Inclusion in the workplace isn’t just an ideal, it’s the expectation for most employees whether they belong to an equity-seeking group or not. Witnessing even unintentional bias, stigma or discrimination can have negative effects on employees. Inclusion can be critical to attracting and keeping talent. It’s linked to organizational reputation and can impact the bottom line by improving outcomes and avoiding litigation. Failure to provide an inclusive work environment can also be a Potential legal concern. Yet, how to create and maintain an inclusive work environment may not be clear for some leaders today.
Equity-seeking groups are those that are denied equal access to employment, education, and other opportunities. At work, this could include little or no representation in upper management and little or no ability to influence decisions at work.
Inclusion is driven by the behaviours, words and actions of you, others in management, and coworkers. It’s also driven by policies and procedures which are part of the organizational approach.
Inclusion efforts are intended to instill a sense of belonging in every employee. It can improve commitment, performance, motivation and well-being.
Below are some of the strategies for inclusive leadership for managers, supervisors and team leaders. We also provide links to additional resources for those who wish to go deeper into assessing or addressing inclusion at work. Many of the suggestions are aimed directly at you as a leader. Some are to help you help your team become more inclusive, because you can’t do this on your own. It takes a concerted effort by each stakeholder.
Strategies and resources
Review the following and choose those strategies that feel most relevant and useful for you now.
Reflect on your leadership approach
Explore the questions in Are you an inclusive leader? to help you consider what you might be unaware of, or what you could do differently.
- Lead by example. The first strategy for inclusive leadership is to be a role model who speaks in an inclusive way, is respectful and supportive and who acknowledges and values differences. Be someone who isn’t afraid to admit to and take responsibility for making a mistake.
- Earn trust. If you don't feel you have the trust of all your employees, or you want to continue to build and maintain trust, review Building trust for leaders.
- Check your bias. We all have implicit bias. We all can prevent it from having a negative impact on others. Performance management, recognition, reward and promotion are tied to inclusion efforts. Learn how supportive performance management makes a difference and how to avoid bias in your decision-making and discussions with employees.
- Tied to performance management is how we provide feedback and how we recognize the achievements of employees. Are we doing it equitably, or does our implicit bias mean we are more likely to feel, speak and react more positively to those who are like us? Ask about and honour the preferences that each employee has for receiving both feedback and recognition.
Reflect on team interactions
- Create safe spaces. By supporting everyone to speak up and interact in a safe and respectful way, we increase inclusion and psychological safety. Encourage curiosity instead of judgment and listening to understand instead of to critique. Once you have taught this to your team members, make sure everyone understands how to address negative behaviours at work. Include how to respond to interrupting, sarcasm, disrespectful body language or facial expressions, and comments or jokes that disrespect any individual or group.
- Develop awareness. Review the information found in Implicit bias. Facilitate the workshop or team activities on this topic with your peers, colleagues or team. These reflection activities can help us understand that we often have no idea what others have gone through in their lives, and little idea of what they are experiencing in their lives today.
- Co-create a team agreement. Work with your employees to uncover the difference between perception and intention, the assumptions we might make about the motives of others and how we can co-create a team agreement to reduce or eliminate these misunderstandings and to ensure that all members, including the leader, are respectfully held accountable. Intimidation, bullying or even very subtle microaggressions can have a profound effect on an employee’s performance and well-being. Often the impact is not intended, but this does not usually lessen the damaging outcomes.
- If you have some staff who work remotely and some who work on-site, review the information in Hybrid teams. The tips and strategies found here can help you improve inclusion, even when some are on the worksite and others aren’t.
- Assess to support continual improvement. Send the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment to those who report to you. It can help you understand how your team experiences your leadership support, interactions among team members and individuals’ sense of inclusion on the team. This assessment will also provide you with relevant resources, tools and strategies to take positive action.
Reflect on individual circumstances
- Recognize employee concerns. There are circumstances that can make employees more vulnerable to subtle bias at work. This can include mental health concerns such as depression or anxiety, working in isolation, conflict at work, being a newcomer to the country or even to the job role, or going through any life stressor. Using the process found in Developing an employee plan can help you support work success, even when these circumstances exist.
