As we begin to settle into the new year, it’s important to take some time to both reflect on the past year and continue planning for the year to come. While 2020 was an unpredictable year, through the chaos we find insights that will shape the future of the workforce and employee benefits.
While many experts have made predictions for what 2021 might entail, there are a handful of themes that have come to the forefront for most. Likely the most notable of these is the prioritization among employers to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Following a year of civil unrest and mass protests for social justice, it makes sense that there is more interest in DEI. And we are seeing more people of color filling roles in high-profile positions – inspiring others, and influencing change. Additionally, we’ve seen a growing interest in environmental, social, and corporate governance policies among corporations where ESG had traditionally been less of a priority.
While priorities have been shifting regarding social equality, we have also been enduring the impacts of a global pandemic. This has shed light on many areas that have been overlooked in the past, such as improved benefits for working parents, women, and low-income individuals. These emerging themes have played a major role in what experts believe will influence the benefits strategies of employers in 2021.
Meeting a Diverse Range of Needs
It has become apparent that a broad benefits plan for all isn’t an effective strategy for companies that are working to create a more inclusive and diverse workplace. Instead, the standard has changed to a need for personalized benefits. While a change to benefits that serve a wider variety of employee needs (mental health, childcare, etc.) has been in the works for a few years, the events of 2020 have and continue to accelerate the need for more inclusive, well-rounded benefit programs.
More Equitable Benefits
2020 brought with it a variety of new challenges for employers and employees alike. While working parents struggled with the stress of ever-changing childcare solutions, many single non-parents struggled with the mental health concerns caused by isolation. The differences in the varying needs of employees brought forth the need for empathy and a shift in the benefits and services offered by employers. The effects of these differences will influence employers to have a more equitable approach to the benefits offered moving forward.
The Rise of Social Benefits
Social benefits refer to things such as student loan repayment programs, commuter benefits, child care, elder care, and more. They are a response to what many employees consider their employer’s social responsibility. While student loan repayment plans were expected to be the big trend of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic certainly had a big impact on the emergence of such plans. However, that idea and similar non-traditional benefits are continuing to become more important as we see a growing interest in social benefits.
An Emphasis on Connecting Remotely
Our daily working environments have changed dramatically this year and with it came many opportunities and challenges. For example, remote work has allowed employers to tap into a wider pool of talent. However, employers need to continue to prioritize the use of technology that helps their teams succeed and educate them on time management and skills that will improve productivity while working from home.
Surge in DEI-Based Recruitment Efforts
Among all of the realization of the past year, we have seen a significant focus on the need for effective DEI initiatives from employers. The new virtual environment is not only helpful to the continuity of businesses, it encourages DEI initiatives in the future. Employers are no longer limited by geographical location when acquiring talent, rather, the virtual environment enables them to leverage recruitment platforms to access a more diverse pool of talent.
A Focus on Inclusivity, Despite Social Distancing
It uncertain when we will return to working in the office again. Many employers are feeling the struggles of the disconnect between employees. While Zoom meetings are helping us stay connected, it doesn’t quite replace the feeling of seeing and collaborating in-person. In the future, it will be important for leaders to structure remote work in a way that puts inclusivity as the top priority. Regardless of what the future holds, it is important that employers create a uniform and inclusive experience that encourages employees to do their best work.
This is a guest post written by Launchways partners Rada Yovovich and Chanté Thurmond, representing The Darkest Horse, a next generation Diversity & Inclusion consulting firm.
The Long-Awaited “Future of Work” Has Come Early, and Brought Surprises Galore
Particularly in the last few years, Thought Leaders have been heralding the approach of “The Future of Work,” imagining a model of what “work” would look like in a world of abundant emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation. That future vision has typically focused on the need to manage a shift of the workforce to virtual, remote, and alternative models to full-time staff (gig-based, contract-based, and part-time labor, for example).
Enter COVID-19, and the timetable has changed, and brought with it a number of unexpected features. In a matter of weeks, we’ve seen non-essential workers being told to work from home (WFH) while sheltering-in-place. Organizations, in an effort to recalibrate their budgets in tightened consumer and supply chain markets, have done their best to be creative by adapting HR policies and employment contracts to allow for safer working conditions, flexible hours, and many have reduced their workforce resulting in employees being shifted to subcontractors, part-time status, or have simply been laid off, forcing them to seek new income opportunities from home.
Who would have guessed that these disrupting shifts to work-from-home would coincide, hand-in-hand, with equally disrupting shifts to school-from-home, making working parents into teachers as well? And who would have predicted the explosive and breathtaking speed of almost-universal adoption of Zoom and other web-conferencing services?
This is not the graceful, opportunity-driven entrance into the future we may have envisioned. In fact, initial waves of surprises produced longings for a “return to normal.” But, more recently, subsequent waves of signals from the future have pointed toward possible shapes of things to come. Many uncertainties remain, but some things have become quite clear. We most certainly aren’t going “back to normal!” The past has passed, and it is not coming back. Winners and losers will be defined by their agility in adopting new technologies, by the ability to learn and innovate quickly, and by how well they attract and retain top talent.
Competing for Talent in the Future of Work
In a world where more companies’ workforce is remote/virtual, the geographic and financial constraints of recruiting melt away. Suddenly, teams have an opportunity to pursue a truly global talent pool in a more democratized way—allowing them to expand their talent search beyond their local zip codes.
