Katerina Everard, Community Engagement Executive at Watch This Sp_ce

You’ve got the checklist, you’ve got the goals, but do you have the momentum to put it into action?

Starting a diversity and inclusion project for your company requires more than just creating a few goals. It requires drive, consistency, educating, thinking outside the box…the list goes on. It might feel overwhelming to think about where on earth to start.

What are the main challenges that companies might face, and what do they need to do to stay on the right track?

Watch This Sp_ce Inclusion Journey Mapping

First, let’s start off with the big words – Diversity and Inclusion.

Some companies may think they have these under the belt. However, a lot of the time, they start off with hiring diverse employees, but start to fail early on by ignoring ‘Inclusion’. You cannot start being inclusive without a diverse workforce, but you cannot retain the diversity if you do not focus on inclusion…

We have spent time gathering advice and feedback from a wide range of organisations. We have included this information in our book The Inclusion Journey

Here are the Top 4 Reasons For Diversity and Inclusion Failures:

1. Lack Of Momentum

A diversity and inclusion project is not just a matter of ticking things off a checklist. Alex Farbon at GFT UK told us that this is what many companies do and this is where they go wrong. Change will only happen if the momentum is instilled in the people and the culture at the company.

A lack of prioritisation of the project means a lack of momentum. One of our contacts, Nicky Moore, who is the head of HR at ‘Centre of Excellence’, explained how inclusivity in the company wasn’t a priority for them, due to having to reallocate funds towards other crises they were facing. This unsurprisingly meant that their project could not go as far as they would have wanted.

Dina Knight at Datatech and Logicalis says, ‘You need to want to do it, not need to do it.’ Diversity and Inclusion projects take up a lot of time and energy, so if your momentum starts to fizzle out, the consistency will become harder to maintain. Many companies solely see it as a necessity, and don’t have the proper drive for it.

One way to keep the momentum going, which we recommend to our clients, is to celebrate and reward the company’s efforts. Specifically the employees, who need to be persuaded and kept on board the train as the project moves forward.

This brings us onto consistency, as momentum is key for maintaining consistency, but a lack of consistency will also lose the momentum of the entire company.

2. Lack Of Consistency

It is important to have a clear plan that you consistently review, as obstacles and challenges you encounter will likely change the trajectory of your plan. It is ok to fall off track, but staying consistent will allow you to get BACK on track. Don’t give up once you start to fail. See where you’re going wrong and improve for next time.

One key thing you need in order to review and track your progress is data. Danielle Alsey, from Plus X Innovation, uses a system to track their HR analytics data, which has helped the company stay consistent with their diversity and inclusion efforts.

The inclusion of your employees in the diversity and inclusion project is vital. Dina Knight at Datatech and Logicalis says to retrieve feedback from employees, which is a great way of dispersing the project throughout the organisational hierarchy, and is also a great source of data to help notice where the strengths and weaknesses are in the plan. Many companies do not notice their weaknesses until it is too late, so find them early on so that you can guarantee success and avoid failure.

Once data is acquired and the plan is being strengthened consistently, it is much easier to keep going and harder to fall off track.

3. Lack of engagement

Accountability of employees is something that most of our clients have identified as a strength in their diversity and inclusion projects. This means dispersing the responsibility of the project throughout the organisation and onto their employees, allowing them to think for themselves and stay consistent. Many companies make the mistake of keeping the responsibility among the managers and in HR, leaving the employees to lose momentum and understanding of what their goal is.

Natalie Rathner, at Simply Business, emphasises that “it’s not one person’s responsibility and you really need a strong ecosystem that can drive it forward, that has really clear ways of working, really clear milestones”.

Keeping the project at management level is a sign that the company isn’t thinking about diversity and inclusion on a deeper level, which is vital if the company wants their efforts to stay consistent in the long term. Implementing diversity and inclusion is more than just procedures…. It’s a new mindset and a new way of working together.

4. Not creating space

Natalie Rathner at Simply Business, explains how “creating a space and a culture where people can make mistakes” is vital if companies want all employees to have accountability in the project. It’s one thing saying that you’re going to give employees accountability, but how will you actually go about doing this?

Examples of thinking outside the box in terms of inclusivity have been given by Alex Farbon at GFT group, who says taking in non-British religious holidays and events has immensely helped them. Dr Helen Curr at Here explains how bringing alcohol to a Christmas party must be carefully considered in the presence of employees from different backgrounds.

Think about setting up and designing your workspace so that it is accessible for those with physical disabilities. This may seem like an obvious task, but many companies forget the importance of this, or simply don’t have the momentum and money to make these changes. When it comes to hiring someone with a physical disability, not only you as individuals should be prepared, but so should the physical workplace.

By looking at the newfound success of many of our clients’ diversity and inclusion projects, we can identify the key things that they have changed in their plan. They have identified themselves that, after involving these processes in their projects, they have made much more progress compared to last year for example.

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