There has been major awareness and development surrounding diversity and inclusion in the workplace. This topic makes ongoing front-page headlines due to the likes of local leaders such as Grace Tame and Dylan Alcott – but also with substantial international awareness from world events such as the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Organisations are taking notice, and diversity and inclusion is extremely important for workplaces to develop positive culture, and reach broader ESG goals.
What is diversity and inclusion in the workplace?
Within the workplace, and life in general, it is crucial to be genuinely and sustainably equitable towards everyone – regardless of gender, age, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, race, religion or cultural background.
It is essential to be inclusive and accepting of everyone because by doing this, we can achieve a beautifully diverse workplace and culture that also reaps the benefits of greater innovation, efficiency and growth.
Diversity encompasses acceptance and respect of individual differences, which can range from many different aspects said above or vary in individuals holding a diverse range of political beliefs, ideologies, education attainment, marital statuses, involvement in a pregnancy, being subscribed to industrial activities such as trade unions, or differing socioeconomic statuses.
Importance of workplace diversity and inclusion
The recent Diversity Council Australia’s Inclusion@Work Index 2021-2022 found that workers in diverse and inclusive teams are:
The index also found that like previous ones, 77% of Australian workers in 2021 support or strongly support their organisation taking action to create a diverse and inclusive workplace.
Yet also in 2021, 27% of all Australian workers still reported having personally witnessed or experienced discrimination and/or harassment in the past year alone – with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander workers reporting the highest levels of exclusion at work, and people with a disability and/or LGBTQIA+ workers following closely after.
These results from DCA only highlight that despite the current improving trend of diversity and inclusion in the workplace, exclusionary behaviours are still commonly occurring.
What are the goals and challenges of achieving this in the workplace?
A very important aspect to achieving genuine diversity and inclusion within the workplace is representation.
Currently in some workplaces, minorities are severely underrepresented, especially common in leadership and other higher-level roles. Hiring from various backgrounds across the organisation increases leads to having access to a bigger talent pool and a wider variety of ideas. It also can lead to diversifying your customers and improving the perception of your organisation.
The major roadblocks impacting diversity and inclusive workplaces are undoubtedly stereotyping, prejudice and bias. Particularly, bias can be conscious or unconscious, and present in a variety of ways such as confirmation bias, self-fulling prophecy, and affinity/in-group bias.
By managing and preventing these negative patterns in the workplace, it can allow you and your organisation to instead focus more energy on creating an inclusive workplace through awareness, action, and embracing challenges.
Where can you start to improve workplace diversity and inclusion?
Safetrac values diversity and inclusion incredibly highly, which is why we have reviewed our online Diversity & Inclusion course to make it even more comprehensive.
This interactive and engaging course has broadened its approach and covers greater depth on what diversity truly is and how inclusion is fostered, maintained and constantly improved. The course covers fairness, important steps to achieve diversity and inclusion, the many benefits that flow on from diverse and inclusive workplaces and identifies the main roadblocks that prevent or impact achieving one (such as stereotypes and bias). This is a staple course by Safetrac and is recommended for all staff.