The expansion goes beyond geography. Entire populations of people for whom a traditional office role is challenging, unsafe, or even impossible are finally able to access the labor market in a more equitable and inclusive way. These include, just to name a few:
Individuals with significant physical disabilities
Individuals who are gender nonconforming or going through a gender transition
Individuals with phobias or other mental health challenges
Individuals with chronic or acute health conditions
Neurodiverse individuals
Caregivers, whether for children or aging/ill family members
These types of barriers to workplace accessibility can be easier to accommodate in a remote-work context. Individuals can curate their space and constraints to meet their own needs, particularly if their organization provides proper technology, infrastructure and policies to support them.
The Best Talent is Diverse
The greatest talent in the world includes members of populations who are suddenly gaining access in this new normal. If your organization is hiring the best talent without bias, members of your team will represent a wide array of cultures and identities.
Not only is diversity an inevitable outcome of unbiased recruitment practices, but the data shows diverse teams far outperform homogenous teams. This ROI has been proven time and time again — reports by Forbes, Mercer, the Harvard Business Review, and many more demonstrate that a diversified workforce drives innovation and business growth — bottom line: diverse organizations perform better.
Here’s How: Practice Inclusion and Equity Throughout your Employee Lifecycle
It starts with Attraction.
Inclusive employer branding, content marketing, events and continuous networking
Talent Acquisition and Recruitment.
Engaging diverse talent, identify diverse sourcing opportunities, curb unconscious biases, reduce barriers to application process, create transparent process and develop culturally intelligent communication practices
Hiring and Onboarding
Transparency, over-communication and personalization can make all the difference
Combat bias by building a fair and consistent processes
Build interview guides and scorecards that are clear and objective
Promotion of wellness programming is more important now than ever before
Re-evaluate and optimize for equity and gender parity
Employee Engagement and Training & Development
Make it a regular practice to check-in with your employees. Conduct pulse-surveys that specifically gauge inclusion, equity and belonging. Click here to learn how The Darkest Horse can help your organization with this!
Cultivate an inclusive culture
Offer inclusive and accessible learning experiences and develop clear learning/career pathways
Performance Management
Here’s your opportunity to acknowledge, celebrate and reward for each team member’s cultural contribution, unique ways of working, and fostering a culture of inclusion!
This is also an opportunity to re-evaluate your performance metrics. Some questions you may want to ask yourself includes:
Is your process fair, equitable and inclusive?
Are your policies unintentionally punitive or do they lean towards corrective action?
Foster Community
Create, support, and invest in Employee Resource/Affinity Groups
The Future is Yours!
Now is the time to catch the wave of change and surf it to success—don’t get pulled into the undertow of clinging to old ways of working! Here are a few steps to move your organization towards the future of work:
Harness the inclusion capacity of your organization. Identify the innovative, forward-thinking, and inclusion-minded changemakers in your organization. Activate them toward a goal of fostering inclusion. Empower them to set audacious goals and affect disruptive change when needed, and support them with leadership buy-in.
Get help. When you have reached the bounds of your team’s capacity for in-house inclusion efforts, partner with inclusion experts like The Darkest Horse to bring in external support for consulting, training, facilitation, and events/experiences.
Use the right tools. Work with an HR and Benefits expert like Launchways to ensure your HR processes and benefits packages meet the needs of a modern workforce.
About The Darkest Horse: The Darkest Horse (TDH) is a women and minority-owned next-gen consultancy firm helping the workforce and organizations explore the intersections of Radical Inclusion; The Future of Work; Emerging Technology; Health, Well-Being and Human Potential.
The Darkest Horse partners with organizations to empower diverse talent to thrive by embracing emerging technologies and instituting strategies that maximize human potential.
Before we dive deep into the power of Diversity and
Inclusion, let’s take a second to establish our terms and clarify what D&I
actually looks like.
Workplace
Diversity: The practice of hiring, promoting, and building a team in a way
that brings together people of different backgrounds, educations, personal
histories, experiences, and areas of expertise.
Workplace
Inclusion: The practice of ensuring diverse voices are fully comfortable,
integrated into, and valued as members of a thriving, complementary,
interdependent team.
To be clear, diversity is nothing without inclusion!
It’s pointless and somewhat dishonest to build a diverse team only to
maintain a leadership framework where a certain “in-group” maintains the power
to impactfully steer the ship while a nominally diverse team underneath them
feels disenfranchised or fearful.
Why Diversity and Inclusion Build the Best Possible Team
The true potential of humanity lies in our ability to come
together and build a unit that’s more powerful than the sum of its parts. A
group of people from similar backgrounds, educations, and ways of navigating
the world might be able to put their heads together to come up with one, two,
or even three ways of solving a given problem, but when you invite
professionals of diverse backgrounds to the table, the possibilities are far
more open-ended.
When businesses make diversity and inclusion main values and
priorities, they can gain incredible benefits, includes:
Increased brainstorming/innovation potential
More access to outside-the-box problem-solving
A wider skill and knowledge base across the
organization
A thinktank and business team that accurately
reflects the national and global marketplace
Building a Foundation for a Great Team
There’s no magic recipe you can learn to turn D&I into
areas of pride and opportunity for your business, but the key is to foster a strong
culture. If that culture is one that values diversity of people and ideas,
fights for representation and inclusion in every situation, and works to give
everybody a voice, then you can really capitalize on the innovative power of
D&I.
Workplace culture determines both the levels of buy-in,
engagement, and persistence your team will put into their work on a day-to-day
basis, their feeling of personal investment and their job, and the dedication
they put into embracing and maintaining the company culture. Great talent wants
to work in a culture that supports them and sets them up for success. When they
encounter a situation where they don’t feel comfortable, valued, or positively
plugged in, they leave quickly.