- Co-create a plan. Ask employees how you can support them to be successful at work. Take time to get to know their learning and communication styles and their particular needs and preferences. Meet these needs where you can, and be transparent in explaining when you’re not able to. In Developing employee plans for leaders. you can find more strategies and resources to help you with this.
- Use supportive language. Sometimes it can be difficult to find the words to say when someone is struggling. Supportive conversation library, offers guidance and suggested wording to help you and your team consider effective ways to approach someone. There are many other tips and strategies for communicating with emotional employees.
Inclusion and psychological safety
Inclusion is an integral part of a psychologically safe work environment. Inclusion isn’t an approach that’s only used when someone complains or is obviously struggling with stigma. If you are an inclusive leader for everyone, all of the time, it will contribute to your team's overall success as well as your own.
This doesn’t mean treating everyone the same. It means getting to know your employees and what best supports them to do a good job in a safe working environment. Being clear about expectations and having the same measures of success for each employee in a similar role also supports inclusivity.
The goal is to create an environment where each person is supported to do their best every day. Doing their best on a bad day when their health, emotional state or circumstances are being challenged, may look different than doing their best on a good day. If their energy and focus is supported at work by a sense of belonging and the ability to be authentic, then every day can be one in which they can meet their potential for that day.
Evaluate your initiatives
Good intentions do not necessarily ensure equity and inclusion. By defining clear and measurable goals, you can determine the level of success of the initiatives taken.
Set up a comparison group
A “control group” is what researchers call those with similar characteristics and experiences but who do not receive the intervention. Of course you should be inclusive with all employees, all of the time. But interventions intended to improve awareness or change behaviours could be evaluated in this way.
By measuring both those who are benefiting from your initiative and those who are not, you are able to determine if the results are indeed due to the initiative, or possibly some other source.
For example, if you had an initiative to improve inclusion and your participants reported a huge increase in feelings of belonging, you may assume that your initiative was a success. If you had a control group who also reported increases in the feeling of belonging, you would have to wonder if it might have been due to another factor. This could be team building exercises, the resolution of conflict, a new leader, or changes in organizational policy.
Narrow your scope
Sometimes we aim too high or wide, and as a result are not able to measure significant improvement.
For instance, rather than a broad aim like "Create an inclusive culture," opt for specific objectives like "Reduce gender and racial bias in hiring."
Establish success criteria
For example, if your goal is to increase diversity among new employees, you might choose to measure the diversity of not only your final hires but also the total applicant pool and candidates who were interviewed.
Instead of a vague objective like "Support skill development of employees from marginalized groups," focus on specific targets such as "Increase proficiency in project management by 20% within six months for this group."
Reflection
Did your initiative (or something else) make a difference? How do you know?
If it was successful, you should feel confident scaling up the initiative and introducing it to other teams.
If not, look at your measurement criteria for clues about what you could do differently, and experiment with either a brand new initiative or a modification to the one you just did. Continual improvement is ongoing.
Additional resources
- Evidence-based actions for inclusion. These actions to improve inclusion can be implemented with minimal monetary investment from the organization. They’ll take dedicated time and focus to hold employees accountable to working together in inclusive ways.
- Canadian Centre for Diversity and Inclusion (CCDI) resources. This page has many low-cost or no-cost training solutions.
- You may also like to explore the CCDI Leader Talks podcast.
- • Considering diversity, equity and inclusion at work can feel tricky, but it has many rewards for businesses and people. You can learn about success stories from various industries put together by the CCDI.
- Psychologically safe leader assessment. This free resource helps leaders become aware of the impact they can have on the psychological health and safety of employees at work. It helps leaders improve communication, social intelligence, fairness and problem-solving.
- The six signature traits of inclusive leadership: Thriving in a diverse new world. Diversity of markets, customers, ideas, and talent is driving the need for inclusion to be a leadership characteristic. This article outlines six attributes of leaders who display the ability to embrace individual differences and use them for a competitive advantage.