Understanding The Best Way To Improve Your Diversity And Inclusion Strategy At Work

The word ‘strategy’ is often misunderstood and misused.

Anyone who understands what it takes to formulate strategies knows that there is a strong element of design and futuristic thinking required. The tricky bit is getting from where you are now to where you want to be. When it comes to implementing an effective diversity and inclusion strategy, the tricky bit becomes even trickier.

Any overarching organisational strategy needs to flow throughout the organisation. This should be planned systematically but allowed to occur as organically as possible thereafter. This is essential to retaining momentum while creating fundamental shifts in people. We cannot instruct and force people to change—you can only give them the tools, support and space to be more inclusive.

Make it personal

To achieve this infusion of diversity and inclusivity, organisations generally target all levels of the company. They focus on boards, departments, teams and even individuals through thorough training programmes. Enrichment is achieved through ongoing access to online diversity and inclusion courses .

The question then is if cascading strategies are enough.

After all is said and done, we should acknowledge that individuals are responsible for reality. Your diversity and inclusion strategy needs to take this into account.

Organisations don’t change—people do. Your DEI programme is, therefore, without a doubt, the most people-centred strategy you can execute. The aim is to get people to care and engage with diversity and inclusion as part of their own personal journey. Beyond diversity and inclusion training, people need to emerge wanting to embrace diversity and be more inclusive because it’s the right thing to do and they want to do it. They can’t be forced.

Accountability as part of personal progress is where the “rubber hits the tar”. A diversity and inclusion strategy is, in essence, a growth strategy that links to individual growth and potential in this arena.

Improved strength, harmony and performance become woven together when organisational strategy is synchronised with an individual’s discovery of meaning and purpose.

Diversity and inclusion training is never simply a technical exercise, therefore. Its aim is to support personal improvement and authenticity to the maximum.

Create a vision and work towards it

Design and futuristic focus, which are integral to all forms of strategy, must, therefore, be reverse-engineered when it comes to your diversity and inclusion strategy.

We need to commence with the end in mind—which, ideally, is team members choosing to design a future where diversity and inclusivity are important to them.

The strategy is really ground-up rather than top-down. Diversity and inclusion training must touch the core of the individual in terms of who they are and allow them to extend themselves incrementally into wider circles of inclusivity towards others.

In this way, strategy feels and becomes a more integral part of the individual and organisation as all levels interconnect.

As a people-centred strategy, your diversity and inclusivity policies must stretch the bounds of traditional strategies. Your strategy must be felt beyond the confines of your organisation and stakeholders. Bridges are built in the process of organisational learning. This is not only at and across all levels, but within the heart of each individual as well.

Your strategy can also evolve and improve social, political and environmental foundations that support greater diversity and inclusion. Perspectives on self-reliance, justice, participative decision-making and empowerment are just a few of the issues that must be dealt with along the way as part of the training. The myriad of diversity and inclusion courses online makes this ever-expanding contribution to human development possible.

The real beauty of a diversity and inclusion strategy, which truly understands people and their capacity to transform, is that it will never be a push strategy. With the individual taking centre-stage, it becomes more of a pull strategy, where people are increasingly pulled towards their better selves.

We need to remember that according to Kamal Ravikant, “Life is from the inside out. When you shift on the inside, life shifts on the outside”.