Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are big topics of conversations in the corporate world today. Like most political issues, corporations have to find a way to represent these ideals within their company to stay true to the times. The purpose of this does not appear to be born from a desire to fully understand the issues that go into their lack of presence in professional environments, but rather to build a narrative of trust with future employees by assimilating an image of a politically correct work environment.
There are many things a company can do to promote these ideals within their workforce—it just depends on the specific situation of your business. Are you looking to provide more opportunities and agency among employees? Or are you looking to educate them on inclusive behavior?
Whatever your goal is, sometimes it’s useful to access some tips to jumpstart your inspiration. Keep reading for a few ways you can think about promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion at your place of business.
Empower Employees With Startup Knowledge
There are many ways to promote ideas of DEI in a company, and one way to do so is by empowering employees with the knowledge about how to achieve their personal goals and ideals, rather than just the goals of the company.
Of course, you always want to hold onto your best employees, but you will have greater turnover without caring for their futures as well as your own. Helping them explore the guide to loans for startup businesses with StackCommerce will help build trust and improve relationships within your company.
Include Everyone in Opportunities
Promoting diversity sometimes means having a positive attitude and encouraging others to have one as well. When events, seminars, or educational opportunities come up, it’s best to take a positive approach and let everyone know of the opportunity coming up. Using a mass texting service by Text Sanity can help spread the word about your upcoming diversity seminar, team building workshop, or financial advising session, so you can be sure you’re including every employee in the opportunity.
Make Sure Employees Know Their Rights
Employees often feel at the mercy of their jobs, apartments, and the slew of things in our lives that we have little control of. However, employees and tenants have more rights than the average person knows; it’s just a matter of understanding how laws are structured in the place they’re located.
For tenants, it’s important not only to know your own rights, but the rights and costs that landlords have as well. For example, learning about landlord insurance costs from Steadily is a great place to start to understand you and your landlords rights.
Show Your Support
In general, keeping things out of the political realm is a good custom at work. However, some issues are just too intrinsic to our daily lives not to draw attention to. For those occasions, custom lapel pins by Lapel Pins and Coins can help spread awareness of inequality and help promote DEI within your company by showing solidarity for the issues that affect each and every one of us.
Ease the Conversation
Bringing up tough issues to your team can be awkward and tense at times, especially if you feel like you’re treading on ground that may be sensitive for certain people in the room. Virtual icebreakers by Bar None Games are a great way to, well, break the ice and shed some of those awkward feelings aside. You can feel more comfortable dealing with the issues at hand, whatever they may be.
Marketing Representation
For companies looking to promote an image of diversity, their marketing and ad campaigns are a great place to start. Who you represent will send a message to other companies and customers that your company makes an effort to serve users of all backgrounds. Learning about user generated content, or UGC content, with Insense Ads will help you start understanding this form of marketing and how to implement it within your business.
Cultural Knowledge
In the case that employees or team members are in need of education on cultural traditions, it can be a tricky subject to tackle. It depends entirely on the situation, but in general, most people need simple guidance to understand another person’s culture.
This is especially true when it comes to traditional garments from non-western cultures. This way, they can be more culturally sensitive when referring to traditional garments and traditions, such as a silk kimono. It’s crucial to know a thing or two about different cultures, and Johnny Was has you covered there with their line of stunning silk kimonos.
Offer Discounts on Essentials
The cost of living is going up. Whether businesses want to recognize this to be the case is a non-issue; the simple fact is that essential items are more expensive and these price increases impact white business owners the least of anyone. Offering deals and discounts on essential items and services, such as new tires with Discount Tire, is one way that businesses can make a real impact that isn’t solely focused on their PR image.
Communication
Ultimately, the best thing you can do to promote DEI at your company is to take a real step back and listen to your employees. Communication is key, and while many managers may fancy themselves as good communicators, it’s actually quite rare for upper level management to have developed communication skills.
In some cases, learning to communicate with Slack can help you build accountability for yourself to reach out to people in your department and make sure that not only do they feel heard, but are heard.
Conclusion
In reality, the only way to promote these values at a company is to actually hold those values ourselves. Businesses are often concerned about their public image, which is understandable, but ultimately detrimental to those who actually need support at a company. Make sure you pay attention to every employee and try adopting values of inclusiveness to start implementing them at your place of business.