In business, you need to make sure you are looking after your employees as well as you can if you want them to be happy to work for you. This is something that you can approach in a lot of different ways, and it might actually be easier than you think, but you will need to make sure that you are keeping aware of it at all times if you are going to make it work. One of the main areas you’ll want to focus on here is the workplace itself, and there are a lot of qualities you’ll need to think about when it comes to getting this right.
One of the main ones is inclusivity: you need your workplace to be equally suitable for all, and that might be harder than you think to make it a reality. However, it’s going to be essential if you want to make sure that you are doing all you can to look after your people, so that is something to think about here. Let’s take a look at how you can hope to create a perfectly inclusive workplace for all.
Understand That Inclusion Is Ongoing
One of the things that you might need to bear in mind upfront is that making a place inclusive is not something you just do once and then forget about. Instead, it is ongoing work, and you’ll need to keep on going back to the drawing board again and again, or at the very least make sure that you are maintaining the same level of inclusivity as best as you can, otherwise you might struggle to actually be able to get this right.
In other words, it’s not just a one-time training session or a committee meeting once a quarter, but a continuous process of learning, unlearning and adjusting, and this is something that you are going to find really important to bear in mind. Cultures evolve and people change, and so you need to remain flexible as much as possible. It’s not about being perfect either, but about staying open to growth as best as you can.
Design Systems Carefully
It’s about much more than just saying stuff too – you actually need to get into the nuts and bolts of your system and see where you might be going wrong. You need to design systems carefully and with compassion, to ensure that everyone is going to feel included and be genuinely inclusive at all times. This goes into everything from how job descriptions are written to how hiring panels work and what kinds of ada picnic tables you choose to have in your outdoor break rooms.
If you are designing it all carefully, you are going to find that you are much more likely to be inclusive of all, and that people are going to benefit from this a lot more effectively. So this is something that you really need to think about from the start if at all possible.
Keep On Top Of Psychological Safety
It’s also really important that you are allowing people to talk about themselves, and to be honest about their experience. If you are able to do that, you’ll find that it makes it better for everyone. In order for your people to be able to do that, however, they need to feel safe, so this is something that you really need to focus on as best as you can. That means you have to create environments where it is considered okay to make mistakes, to speak up and to be vulnerable – if you can do that, it’s going to really make a world of difference overall, and particularly for those underrepresented groups.
As long as fear runs the show, there can’t be genuine inclusion, so it’s really important to make sure you are aware of this, and doing all you can to try and avoid that major and common problem.
Lead With Intention
The quality of leadership is one of the main things in all this, so you need to make sure that you are leading with intention as best as you can at all times. If you are able to do that, you will be setting a good example, and that is going to help a great deal with making sure that your workplace is more inclusive for all at all times. Your leadership could genuinely change the lives of many in this sense, so that is something you can hold your mind to for sure.
