Four ways to invigorate your D&I in 2022  | Article

In recent years, the practice of diversity and inclusion has seen the conversation move beyond building a business case and rather seeing the implementation of D&I as something that should be a core focus regardless of the many benefits. Some leaders are now directly accountable for their D&I performance and are creating organisations of ‘real belonging’ - where staff members don’t feel a need to hide their true identities at the door. However, it’s important to note that every organisation is at different stages of its D&I journey. So, whether your organisation is a trailblazer or just getting started, here are a few tips shared by our members to invigorate your organisation's D&I approach in 2022. 

Bring leadership into the conversation 

Make D&I an everyday conversation for leaders and managers – support them to build their knowledge and confidence in talking about difficult challenges. Furthermore, leaders should be making their D&I leadership seen by staff. Visible D&I leadership shouldn’t be confused with unsubstantiated gestures but rather it should be actively demonstrating a commitment to D&I. While great work in D&I may be going on behind the scenes, being open, honest and communicating internally can go a long way in building trust and safety with your staff. 

Keep up with data innovation 

It’s common knowledge that the basis for any key decisions should be good quantitative and qualitative data – this has been practised in the D&I field for some time. With digital becoming the imperative in many organisations, new tools and data opportunities are rapidly becoming available. Whether it’s better employee productivity tracking or new data analysis tools, these opportunities can help you build a broader picture of D&I in your organisation – helping you identify gaps in D&I performance and giving you focus. Therefore, it can be useful to take time every year, to take stock of the new data opportunities available and how these can be integrated into your D&I strategy. 

Measure psychological safety 

To fully understand your organisation’s effectiveness in D&I, open and honest communication needs to happen. However, employees can face barriers to speaking up and many vital critiques can go unheard. This leads to sampling biases which can provide a skewed picture of your organisation’s D&I. An important first step to embarking on this journey is by measuring psychological safety. Essentially, this is understanding how psychologically safe individuals feel to speak up and make authentic contributions. 

Collaborate with non-traditional partners 

Look for solutions outside of your normal networks. Diversity and inclusion is a shared challenge across every organisation - with practitioners applying new and different strategies and solutions. It is true, now more than ever, that no single organisation or sector has all the answers. Here at WIG, our charitable purpose is to address this truth – through our cross-sector offering, we expose our members to a range of new and different perspectives and ideas. Under our people theme, we host a varied events programme surrounding HR, talent and equality, diversity & inclusion. Find out more here.