A diverse, equitable, and inclusive company is a successful company. Enhancing diversity and inclusion in your workplace goes beyond maintaining gender balance or hiring BIPOC employees. Instead, it entails weaving genuine inclusivity into your organizational culture and building a diverse team where every member is trusted, empowered and involved.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion have been pressing issues in workplaces across all sectors for some time, but the tech industry, mainly, has seen slow progress in this space. Please keep reading to understand the importance of diversity in tech and to learn how leaders can improve diversity and foster inclusivity in their teams.
Maintaining a diverse and inclusive team benefits your organization in the following ways:
There are still numerous barriers to diversity and inclusion in tech, but that doesn't mean improvements are out of reach. Implement the following solutions to cultivate a diverse, inclusive culture in your organization:
Managers and relevant decision-makers must level out the playing field through fair opportunities for all workers. Use analytics to identify underpaid staff or any other gaps in remuneration. Also, please take note of any trends or patterns in the underpayment of particular groups of employees, and ensure they are rectified.
Educating your workers on potential micro-aggressions and subconscious bias can go a long way toward improving diversity. No team member wants to work in an environment where they feel undervalued for any reason inherent to their identity. Employers must eliminate any workplace behaviors that alienate or discriminate against their team members.
Learn about and acknowledge a wide range of cultural and religious holidays. Leverage the company's intranet to keep track of all upcoming celebrations and be flexible and respectful of these dates in the calendar when approving vacation days or appointing time off.
Women and other underrepresented groups within the tech industry can experience a lack of mentorship and role models from similar backgrounds. Working under exclusively white or male leadership can lead diverse team members to believe career progression is not an option for them at your company. Ensure a plan is in place to deliver the same level of feedback and professional development opportunities to all employees.
Encouraging team members to share feedback can help executives better understand what's happening below the surface. Pulse surveys, for instance, provide essential insights for informed and mindful decision-making while equipping you to eliminate any discrimination or bias patterns. This approach should allow for anonymous feedback, facilitating open and honest responses.
If you want to improve inclusion and diversity within your organization, don't fall into the trap of limiting yourself to junior or entry-level hires. Maintaining a diverse HR and recruitment team is a great place to start. This will help reduce unconscious bias in the hiring process, provide broad points of view, and change mindsets to improve the company's approaches to diversity and inclusion.
Significant and long-lasting change doesn't happen overnight. A cultural shift requires time from making structural adjustments to implementing new workforce strategies. Make sure you set benchmarks and track your progress to determine whether you're reaching your goals and achieving continuous improvement. This way, you'll learn what's working and where you're falling short.
Companies in the tech industry still have much work to do to create truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces. Fortunately, the above steps can help you dismantle existing barriers within your organization to reap the benefits of a diverse team. Ready to take the next step? Empower your HR department with an IT solution that equips them to spend less time on operations and more time on people.