The following is the second in a 3-part blog series on the benefits of measuring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in your organization. You can stay up to date by signing up for our newsletter to the right of this post. Read part 1 here.
What is Inclusion?
Inclusion is the degree to which diverse individuals can participate fully in the decision-making processes within an organization or group. Inclusion puts diversity into action by creating an environment of involvement, respect, and connection. Inclusive cultures can more easily harness the richness of ideas, backgrounds, and perspectives to create value for the organization or community. Organizations need diversity and inclusion to realize business value (Jordan, 2011).
Why Measure Inclusion?
Inclusion, diversity, and equity are all interconnected. This interdisciplinarity is why many organizations have a comprehensive Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) plan. To advance equity, we must also measure diversity and inclusion.
Achieving inclusion also has clear business benefits. Inclusive workplaces positively impact every aspect of an employee’s job performance – particularly productivity, loyalty, honesty, teamwork, and creativity. Exclusive cultures, on the other hand, create disjointedness, high turnover, and high-stress environments.
Below are three measures your organization can use in the effort to be inclusive. These measures are not perfect, nor are they an extensive list of everything that can or should be measured. They are simply a jumping-off point. We recommend including your staff and partners to refine these measures and make them useful for you.
Learn more about measuring DEI in your organization.
Download our free e-Book: DEI Made Measurable; Suggestions for Getting Started With DEI Measures Within Individual Organizations.
3 Inclusion Measures for Organizations:
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% of employees who feel their workplace is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment
Inclusion is about much more than employee demographics. In the book, Social Service in the Workplace, Repositioning Occupational Social Work in the New Millenium, David Bargal and Michael Mor Barak explain that “employee perception of inclusion-exclusion is conceptualized as a continuum of the degree to which individuals feel a part of critical organizational processes. These processes include access to information and resources, connectedness to supervisor and co-workers, and ability to participate in and influence the decision-making process.”
When an employee feels included, it can positively impact every other aspect of their job performance. For example, experts have demonstrated that employees who feel included are more productive, better performers, more loyal, and more honest (O’Hara, 2014). Pervasive feelings of exclusion, on the other hand, can create negative sentiments that harm an organization’s ability to thrive. Feelings of exclusion may also affect an employee’s health and psychological wellbeing at work and home. Researchers have linked perceptions of exclusion with social anxiety, loneliness, depression, anger, and lower physiological health (Hitlan, Cliffton, and DeSoto, 2006).
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% of employees who feel they are meaningfully informed and engaged in organizational decision-making
When leaders offer employees an outlet to express their ideas and opinions, they are able to take advantage of the diverse perspectives, creativity, innovation, and experiences their team has to offer. Additionally, “employee participation is a basic ingredient of workplace innovation, allowing companies to profit fully from workers’ capabilities and their knowledge of production processes” (Duran and Corral, 2016). Asking for employee input on processes, products, and policies fosters the creation of new ideas using the resources an organization already has, without having to hire outside help.
Many experts agree that including employees in decision-making also leads to higher levels of morale and motivation. For example, in an article for Chron, Casey Anderson asserts that “As a functioning participant in the decision-making process, employees understand their ideas are an important contribution to the company.” This gives them a sense of “power to influence the outcome of their work, leading to increased job satisfaction and a positive attitude, not only toward their position but also to the company itself.” This sense of feeling valued may also increase feelings of responsibility for departmental and company success. If an employee’s ideas influence critical company decisions, those employees may feel more committed to the success of these decisions. Ultimately, the more employees are involved, the greater their sense of shared responsibility.
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% of employees that feel they have a safe space to voice opinions and that their contributions are valued
Obtaining employee input is dependent upon them feeling “psychologically safe.” According to Harvard Business School professor, Amy Edmonson, “psychological safety” is defined as a “‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.” Furthermore, Psychological safety is “a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up” (Duhigg, 2016). Employees who feel safe expressing their opinions and concerns without the risk of embarrassment are more likely to volunteer potentially valuable input and ideas.
During a study of its most successful teams’ attributes, Google found psychological safety to be the number one predictor of a high-performing team, ahead of dependability, structure, clarity, meaning, and impact. This is because employees are more likely to admit mistakes, partner together, and take on new roles. Teams with higher psychological safety are also less likely to quit, more open to new ideas, bring in more revenue, and are rated twice as effective by executives (Rozovsky, 2015). Asking employees what their level of comfortability is in expressing themselves, working to develop solutions to increase psychological safety, and addressing complaints will provide critical data to help achieve high performance.
Learn More and Sign up for the One Year Measurable Equity Challenge
If you want to get serious about advancing DEI within your organization, Clear Impact Offers a One Year Measurable Equity Challenge.
Each month, we will send out a prompt for consideration and action with your team. We will also send educational resources and video tutorials to support their completion. One of these resources will include more in-depth research on the measures discussed in this blog.
You can complete all tasks at no cost to you or your organization.
Click here to sign up: https://clearimpact.com/solutions/racial-equity/#challenge.
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