Introduction
A reader responded to Take the positive potential approach posted on my birthday – Jan 22nd this year with the following message:
I’d appreciate a follow on from this thought-provoking blog including some concrete strategies or actionable steps for implementing these principles in practical settings. Also, how individuals in an organisation can address power dynamics which could significantly influence the pace and effectiveness of inclusion initiatives. Lastly, how might we measure and evaluate the effectiveness of inclusion initiatives, which is crucial for assessing progress, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring accountability in promoting inclusivity within organization.
I have delayed responding because with my current consultancy with my former employer I am continually refining my thinking as I talk with ERG leads. It has been useful to step outside my focus on disability and consider positive change in general.
Below I will respond to each point separately.
An initial overview
A conversation yesterday on the need to help mangers be more effective in meeting contemporary demands reminded me of the importance of developing a theory of what is going on – and then refining it as evidence becomes available. I speak in terms of evolution of workplace and community culture because that is how I have decided to look at my experiences. Rather than seeing a deficit to be corrected I see a potential to be attained.
Evolution is slow but inexorable. Activism in favour of disability started gaining momentum in the 1960s – along with other critical inclusion causes. In NSW we have the Disability Inclusion Act 2014. There were other moves to enshrine disability inclusion in law, but my point is that this act came into effect roughly 50 years after concerted demand for change got under way.
I have been in the public sector almost as long and I have seen a steady evolution of organisational attitudes toward staff wellbeing. In the latter part of the 1980s the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) introduced requirements to remove discriminatory requirements from job vacancies. It was a half-hearted move in the CES office where I was employed, but it was the start of a vital change.
I don’t have a clear understanding of when Inclusion and Diversity teams became the norm in public sector agencies in New South Wales, but I wasn’t aware of the one in my department until mid 2010, when its Disability Employee Network was established.
Now the presence of multiple ERGs is a testimony for the need for ongoing and more effective action to improve work experience for members of a spectrum of diversity groups. It’s taken 50 years to get to this point and there’s a lot of work to be done yet.
So why advocate a positive evolutionary approach rather than more vigorous agitation?
Quite simply a decent appreciation of our psychology doesn’t support blaming or pressure. Contemporary workplaces are high pressure from core business demands, so adding additional expectations to conform to inclusion goals can be counter-productive.
While many of us are innately inclusive, others are not – for personal or cultural reasons. Even those who are inclusive are not constantly ‘disability aware’. That takes intentional commitment, involvement and continuity of engagement. Not everyone has the need, motive, or opportunity to develop that level of awareness.
While evolutionary forces will move our communities toward greater inclusivity eventually, simply because there is a majority of people who are inherently inclusive and who are support of positive, we need to think about how effective the change advocates are. In no area of activity does having right on your side constitute a sufficient basis for being effective and successful.
Accelerating the pace of positive change is a high-skill job anywhere and the fact that those who participate in seeking change via ERGs are volunteers doesn’t change the need for high skills. I participated in bush search and rescue in Tasmania many decades ago. We were mostly volunteers, but we had to be skilled and competent. Volunteers are no less accountable for ensuring good outcomes. In this case people’s lives depended on us.
If we have a theory of what is going on we can shape our skills and direct our actions to best effect. If we engage in reflective practice we can refine our theory, upgrade our skills, and make our actions more effective – the action learning cycle.
Some concrete strategies or actionable steps for implementing these principles in practical settings
- See being an inclusion advocate as a skilled role. This includes developing a discourse model that helps you to clearly articulate what you want, and why you want it. Here is a useful starting point.
- Inclusion must be a personal commitment that is universally applied. You can’t focus on disability inclusion and ignore the other diversity groups. You must ensure you are not unintentionally discriminating against other people. Understanding the nature and extent of bias is essential.
- Being authentic and empathic in your interactions with the people you want to influence is critical. This isn’t easy to do initially. Your right to be agitating for change must be calmly centred.
How individuals in an organisation can address power dynamics which could significantly influence the pace and effectiveness of inclusion initiatives
- So much depends on an organisation’s leadership culture and its attitude toward inclusion. You can’t assume that a positive attitude toward inclusion is backed by an informed understanding of how to progress from intent to attainment. Equally you can’t assume reluctance arises from aversion to inclusion.
- Inclusion advocates must have a clear sense of situational leadership, as opposed to leadership based on role and rank. I recommend Loretta Malandro’s Fearless Leadership: How to Overcome Behavioral Blindspots and Transform Your Organization.
- How inclusion advocates approach an organisation’s leaders is critical. You can be an agitator or an ally. There’s a lot said about inclusion advocates seeking allies in support of their cause and virtually nothing about them being allies to, for example, an organisation’s DEI team. Telling an organisation that you want to help it meet its inclusion obligations and goals makes more sense than calling out its perceived failures.
- Its not easy for an organisation to meet its inclusion goals. Doing so stretches the organisation, its DEI team, and its staff. Change, even for those who are willing, takes cognitive and emotional effort. We mostly can’t honour our own freely made New Year’s Resolutions. Inclusion advocates can’t go to an organisation’s leadership naïve about what they are asking for – and certainly must avoid placing the onus of change upon the executive. I know it’s a cliché but we must be the change we want to see.
How might we measure and evaluate the effectiveness of inclusion initiatives, which is crucial for assessing progress, identifying areas for improvement, and ensuring accountability in promoting inclusivity within organization.
- Most well-run organisations have methods for measuring how effective actions are. Much will depend upon how well-resourced and supported its DEI team is – and whether staff are motivated to participate in their means to measure success.
- Inclusion advocates must be close allies of DEI teams and support their efforts to measure responses and outcomes.
- ERGs should have their business model that helps them measure how effective they are. I recently came across The ERG Handbook by Aimee K. Broadhurst and Supercharge Your ERGs by Joseph Santana. Broadhurst’s book is a comprehensive guide that covers the key steps needed to develop a good business model that embraces ways to self-evaluate performance. I haven’t read Santana yet.
- If there is a good working partnership between an ERG, the organisation’s executive and its DEI team there will be a commitment to evaluating efforts to grow inclusion and accessibility.
Conclusion
I have intentionally focused on the skills and capabilities of inclusion advocates and their ERGs because without these skills and capabilities any activities are less likely to deliver the outcomes desired.
As I have noted, being a change advocate is a skilled role. Such an advocate must work with the psychology of individuals, groups and organisations. In larger corporations this is acknowledged as a critical and well-paid role. But DEI is often seen substantially as a ‘feel good’ thing driven by passionate people – paid if they are members of a DEI team but mostly volunteer if members of an ERG. True, some corporations offer some degree of compensation to ERG leads and, rarely, an ERG lead might be a paid role.
My commitment is to professionalise the standards of inclusion advocates and ERGs leads because such a role is complex and difficult. There are ‘gifted amateurs’ of course, but they are either self-taught or have critical professional experiences, training or education that give them a solid foundation upon which to build a reputation for being highly effective.
Disability Inclusion will be an ongoing challenge simply because our workplaces are continuous experiments in complexity and diversity as our communities evolve. In decades past discrimination was the casual norm. Now it is a contested norm. But how that contest plays out will be the difference between discrimination still being a norm in another 50 years or being an exception a decade hence.
We can/must choose to contest with knowledge, insight, skill, and empathy.