Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI), including social mobility, has always been important. However, it has emerged as a singularly significant business imperative over the past year, with a heightened awareness of justice and equality pushing organisations to build more inclusive environments. This should be seen as a win-win for employers, with a plethora of research indicating that embracing and promoting DEI is linked to increased organisational performance, employee engagement and staff attraction.
Despite the well-known perks of DEI, attracting diverse talent into some sectors can prove to be challenging, with many organisations struggling to move the dial. In addition, in a talent short environment social mobility, often overlooked and disregarded in regard to DEI, should also be prioritised. While the reasons for this vary from firm to firm, commitment to real change on a longer-term basis is needed in such a talent-challenged environment.
So, how can organisations begin to be more diverse and inclusive? Matthew Rodger, Chief Growth & Commercial Officer at AMS (formerly Alexander Mann Solutions) explains.
Changing company culture
When driving diversity of thought and actions across your organisation, it’s essential to ensure a culture of appropriate behaviour is embedded within the entire workforce, particularly for those making hiring or promotion decisions. Of course, in order to really get authentic buy-in from leaders, this mustn’t be seen as a tick-box exercise or a means of meeting a performance objective. Instead, educating individuals about the importance of having diverse representation within teams will be key, alongside identifying and addressing any unconscious biases that may be impacting senior managers and decision-makers.
Utilise the power of reverse mentoring
A practice that is working well within AMS and several of our client organisations is reverse mentoring. This equips leaders with inclusive leadership skills and cultural awareness by having junior employees from underrepresented groups guide leaders rather than the other way round. This has also been an extremely valuable tool for improving social mobility.
Typically, reverse mentoring will involve young employees teaching older business veterans how to use the likes of social media, but it’s certainly not limited to this. Reverse mentoring helps leaders to better understand cultural, social and gender differences, providing a platform for the mentor and mentee to talk about their personal life and unique experiences.
When applying this, having a plan of action is essential. A kick-off meeting where all participants gather is a great way to ensure participants are comfortable in each other’s company. Establish a timeline, including frequency of meetings, duration, objectives and potential topics to be discussed so that all individuals know what to expect.
Open space to converse
While this is just the start, businesses and their HR teams need to continue to provide the platforms for people to talk – and ensure that they are heard. We need to create a sense of safety in the workplace that allows individuals to open up and have conversations – even if they are uncomfortable.
Gathering employee feedback by using a survey is a good first step toward easing into important conversations around people’s experiences in the workplace and making more informed decisions that affect the people of the organisation.
Focus on Metrics
It’s also important to measure socio-economic and DEI in your workplace. By measuring the background of your workforce, you will be able to see the gaps in applications, hires, progression and retention.You can also develop initiatives that will target and improve diversity which will allow for progress to be tracked.
Build a talent pipeline
One way to really enhance social mobility, thus improving DEI is by creating diverse routes into your workplace by focusing on skilling and working with young people, further education colleges and universities.Business is all about talent and having a fair and level playing field which is open to all.So, including those of us from diverse and lower socio-economic backgrounds is not only the right thing to do but strategically important for any business that wishes to thrive.
Keep in mind that making small changes will go a long way – improving DEI doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, it just needs to involve a greater understanding, a little more research and letting go of assumptions.
