By Steven Cooney and Sebastian Boo
One of the biggest challenges for organisations in today’s world is creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. The terms diversity and inclusion often go hand-in-hand, particularly in the context of businesses and organisations. Having a diverse workforce with colleagues from a range of demographics has a whole host of benefits for business performance. However, it is vital that employees with different backgrounds feel welcomed and included within the organisation to reap the benefits of diversity. Diversity without inclusion is a risk that needs to be avoided. As Barnes Marshall has aptly stated “Diversity in counting heads, inclusion is making heads count”. Inclusion refers to the cultural feeling of belonging in a workplace. Therefore, having an inclusive culture is important for businesses to enable a diverse workforce to thrive.
Inclusion in the workplace is a vital component for organisational success. When employees feel included, they often create collaborative teams which are innovative and engaged. When an organisation is inclusive, employees also feel a sense of belonging which impacts loyalty, retention, engagement and drives individual and collective performance with positive consequence for business results. Research from Deloitte shows that "inclusive teams outperform their peers by 80% in team-based assessments", highlighting the benefits of inclusion for organisational success.
Recent UK government guidelines and promotional videos that support employers to engage in “inclusive recruitment” and take on people with different background include ex-offenders, older people, individual with a disability and those recovering from drug and alcohol misuse are great. For organisations to achieve inclusion, it is important to foster a culture that promotes kindness. For organisations to achieve inclusion, it is important to foster a culture that promotes kindness. Prioritising kindness at work, means a commitment by the organisation and its leaders to promoting to wellbeing and reducing distress among all employees. So for instance, a commitment to kindness entails making efforts to ensure people of all backgrounds feel they belong. As a consequence, there is less risk of some employees being perceived as ‘outgroup’ members and others as “ingroup” members which is an instinctive initial human response to noticing differences between ourselves and others that account for unconscious bias and unkind behaviour at work. An effort to be kind helps to override unconscious bias and helps to create a culture in which everyone feels they are in-group members and everybody feels equally invested in achieving the organisation’s goals. Applying Professor Paul Gilbert’s insights into the neurobiology of compassion we can say that kindness within organisations helps to support employees’ neurobiological soothing system activation while reducing their threat system activation, fostering both physical and mental health and wellbeing at work. Furthermore, the greater sense of psychological safety within an organisation that comes from prioritising kindness supports higher quality connections at work, greater information flow, collaborative working and identification of errors and mistakes as evidenced by Amy Edmondson's work. To promote kindness that supports inclusion, leaders need to do three things. Firstly, be aware of the possible causes of distress that exist among all member of the workforce. This requires being aware, sensitive and curious about employees’ lived experience of being part of the organisation as well as being humble and ready to accept difficult-to-hear feedback. Secondly, leaders need to work with employees to identify what practical steps can be taken to reduce, eliminate and prevent unnecessary distress, and equally what can be done to promote wellbeing. Thirdly, leaders need to show real commitment to taking action. Leading with kindness to promote inclusion may not be easy initially for some leaders as it can mean acknowledging past or existing weaknesses in leadership and acknowledging that some aspects of work culture need to change. However, for leaders to succeed in making their organisations survive, adapt and thrive doing whatever is necessary to optimise inclusion in their organisation is essential.
