7 Inclusive Culture Guidelines

I recently interviewed 6 representatives from diversity & inclusion leading corporations. The interviewees were asked what are their key recommendations to foster an inclusive culture. These recommendations were developed into a short list of thought leadership points for developing an inclusive environment. What would you add to the list?

1. Embed diversity and inclusion into your core values
2. Develop internal key messaging to reflect the core values
3. Make it open and easy for everyone to participate and offer ideas
4. Make resources easily and readily available
5. Encourage employees to volunteer or be a part of the groups/organizations that may exist within the company so that they may meet people out of their own business units/departments
6. Build in accountabilities by building in objectives and performance measurements in the evaluations
7. Focus not on retention, but on success

Defining Diversity

I recently interviewed 6 representatives of major corporations in the United States that are openly dedicated to diversity and inclusion. I was curious to know how they personally defined diversity. As you read, consider how you might define diversity...share below!

In an interview with representatives from leading inclusive corporations in the U.S., I asked them to define, in their own words what does diversity and inclusion mean to them. The findings revealed that the participant’s descriptions included four common dimensions: actuality, customer representation, holistic culture and inclusion. Actuality is the actual characteristics of differences. The actuality dimension of diversity was described in terms of ideas, preferences, backgrounds, racial/ethnic origins, sexual orientations, as well as physical and intellectual disabilities. The customer representation dimension is defined as the ability to synthesize differences to meet customer interests. It described diversity as the opportunity to drive solutions to clients that are holistic in scope and that allow the company to approach customers with various interests. In addition, the customer representation dimension described diversity as the opportunity that reflects every possible difference that may impact the solution. The holistic culture dimension described diversity as an ability-focused environment that celebrates the difference between core values and day-to-day employee engagement. The holistic culture dimension was described by multiple participants as something that is embedded so deeply, it’s just assumed to be a part of business culture. The inclusion dimension described the actions taken to include individuals with differences; in particular, it is the leveraging of differences to foster high performance and produce better business results. It’s the act of establishing the necessary processes and attitudes to ensure that employees can accomplish success.

As a result, a summation of diversity in the workforce that incorporates all the interviewee input is as follows:

Diversity is the holistic empowerment of differences, leveraging all possible perspectives to produce high performance in the development of solutions that meet customer interests.