Creating a Level Playing Field Through Education
While diversity hiring programs are nearly ubiquitous in the
big business world, they often lack the crucial, consistent ground-level
follow-through (inclusion) that turns that diversity into business power. Employee
education (in the form of in-house training or formal professional development)
is a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to shaping your existing culture
into the kind of inclusive environment that sets the business up to win big
with D&I.
Of course, you can’t just do diversity and anti-harassment
education to check them off the list for compliance purposes – employees can
smell that from a mile away, and it directly affects their ability to engage
authentically with the training and reflect on the information in a way that’s
going to augment their mindset or behavior at work. Discussions of diversity
and inclusion need to be powerful, real, and backed by thought-provoking
human-to-human engagement – not a comprehension quiz at the end.
Designing and building that education program is a key step
in articulating, fostering, and supporting a great employee culture. When you
give great talent something important to aspire to and make it real for them,
the possibilities are endless. At the same time, worker education creates a
foundation for accountability and makes it easier to remove toxic mindsets that
do damage to inclusion or morale.
Don’t Hesitate to Be Great!
The biggest mistake organizations make is waiting to
articulate the perfect approach to D&I. Every business can and should be
doing something about diversity and inclusion at scale today. If you think
diversity training or inclusion workshops would be valuable to your team, seek
out a great independent PD provider who can help you today – don’t form a
committee to discuss what the training might look like two years from now.
Of course, long-term initiatives are key to harnessing
diversity and inclusion as business strategies over time, but the best thing
any organization can do from a talent-centric and corporate decency standpoint
is to identify a starting point and dig into exploring the challenge and
addressing the issues at hand.
In the next section of this book, we’ll explore some of the thinking
points and strategies businesses can use to find a starting point for their
D&I program, articulate a commitment to diversity and inclusion and begin
creating that great culture and winning team. Depending on the size, industry,
or existing culture of your business, some of these approaches might be more
relevant or feasible early-on in the process than others, but any of these
strategies will help you grow in your ability to embrace D&I in a powerful,
data-driven way.
Part 2: Planning to Become Unbeatable
Aligning Your Values
Everybody knows diversity is good, right? Everybody believes
people should be represented and have voice at the table, right? Those
statements are hopefully true, but creating a culture of excellence through
diversity and inclusion requires that you as a business shout those values from
the rooftops.
Articulation is the first step for you as an employer to
tell your team members what you really stand for as an organization and what
you expect out of them as employees. At the same time, your company values help
you establish a public face that can be used as part of on-going marketing or
recruitment campaigns.
When you as an organization show your employees and
the public through your actions and business practices that you care about
diversity and value inclusion (and don’t just tell them), you set
yourself up to win big on many levels including:
Improved recruitment capabilities
More talent from diverse backgrounds
Fewer toxic team members who don’t embrace
diversity
Improved reputation in the public space
Improved opportunities for partnerships with
other diverse companies
Improved ability to create logical, powerful
procedures that are rooted in established values
Building the Strongest Possible Understanding of Your
Current Team
Of course, before you can hone yourself into a diversity and
inclusion powerhouse, you need to build a rich understanding of the current
state of D&I in your organization. Without that foundation of data, it’s
hard to know what the challenge/opportunity really looks like and what you need
to do to get there.
A few years ago, gathering that data would’ve been pretty
tough, but thanks to advances in human capital management technology such as
Paylocity’s demographics dashboard, mining your HR records to create a “state
of the business” diversity report for your business only takes a few clicks.
That data can help you understand your workforce in terms of:
Age makeup
Experience level
Education level/background diversity
Gender representation
Diversity among leadership
Diversity by department
Diversity by team
Once you’ve created that roadmap of your current state, it’s
much easier to understand the work at hand. When it comes to understanding the
state of inclusion in your organization, that can be a little trickier, but
employee surveys and other engagement markers can be useful to fill out the
picture.
Setting Ambitious but Achievable Goals
With your commitment to diversity and inclusion articulated
and a rich understanding of your existing team’s make-up and culture, it’s time
to roll up your sleeves and get down to the work of determining what your
D&I strategy is going to look like and how it will impact your business.
The key here is to be sure you’re setting data-driven goals – things that you
can measure either through qualitative or quantitative means to determine your
success.
If your program is going to grow into something great, you
need to dream big, but it’s important to think at scale and in a logical order.
When it comes time to set those tentpoles that will guide the vision and work
moving forward, ask yourself:
If we’re not satisfied with the current state of
diversity in this organization, what would we like to look like three years
from now?
Does the diversity of our leadership
align with the diversity we envision for our workforce?
If not, how can we step up recruitment and
promotion of diverse leaders? Where would those leaders fit best?
How will our regular recruiting, on-boarding,
and P.D. approaches need to be modified to support our commitment to making
these things happen?
What can we do to improve workplace culture
in a way that maximizes talent and invites everybody to the party?
How will we use data to measure whether
or not this is happening?
What will we do on a daily, weekly, and monthly
basis to reinforce our commitment to D&I and ensure the work environment
stays healthy?
Creating Powerful Policies & Procedures
The answer to some of those questions will likely lie within
your policies and procedures. The best way to guarantee the success of your
D&I initiatives is to give them real teeth by backing them with official,
well-defined rules and policies. It’s one thing to say you value diversity and
inclusion, it’s another to codify your beliefs in a way that make it easier to
hold everybody accountable to organizational ideals.
Some of those procedures will be dictated by government
compliance. The EEOC is responsible for ensuring that diversity and inclusion –
at least to the levels articulated by the federal government – occur in the
workplace, and many states are adopting increasingly specific racial or LGBTQ+
inclusion laws to hold businesses to a higher standard.
You’ll never become a leader in the fields of diversity and
inclusion by sticking to government guidelines, however! If you’re looking to
get a better sense of how your HR department can support a diverse workforce
better, take a look at some of your industry’s identified diversity leaders.
