How inclusive is your organisation?

If you are familiar with the outcomes of college inspections, you will know that there is a strong correlation between outstanding practice and an inclusive ethos and culture. How inclusive is your organisation? Do staff feel accepted and valued as individuals regardless of difference? Do your managers, at all levels, understand the impact of unconscious bias on staff recruitment and performance management?

The Ofsted inspection handbook provides grade descriptors for outstanding leadership and management that includes:

the ethos and culture ..counters any form of…discriminatory behaviour…leaders, staff and learners do not tolerate prejudiced behaviour

An article published in PersonnelToday recognised that organisations can assess inclusivity by examining three key areas:

Culture. Does your culture support inclusion? What are you doing that makes your employees feel included? What makes people feel excluded? Your culture is influenced by the behaviour of your senior leaders and managers, the stories they tell, the way they manage people and the example they set. What behaviours are driving your culture?

People. Do your people really feel included? Engagement surveys will provide a general temperature check but what are people actually saying about their jobs, and the organisation, in the staff room, around the coffee machine and on social media? That’s where they’ll express their true feelings.

Processes. Do your processes, including recruitment, selection and performance management, support inclusion? Are they fair? Do they encourage the right behaviour? Could they be inhibiting inclusion?

It’s easy to think of discrimination and prejudiced behavior in its extreme form – identifying language and actions as blatantly ‘sexist’, ‘racist’ or homophobic’, for example. But effectively tackling discrimination and prejudiced behavior involves thinking beyond discrimination in its extreme forms to identify and tackle the subtle things that take place in an organisation on a daily basis.

One of my most popular training courses is ‘Actively tackling Unconscious bias, Creating an Inclusive Ethos and Culture’. This can be tailored to specific job roles such as HR, teaching staff or business support staff. For more information, you can download a copy of the workshop publicity here