Diversity Without Inclusion Is a Missed Opportunity: How Employees Can Speak Up

31 10 2023

Image: nanzeeba/Adobe Stock
By Riya Anne Polcastro from Triple Pundit • Reposted: October 30, 2023

Toxic workplaces have the power to do a lot of harm. Employees feel the effects mentally and physically, and productivity suffers as a result. Naturally, turnover is high in toxic work environments, and employers struggle to retain top talent. But discrimination, harassment and bullying are preventable. It’s up to employers to foster healthier workplaces that truly value diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), but employees can also find their voice to speak up and hold leaders accountable. 

TriplePundit spoke with Chiquita Hall-Jackson, an attorney and expert in employment law, about what can be done to promote employee wellness and inclusion, and what employees can do if they witness discrimination or mistreatment at work.

Diversity without inclusion leads to missed opportunities

“A lot of companies have been focusing on diversifying their staff and their workforce,” Hall-Jackson said. “However, they’re not being inclusive, and that’s where a lot of opportunities have been missed.” It’s not enough to just hire a diverse staff. By ignoring inclusion, many employers miss out on the benefits that come with a diverse workforce. After all, employees have to feel included to be comfortable sharing their ideas and talents.

Employees need to feel like they have a voice in the workplace and can offer input, she said. “They also want to contribute and show that their talents are recognized by the company.”

Chiquita Hall-Jackson smiles at the camera - attorney, employment law expert and inclusion advocate
Attorney Chiquita Hall-Jackson, who is an expert in employment law, founded the Blow the Whistle Law social justice movement that encourages workers to speak up when they witness wrongdoing in the workplace. (Image courtesy of Chiquita Hall-Jackson)
Inclusion through bonding experiences

Hall-Jackson sees bonding experiences during the workday as a simple step employers can take to foster employee wellness and connection. These group activities could include mixers, cooking lessons, exercise classes, and paint and sip classes. “Different activities that you used to do with your girlfriends or a bunch of friends, corporate is now evolving as bonding activities,” she said.

These experiences cultivate inclusion, employee happiness and a sense of belonging, she said. “A lot of people just don’t feel like they belong in the workplace, and ultimately it affects their mental health.” Offering bonding experiences can help workers who don’t feel valued or engaged to feel included. 

Resources for reporting workplace issues

A strong social support system in the workplace is the backbone of inclusion and employee well-being, Hall-Jackson said. That means fostering an environment of respect and fair treatment, supporting an open-door policy for communication between workers and supervisors, and creating a human resources policy against discrimination and harassment. 

When it comes to reporting discrimination, harassment and bullying, employees feel safest if there is a third-party phone number they can call instead of reporting to internal human resources personnel, she said. The option to remain anonymous can also protect them from retaliation. 

Likewise, she encourages employers to use a third party to handle issues that arise while safeguarding employee privacy — for example, requests for leave related to medical issues and disabilities. She gave the example of a client whose supervisor left the mental health records she submitted for a leave request on a desk where anyone walking by could see the employee’s personal, protected health information. Utilizing a third party to process these records would have protected the employee from the embarrassment of sharing such personal information with her supervisor and exposing it to others in the office.

A budding movement rallies workers to speak up about wrongdoing

Hall-Jackson wants employees to be able to use their voices to stick up for what’s right and intervene when they witness harmful behavior like microaggressions and discrimination at work. 

“They might even see their supervisors yelling and picking on a particular individual or group of individuals,” she said. “If you don’t feel comfortable speaking up in that moment, maybe immediately after — I’ll say no more than 24 hours after that particular meeting, or interaction — pull that person to the side and say, ‘Hey, I witnessed what happened. I don’t think that’s fair. I think you owe XYZ an apology. And that’s not how we do things around here.’” Letting people know you’re against this type of behavior and don’t think it’s good for the company draws a clear boundary and establishes that you won’t look the other way, she said. 

Hall-Jackson founded Blow the Whistle Law to facilitate more speaking up. The “social justice and accountability movement” aims to institute workers’ rights clinics in at least 10 law schools across the U.S. to train law students to disrupt wrongdoing and prioritize diversity in the workplace, she said. 

