Taking place each April, Celebrate Diversity Month has been vital on organisational calendars as a way to learn more and showcase their commitment to diversity. Diversity not only increases employee engagement and retention but also offers a competitive advantage, increases employee performance and can grow innovation revenue.
With this in mind, diversity is something that deserves year-round attention. So now that Celebrate Diversity Month is over for another year, what can organisations do to ensure diversity is a year-round commitment?
Read on for top tips for celebrating diversity all year round.
1. Start A Cultural Calendar
Create an open calendar for your organisation where employees can add all of the cultural events that are important to them. This calendar offers a chance for people to book specific holidays off without feeling like they have to discuss their cultural beliefs/practices. It is also a chance for people to learn more about specific events and celebrate more festivities at work.
2. Reduce Unconscious Bias
With technology advancements, there are some excellent tools available that can help to unlearn bias and help organisations are actively trying to reduce bias from their practices. For example, a Google Chrome extension helps remove names and photos from social media searches to mitigate unconscious bias in recruitment.
There are also AI text tools that can help create inclusive job descriptions and broader company communications. Similarly, you can get content analysis tools that can help create more balanced communication in terms of using masculine and feminine words to attract a wider audience.
3. Acknowledge And Improve
Many organisations will have a cultural blindness to things happening within the company – this can often be to look good. However, regularly checking in on any diversity challenges the organisation faces and speaking up about it not only shows that you’re aware of the problem but are trying to make changes. Accepting accountability, acknowledging that changes need to happen and inviting discussion around these themes regularly can help with continual improvement and may increase employee engagement too.
4. Conversational Skills
Some of the best friendships people will have are with people they meet at work. Organisations can not only help to encourage these friendship bonds to form but also help conversations to flow, which can lead to ideas and innovation that benefit the organisation.
To celebrate diversity, it can help to train employees in conversational skills and non-offensive ways to strike up conversations about cultures, religions and practices. Inviting these conversations while also understanding what questions may be offensive and how to navigate different topics can help your workforce feel more confident and comfortable in striking up conversations.
5. Is Everyone Feeling Valued?
Employee appreciation is a significant factor in employee engagement and retention, and diverse organisations must ensure that every employee feels valued. Check through your employee recognition program – is it inclusive and accessible to all members of the organisation?
Does your recognition scheme offer peer-to-peer recognition to help everyone at every level to celebrate achievements and feel appreciated? Employee recognition can reap big rewards, too, with studies suggesting that organisations are 2.5 times more likely to see an increase in employee engagement and three times more likely to see an increase in employee retention.
6. Pulse Surveys
Issues can come up for employees that can either be forgotten about by the time an annual survey comes around or these issues evolve into bigger issues with severe disruption. However, regular pulse surveys offer the opportunity to regularly check in with employees, make sure issues are reported promptly, and you can take immediate action.
Frequent pulse surveys help every employee to feel heard and can help to highlight and prevent any anti-diversity or anti-inclusion behaviours before stemming into a bigger problem. Creating this trusted feedback loop and showing that you’re always here to listen can help improve diversity all year round.
7. Offer Regular Voluntary Diversity Training
It is becoming commonplace for diversity training to feature in induction days for organisations. These are often mandatory and a way to share the organisation’s diversity, equity and inclusion values with new employees. However, studies have found that when diversity training is compulsory, it can strengthen bias, whereas freedom to choose diversity training can reduce bias.
As a result, running regular voluntary diversity workshops and exploring different areas can help people to make a conscious choice to show up and actively commit to being pro-diverse.
8. Inclusive Company Culture Events
How does your organisation celebrate its success or bring teams together? The company socials can give significant insight into how inclusive your company culture is. It may be that you have a go-to event that people feel uncomfortable attending or that doesn’t align with their values. It is well worth considering inclusive events and offering a variety of options to make events more accessible to your workforce.
Of course, your company culture extends beyond the events you host and finding ways to further improve your inclusivity in your policies can maintain your commitment to diversity.
9. Communicate salary and raise policies
Sadly, there are vast discrepancies regarding salaries and diversity, and the pay gap widens more significantly as individuals progress to more senior positions. However, organisations can help mitigate this by improving transparency around salary expectations for roles while also detailing requirements for reaching the highest salary bracket or expectations to meet for raises.
Transparency can help to narrow any pay gaps in the organisation and also help to increase awareness so that employees are not second-guessing their salary in comparison to other workers. In addition, understanding top performance goals for salaries and raises can also offer a motivating factor for employees while also maintaining transparency.
