.
Given the importance of diversity and inclusion in the
workplace, what steps can you take to ensure you are making the most of your
employee base? How can you make sure you
have the best group of diverse thinkers and problems solvers to maximize the
functionality of your team? What are
some steps you can take in order to ensure your workplace is making the most of
this modern era of diversity and inclusion?
As with most things in life, including preparing for a
mediation, getting clear on what your goals are is the first step. In the case of diversity and inclusion in the
workplace, are you concerned with addressing an existing lack of diversity, addressing
challenges a diverse workforce presents to group functionality, or both?
If a lack of existing diversity is your primary concern,
begin by taking a clear look at your workplace in order to identify any “diversity
lapses,” and then determine the changes you want to make to address these
lapses. For example, is there a
significant gender imbalance in your workplace, or a dearth of employees of
color? Do you want your workplace to
have wider range of ages of your employees to better leverage different life
experiences? How about different
educational backgrounds in order to encourage different ways to think about the
problems your workplace is designed to address?
This analysis will tell you what your diversity and inclusion goals are.
Once you have your goals in mind, then you can start to
implement ways to achieve that diversity goal in your workplace. Take a look at your pipeline, where are your
employees coming from? If all of your
hiring is done through your management’s LinkedIn network, then you may end up
with a homogeneous applicant pool. Think
of ways you can redesign your hiring procedure to broaden your applicant
pool. Can you recruit more extensively
geographically, can you deliberately try to broaden your management’s networks,
can you actively post job openings directed at applicants from different academic
backgrounds? There are many
possibilities for broadening your pipeline of talented applicants to ensure
greater diversity and all the benefits that brings to your workplace.
On a related note, if your workplace shows diversity at
entry level positions, but looks increasingly homogeneous as you move up through
the ranks, you can use the same process as revising your hiring and recruitment
techniques in order to make your internal promotion processes more effective
for increasing diversity throughout the workplace. A
great example of this also comes to us from Google. An analysis of their promotion program showed
what in order to be promoted, employees had to volunteer to be considered. For a whole host of societal reasons, it was
much easier for men to volunteer than women, thus leading to a severe gender
imbalance in applications for promotion management. When Google realized the problem, the
requirement to volunteer was replaced with a direct reminder to all employees
to apply. This simple change yielded a
dramatic uptick in women applicants for management positions.
What if your workplace analysis shows that while the
workforce is diverse in gender, race, thought, background, age, etc., the issue
is bringing people together to successfully work in groups? In that case, your workplace analysis should
begin with a workplace audit. Check in
with all the employees to get a full understanding of the issues at hand. Is there lack of clarity regarding goals,
objectives or responsibilities? Is
everyone on the same page regarding decision making? Do people feel trusted, valued and safe to bring their whole self to the table?
Once you have identified any challenges, you can then work with
management and employees to think about new ways to promote more effective
workplace relationships. This can take
the form of coaching, the creation or redesign of policies and systems, or
training about effective communication.
And these are all things that a qualified workplace mediator can help
you deal with.
When you are dealing with diversity and inclusion in the
workplace, the key lesson from Google’s Project Aristotle remains this: do
people feel valued for everything they have to bring to the workplace? If not, what steps can we take to make that
the new office norm?
