“Inclusion is not a matter of political correctness. It is the key to growth,” said the Reverend Jesse Jackson back in 2007. In 2021, the business case for diversity is clear. Companies that are more diverse perform better financially, are more productive and have better access to in-demand talent.

Don’t believe us? Ask the experts. The 2020 McKinsey Diversity Matters study found that companies in the top quartile of gender diversity were 25% more likely to experience above average profitability than those in the bottom quartile. Companies in the top quartile for ethnic or cultural diversity were 36% more likely to outperform on profitability than those in the bottom quartile. In fact, the higher the level of representation, notably 30% women on the board versus 10%, the better the performance.

But it’s not just about diversity at a demographic level; it’s about diverse thinking. Research by Deloitte shows diversity of thought is just as important to an organisation’s future, with cognitive diversity enhancing team innovation by up to 20% and reducing risk by up to 30%. How does it do this? By enhancing trust and buy-in between employees and managers, allowing creative solutions to come from a wider group of people who are more open to their implementation.

Creating this environment is not easy. Many organisations struggle to understand the difference between diversity and inclusion. Put simply, diversity is the “who” and “what”, who sits on your board, what ethnicities make up your workforce? Inclusion is the “how”, how do you bring these people together and enable them to express their individual opinions and beliefs?

The answer lies in providing space for difficult conversations to occur. This in turn comes from thinking of inclusion as a business strategy, not something the human resources department tells the C-suite it needs to do. It should permeate every decision an organisation makes, whether that’s Microsoft bringing technology to disabled people or Unilever focusing on inclusion because its products are used by different people around the world. As business author and expert Josh Bersin says: “Companies that define their business in an inclusive way generally have diverse people and practices.”

Beyond productivity and performance, there’s a second reason non-inclusive companies are setting themselves up to fail. The next generation of talent demands inclusion in a way previous generations have not.

Looking for tangible proof

For Generation Z and millennials, flashy mission statements around inclusion and social media posts on protests aren’t enough. They want to see tangible proof that organisations are taking D&I seriously and making changes, otherwise they’ll look elsewhere for jobs.

Companies that define their business in an inclusive way generally have diverse people and practices

A recent survey by Glassdoor backs this up. It shows 76% of US jobseekers believe that a diverse workforce is important when evaluating a potential employer. Almost half of Black and Hispanic respondents said they had quit a job after witnessing or experiencing racial discrimination and more than a third (37%) of respondents said they wouldn’t apply to a company which had negative satisfaction ratings from people of colour.

This extends to organisational design. Once in employment, Gen Z and millennials expect a positive workplace culture. A 2020 Catalyst report looking at Gen Z and the future of work found two thirds of Gen Zers rated equal opportunities for pay and promotion and learning opportunities as the top two factors that build trust with an employer. Interestingly, diversity of educational background was the area Gen Z felt employers needed to work on most, ahead of age, ethnicity and gender, once again demonstrating the importance of diversity of thought.

So how can organisations struggling to progress on D&I make a change? The key to more inclusive organisations is changing your culture. It needs to permeate the entire organisation, starting from buy-in in the C-suite. Managers and employees need to be empowered to have difficult conversations, where different viewpoints may clash. Rather than being scared of conflict, managers should encourage team members to voice opinions, building trust and understanding of each other’s experiences.

Off-the-shelf learning tools, such as unconscious bias training, can help an organisation to understand some of the challenges it’s facing. However, it’s important to use such tools as part of a wider strategy, rather than standalone solutions.

Moving the dial on D&I isn’t possible if you leave it to one individual or department. Instead, it is the responsibility of the entire organisation. The business case for diversity is clear: fail to progress and you risk the very future of your business.

Can unconscious bias training have a positive effect on diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives?

It’s a complicated question. The big problem with unconscious bias training is this: what is the problem you think you’re solving? If you think you’re going to use unconscious bias training as a cure for bias, then it’s a blunt instrument.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have a part to play. Its purpose is to raise awareness that each of us is conditioned and acculturated to make certain associations and file things in ways that fit our mental maps: our metaphors, assumptions, paradigms and safety cues.

