Six ways to build more inclusive organizations

Enable your people to walk in the shoes of others 

Business leaders should encourage and enable more of their teams to use their skills to give back through volunteering with charities. This doesn’t just benefit the charities: it will also provide your workforce with diverse perspectives and valuable insights into grassroots communities – and potential influencers and consumers – they wouldn’t normally be in contact with. At Media Trust, we are all about matching good skills with good causes – we connect charities looking for pro bono communications support with media industry professionals looking to give back – and we’ve witnessed the huge personal and professional growth our volunteers experience. On World Environment Day in 2021, we launched a new partnership with media agency, MG OMD, which mobilized almost 500 staff volunteers to support environmental charities with their strategic communications. As Natalie Bell, CEO of MG OMD UK, put it: “The project gave our teams the ability to apply their media and comms knowledge to the wide range of challenges that climate organizations face and provided us with invaluable and actionable insights that have proven to be invaluable and have really stuck.” 

Be more personal and authentic in how you communicate 

As the pandemic showed, it’s the leaders and organizations who are communicating with employees or the public on a more direct and personal level who are winning hearts and minds. For most of us, Zoom and Microsoft Teams have generated a more intimate relationship with our colleagues as we’ve been given a close-up view of people’s homes and often, if inadvertently, their families and pets. Boundaries have come down and we’re seeing people much more fully than before. This has had a huge impact on what authentic communication now looks and feels like. Leaders need to embrace more informal, more personal, and less scripted communication styles that are more conversational, equalizing, and interactive. The benefits of this approach are clear in the way it encourages authenticity and fosters inclusion by giving everyone permission to be themselves and to share personal and professional challenges so accommodations can be arranged where needed that allow them to be their best selves at work. 

Champion flexibility and difference in the way people work 

Building on my last point, the pandemic also forced everyone to embrace flexible working, and we’ve seen that it’s the organizations that have been able to do this effectively that emerged from the crisis the best – in some cases, they’re even stronger now than before COVID-19. Flexible working and a more empathic approach to management also allows everyone, regardless of their personal circumstances, to feel welcome and valued at work.