Diversity and inclusion in companies
Through this article, we would like to share how to go about developing a plan for a company’s diversity programme. This will help you in your endeavours to create a more inclusive workplace!
It is important to focus on this when recruiting new employees to your company.
This article is based on an article by Kimiya Sajjadi, Head of Big Enough Global. Read her article here (in Norwegian).
1. Support from management
The first thing that is critical for a company to succeed in its diversity efforts is support from management. This means that the company must allocate time, money and human resources to this work. Therefore, before you start making a plan, you should ensure that you have the support of management.
2. Create a framework
Step number two is to create a framework. This means defining what diversity and inclusion mean for your company, setting overall goals, defining why the company should focus on this work, and creating a follow-up and reporting routine.
3. Conduct in-depth interviews with employees
Once you have the goals in place, it’s essential to identify what may have prevented the company from achieving these goals in the past. This can be done through in-depth interviews with employees. You can get a good capture of the risk picture by talking to employees with different backgrounds and positions.
4. Create measures and milestones
Based on the interviews with employees and an additional analysis of the risk picture, you can create measures and milestones that the company must achieve.
5. Prioritisation
When creating a plan with measures and goals, it is important to prioritise. Diversity work involves many areas such as employer branding, management, marketing, recruitment, career development, pay, leadership, etc. It is unrealistic to work on everything at the same time. That’s why it’s important to choose which areas to prioritise.
When choosing what to prioritise, you can use research on what works best and the risk picture that has been mapped as a starting point.
6. Presentation to management
Once the plan with the framework and measures has been created, it must be presented and anchored with the management and all managers in the company.
As you can see, there are a number of steps that need to be taken to create a more inclusive workplace. These steps can help create a workplace where all employees feel welcome and included.
Source: Big Enough Global