What do they do to attract talent? How has that diversity, inclusion, and
strong culture created wins for them? What can you do at scale to replicate
their success?
By using legal guidelines, industry best practices, and
emerging trends, you can create a D&I framework that speaks to both the
current climate and what’s unique, special, and exciting about your business.
Building Benefit Packages that Truly Value Diversity & Inclusion
Part of inclusion is recognizing everybody’s needs and
ensuring they are met in a way that supports productivity and a positive
relationship with work and the workplace. That means taking care of your
diverse workforce away from the office is just as important as building a great
environment for them to work in.
Employee benefits are an area in which businesses frequently
send subtle, non-inclusive messages that employees pick up on. For example,
many health plans provide no coverage for same-sex couples. For organizations
that value diversity and inclusion, those kinds of biases must be eliminated
from your compensation, benefits, and healthcare packages in order to build a
system that’s truly valuable and authentic for everybody.
At the same time, it’s important for HR to consider how
their offerings will support a wide variety of workers from different
backgrounds. Ask yourself questions like:
How can you build value for young families?
What about single, relatively healthy folks? How
can you save them (and yourself) money while still providing a strong healthcare
safety net?
What about transgender or intersex employees who
need access to preferred doctors to get their medical needs met?
What about employees with long-term medical
issues who require expensive medicines and therapies?
How can we help provide culturally responsive
medicine and services? How can we make sure all our employees have access to
services that make them and their families feel comfortable and happy?
In order to support a diverse workforce and live up to your
values as a progressive, inclusive employer, you need to find a way to answer
those questions without making the classic benefits plan design error of trying
to offer everything. It’s important to remember that more doesn’t always mean
better when it comes to benefits. Building a truly inclusive benefits framework
is a tall task, but it’s incredibly rewarding and can set your business apart
from the pack at a time when talent is more conscious than ever of their
healthcare needs.
Part 3: Staying Unbeatable
Keep Your Eye on the Data
So, you’ve established diversity and inclusion as core
values, devised a recruitment and promotion initiative, beefed up your policies
and training procedures, and gotten the feedback you need to build a really
great culture. It’s tough work, and it’s rewarding, but it’s important not to
fool yourself into thinking the work is done once your program has been created
and rolled out in its initial form.
Part of inclusion is being responsive to the evolving needs
of your team members as individuals and a community. Those targets move
month-from-month and year-to-year, and for your organization’s D&I approach
to remain strong over time, you need to keep evolving to keep up with shifts in
your employee culture.
Of course, your most powerful ally in this work is data! You can and should continue to monitor your HCM data and survey your employees regularly to provide yourself with a strong understanding of the state of diversity and inclusion across the organization.
Create a Built-in Feedback/Assessment Loop
Part of getting the data you need to stay unbeatable is
creating a formal framework through which employees can conduct on-going
discussions about diversity and inclusion to help you, the employer, understand
how well you’re doing and what they need from you.
Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are a great way to support a
diversity and inclusion strategy, as they provide tremendous two-way value. For
employees they provide the opportunity to speak frankly with their most direct
peers about the needs of their specific community or interest group and finally
create a space that’s specifically designated for talking about the personal
side of work at hand. For the employer, ERGs are a great way of making sure
team members feel empowered to discuss the issues that concern them in the
workplace, and they create a feedback loop that lets you know very clearly what
people’s needs, wants, and goals for the office culture are.
Once again, it’s important to mention that you can roll out ERGs at any point in your D&I journey. As soon as you’ve identified particular communities or interest groups within your team, create a framework for them to get together, talk about their shared experience, and discuss their vision for the workplace and issues that are relevant to them. There’s no need to wait until you’re three years into the initiative and have greatly increased the diversity of your workforce – in fact, it’s better for you to start small early on and allow the ERG program to scale up with your business.
Maintaining the Commitment to Greatness Together
Diversity and inclusion are all about commitment –
commitment to talent, commitment to values, and commitment to greatness
together. When you create a great cultural platform, create a diverse,
complementary team, and focus on inclusion in a way that ensures everybody is
heard and their abilities are maximized, you set your business up to maximize
its potential for profit, innovation, and high-level problem-solving.
Remember:
Diversity is nothing without inclusion – A
hiring/recruiting initiative is just one piece of a much larger picture
A strong, positive culture and employee
education framework must be in place in order for a D&I initiative to be
successful in the long term
Every business should be doing something to
tackle D&I at scale today – Progress over perfection
Good HCM data is necessary to benchmark your current
state of D&I and measure the success of your initiatives over time
HR policies and procedures, along with employee
benefit offerings, must reflect the organization’s deep commitment to diversity
and inclusion
Diversity and inclusion is a complex, evolving
challenge/opportunity, but businesses that get it right have the power to
maximize the potential of their individual team members and their organization
as a whole.
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Diversity and inclusion are the keys to creating a truly
modern team that’s built to maximize each individual’s skills, shore up
individual weaknesses, and build a powerful unit that can thrive, brainstorm,
problem-solve, and celebrate achievements together. With that said, getting
diversity and inclusion right is such an important responsibility that many HR
and business leaders continue to hire for cultural fit, leaving a coordinated,
purposeful D&I initiative for another day.
In order for businesses to succeed and innovate into the 2020s, that kind of thinking needs to stop. Each and every employer should be doing something at scale to encourage diversity and foster inclusion. The businesses that do not will soon stand to miss out on some of the world’s best talent and leave themselves exposed to costly lawsuits.In order to demystify the complexity of D&I and connect business and HR leaders with actionable strategies, Launchways recently held a free one-hour webinar, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Workplace Diversity & Inclusion but Were Afraid to Ask.”