I think unconscious bias training is no more than an invitation to rethink the way we think. Or, more precisely, recognise that we don’t think in the rational way we like to imagine we do.

The important contribution unconscious bias training makes is similar to the benefit of knowing that in crown green bowling, bias affects the way the bowl will behave when delivered. We cannot take into account biases we are not aware of, so in bowls the art is all about the bowler’s ability to control the bias during delivery to achieve the desired position on the green.

Why are businesses focusing on bias training?

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, we have seen a new consumer in the D&I training market: the panic buyer driven by a compulsion to be seen to do something progressive. They’re making a gesture and unconscious bias training is the easiest thing to buy off the shelf. However, instead of being the desired panacea, it further polarises and paralyses, which in the most thoughtless deployments has the unpleasant scent of ASBO training for White, middle-class, middle-aged men.

As my colleague Ben Betts at Learning Pool says: “People who panic buy bias training are trying to move forward, but they’re in danger of being caught both ways. Doing nothing is unacceptable, but doing the wrong thing is equally unacceptable. How can we help them do the right thing?”

So are organisations relying too much on quick fixes to inequality?

The key issue is to not rely on numeric diversity. Diversity goals and aspirational targets are very important, but they must not be the sole focus. To do so is to approach the agenda back to front. When you begin with a diversity target, you’re tempted to think if people aren’t being discriminated against, and you roll out some unconscious bias training to make sure they aren’t, then that, combined with robust equality policies, will mean diversity will flourish. For many, this passes as inclusion.

We need to remind ourselves that diversity isn’t inclusion. Diversity simply means difference. We are all individuals, all unique, therefore all diverse. What we need to give attention to is how we as individuals are able to be integrated into an inclusive whole. If you do that, diversity is no longer a target and you stop triggering a deficit mindset. Instead of lowering the bar with targets, you’re levelling the playing field and creating inclusion.

How do you start building a more inclusive culture?

Let me be clear, I don’t think most people managers are trying to make others feel excluded. The problem is they’re not intentionally trying to make people feel included. It’s about increasing self-awareness, so we choose thoughtfulness instead of thoughtlessness. It’s about making a shift from small acts, gestures and nuances that create an implicit unconscious exclusion to creating an environment of conscious inclusion.

Doing so is complex. There are certain things, whether micro-aggressions and micro-inequities, that have a compounding effect of making people feel “othered”. To feel this way is to be uncomfortable, on your guard, unsafe and disconnected, knowing you’re on the outside.

While inclusion can look different in different organisations, there are some universal belonging-centred identity markers. These often present themselves in questions you can ask of your organisation. Can your people be authentic? To do so, you need a workplace which is safe for your people to be themselves, not just versions of themselves.

Leaders and managers tend to think inclusion is about ensuring the same treatment, but it is not

Is your environment one in which people feel they can grow? To grow in an organisation, people need to be granted “learner safety”. This is the ability to tell a superior or manager that you don’t understand what they’re asking you to do and not be shot down for it. This is crucial to development.

Do they feel they can contribute to the team and are their contributions valued? Colleagues often find that some people’s contributions get valued more highly or, worse, some individuals’ contributions are ignored. It’s about having a voice and being heard.

What frameworks can leaders use?

Leaders and managers tend to think inclusion is about ensuring the same treatment, but it is not. Nor is it about treating people the way you want to be treated; it’s about treating people the way they want to be treated and treating people equally well. Rather than offering D&I courses, we work with clients to plot the course of inclusion journeys. That journey can only benefit from cultivating self-awareness and the consciousness generated by conversations about unconscious bias.

As Ben at Learning Pool says: “We need to help the hierarchy in an organisation understand the cost of exclusion. We need to get them to focus more on what inclusion looks like and bias training can form part of that. Most importantly, we need to ensure they’re in the right frame of mind to understand where they are on the journey and what they’re training to achieve.”

This means looking at inclusion at all levels of a business. Leaders steer inclusion from the top, implementing the values and behaviours an organisation wants. Then the middle layer of management cultivates and curates the lived experience of a workforce. However, the problem is many managers do not go into their careers to manage people, they simply end up there. We expect them to be good at managing people simply because they are good at being individual producers, which can cause issues for inclusion.

