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