The webinar featured an all-star panel of four of the
Midwest’s leading experts on diversity and inclusion, each of whom provided
crucial considerations and actionable strategies for businesses of any size or
growth stage looking to improve their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Rebekah Wolford of Paylocity began the conversation
by articulating the importance of diversity and inclusion as prized values
baked into the core of what your organization does and represents. She
explained how D&I initiatives all about building the “We” that’s going to
maximize company potential and customer experience.
Rebekah also provided a valuable real-world case study for
D&I success by walking through how she and her team planned, initiated, and
built an impactful diversity and inclusion program at Paylocity. She discussed…
How to use surveys and HCM data to build an
understanding of the current state of D&I at your organization
Which data points should be most important to
your D&I planning and assessment
How to create a comfortable space in which
employees and leadership can challenge each other
How to be sure you’re practicing inclusive
behaviors and creating a strong culture
How to use employee resource groups (ERGs) as an
on-going part of a D&I strategy
How to create and provide meaningful D&I
training for your team
Rada Yovovich of The Darkest Horseshared
some of her wisdom as an expert diversity and inclusion consultant, expanding
on the vital importance of strong company culture and discussing how businesses
can work towards getting there from any starting point.
Rada stressed that the workplace is an unintentional “bias
factory,” which presents an unwelcoming or additionally challenging situation
for diverse talent. She specifically discussed how organizations can work to
identify and eliminate bias in their job postings, hiring interactions, and
performance management evaluations. She also explained…
How to build buy-in for your D&I program by
making it authentic to, designed for, and reflective of your organization’s
existing culture
How to use employee engagement to drive forward
the culture and team you aspire to
How to recognize, address, and eliminate the
unconscious bias that works against diversity and inclusion
How to provide non-judgmental employee
assessments by staying grounded in functional competencies
How to create a documentation trail that protects
your business in compliance scenarios
Dr. Renee McLaughlin of Cignadrew upon her years of
experience as an LGBTQ+ inclusion and healthcare professional to emphasize the
importance of proactive planning in corporate D&I. Whether it’s an
early-stage organization devising a plan for maintaining their strong culture
if a merger or buyout occurs or choosing which healthcare offerings will
ideally support your team, the best answer is to have a clear, powerful plan in
place.
Renee also provided tremendous insight into the necessity of
transition resources for professionals in any workplace. That means having a
policy-backed transition plan, proactively working to ensure the safety of
trans professionals, and providing healthcare offerings that provide trans team
members with the best opportunity to be their authentic selves at work. She
specifically discussed…
Why
diversity and inclusion are especially relevant for early-stage businesses
How
to work toward combining cultures in a positive, authentic way during a
business merger scenario
How
early stage companies can plan proactively to reduce these challenges
How
to proactively address the needs of LGBTQ+ employees, particularly transgender
team members, through company policies and insurance offerings
Which
specific terms need to be included in your policies
How
to plan to address resistant beliefs in LGBTQ+ inclusion scenarios
The
importance of understanding all local laws related to LGBTQ+ rights, particularly
for multi-site corporations
Alex Koglin of Launchways
applied his expertise as a leading employee benefits consultant and LGBTQ+
rights activist in the Chicago area to provide specific insight into how you
can build alignment between your benefits offerings and your commitment to
diversity and inclusion.
Alex provided specific employee benefits recommendations
that organizations can use to build the necessary support for diversity,
inclusion, and transition that Renee, Rebekah, and Rada discussed. He
explained…
How to create a strong, supportive D&I framework regardless of your personal feelings through employee benefits and healthcare offerings
The importance of benefits offerings that account for domestic partners and same-sex spouses
How to ensure your transgender employees’ healthcare needs are met
The importance of providing robust mental health coverage as well as physical healthcare
How to provide on-going health and wellness education to maximize team-wide well-being
When businesses truly embrace diversity and inclusion, they create a powerful, complementary team that’s unbeatable together . Unfortunately, though, there’s no magic wand you can wave to get there.
To leverage the incredible team-building and innovative
potential of diversity and inclusion, businesses need to articulate strong
values, make them a real part of daily work culture, and create policies and
procedures that hold themselves and their employees accountable. It takes
honest commitment, thoughtful planning, strong follow-through, and built-in
checks and balances along the way.
With that said, no business should be dissuaded from working
towards building diverse and inclusive HR policies just because the work is
complex. In fact, organizations who don’t tackle the challenge and opportunity
of diversity head-on only set themselves up to stagnate.
In this post we’ll explore:
What strong workplace diversity and inclusion
“look like” as we near 2020
How truly valuing diversity and inclusion builds
success for businesses
The many costs associated with undervaluing and not
practicing workplace diversity and inclusion
How HR professionals trying to increase their
knowledge of current best practices for diversity and inclusion can connect
with the best resources
The State of Workplace Diversity & Inclusion
The world of workplace diversity has transformed immensely
over the past decade. A diverse, progressive, and inclusive workplace culture
can no longer be treated like an optional, industry-specific perk. Instead, a
commitment to diversity and inclusion has become a necessity for businesses at
any size. In fact, diversity and inclusion policies are increasingly
requirements when it comes to disclosures for business partnerships, grant
applications, and proposals.
In today’s modern work climate, organizations that don’t understand and leverage the value of workplace diversity will fail to outperform their competitors.
Let’s take a minute to break down both the words “diversity”
and “inclusion” and think about what they really mean in today’s marketplace.