Are you optimistic for the future?

The optimist believes things will get better on their own. I’m not an optimist, but I am hopeful. While there is always a chance we’ll stumble down the stairs of repeated history, I genuinely think we have crossed the point of no return. We’re in a tricky moment, almost the moment before the moment, but I feel hopeful a number of crucial factors have combined so we will pull together to make a genuine change. However, it’s a long process and the outcome is uncertain.

Diverse perspectives spark innovative business solutions, yet many employees feel their voices go unheard at work.

While the focus on diversity and inclusion (D&I) in the workplace has spiked, the inclusion part of the puzzle remains a challenge. Making a tangible difference to whether employees truly feel heard can only be achieved with collaborative effort from executive-level leadership, managers and colleagues.

This means going beyond “window-dressing” to offer substantive affirmative actions, argues Kent Wong, director of UCLA’s Labor Center. “It’s important to acknowledge at a senior level that something needs to be done, that there is inequity and a historic disparity which exists in the vast majority of companies in our society,” he points out.

The key, according to recent research, is to move beyond surface inclusion to a culture that nurtures differences, without over-emphasising them, while creating supportive workplaces to promote a sense of value.

In a study examining belonging, researchers at Columbia Business School and University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business found placing equal value on social group and individual identities is essential. The research, covering more than 1,500 employees, found they felt singled out when asked for their input as a representative of their minority social group, which actually reduced belonging and feeling actively heard.

But there are strategies to overcome this hurdle of surface inclusion. Recognising every employee as a unique individual, acknowledging intersectionality of diversity and promoting open dialogue with managers are good places to start.

Senior leadership teams drive active change

“Fundamentally, there has to be a desire on the part of management and leadership to make real and constructive change,” urges UCLA’s Wong. “That begins with committing to ensure the leadership of the organisation reflects the workforce and the general population.”

If employees can see a clear professional development route, such as through mentors, access to training and senior-level role models, they are more likely to believe the business wants to listen and values their unique perspective and skills.

In addition, tackling aspects including everyday micro-aggressions, such as commenting on origin, use of language, sexual orientation or appearance through company-wide training, can allow all employees to feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work.

“There needs to be an investment in resources that upskill employees to build their cultural competence and train them on behaviours that are equitable and inclusive,” says diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) practitioner Dr Salwa Rahim-Dillard, founder of Equision Consulting.

As well as training, creating formal channels for staff members to raise their voices can help develop the sense a business really wants to hear from every employee. Anonymous staff surveys can be an effective starting point, with open-ended questions an opportunity for sharing views without repercussions.

Bringing in independent facilitators for focus groups allows greater neutrality so employees can speak their minds. After all, “employees themselves are in the best position to make recommendations and suggestions”, adds Wong.

Democratise decision-making processes

Rahim-Dillard says: “Generally, there are not established processes for including marginalised and junior-level employees in organisations’ decision-making.” The golden rule is action. If employees see effective policies developed when issues are raised, it becomes a virtuous circle reinforcing the idea their voices are heard and valued.

At global pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, its latest DE&I Impact Review highlights how it is only by actively listening to its diverse workforce and developing solutions that it can rise to the challenge of health inequalities spotlighted by the coronavirus pandemic.

J&J’s chief DE&I officer Wanda Bryant Hope explains: “Through the Raise Your Voice global dialogue sessions held throughout 2020, employees told us they want leaders who take visible, tangible and impactful actions to create a more inclusive culture where everyone belongs and can contribute.

“We have acted on these learnings by launching a cultural immersion programme, called Black in the US, and a conscious inclusion workshop to educate our leaders and help them take purposeful actions to enhance our culture of belonging.”

An active network of employee resource groups can also create a forum for diverse employees to speak up in an empathetic environment. As these are generally led by employees, their success depends on how much power and resources they’re given, such as physical space, funding and time to meet. Individual employees have a chance to share their views, while the group can potentially wield more clout with senior leaders.

Open-door policies foster ‘employee voice’

Empowerment is important for employees to express the unique take they can bring to the decision-making process, which can be a catalyst for creativity and disrupt the status quo in a positive way. Meanwhile, ensuring an open-door policy with management is crucial to foster a sense of feeling heard.

