Employee feedback is the key to progressing your Diversity and Inclusion strategy
Just over a year since the Black Lives Matter movement seized our attention, organisations have started to develop their own D&I strategies in earnest. It is early days, and many of us are just at the beginning of defining our D&I ambition, understanding the attitudes of our employees and the shifts required for a more inclusive workplace. Not only is this the right thing to aim for, but according to the Network for Business Sustainability, diverse and inclusive organisations are linked to strong financial performance, productivity, innovation, talent attraction and retention and corporate reputation.
35% LGBT and 51% transgender workers in the UK hide their identity in fear of discrimination (Catalyst.org)
Employee feedback is key to assessing the status of diversity and inclusivity in organisations and hundreds of the best-known brands include D&I assessment in their employee surveys. It can take guts to ask for the feedback – knowing you have to do something about the results. It’s sensitive; How do you ask questions in an inclusive way? How do you get your employees to share their ethnicity, sexual orientation and belief system and trust you in to use it a way that prevents discrimination rather than causes it?
The majority of our clients assess D&I as part of their employee surveys
The BELONG model is a robust and ethical framework for measuring D&I. This framework takes a whole person approach and shows three outcomes that mean an employee is experiencing an inclusive culture:
· I can be my true self at work · I belong here · People like me succeed
There are six enablers of these outcomes that make up BELONG:
1. Belonging – I feel perspectives are mine are included here 2. Equity – Everyone is treated fairly here 3. Leadership – leaders role model the right behaviours 4. Opportunity – anyone can succeed here regardless of background 5. Normative – our workforce is sufficiently diverse 6. Governance – compliance is appropriately assessed
Knowledge is power: using these measures in your employee survey will help you identify any groups that feel marginalised, where you need to act and what you need to look at first. Of course, including D&I measures in your employee survey can reveal uncomfortable findings that leaders then have to face up to. However, this can be overcome as organisations like Clarion Events have shown.
Join our webinar on 24th June when we’ll share how brands have been measuring D&I in their organisations and how they’ve been handling the subsequent sensitive conversations with leaders and colleagues with success.
We’ll share how you can generate employee feedback about D&I with confidence using the BELONG model, and how the most forward-thinking organisations action the findings for a more inclusive, successful organisational culture.
Join the webinar |