“It was sparked after being triggered by the Black Lives Matter movement back in 2020,” Hall-Jackson said. “When I, personally, had the belief that if the officers who were with Derek Chauvin had intervened that day when he had his knee on George Floyd’s neck, that his life could have been saved.”

The limits of employment law

The Blow the Whistle Law movement holds monthly webinars around workplace issues. One of the most popular is about identifying discrimination and how to navigate a hostile work environment. It’s important that employees can distinguish discrimination and harassment from workplace bullying, because perpetrators are emboldened when employees rush to file lawsuits or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims for bullying and, inevitably, lose those claims, she said. 

“Unfortunately, there are no workplace bullying laws in place,” she said. And unless the mistreatment is related to a protected class, “what they’re describing is not discrimination. It is simply workplace bullying or some kind of petty offense that’s not covered under the law.”

This is why it’s all the more important for employers to value their employees’ well-being by proactively creating inclusive work environments and safe ways for employees to report mistreatment. Simultaneously, bonding activities can help co-workers feel more inclined to speak up for one another. Ultimately, it is up to employers to ensure their workplaces are not toxic, but employees can help protect each other by educating themselves on employment law and speaking up when they see mistreatment. 

Riya Anne Polcastro is an author, photographer and adventurer based out of the Pacific Northwest. To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/diversity-without-inclusion/786906


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Want a Better Company Culture? Make More Space for DEI

24 10 2023

Members of an employee resource group (ERG) at the intelligent power management company Eaton strike a pose while volunteering in their communities. ERGs are just one way for companies to create intentional spaces for diversity and inclusion. (Image: Eaton)

By Amy Brown from Triple Pundit • Reposted: October 24, 2023

For all the strategies, frameworks, and tools that companies adopt to improve diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in their workplaces, success often comes down to conversation. The employers doing DEI the best are those creating intentional spaces that allow people to share their authentic selves safely and openly.

That something this simple should be so powerful — people of diverse backgrounds sitting around a discussion circle, or members of a group with similar backgrounds finding support in shared experiences — can be surprising. Yet making the time for DEI within the regular workday is one of the most effective solutions to truly change company culture.

Corporate culture, after all, is essentially the way employees interact with each other, the spaces they feel empowered to occupy at work, and the way they feel they’re given permission to spend their time and energy. Conversations among colleagues, especially around what makes us different and what connects us, are a way to enhance belonging, and to attract and retain talent. 

People are less likely to stick around if they don’t feel welcomed and included or worry a situation is stacked against them based on some aspect of their identity or background. In fact, a 2022 study published in the MIT Sloan Management Review found that a toxic corporate culture is by far the strongest predictor of industry-adjusted attrition and is 10 times more important than compensation in predicting turnover.

Confronting bias in a comfortable setting


Research bears out that it is the day-to-day interactions among colleagues that spur greater feelings of inclusion, especially when the organization creates dedicated time and space for people to come together under the lens of DEI. In a 2021 survey of 1,115 North American organizational leaders conducted by the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), 82 percent of respondents from leader companies facilitated the shift to a more equitable and inclusive culture by encouraging and supporting open conversations about DEI among employees, compared with 47 percent of laggards. 

Research also shows that allyship — or support from people outside a marginalized group — is key to creating inclusive workplaces. Poornima Luthra, diversity expert, associate professor at the Copenhagen Business School and author of “The Art of Active Allyship,” championed allyship in corporate culture in a 2022 article for the Harvard Business Review. In particular, she recommended companies host “bias compass circles” that bring together trusted colleagues who are equally committed to inclusion to be vulnerable with one another about checking their biases.

“What we need to make our workplaces truly inclusive is a clear set of practical behaviors that we can embed into our day-to-day working lives,” she wrote. “Allyship is active, not passive. It’s about lifting others and creating platforms for them so that their voices are heard.”

DEI discussion circles foster belonging

The intelligent power management company Eaton is among those embracing allyship groups. In the company’s Ally Advocacy Circles, groups of about 10 people get together to talk about bias, how it shows up in the workplace and what to do about it. The conversations take place over about a month, held twice a year. 