Generally, there are not established processes for including marginalised and junior-level employees in organisations’ decision-making

In its research report Empathy: DE&I’s Missing Piece, the Society for Human Resource Management found when workplaces are not empathetic, employees do not feel comfortable voicing their opinions. Yet by demonstrating empathetic traits, companies can improve trust and drastically cut costly staff turnover.

As remote working has altered the structure of workplaces, it’s more important than ever that virtual spaces allow diverse employees to feel heard. Rahim-Dillard says while virtual working may help increase under-represented talent from a wider pool, it means leaders “need additional skills to help them with bridging (connecting with people different from them), and bonding (connecting with people similar to them)".

“With less face-to-face time providing the opportunity to read body gestures and non-verbal communicative cues, leaders need to be intentional about including remote employees from marginalised groups in the decision-making meetings, and intentional about acknowledging and valuing their efforts,” she says.

The challenge of making sure employees feel heard is a complex one, but with strong leadership, investment in training and a clear goal to listen to diverse voices, it is a process that adds value to the entire business.

2020 was the year diversity issues cut through. As global protests against the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis surged, business leaders were forced to react. Some issued public statements of support, others donated to the Black Lives Matter movement, and many pledged to change how they recruited and engaged with under-represented groups.

Most often, this resulted in the hiring of a chief diversity officer. In the 45 days after the Black Lives Matter protests began, postings for diversity and inclusion (D&I) roles on LinkedIn grew 100% and more than 60 organisations hired their first ever diversity chief, according to analysis by DiversityInc. Starbucks, McDonald’s and Apple are just some of the major brands that have hired senior D&I leaders in the past year.

However, creating a dedicated D&I division or hiring a head of diversity is no guarantee of a more inclusive organisation, especially with diversity chiefs being one of the least secure C-suite roles, lasting an average 3.2 years in a post compared with five plus for chief executives.

“Diversity isn’t a thing in and of itself and it’s not a number-counting game where you tick off how many female leaders you have in the business. Instead, it’s an approach to talent that allows you to achieve strategic objectives,” says Simon Fanshawe, co-founder of Diversity by Design.

“This means it can’t be an add-on to the business, but has to be central and everybody has to be engaged. If you only see diversity as something about minorities and your approach is based on numbers, it’s a zero-sum game.”

Top-down engagement

So how do you ensure your entire organisation buys into inclusion initiatives? For most it starts at the top with the C-suite. It’s no secret that company boards aren’t as diverse as they could be – the Fortune 500 list has only ever featured 18 black chief executives since its founding in 1955 – so mentoring high-potential leadership candidates and providing a pathway for development is vital.

Some organisations are even choosing to hit executives in their pay packets for failing to take diversity seriously enough, with Nike announcing in March that executive bonuses would be contingent on hitting diversity targets by 2025.

However, this is just the start. While building a culture of inclusion requires senior leaders to role model behaviours and empower managers to make changes, no D&I strategy can succeed without buy-in from employees. But this requires thoughtful engagement and good management.

“We engage people by not imposing on them. Inclusion has to mean something to everybody on the team and it’s about valuing the difference people bring in combination with each other. Everybody has something to contribute,” says Fanshawe. “Inclusion isn’t about telling your people how to behave. It’s about holding difficult conversations about differences within your team and allowing space for disagreement.”

Inclusion has to mean something to everybody on the team and it’s about valuing the difference people bring in combination with each other

Doing so can be frightening for managers used to avoiding conflict. However, allowing your people to voice concerns and discuss issues is vital to fostering an open environment where they feel heard, even if ultimately the organisation chooses a different path.

Another tactic is to provide spaces for employees to come up with their own ideas around inclusion. Microsoft has undergone a culture change programme since chief executive Satya Nadella took over in 2014 and a huge part of this has been empowering smaller teams to make bigger decisions.

According to Microsoft’s chief people officer Kathleen Hogan: “We are trying to enlist every one of 140,000 employees in this effort. We need them. We’ve activated our 18,000 managers with tools and approaches to help them engage their teams. In hindsight, I wish we’d done even more to engage managers – their role can’t be overstated.”

