inclusion

D&I isn’t dead, it just smells funny

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The desire to make workplaces more diverse and inclusive has been going on for at least as long as I’ve been in a job. As a Personnel Officer, one of my early tasks was completing diversity returns to the Government, I’m not sure they ever achieved anything but the intention was there. I remember the IPM (as it was then) snowflake campaign, remember that? And I’ve seen the law change, develop and progress over the years. Are things better now than when I started in work? Yes. Are they as good as they need to be? No.

And throughout the majority of my career it is fair to say the broad consensus, in the UK at least, has been that fairer, more equal workplaces are a good thing. I think that still remains the case to this very day. If you asked ten people whether they thought selection, progression, and promotion should be based on ability and past performance, or whether it should be based on gender, race or some other characteristic I’m pretty certain they’d all say the former. And yet over recent years it has sometimes felt like one of the most divisive debates in the world of work. So divisive, that most people don’t want to write or talk about it.

Look across the pond and you can see this playing out in the proclamations being made by the incoming administration. Is this really one of the most important issues for the leader of any nation to address? Probably not, but then it really isn’t about that it is about throwing some proverbial red meat to supporters in the artificial culture wars. But on the other side of this argument, in the opposition trenches, there are people equally to blame; people making similarly ridiculous proclamations but without the established power. The people that declare that your personal behaviours and beliefs are not enough, the people that have denied large sections of the population a voice in the name of redressing historical unfairness, the people that make others feel scared to think, feel something different or to ask questions, the people who actively seek to divide rather than to unite.

And this is the nonsense that detracts from the real work that is happening in the vast majority of organisations across the UK, where people are still trying to create better, more inclusive and diverse workplaces because it makes good business sense and because it is the right thing to do for our communities. These are the hard yards that make a bigger difference than the soundbites or statements, the icons or the indices. Whatever the campaigners on either side say, do you think it will result in fewer women being employed or promoted? That it will setback our understanding of supporting neurodiversity in the workplace? That it will mean that we see fewer black and asian executives?

D&I isn’t dead, although there are parts of the current approach that definitely do smell funny. And that happens when the agenda steps into social engineering and unfocused activism rather than being about driving better business outcomes, driving organisational performance and customer satisfaction and moving slowly, but steadily closer to a meritocracy for all.

Don’t bring your whole self to work

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I’ve always taken issue with the idea of “bringing your whole self to work”. It’s a pretty meaningless statement that is normally espoused by the kind of sugar addicted character who will also bounce into a room and start a sentence with, “I know this is probably TMO, but..”

The first reason I dislike it is the base logic, or more the lack of it. There are many things that people do in their lives that would be highly inappropriate to share with most other people, never mind in the workplace. The second reason I dislike it is that it takes the kind of “radical candour” approach that many feel uncomfortable and suggests that if you don’t comply, then somehow you’re repressed or restricted rather than making a perfectly reasonable choice to keep things to yourself. If I don’t want to bring my whole self to work, then that should be entirely my choice and totally acceptable to others.

But over the last few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on some of the debates that we’ve seen about organisational behaviour and the stances taken on social issues and I’m starting to see a much more problematic issue with this approach. Some organisations are increasingly moving away from employment policies and are straying into social policy, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Our job should be to create safe and inclusive workplaces, where people can come and perform their work without fear or intimidation and go home at the end of the day to their private lives. We should be creating environments that aim to reduce and remove discrimination, we should make sure that our workplaces are legally compliant and we should foster respect and understanding. But I wonder if making bold stances on our positions on social issues serves us, our employees and society well.

As we increasingly see “culture wars” break out on a whole range of topics, is the workplace somewhere that should provide a safe space away from them? A place where active positions intentionally aren’t taken, but that acceptance of all is a requirement. The alternative seems to me to be that we either risk alienating employees through stances that they don’t agree with but feel unable to challenge, or we engineer our organisations so that they only accept people with certain social views and beliefs.

Ultimately this means working alongside people who might have completely different views and beliefs to us, that will hold opinions that we do not agree with and will challenge us and who will maybe do things in their lives that we find difficult to accept. But we recognise that at work we don’t bring these aspects with us, that they our part of our private lives and we respect the right of everyone to have a private life, which is entirely separate to how we behave at work. In a funny way, that could actually be more inclusive.

Inclusion matters more than ever

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Somewhere close to you now,

There will be people feeling crippling anxiety that they cannot or do not want to show.

There will be people hiding conditions or vulnerabilities that they carry silently each day.

There will be people who are carers, not wanting to let this get in the way.

There will be people who wish they were carers, who don’t need reminding they’re not.

There will be people with deep held views about medical treatments and procedures.

There will be people looking for answers in their faith.

There will be people who fear that their difference makes them a target.

There will be people who struggle with addiction and dependency.

There will be people who suffer at the hands of another.

There will be people who worry constantly about someone they love,

And there will be people grieving in loss.

These people are our colleagues, our friends, our neighbours and our family. As they were last week, last month and last year. When we aren’t together, inclusion matters more than ever.

 

 

The answer probably isn’t simple

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I’ve been writing a blog now for over ten years and over that period I’ve received praise, criticism, support, detraction and sometimes even hate. I often read comments or statements where people ask why anyone bothers blogging anymore, probably much easier to record a film of yourself just out of the gym and post it on LinkedIn.

Smashing it…

For me this has always been a way to set out thoughts or ideas that are buzzing around my head. Incomplete and sometimes inarticulate explorations of something that I’m trying to work out. My average post is about 400-500 words, so you’re never going to explore an idea fully in that space, but maybe set people off thinking too.

Sometimes I sit and write something that I know is going to be awkward. Over the years you develop a sense of the topics that tend to get people het up. The ones where there is a defined collective view that you’re questioning, or the topics where we are being overly British and avoiding. Sometimes the topics feel benign, but then hit a nerve.

Mostly the people that read these articles are people interested in the world of work, leadership, culture and human resource management. People that would espouse the exchanging of ideas, the ability to express unpopular views, the creation of environments that are open and challenging. “There’s no such thing as a stupid question”, how many times have we heard that?

Today as I write this, for very different reasons, people are talking about kindness. There are numerous statements about just “being kind”. And I’m struck by the incredible tension that sits behind such a blanket statement. Be kind to everyone? The rapist? The terrorist? The domestic abuser? Or just the ones that we feel sorry for.

Last week I wrote that if we are serious about inclusion, we have to consider inclusion for all. I can’t help feel that there is a similar tension here. When we start to apply our own filters, our own rules, our own personal criteria then by definition we introduce a level of discrimination to our original assumption. Which is perhaps absolutely fine, perhaps absolutely human, but should come with a level of honesty, rather than a false image of purity.

If we are genuinely interested in creating better working cultures, better environments, event a society that is better for all. If we want these things then we need to understand that the answers are more likely to be found in messy compromise than clarity of simple assertion, that they are more likely to involve us having to calibrate our own beliefs and opinions as much as anyone else.

I’ll leave you with this from Barack Obama, which sums it up nicely.

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly,”

“The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”