Insight is the virtual newsletter for Schneider-Ross, the global diversity consultancy where I am Director for Applied Diversity and Inclusive Leadership.

The newletter can be accessed here.

Hopefully you will find something interesting and informative. There's a bit of a theme around inclusion in this edition which we know is a huge issue for many organisations at the moment. Inclusion and Inclusive Leadership is the mainstay of much of our work and we are delighted to be able to share with you an interview with Debbie Laybourn, Group Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Vodafone.

This edition also showcases our new Inclusive Leadership Feedback Tool^TM, our growing role in India and shares our thoughts on elite organisations who are increasingly using inclusion as a means of leveraging better business outcomes.

I look forward to hearing from you with your comments and feedback. You can contact me here.

Applying a Diversity Lens to Improve Business Performance

The Business Excellence Model is a tool many organisations use to assess the strengths and weaknesses of their business. It looks at both the results being achieved and how the organisation is delivering those results (enablers) see below.

I’ve found that applying a diversity and inclusion lens through this model can be helpful in identifying priorities for action. The version of the model shown below was developed with leaders of a financial services business in India. It helped to condense their business arguments and structure debate about diversity-related changes that would benefit the business. Clearly, this example is high level and for the whole business. Individual units then drill down into an assessment which is more specific to their unique role.

I find it really helpful to start with the results needed from the customer’s standpoint and work backwards (to the left). That way, diversity-related investment in people and processes is aligned with business priorities.

Whatever business model your organisation has – this way of thinking should be helpful.

Interested in more discussion about this?

Contact me here

Inclusion with a Purpose = Consistently Good Outcomes

“Inclusion sounds good but what is it, what does it look like, what does it get me”? This question, in one form or another, is one I hear often from business leaders. Being inclusive, like being fair, is instinctively the right thing to do. But what actually do you need to do and why? What is the business context?

Only last week a client meeting provided another practical example of looking at what I call Inclusion with a Purpose. The diversity strategy team inside a utility company is reworking their roadmap around diversity and inclusion. Where do they want to go and why? At the same time the organisation is reorganising and rebranding. At the heart of everything sits the ambition to deliver a customer experience which is second-to-none. This is a strong anchor-point for their thinking about operating inclusively. So now the question becomes “what do we need to do to deliver second-to-none experience for every customer in a region with very diverse communities?”

Why is this question so important to the business? Because regulators are increasingly linking future tariff increases to customer satisfaction. Profitability is hard-wired to the experience of every customer. The question creates the landscape for which a specific road map is needed. Now the organisation needs to apply a diversity lens to all the practices which link to customer experience. More questions will need to be asked and resolved.

· Do we have all the data we need on customer diversity in our operating area?

· What kinds of diversity are likely to impact customer experience and how?

· Are our systems allowing us to compare customer experience for different demographic groups?

· What can we learn from different customers about what they need and expect from us to give us second-to-none ratings?

· Does the makeup of our own staff and leaders reflect customer diversity with the empathy that brings?

· How can we access the different perspectives and ideas that could help us develop innovative ways to improve customer experience?

· Which of our core practices deliver consistent outcomes across differences like age or cultural norms and which do not? What needs changing?

· Have we helped our customer-facing staff develop the awareness and the attitudes required to provide consistently good service to every customer?

· How will we measure, report and respond to feedback on service from different groups?

Anchoring the effort in a core business outcome helps define what Inclusion with a Purpose means for any particular organisation. This helps leaders clarify what they need to do and makes it easier to communicate why specific diversity-related actions are being taken. In this case it will also drive greater engagement with diverse communities which links to recruitment and reputation as well as customer satisfaction.

What does Inclusion with a Purpose mean in your organisation?

Inclusion - Part of Being an Elite Organisation?

Is there a contradiction between being inclusive and being elite in terms of performance and business reputation?

Judging by the actions of many organisations with clear competitive ambitions, the answer is no. They are attaching more weight to inclusion as a means of delivering better business outcomes. Unilever, Barclays, BP and others in the Global Diversity Network (GDN) confirms this shift. They are analysing where and how to integrate inclusion into their operations to improve outcomes.

Much of this effort is driven by the need to connect effectively with stakeholders who are more diverse than in the past. This includes employees, customers, suppliers and joint venture partners bringing with them many individual, cultural and organisational differences. While these new connections may not come easily, remaining inside an existing “comfort zone” limits access to skills and potentially profitable business opportunities.

Inclusion is simply an approach to managing the differences (diversity) strategically and confidently. Companies are sharpening their competitive edge by changing mindset, practices and behaviours. Some brief examples are given below:

Inclusive Mindset - More Connections, More Opportunities

Where once competitive advantage came from inventing in-house and in secrecy, companies must now increasingly embrace ideas from the outside.

Drug discovery is a good example. An increasing proportion of discovery work is carried out by small, highly specialist labs. Competitive advantage for the major players is partly about becoming a preferred partner for these “inventors”. This requires the development of a different mindset where valuing and including people and ideas from the outside is business critical. Is your own organisation genuinely open to ideas, wherever they come from?

Inclusive Practices - It Doesn’t Happen by Accident

For some organisations, it is clear that making practices more inclusive is already generating a pay back.

One GDN organisation, facing huge competition for manufacturing talent in Mexico responded by changing its approach to recruitment. It set out to attract people with disabilities, a talent pool largely untapped at the time. Increased levels of employee engagement and retention have resulted from the change - a phenomenon we have also seen elsewhere.

Which of your practices might exclude people who are potentially important to the business?

Inclusive Behaviours - It’s the Real Thing

At the front lines of leadership and customer service, behaviour is everything. Organisations are investing to ensure that the behaviours of staff really do create an inclusive environment. In retail banking for example, leading organisations are training staff to deal confidently with the needs of customers with disabilities. Increased customer loyalty is a direct result of this effort.

Across industry sectors, we see increasing integration of inclusive behaviours into competency profiles, performance management tools, development offerings and selection criteria. Inclusion is increasingly seen as the way we need to do things here.

How Confident Are You About Inclusion?

You can start to answer this question by analysing:

o How your organisation is most impacted by diversity, internally and externally

o What kinds of diversity affect your business the most e.g. cultural differences

o Whether the attitudes, practices and behaviours prevalent in the business today are sufficiently inclusive to meet the challenges