For us at Included, this has meant finding more and more new ways to help organisations create more inclusive cultures. Inspired by you – our clients, friends, family, coworkers – and what you’ve so graciously opened up to us about where you need support, why you might feel nervous about this work, and what the real inclusion issues you face are, combined with our own analysis of how to create effective, inclusive change, we have in the last year developed and launched a number of new products that we are pleased to offer.
D&I Toolkit
D&I has become a popular area of work in the last year – and it’s about time! We have known for decades the importance of creating diverse and inclusive work environments for better decision-making, improved performance, increased resilience, and healthier and happier employees.
But if this is a new area to you as a leader, or if your organisation is just beginning its journey, the sheer amount of information – not all of it useful – can be overwhelming. It can be difficult to figure out where to start, and how to develop an effective and sustainable strategy.
Our D&I toolkit provides a solution to this problem. By outlining the key areas leaders and organisations need to consider when embedding D&I into their work, the D&I Toolkit provides a map of how to move forward. The toolkit:
- Defines key terms and evidence to help arm you with the information you need to get buy-in from those who might be skeptical of D&I work.
- Provides different approaches organisations often take when doing D&I work, and the pros and cons to each
- Identifies the steps for building a coherent, effective, efficient, and sustainable D&I strategy, including how to:
- Embed a D&I lens for your overall business strategy
- Measure both D&I (including equity) to establish baselines and measure effectiveness of interventions
- Build accountability mechanisms and governance structures to ensure D&I work gets done
- Embed inclusion in your day-to-day behaviours and interactions
- Ensure that your organisational processes and procedures are in line with best D&I practice
- Offers case studies from a variety of industries and organisational sizes, highlighting the challenges they were facing from a D&I perspective, the actions they took, and the impacts of those interventions
- Includes links and citations throughout, as well as additional resources such as documents and articles that may be helpful for organisations engaging in D&I work
Inclusive Language Workshop
One of the main learnings since the more global eruption of the Black Lives Matter movement is that many of us feel like we don’t always have the correct language to talk about issues of racism, homophobia, misogyny, ableism, and other aspects of discrimination. This is especially difficult because it sometimes feels like the language around these issues is evolving rapidly, and differently in different parts of the world.
This 90-120 min workshop helps clarify key concepts required to ensure you and your team are using language that is appropriate and accurate, and creating a space where everyone can learn from their mistakes in this area. Centered on understanding the history of different terms and why they might be inappropriate, rather than simply giving a list of approved and disapproved terms the Inclusive Language Workshop helps individuals and teams understand HOW to decide if a word is appropriate. Importantly, the workshop provides practical tips and tricks that participants can take with them into their daily lives.
Inclusive Future Planning series
When trying to develop organisational strategies that project multiple years into the future, we often consider things like how technological changes may impact our work, or how government policy could affect our industries, or how societal trends could sway our priorities. However, while these “Horizon Scanning” exercises (as they are often called) can be extremely useful, they often are not viewed with an inclusion lens.
Our Inclusive Future Planning series is a set of three 90-minute workshops with 2 separate groups (group 1, group 2, and group 1&2 combined) to put that inclusion lens on the way we view the future and how future trends may affect our organisational work and strategy. The first two workshops help define differences in approaches to the future that exist within the organisation, as well as differences in priorities. The final workshop allows for a broader conversation reflecting those differences, and helps to facilitate a dialectic that synthesizes the best of different approaches proposed. Most importantly, this series helps organisations see the future of their work through a new lens, identifying issues they may not have realised existed and providing a way forward for a broader swathe of people.
After hearing from many of you about what support you need, we have focused on developing these products as we feel they are both important and practically helpful for embedding D&I even more throughout your organisation. If you are interested in any of these products, please reach out to hear more.
