Diversity in Leadership: Improving diversity practice

Innate Consultancy

This blog is part of the Asian Business Chamber of Commerce’s (ABCC) Diversity in Leadership campaign.

The Diversity in Leadership campaign works with some of the regions’ biggest employers in order to boost the numbers of women and those from black and minority ethnic (BAME), lesbian gay bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and disability groups being represented on boards of directors and in leadership roles.

Click here to find out more about the campaign.

An increasingly multi-cultural population, ageing workforce and skills shortages are creating new challenges to recruiting, retaining and developing talent. 

Creating a more diverse and inclusive organisation is seen as an enabler to deliver better business results as evidenced by McKinsey (global management consultancy firm) who, in 2015, found that gender diverse companies are 15% more likely to financially outperform their peers and ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to do the same.
So how does your organisation shape up?

Here are some key points for you to consider:

· improve the quality of diversity monitoring data collection

Data and value metrics are a priority for all organisations.

Objective data and analyses of under representation and gaps/barriers in the culture provide an evidence based approach to addressing any concerns and identifying areas that require greater focus.

· review the entire recruitment & selection process from attraction to appointment.

Narrow attraction strategies, nepotistic recruitment attitudes and a bias in attracting those that look, think and act like you are limiting the talent and skills available to an organisation. Progressive organisations investigate each step of the selection process and ensure they are genuinely meritocratic and inclusive.

· retain talented employees

All interactions, decisions and talent processes must be free from unconscious bias which plays a key part in perpetuating discriminatory behaviour at work. It is imperative for leaders and managers to define their leadership/management style and leverage the talent of diverse teams where all employees feel their voices are heard and respected.

After pay, culture is the most important factor in employees deciding whether they remain with an organisation. Banter is something that most teams engage in and often racism/sexism is passed off as “banter”. This can be harmful in building cohesive and high performing teams, do your employees know when banter crosses the line?

• increase the knowledge and awareness of all staff

Make equality, diversity and inclusion part of everyone’s role and make it real. Define and support the behaviours that matter to your organisation. Help employees to become more aware of their unconscious biases and understand how easy it is to misrecognise and categorise people.

Want practical and actionable solutions to all of the above? Innate Consultancy Limited is an Equality, Diversity & Inclusion learning and development consultancy that recognises that we all have an innate need to be valued, respected and included. Innate is supporting the delivery of Asian Business Chamber of Commerce with the Diversity in Leadership pledge workshops, please visit https://www.greaterbirminghamchambers.com/our-group/abcc/diversity-in-leadership-pledge/