To increase employee engagement and productivity, as a leader, you need to support diversity and inclusion in your workplace. Your team will improve at problem-solving as they will learn to tackle difficult challenges with a positive mindset. Here are four actionable steps that can help you support diversity and inclusion in your organization.
Be Aware of Unconscious Bias
There will be many employees who would have applied for their jobs hiring a service to write cheap resumes for them. You should not treat them in a certain way just because they were wise enough to choose a reliable service. Whether they wrote their resumes themselves should not be an issue; what is important is the set of skills they are offering.
It is important to build awareness about any unconscious bias that exists in any form in your organization. You need to examine your behaviour and the conduct of your team in the organization. Make sure that there are no subconscious assumptions that influence the decisions of you and your team.
To know more about these subconscious assumptions, you can order an essay on this topic from any of the affordable resume writing services available in the market. There are many types of unconscious bias. Following are the three major types that you should be aware of.
- Out-group bias is where unconsciously, you develop negative feelings about people who differ from your perspective;
- Affinity bias is where you subconsciously develop positive feelings for those who seem more similar to you. For example, you might like someone because, just like you, they also take services of resume writing services under $100.
- Blind-spot bias is where you tend to identify bias in others but fail to identify it in yourself.
You need to participate in diversity training and identify ways to reduce the impact of unconscious bias in your work. You can implement the following strategies to reduce the impact of unconscious bias.
- In order to de-bias your practices and procedures, rewrite job descriptions, so they are gender-neutral;
- While assigning tasks, give importance to relevant experience and not just the number of years;
- Create a blind system of reviewing resumes, whether they are written by your employees or with the help of any best cheap resume writing service. It is an effective strategy because, in this way, you will not be able to see the demographic characteristic of your prospective employees;
- Hire a diversity manager to track your progress.
Create Inclusive Workplace Policies
You need to analyze your current practices and conduct to become a more diverse organization. You might need to amend your current policies or create new ones to facilitate workplace diversity. Replacing all your old workplace policies, whether related to recruitment or promotions, after a comprehensive evaluation would be a wise step.
Points about Inclusive Workplace Policies
Some inclusive policies can promote diversity and inclusion in your workplace.
- Allow employees to take off for their religious holidays;
- Make policies that allow employees to avail the on-site daycare facility;
- You can ensure an inclusive facility by reviewing your office setup. Make sure that there is the availability of non-gendered restrooms in your office for your employees;
- Make amendments in policies to allow the option for flexible work hours;
- To ensure that every employee can in their preferred language, utilize a mobile workforce app with a translation feature;
- Allow employees to work from home;
- Create flexible mandatory holidays;
- Hold regular cultural days to promote cultural diversity.
Create Mentorship Programs
Mentorship programs are as important as hiring a diverse and professional workforce. These programs are key to supporting diversity and inclusion in the workplace. These programs make sure that every employee has an opportunity to advance. These pieces of training cover concepts of communication styles and dealing with conflicts.
To make these pieces of training more effective, offer these diversity training as optional tends. Following are some ways of providing these training opportunities.
- Support professional development opportunities by contributing to employees and continuing education.
- Hire resource groups that are dedicated to training young professionals and women empowerment.
- Focus on training that is relevant to your organization and employees.
Become an Inclusive Leader
You must lead from the front to support diversity and inclusion in your organization. Make it a continuous process to promote diversity and create new dynamics with your team to strengthen your company. Take the following steps to show leadership.
- Create a welcoming environment where people treat each other fairly;
- Respect each individual for the skills they bring to the team;
- Proactively work to make your employees feel that they belong to the organization;
- Hire a diverse team and celebrate the different perspectives of each member.
Every workplace can benefit from the diverse experiences of people of different genders and ethnicities. The best thing you can do is maintain an open mind. Make sure you listen to new perspectives from people from all walks of life. You must intentionally invest in diversity and inclusion for a happier and more engaged workforce.