Workplace diversity
means hiring, promoting, and valuing professionals from a variety of different
backgrounds, experiences, and approaches. It means employing people who think
differently, look differently, and experience the world differently from each
other. It means thinking beyond age, race, religion, disability, or sexual
identity. It means trying to build a team that is truly complementary and
reflects the world and marketplace as a whole.
Diversity, however, is nothing without inclusion. In fact, it is inclusion that has become the hot-button
issue and the trendier topic over the last two years. Inclusion is the
company’s devotion to and strategies for ensuring their diverse workforce
functions as a true team, and all people’s skills, values, and perspectives are
valued in a fair way.
As we approach 2020, diversity is firmly cemented as one of
the most important values for all corporations and businesses, while inclusion
is continuing to emerge and take its rightful place as a key focus of HR. Let’s
take a minute to think about what benefits forward-thinking HR departments can
create for their organizations when they get both diversity and inclusion
right.
How Diversity & Inclusion Help Businesses Win
As an HR professional, it’s your job to build a team that
sets your business up for success. From that perspective, diversity and
inclusion aren’t even really values or ideals anymore – they’re simply matters
of best practice.
When your organization embraces a variety of professionals,
perspectives, and people, you create a team that can accomplish more than any
homogeneous group. With that said, maximizing their impact means pairing that
diversity with inclusion – that is to say, diverse staffing practices must be
supported by policies, leadership, and day-to-day workflows that keep everybody
feeling empowered and engaged.
Businesses that call pull those two components off can reap significant
business results that less diverse or inclusive workplaces simply can’t access.
Talent Attraction and Retention
One of the most seismic shifts of the twenty-first century
has been the deemphasis on base salary, especially in the face of a thriving
workplace culture. Simply put, great talent wants to work in a great
environment – one that feels warm but professional, welcoming and collegial.
People also want to work in a place where their perspective
is appreciated and valued. That’s where the organization that values diversity
can connect with outstanding talent. If you can establish an identity and a
reputation as a business that truly creates opportunity for people based on the
strengths of their talents and thinks beyond twentieth-century concepts of what
corporate leadership and a productive office look like, you’ll be operating a
workplace where the very best talent of every background will want to work.
Increased Authentic Engagement
When your boss is the person who signs your check, you’ll
work to meet their expectations. When your boss is a person who shares your
values, applies fairness in every possible situation, and builds a team of
diverse voices that makes you (and everybody) feel heard, you’ll work to exceed
everybody’s expectations.
By fostering a diverse team, promoting diverse leadership,
and creating a workplace where everybody has the level of comfort, support, and
safety they need to get their work done, you can build something truly special:
an environment without glass ceilings or toxic secret inner circles. You will
have a workplace where all employees feel like they’re working positively
toward shared goals. This sets talent up to be their best selves and function
as a whole that’s much greater and more powerful than the sum of its parts.
Building a Variety of Perspectives
Too often, organizations lock themselves into a vision, a
culture, and a way of thinking early on in their lifecycle and craft hiring and
promotion programs in a way that reinforces that orthodoxy. This can be a
recipe for business stagnation.
Forward-thinking businesses aren’t afraid of a diversity of
perspectives or approaches destabilizing what they’ve previously built. On the
contrary, these businesses realize that a team with a wide variety of
backgrounds creates a much greater pool of ideas for innovation,
problem-solving, messaging, and more.
When each department, committee, and project team is diverse
and everybody knows their perspective and work is valued, businesses create the
strongest possible framework for innovative thinking, innovative work, and
innovative approaches to quality assurance.
Fostering a Reputation as a True Modern Business
If you can establish a great, diverse, inclusive workplace
culture where everybody feels supported and bought-in, you can turn your
organization into a destination landing spot for great talent and great buzz
alike. Your HR and marketing departments can leverage your thriving, positive
culture as an anchor point for campaigns that help your business grow and
spread the word about the great work you’re doing.
How Businesses Lose When They Don’t Prioritize Diversity
& Inclusion
Organizations that lack a strong commitment to diversity
don’t just miss out on all the benefits discussed previously, they also create
several very real and very dangerous business problems for themselves. Whether
it’s through explicit exclusion or simply a lack of care at the leadership and
HR levels, businesses that disregard building a thoughtful approach to
diversity put themselves in a tenuous business and legal position.
Businesses that preach diversity on paper but do little to
make inclusion a daily workplace value at every level leave themselves
vulnerable to many of the same problems. In fact, in some ways, a half-hearted
approach to diversity and inclusion can set you up to lose bigger, as the
organization comes away looking either disconnected from its values or like a
fraud.
Increased Turnover
When employees don’t feel fully safe, valued, appreciated,
plugged-in, or supported, they head for the door. Of all the changes to the
workplace over the last twenty years, this is the one that’s caught senior
leaders and HR professionals off-guard the most.
Turnover due to gaps in diversity and inclusion isn’t just
the result of stereotypical harassment or bullying, though. Today’s top talent
is sensitive to their environment and can generally gauge whether or not they
are a fit for a job and its culture within six months. If talent feels there is
a glass ceiling or lack of potential for success and personal happiness due to
your organization’s lack of devotion to diversity and inclusion, they’ll just
hand in their notice and move on.
No HR professional needs to be told how damaging the spend
associated with turnover is. Gaps in productivity, hiring expenses, and
training time all hurt the bottom line and significantly impact the team’s
ability to fire on all cylinders. Even if you’re great at identifying and
hiring diverse talent, you’re just setting your organization up for a brain
drain if there isn’t a framework in place to ensure those professionals are valued
and supported.
Lower Employee Morale & Reduced Engagement
Discrimination and exclusion are ugly things, and when
people see them in the workplace – even devoted professionals – they simply
can’t work like their best selves. To put it simply, toxic cultures bum people
out, and nobody is motivated to do their best work when their workplace feels
toxic.