D&I initiatives have long been championed by human resources teams, with mixed success. As businesses finally wake up to the importance of creating more inclusive cultures, these initiatives must now be opened up to businesses as a whole. Fostering an inclusive culture is something an entire organisation needs to be invested in and empowered to achieve, but doing so requires difficult conversations, good management and openness.

Businesses are beginning to see the link between more diverse and inclusive workplaces and commercial success. Not only are diverse organisations more likely to succeed financially, have more engaged employees and better reputational standing, they are also best placed to cope with future talent challenges.

Generation Z, who make up 25% of the global workforce and will be the largest generational cohort by 2030, put diversity and inclusion (D&I) agendas at the front of their mind when thinking about brands. According to a 2020 study by McKinsey, 75% of Gen Zers would boycott a brand that discriminates against minorities in its advertising campaigns.

With this in mind, here are five companies getting D&I right.

1. JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle)

Global real estate company JLL topped the Forbes 2021 Best Employers for Diversity list, focusing on a top-down approach to diversity. More than 75% of the company’s directors represent gender or ethnic diversity and in January the organisation hired Ingrid Jacobs, its first global head of D&I, with a focus on building an even more inclusive practice.

This approach trickles down to the employee base too, with more than 8,000 employees across the Americas taking part in over 80 local business resource groups, including those aimed at Black, Asian and female employees.

2. Eli Lilly

Back in 2015, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly realised its diversity initiatives were having little effect on closing gender and ethnic minority gaps in its leadership team. Progress was so slow that the company estimated it would take 70 years for equality to hit the boardroom.

To change this, the company turned its expertise on patient journeys inwards to look at employee journeys, bringing to light the barriers some employees faced in progressing their careers. The organisation commissioned professional actors to portray real employees’ workplace experiences, created innovation labs for managers and employees to build actionable solutions, and invested in a chief executive-led sponsorship programme for Latina, African-American and Asian women at director level.

The result? Female representation in the C-suite grew from 29% to 40%, with female senior directors increasing from 34% to 42%.

3. Marriott International

Hospitality chain Marriott International has been a regular fixture in DiversityInc’s list of most inclusive organisations. It does this by adopting two core cultural themes: inclusion by surfacing commonalities, which looks at the shared desires employees and guests have despite their differences; and inclusion by surfacing differences, which celebrates what makes each employee unique.

An example of the former comes through Marriott’s own workforce data, which shows little difference in job satisfaction regardless of gender, race or age. As the organisation offers thousands of opportunities for its employees to move within the chain, many with a low entry barrier, career progression is offered to a wider group of employees.

Marriott has also worked on its structural inclusion, opening Courtyard Muncie in Indiana as a training hotel for people with disabilities, the first of its kind in America.

4. Slack

Technology companies don’t have the best reputation when it comes to D&I, but messaging platform Slack has been ahead of its competitors since founding in 2009. It proactively recruited from outside traditional programmer universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford, partnered with all-women or under-represented coding camps like Hackbright Academy and Code2040, and removed face-to-face coding tests for those done at home in a bid to remove bias.

That’s not to say they’ve got everything right. The 2021 Diversity at Slack report shows an overall decline in under-represented minorities despite continued hiring. To address this, they’re partnering with a diversity consultancy and analysing exit interviews to see where they’ve taken a wrong step.

5. Starbucks

Starbucks took an aggressive stance on D&I issues in 2019 after an employee called the police on two African-American men waiting for a friend in a branch. The high-profile incident forced the coffee chain into a public apology, after which it took the unprecedented step of closing all 8,000 US shops for a half-day unconscious bias training course. Companies like Starbucks often come under pressure for 'solving' exclusionary attitudes with quick fixes like Unconscious Bias training. But for Starbucks, driving genuine inclusion seems to be the agenda. Since then, the organisation has taken steps to link executive pay to diversity initiatives, launched a mentorship scheme connecting employees from under-represented backgrounds to senior leaders and is aiming to double the number of employees who identify as Black, indigenous or people of colour in its corporate wing by 2025.