What is an inclusive environment and why is it hard to measure or engender?
Feeling included is highly personal - so how can organisations measure and drive a culture that is empowering for all?
Characteristics of an Inclusive environment
Diversity is about ensuring a seat at the table for people of all backgrounds, with the representation of minority groups. Inclusion is about creating an environment where everyone can be themselves, feel that they are able to contribute their views and that these views are valued.
An inclusive environment promote inclusive leadership and accountability among managers, equality and fairness of opportunity, and openness and freedom from bias and discrimination. Inclusion is closely linked to employee engagement and a sense of belonging which employees feel which in turn are critical components of employee retention, productivity and financial performance. Yet inclusion and workplace culture are inherently difficult to measure. There is no standardised, universal metric, and employee survey data are typically required limiting large scale comparison against different companies. Further, as the Mckinsey report says, it is unclear that employee responses to internal satisfaction surveys, even if anonymous, are fully representative of their experiences and are not influenced by employees’ perceptions about what their employers consider to be acceptable responses.
Mckinsey inclusion measure shows negative employee sentiment
In the Mckinsey analysis published in May 2020, they took a different approach to measure company culture outside-in, using sentiment analysis of employee reviews of their employers posted on job-search websites. Mckinsey focused on 10–30 companies in each of three industries: financial services, technology, and healthcare using 5 indicators, 2 to check whether companies surveyed have a systemic approach to D&I and 3 indicators being equality, openness and belonging, three core components of inclusion to check the employees’ experience of inclusion.
Whilst the survey’s result can only be indicative given its methodology, it found particularly high levels of negative sentiment (63-80% across industries analysed) about equality (which includes fairness and transparency in promotion, pay and recruitment and access to other opportunities). The work environment’s openness, which encompasses bias and discrimination, was also a significant concern with negative sentiment across industries ranged from 38 to 56%. Belonging is an outcome resulting from an organisation’s commitment to support the well-being and contributions of diverse and other employees. On this front, an overall positive sentiment was elicited, but from a relatively small number of mentions. In aggregate, this research shows that even where companies are more diverse, many appear as yet unable to cultivate inclusive work environments in an effective and consistent way.
Given the importance for organisations to understand to what extent they have an inclusive environment, where they are already doing well and where they can do better, having a reliable methodology which they can trust to measure their employees’ sentiment will make an enormous difference to any who wish to create a more inclusive environment.
The prevalence of biases
Despite the business logic, why is it difficult to create a diverse and inclusive (D&I) environment? Many academic studies by psychologists, behavioural scientists and neuroscientists have all shown that we fall prey to many different form biases regularly. Our brains are processing so much information at any one time that we need a system to work out what is and isn’t important. We therefore often rely on our intuitive system (System 1) which makes snap judgement and runs automatically without much control, using rules of thumb to interpret the world and relies on categories represented by archetypes. System 1 has a need for internal consistency and confirmation of previously held beliefs too. When we are stressed, anxious or feel threatened, we are even more likely to apply System 1.
We do have a deliberate system (System 2) which is based on conscious reasoning, but it requires effort and works much more slowly in a controlled manner. So we employ stereotypes when judging others. Apart from biases based on social categories, some common form of biases including affinity bias (tendency to favour people we like or familiar to us), anchoring bias (relying on the first piece of information to make a decision), attribution bias (the tendency to judge others on their actions but ourselves on our intent), confirmation bias (seeking information to support our existing beliefs), negativity bias (the tendency to be more powerfully affected by negative experiences than positive ones), self-serving bias, hindsight bias (tendency to see the present as more predictable after the event than it really was), status quo bias (tendency to stay with the status quo) and sunk-cost bias (tendency to continue because we have invested time and money). In addition, we all tend to have bias blind spot, being the tendency to see oneself as less biased than other people. One excellent way to discover such biases is to take the test made available by IAT online at https://implicit.harvard.edu/.
What can be done to create a diverse and inclusive environment?
Varying degree of optimism to self-correct biases
If we care to create a diverse and inclusive work environment, are there any effective interventions we can take if bias is so prevalent? Experts on D&I express varying degrees of optimism as to whether we can be de-biased. Even if we are aware as a general matter that we are often biased, Iris Bohnet, the author of What Works: Gender Equality by Design, believes that often we do not realise that we are biased in our specific decision making or behaviours and even if we do because we get feedback in time, we might not act on it. Other experts, like the authors of The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias are more optimistic that actions can be taken to self-correct biases by being vigilant about recognising the bias traps, practising mindfulness, pausing and reflecting on decisions, challenging assumptions and creating connections through developing and deploying empathy and curiosity and having the courage to be an ally. However, there is certainly substantive agreement amongst D&I experts that unconscious bias training, whilst useful for raising awareness, has little lasting impact or any clear impact measures to demonstrate its success. Research suggests that there is a direct correlation between awareness raising and a decrease in bias, but you have to do this regularly and give reminders at important decision-making stages, otherwise, it does not stick. Given the opportunity, our brain is quick to revert to whatever is most comfortable, and it will find ways to save on time and effort.
Systemic designs and inclusive leadership behaviours to foster an inclusive environment
Given that de-biasing is hard, we can all do with a helping hand. Designs which create a new environment or a new process can help us to combat our natural biases. These designs come from the field of behaviour economics with simple interventions building on insights on how our minds work.
However, there is no doubt that the mindset, the style and behaviour of business leaders (all the way from top leadership to middle management) also make all the difference in creating an inclusive environment.
Seeing is believing – people need to see counter-stereotypical role models often for beliefs to change.
Equality (comprising promotion of equality through fairness and transparency in promotion, pay and recruitment), openness (being an open-minded culture where bias, bullying, discrimination and micro-aggressions are actively tackled and everyone feels psychologically safe to speak up with relevant ideas, questions or concerns) and a sense of belonging ( being an environment where diverse employees can contribute their unique talents and bring their whole self to work) are three core components of an inclusive environment.