With that said, the way gaps in inclusion affect morale can
be subtler but no less devastating. When employees are physically present but
feel like they aren’t valued, heard, and included in the same ways as their
peers, their engagement level, buy-in, and quality of work begin to drop at a
steady pace.
One of the biggest mistakes HR leaders make is
underestimating how many people are sensitive to issues of diversity and
inclusion. When discrimination occurs or inclusion is clearly not a priority,
the blow to morale and buy-in extends far beyond the direct victim of the
situation. That means that organizations that do wrong by their minority or
LGBTQ+ employees are actually damaging the productivity, motivation, and
engagement of a much higher percentage of the workforce, who stand as allies to
those groups.
Groupthink
Diversity is a synonym of “variety,” and the less diversity
an organization has, the less variety there will be in terms of innovative
thinking and profit-driving work. If you get a room full of 10 people from
similar backgrounds and ask them to solve a problem, they’ll probably come up
with one or two well-defined ideas. In a room of 10 people from diverse
backgrounds, however, you can have a much richer discussion about possible
solutions because there are more ways of looking at the problem and a wider
range of past experiences and familiar approaches available.
Organizations that don’t prioritize diversity and inclusion
at every level within the organization set up themselves up to fall victim to
groupthink. This can be especially limiting at the executive or leadership
level, where a true team of complementary minds is necessary to steer the work.
Reputation & Perception as an Innovator
In this day and age, reputation is everything, for
individuals and businesses alike. Tone-deaf marketing campaigns sink brands
overnight, and reports of regressive, toxic, or non-inclusive culture on sites
like Glassdoor can quickly limit an organization’s potential to land great
talent.
When people encounter a discriminatory or non-inclusive
environment in today’s culture, they’re not going to suffer in silence or keep
it to themselves. They will use the tools available to make sure that the world
knows exactly what gaps exist in their current or former employee’s commitment
to inclusion.
Legal Issues
Of course, litigation is always the elephant in the room,
especially when HR issues are concerned. When it comes to inclusion and
diversity, a lack of HR commitment can quickly spiral into a costly legal
situation.
On one hand, all organizations in the U.S. with at least 15
employees are beholden to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC).
EEOC investigations and adjudications can last for months, or even years,
creating a long, damaging process that can devastate an organization’s ability
to turn a profit in both the short- and long-term. Depending on the state in
which your business is located, there may be additional anti-discrimination and
inclusion laws you need to consider.
On the other, there’s the specter of civil litigation. Civil
cases can be resolved much more quickly than EEOC investigations, but they can
be just as damaging in terms of finance, reputation, and ongoing employee
morale. No matter where your organization is located, there are several
attorneys in your area who make their bread and butter on discrimination
claims, and they know how to use your own policies (or lack thereof) against
you to win the biggest possible award for their clients.
Key Takeaways
As an HR professional, it’s your job to build the best
possible team and create an environment in which that team can thrive and
succeed. Part of building that great team is truly understanding the importance
of diversity to high-quality work; another part is commitment to supporting the
team you’ve built with policies, procedures, and structure that help them feel
plugged-in and valued.
Some key takeaways from this post include:
Diversity and inclusion are no longer optional workplace values
Businesses that create a welcoming, diverse, inclusive environment provide themselves with the best opportunities for innovation and the widest array of skills and perspectives
Organizations that don’t embrace diversity and inclusion stand to lose the war for talent and set themselves up for legal and financial trouble
How to Learn More
Whether you’re an emerging HR leader trying to build a better understanding of diversity and inclusion or an experienced veteran looking to bring yourself up to speed on how D&I best practices are evolving, be sure to reserve a seat at Launchways’ upcoming Diversity & Inclusion Summit for HR and Finance Leaders.
The free education session will take place after hours on Wednesday, October 16th at TechNexus in Chicago and will feature an expert panel with the Midwest’s leading HR professionals and diversity and inclusion experts, including…
· Rebekah Wolford of Paylocity, a culture- and success-oriented HR leader with experience leading data-driven D&I initiatives
· Alex Koglin of Launchways, a leading Chicago-area employee benefits consultant with a passion for LGBTQ+ rights
· Chanté Thurmond of The Darkest Horse, an executive talent consultant who specializes in radical inclusion and expert team building
· Manny Flores of SomerCor, a small business lender with a track record of empowering diverse entrepreneurs
Panel discussions will be packed with takeaways related to diversity and inclusion, including…
· How to foster a diverse and inclusive company culture
· How to build diverse and inclusive HR policies and practices
· How to ensure compliance with federal and state diversity and inclusion regulations
· How to create diverse and inclusive benefits packages.
In addition to these key insights, open Q&A and networking time will allow attendees to guide and personalize the summit experience to maximize their takeaways. If you’re a finance or HR leader in the Chicago area, be sure to save your seat at the Diversity & Inclusion Summit for HR and Finance Leaders!
This post is brought to you by our valued partner Paylocity.
Addressing diversity and inclusion within your workplace is
more than just giving trainings and seminars and sending informational emails. Only
with true action will employees know that you’re addressing their concerns, and
it can take time to show them just how committed your business is to diversity.
Updating your employee benefits package to ensure that your
offerings are designed for the diverse workforce you’re looking to create and
foster is a crucial step in your business’ diversity efforts.
Here’s what you need to know about the different ways your
office can be inclusive, and how to design your benefits package for a truly
diverse company.
