Inclusion Week 2024

It's a time for celebration to highlight all you have been doing, and it's also a time for reflection and further action around all you can do.

Top 5 things I'd like you to consider, include:

1️⃣ What's your balance of diversity-led initiatives to inclusion-led strategies?

If you're wondering, 'what's the difference?', I tend to think of the former as helping the symptoms, and the latter as tackling the causes of under-representation and discrimination. You need to ensure you have as much, if not more, emphasis on inclusion strategies for longer term outcomes.

2️⃣ How bought-in is your leadership with this work?

Dr. Sandra Upton in her book Make It Last advocates for a 100% buy-in rate of leadership for this work. Remember, I tend to say, "'If the culture of any organisation is shaped by the worst behaviour a leader is willing to tolerate', then the culture of any organisation can be shaped by the best behaviours a leader is willing to demonstrate". Inclusive cultures need to be owned by your C-suite/Board/Senior Leadership Team/ ExCo, whatever you call them, and middle-management need to know how to follow-through.

3️⃣ Policies yes, but Behaviours too.

I also tend to say, the existence of policies, procedures and practices don't guarantee their use, it's the behaviours and discipline to do so which do, and so if you've made great in-roads with inclusive recruitment, T&Cs in procurement frameworks, and UX marketing, make sure people are actually using them.

4️⃣ Feedback, Feedback, Feedback!

It's all well and good, sitting back and thinking you've done a great job with all your policies, and indeed developing your Cultural Intelligence, however you need to seek feedback as to the efficacy of the inclusion work and keep learning and improving, having considered what you're being told.

5️⃣ Keep Building Inclusion into our world

There is no end point here. It's a journey that we're all on. Until it's inclusion for all, it's not inclusion at all. There's no such thing as gender equity, without racial equity or disability equity etc.

What are you proud of? What are you working on? What are you stuck with? Share here, and let's grow the work together.