How to Build an Inclusive Workplace

Inclusion ensures everyone feels valued and is able to add value. Fostering an inclusive workplace helps you tap into the valuable talent available to you. It makes for a supportive and thriving work culture; enabling your organisation to attract and retain the very best people.

CIPD defines inclusion as: “what’s needed to give diversity real impact, and drive towards a world of work where all employees are empowered to thrive. And, whilst diversity and inclusion often go hand in hand, inclusion is fundamentally about individual experience and allowing everyone at work to contribute and feel a part of an organisation.”

With this in mind, here are five ways to get you started on thinking about how you can improve inclusion in your workplace and create a truly inclusive working environment.

1.    Ensure inclusion comes from the top

Senior-level commitment is essential – for an inclusive workplace, the leadership team must be on board with prioritising and practicing inclusivity. You need to ensure the board has bought in before moving forward.

Education and training both at the C-suite level, and in turn for all managers, will help ensure the tone is set for the rest of the organisation. In this way, the board can help actively champion and role model inclusive behaviours.

2.    Involve all employees

Setting up a working group is a great way to help bring inclusivity to the fore – and help share it with the wider team. Choosing employees passionate about inclusion will enable this and help maximise the impact. 

Senior HR Consultant Zoe Martin, from CMA’s own Diversity and Inclusion team says: “Working groups are a great way to bring together employees from across the company to explore your company’s existing practices towards inclusion, identify issues and breakdown barriers.”

3.    Evaluate policies and set expectations

Now is the time to take a look at your existing policies and ensure they are relevant to 2022. Can they be improved? Are your practices reflective of the inclusive culture you want to create? Embed inclusion into wide people management practices and consider creating specific policies and practices that support particular groups or individual needs.

Once you have updated these, then communicating these changes and setting expectations with your teams about behaviour and language will help you implement these changes and ensure they are understood across the company.

4.    Examine workplace culture

Integrate inclusivity into your core values – this will in turn make it easier to ensure your workplace culture is fully inclusive, because it will be authentic and at the heart of your business. Review your workplace’s current culture; recognise bias and identify areas for improvement.

Encourage open communication and ensure that employees understand their role in inclusion in the company.

5.    Create a safe space

What is needed to make the work space safe and inclusive for all? Don’t just guess. Partner with managers to learn more about your teams and what they need. What are the norms and values?

Whether it’s adding pronouns to email signatures, ensuring every part of the office is wheelchair accessible, offering a lactation room or making sure that those with dietary requirements are catered for at team lunches – there are big and small ways to enable every individual feels included.

Further reading:

CIPD – building an inclusive workplace > 

Inclusive Employers – Workplace inclusion >

Stonewall – LGBT inclusion in the workplace >