One of the trickiest aspects of any business is promoting diversity and inclusion in the workplace, especially if you don’t know where to start. You see, for anyone designing a diversity strategy from scratch, it certainly can seem daunting, given that there are steps you must take at every level of your organization. Let no one lie to you that you can fix the diversity and inclusion problem at a go – it’s a long-term commitment, which you must take seriously if you are to succeed. Having said that, here are a number of steps to get you started on your strategy;

Listen to your team – if you are looking to drive real change within your organization, the best place to start would be to listen to your team and get feedback with regards to how inclusive they feel your company culture really is. These crucial insights should help you kick start your diversity and inclusion efforts and implement positive changes. To do this, you can send a survey to your employees, and give them the option to respond anonymously. Essentially, you want the employees to voice their opinions on matters to do with inclusivity without the fear of being ignored or judged. Moving forward, maybe you can develop an open-door policy, where you can be able to listen to thoughts and ideas from within your organization.

Lead from the top – if you are serious about promoting diversity and inclusion, start promoting it right from the top, you know, at the executive level. This involves ensuring that your leadership team is diverse enough, and if not, you need to consider why that’s the case. Have you provided enough opportunities for all your employees to progress? Are there training development programs? Also, does your workforce feel empowered by the leadership in place? The leadership team is the best bet to guarantee that diversity and inclusion efforts are driven throughout the workplace. Without the leadership leading by example, any efforts made might be as good as ‘dead’ even before they start.

Look at your policies – how about you take this opportunity to strengthen your existing policies, especially the ones to do with discrimination, and most importantly, ensure that those changes are effectively communicated to the entire workforce. Remember that such changes should be embedded within the heart of the company, rather than written words on a document. I mean, to make real strides in promoting your diversity and inclusion efforts, you have to think of a serious cultural change.

Overhaul your recruitment process – greater diversity starts with hiring. Now, you have to assess every aspect of your recruitment aspect, starting from the way you advertise, to the likelihood of unconscious bias in selecting and interviewing the candidates. You can try something like anonymizing applications on your recruitment technology to reduce bias and also report your equal opportunities data and more.

Final thought

As diversity, equity and inclusion always seem to elude many companies, it is important to note that they play an important role in the overall success of the business. So, it’s not an option! You have to ensure that’s it’s achieved.