Taking Steps Towards Inclusion

While I believe that most leaders want to support diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces, the reality is that we’re still far from having workplaces where we all belong. Even with the additional pledges of support and increased hiring of DEI professionals after the 2020 racial reckoning, progress has been slow. 

If intent is there and actions are being taken, then why is progress slow? Because we’re exhausted and burned out, and when we’re stressed, our tendency is to revert to the default. Think of how when you’re stressed you go on autopilot, losing track of what you’ve cleaned while in the shower or arriving home without any memory of what the drive was like. 

Since racism, white supremacy and patriarchy are baked into the systems and narratives that surround us, that means when we revert to the default, we’re succumbing to bias. Without questioning systems and taking intentional actions, we’ll continue to make slow progress, at best. 

Ruchika Tulshyan’s Inclusion on Purpose is an excellent, tactical resource that outlines how individuals and organizations can take action to really advance inclusion in the workplace. After reading and processing her recommendations — and wading through pages of notes and highlights — I had the opportunity to discuss learnings with this month’s book club attendees. 

Based on our roles (mostly sitting in the middle of organizations with limited influence), most were focused on what we could do individually, yet wanted to understand what’s expected at the organization level so we could engage in sharing best practices and advocacy. While we all have an individual role to play, those with a higher level of privilege should take on a higher sense of responsibility, understanding the impact of their power and outsized burden already carried by those with marginalized identities.

Of all of the great information in the book, here were our key takeaways:

Build empathy & awareness

Begin with recognizing how your privilege has allowed you to be immune to (and therefore perhaps unaware of) the experience of bias. Consuming stories, both fiction and nonfiction, is a powerful tool for building understanding of how people with marginalized identities face bias. Reading fiction and watching films that portray very different lives can be particularly powerful ways for us to take on the perspective of others while avoiding activating defensiveness around our privilege. 

Focus on the stories that cover the experiences of intersectionality, particularly those of women of color, who hold the two most marginalized identities in the workplace. By orienting on, and eventually solving for the experience of women of color, the experience will be better for everyone. I can’t help but think of a parallel to how the kitchen design company Oxo focused on making kitchen tools for arthritic patients, which ultimately made for some of the best kitchen tools for all (at least according to America’s Test Kitchen gadget reviews). 

Explicitness levels the playing field

To create belonging for a variety of cultures and experiences, instead of making assumptions, be explicit. This is especially applicable in the hiring process, where you shouldn’t assume that all candidates—especially those who are immigrants, from different cultures or without generational knowledge in that industry—know what the expectations are. Be clear with all applicants about every step in the process, the pay range, and whether or not negotiation is allowed. 

Proactively correct for the default

Many of us have been raised in relatively homologous social environments, with white Americans reporting that 91% of their social networks are composed of white folks, and black and hispanic Americans reporting 64-83% of their networks being racially homologous.  A practical impact is that when aiming to have a more diverse candidate pool, you’ll need to extend beyond your core network (since they’re, by default, similar to you) and reach into the spaces where people of color gather. 

The ability for candidates to negotiate salary should also be questioned as a default since negotiation perpetuates pay inequality. Gender norms encode stereotypical expectations to be agreeable or submissive and racial bias judges any behavior that can be perceived as angry. These issues compound to set up women of color for failure in negotiations.

While the topic of inclusion is heavy, both in its importance and the level of effort required to bridge the current gap, I hope you’re able to see how many of our small, day-to-day actions can be done with intention in order to circumvent the default of bias in order to make more inclusive workplaces.