“We support these spaces by providing talking points and scenarios, but most importantly, it allows people to have a common language around diversity and inclusion, to see where they may have had a blind spot,” said Nicole Crews, director of global inclusion and diversity at Eaton.

“We are not afraid to ask the question: ‘What about our culture is getting in the way of everyone feeling like they belong?’ It is then up to us as an organization to listen to the answers, and to do the work to implement the practices to achieve a more inclusive workplace.”

One example is Women Adding Value at Eaton (WAVE), which takes the form of small, gender-balanced conversations intended to raise awareness about the most common types of bias against women, moderated by a woman and a man. At the end of the sessions, which last only an hour, a moderator will ask, “What commitment will you make to mitigate bias?” WAVE has held more than 300 such sessions involving over 2,000 colleagues, Eaton shared in the Profiles in Diversity Journal earlier this year.

“Through Ally Advocacy Circles, we’ve seen men and women discuss concrete ways they can support and advocate for each other in the workplace,” Crews said. “Participation keeps growing as we continue to provide more equitable access to these experiences.”

One piece sign that the approach may be working are the results of the company’s employee inclusion index score. Eaton is committed to achieve a score of 80 percent or higher in the biannual survey. The company conducted a pulse survey in 2022, an in-between year, and over half of the approximately 85,000 global workforce participated. The score rose from 74.8 percent to 75.6 percent in 2022, and 84 percent of employees said they’re proud to work at Eaton. 

Shared spaces as a springboard for impact

Along with the power of allyship and advocacy, affinity groups designed as shared spaces for colleagues from marginalized communities can create opportunities for connection where none existed before.

For consulting and investing firm Evolution, this takes the form of Gay Men’s Leadership Circles, a peer group of directors, managers, and C-suite leaders who meet to support one other and share ideas about how to make their organizations more inclusive, TriplePundit reported earlier this year.

“We find it feels safer and more comfortable for members of these circles to have these conversations among people with whom they share a common identity,” said Peter Gandolfo, partner at Evolution and one of the co-creators of the Gay Men’s Leadership Circles. “What’s really powerful is to see that when they get to access their own inner strength — and in particular, get to bring more of themselves to work — it then helps that experience they’re having springboard into all these other things they’re getting to do to support diversity, equity and inclusion throughout their organizations.” 

Many organizations also host employee resource groups (ERGs), voluntary, employee-led groups dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace.

Establishing groups and activities such as ERGs also help to create space for DEI within organizations, as the groups implicitly give employees permission to spend working hours participating in activities tied to DEI — with the understanding that the company values these activities just as much as they do productivity goals and other aspects of operating a business.

In particular, ERGs can “create a sense of community that helps people feel less alone,” said Stuart McCalla, an Evolution managing partner. “People are then better able to focus on their work and on building relationships. Organizations who do this well see a significant reduction in regrettable attrition,” which is when people leave by choice rather than being fired or laid off.

The key is in how one defines “doing it well.” When there’s a gap between what ERGs deliver and what employees actually want, people can feel less included at work, according to research by McKinsey. When employees feel well served by these groups, they experience greater feelings of inclusion, McKinsey’s data showed. 

Another limitation to the effectiveness of intentional spaces like ERGs is when it falls on marginalized groups to lead them, which can be seen as the company pressuring people to do work for free just because they fall into a particular group such as a person of color or someone who is LGBTQ, as 3p has reported.


An invitation, not a mandate

When companies are aware of the possible missteps and continually check in on the effectiveness of these small spaces, it can foster a sense of community that no single corporate policy, workshop or training can do on its own.

“Imagine going to work each day to a place where each part of you is welcome. I think it’s really powerful for a lot of folks,” said McCalla of Evolution.

With an invitation to show up authentically as oneself, courageous conversations can follow, allowing for greater empathy, compassion and understanding. That in itself can become the strongest foundation for an approach to diversity, equity and inclusion that goes beyond the surface and becomes the living expression of a healthy corporate culture.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/company-culture-make-space-dei/785656


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