Types of Workplace Diversity
to Consider
The term “diversity” doesn’t just refer to one thing, and it
takes many forms in the workplace and elsewhere. Types
of workplace diversity to consider when taking a look at your company data
and updating policies are:
Generational
Gender/gender identity
Sexual orientation
Race and ethnicity
Religious beliefs
Disability
Socioeconomic status
Lifestyle
Political views
And others
As you can see, diversity is more than ensuring half of your
employees are women, or that people of color are represented, though those are of
course important considerations. It’s also about avoiding any form of discrimination
based on age, gender, race, religion, or disability.
There are many factors to think about when creating your
diversity plan and updating business elements like benefits packages and
employee handbook policies.
What to Include in Your
Workplace Policies
First of all, remember that some applicable workplace laws
are made on a state-by-state basis, not on a federal level. Some attorneys recommend
going with the
most comprehensive protection plans out there, even if you’re not required
to do so in your state. This means you should update your policies to be in
compliance with these regulations.
One example is the protection of discrimination against sexual
orientation, which is not one of the included categories of Title VII of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, sex discrimination is protected under the
act, and workers have been known to file lawsuits that argue their sexual
orientation cases under these protections instead.
As such, it’s a good idea to include in your policies that
discriminatory actions such as firing an employee because of his or her
mannerisms, or not treating a female employee fairly because she isn’t
“womanlike,” are prohibited, as they are forms of sex discrimination.
Other ways to update policies accordingly is to develop or
include gender-transitioning resources for employees, or to include the most
current, acceptable, and inclusive terminology in employee materials.
Designing Benefits For
a Diverse Workforce
The most important aspect of updating your benefits package
is making sure that the benefits offered are fair and equitable to all employees.
Let’s take a look at the ways in which you can revamp your benefits
offerings, in addition to your company policies. Think through these areas to
get started with building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.
Financial Benefits
for Different Generations
Analyze the financial benefit offerings your company
currently provides, such as retirement contributions, student loan debt
assistance, and savings accounts. Are they more geared toward a younger
audience, or an older audience?
For example, student loan debt is an affliction that impacts
generations across the board, but research from Experian showed that Generation
X, who are between 39 and 54, has the
most student loan debt, with Baby Boomers in second (ages 55 to 73) and Millennials
third (ages 23 to 38). Although it may seem like the younger generations would
want benefits related to paying off their student loans, this is clearly an
issue that all generation struggle with.
Another financial consideration here is retirement benefits.
Baby Boomers are the closest to retiring, but research from the Insured
Retirement Institute (IRI) shows that 45% of people in this age group don’t
have any retirement savings. As such, retirement savings assistance
shouldn’t just be catered to the long-term. In addition, benefits like phased
retirement plans and medical programs for retirees can help this generation better
prepare for life after work.
Family Benefits
Another way to address diversity within benefits is what you
offer for families. Important considerations in this category are:
Assistance with childcare
Parental leave
Adoption leave
Elder care services
Another benefit that can help support families through these
matters is a dependent
care flexible spending account, which helps employees pay for care services
while they’re at work.
Benefits for Same-Sex
Couples and Domestic Partners
Spousal healthcare coverage and other benefits have long
been offered to heterosexual couples. It’s now important to offer these benefits
for same-sex couples, in addition to couples who are in domestic
partnerships. This also means that parental or family leave benefits should apply
to these couples, even if they’re not legally married.
Flexibility Benefits
Because there are so many different perspectives,
experiences, and abilities that exist within your workforce, a crucial benefit to
provide is flexibility. Whether due to having children, a disability or
illness, or caring for a sick family member, flexible work options allow
employees to adapt their schedules and their location based on their personal needs.
However, this means that the flexibility benefits must apply to all employees
that require a different working arrangement, and cannot be implemented
unfairly. Employees should feel comfortable and never feel guilty about using
these benefits when they need them.
Holidays
A major part of your benefits package is time off for
holidays. This has typically only included the major American holidays, both
religious and political. However, think about the employees within your company
that don’t celebrate the “mainstream” American holidays, who instead celebrate
holidays from their own cultural background.
Implement benefits that allow employees to take off the
holidays that are important to their culture or religion, and make it simple
for them to request these days off. One effective way to implement these
benefits is to offer “floating holidays” that employees can use however they
wish.
Ask Your Employees
Even with the best intentions, you won’t completely satisfy
your diverse workforce unless you allow them to speak up. An easy way for your
company to gain invaluable information about what workers care about and what
they want in their benefits packages is simply to ask them.
Send out surveys and ask for feedback. Ask them if they feel
like their needs are being recognized and respected, whatever they may be. Companies
often make a mistake when they assume that employees have certain wants, needs,
and beliefs, so it’s important to avoid those dangerous assumptions when
updating your benefits package. Instead, let employees tell you what’s most
important to them.
Key Takeaways
As you’re strategizing to create a more diverse and
inclusive workplace, making tangible within your benefits package is one
important way to keep your company on track. Remember:
There are many “types” of diversity within any
workplace.
Create policies that offer the most protections
possible against discrimination, regardless of whether your local laws require
all of them.
Different generations have different financial
priorities.
Offer family benefits like paid family leave and
dependent care assistance.
Make sure health insurance and other applicable benefits
are also offered for same-sex couples and domestic partners.
A range of flexibility options, like remote
working or flexible schedules, can help employees with family, disability, or
other concerns.
Not all employees celebrate the same holidays,
religious or not. Floating holidays can ensure that they take time off when
it’s applicable to their beliefs or culture.
Ask your employees directly what they want or
what they feel they are missing from their current benefits package.
Remember that your employee benefits package will only be designed for a diverse workplace if the offerings are applicable to everyone on your team. Avoid making assumptions about what’s important to your employees, and you’ll quickly be on your way to an inclusive, satisfying benefits package.
