Diversity in the workplace - How to create diversity and inclusion

Diversity in the workplace

All companies need skilled employees. When we hire new staff, we look at professional and social skills etc. But how good are we at abstracting from:

• Gender and gender identity
• Age
• Ethnicity
• Disability

You can ask yourself the question: Why work with diversity?

There can be many advantages to having a focus on diversity in the workplace. Let's take some examples:

1. It can strengthen companies' competitiveness
2. Provide a better understanding in relation to suppliers and customers, which can lead to fewer problems with deliveries and growth in export markets
3. Diversity can strengthen your company's appeal and possibly be used in an employer branding campaign
4. Diversity can attract new customers and business partners who share the same ethical code as your company

But one must not be blind to the fact that there can also be challenges in relation to creating diversity in the workplace.

An employee who has a disabled person in their family will, other things being equal, be better able to see the possibilities in cooperation with a disabled colleague than an employee who has not had a disability in their life.

You must therefore expect to have to allocate some resources in relation to information and to be listening in relation to questions and possible objections.

There are primarily two things that apply in this context:

1. The first employee who does not resemble the archetype in your company, will require more attention from your side than employee number five
2. It takes time to change a company culture

Before we focus on how you can create diversity in your workplace, let's take a moment to look at the difference between diversity and inclusion, as there is some conceptual confusion on this point.

What is diversity and inclusion?

The terms diversity and inclusion are related terms, but do not cover the same thing:

• Diversity is about representation of different groups
• Inclusion describes the inclusion of different groups in an equal community

When we talk about inclusion, we also talk about supply conditions. It can be about the psychological working environment. Is it a safe workplace? Is there social and good contact between the colleagues?

If the management or the HR department has communicated the business benefits of increased diversity, then the diversity goals will become as important as the:

• Financial goals
• Operational objectives

However, diversity without inclusion creates no business value!

Nor if the diversity meets the KPIs and quotas.

Try asking yourself the following questions, is diversity:

• Only a means to optimise your business?
• An independent goal?

After this reflection, we are ready to look at how you include diversity as part of your recruitment process.

Diversity as part of the recruitment process

If you do not focus on diversity in the workplace, then it is most likely that there will not be any major changes on this point either, because it is quite normal to find a copy or a replacement for the employee who has just left your workplace.

Therefore, when you have to create your next job advertisement, you should not just copy a previous job advertisement. Try rewording both the title and the body. It is about the job seeker feeling welcome in your company.

What will you emphasise? Different generations emphasise different things:

• Generation X (job security)
• Generation Y, also called millennials, (work life balance)
• Generation Z (the working environment and CSR as well as sustainability and diversity)

Try to reflect on whether you will choose a candidate who:

• Isn't it the most professionally skilled, in order to accommodate and create a higher degree of diversity?
• Is there a gender that is in short supply in management?
• Have a physical or mental disability?

Once you have hired the new employee, the next step is the onboarding process.

The onboarding process

In order to have a good onboarding process in a diverse workplace, it requires you and others in the company to be role models. A role model can have several functions:

• Lead by example and show best practice
• Act as an interpreter in relation to the experiences of existing employees and the new employee. The perspectives and preconceptions may indeed be radically different

For example, and completely impractically, it can arouse great emotions and ultimately create a polarised work environment when the discussion falls on toilet conditions in the workplace

Gender neutral toilets

It is actually not decisive what gender you have. The point is the same. It's about being safe. Also when you as an employee, go to the toilet.

Whether or not there should be gender neutral toilet facilities at your workplace may depend on the mood of the management or the staff. Where a gender neutral toilet can give the inclusive signals that the company wants to embrace, there can be completely impractical challenges in that context.

• Will all women feel comfortable going to the same toilet as the men?
• Men tend to stand when they urinate. It can spray. This may arouse some resentment in the person who subsequently has to sit on the toilet seat
• Women already wait a long time to urinate. Do the women now also have to wait for the men?

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