Championing a Diverse and Inclusive Culture

What do Burger King and Dolce & Gabbana have in common? In 2019, both brands came under fire for culturally insensitive advertisements featuring Asian stereotypes. Burger King’s New Zealand branch ran a campaign on Instagram showing people attempting to eat its Vietnamese Sweet Chilli Tendercrisp Burger in an awkward manner, using oversized red chopsticks. Chopsticks also featured in Dolce & Gabbana’s advertisement promoting its runway show in Shanghai – a Chinese model was depicted having trouble eating Italian food with chopsticks, with a male narrator asking, “is it too huge for you?”.

After a wave of bad publicity and controversy spread on social media, both brands tried to walk back their missteps, releasing apology videos and reiterating their respect for cultural diversity. But the damage was already done – as a direct result of the controversy, Dolce & Gabbana’s products were dropped from Chinese e-commerce sites like Alibaba and JD.com, while the planned fashion show was cancelled by the Chinese government. The fashion brand also saw its sales revenues take a hit, with its Asia-Pacific market having dropped to 22% from 25% of its total turnover.

Planning a marketing campaign is a multi-step process that requires several levels of approval. For companies with robust cultures of diversity and inclusion, avoidable mistakes like these would have been caught early on. Diversity and inclusion is not just an optional feel-good initiative for organisations – those who ignore the need for diversity and inclusion in the workplace are at a very real risk of hurting their branding, reputation, sales and bottom line.

Moreover, it literally pays to have a culture of diversity and inclusion in your company – in 2018, McKinsey and Co’s ‘Delivering Through Diversity’ report showed that organisations that had gender diversity performed 15% better or reported 15% better financial results than their respective industry peers. On top of gender diversity, organisations that championed ethnic, cultural and racial diversity saw their financial performance increase up to 35%. These numbers translate to benefits on the individual level as well – another McKinsey report found that executives working in companies with cultural and ethnic diversity earned 0.8% to 3.5% more than their industry counterparts, before accounting for tax.

In today’s business landscape, it’s clear that organisations that practice what they preach on diversity and inclusion will not only create more positive and empowering spaces, but also stand to gain financially. Conversely, those that fail to adapt to the growing need for diversity and inclusion in the workplace will find themselves losing touch with a new generation of consumers, who have higher societal expectations for diversity and are willing to hold companies to account with their wallets.

Understanding Diversity and Inclusion

Over the years, progress has been made on improving gender equality in the workplace. Both men and women have benefited from the growing popularity of measures like paternity and maternity leave. Countries and companies have taken steps to correct the gender wage gap, and women are seeing greater representation in senior leadership. In 2020’s Fortune 500 list, a record 37 organisations are led by female CEOs; back in 1998, only two female CEOs appeared in the top 500.

While the push for greater gender equality must continue, as well as that for diversity and inclusion at large, the mainstream focus on gender issues in the workplace have led many people to misunderstand diversity as a synonym for women’s rights, gender equality or gender-specific strategies and programmes. In truth, gender is but one aspect in the overall umbrella of diversity and inclusion. Reaching a better understanding of diversity and inclusion requires us to unpack the term and drill down to its fundamentals – many have focused solely on the ‘diversity’ part, but the ‘inclusion’ part is equally crucial to keep in mind.

While the term is ‘diversity and inclusion’, you can only have diversity when you first have inclusion, though both are equally important. When your employees go to work, do they feel safe and welcome? Are they made to feel valued and respected – both for their contributions, and for who they are? If these needs are not met by your office culture, you don’t have an inclusive workplace. Your organisation will attract diversity only when people are thriving in an inclusive environment.

Potential talent looking at your company from the outside will be more motivated to join if they see existing employees operating in an office culture that lets them be at their best while being themselves. When you cultivate a space that empowers and encourages people to do better because their fundamental needs (feeling safe, valued, welcomed and respected) are met, talent from diverse backgrounds will know that your organisation can help them excel, because they’ve seen you do the same for your employees. That’s why diversity and inclusion is so important in today’s context, where the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the spotlight on issues like racism and inequality.

Many advocates for diversity and inclusion push hard and go fast, which is good, but are they willing to help those from the majority group get on board? That’s a blind spot, and one many are willing to ignore. To use a West-centric outlook on this issue, much of their business landscape used to be dominated by white males with traditional mindsets. Many from that generation now feel ostracised and quite excluded from the conversations of diversity and inclusion that we’ve been having. Sure, it’s easy to cut them off as ‘relics of the past’ and not bother reaching out to them. But if not everyone in the organisation is made to feel included, can your culture still be considered an inclusive one?

When engaging people from more privileged backgrounds, you should try to personalise issues of diversity and inclusion and ask that they view it from a different perspective. When you genuinely try to connect with people, it’ll be easier for them to relate to the topic at hand. Shed some light on how their actions and words could make others feel, and when you make this issue real, relatable and impactful to them on a personal level, they’re more likely to change or make a concerted effort.

Diversity and Inclusion’s Key Challenges

One key challenge for diversity and inclusion across all organisations is striking a balance while progressing through the implementation phase. Diversity and inclusion is a complex topic. With so many things making up diversity, many in our profession, myself included, have to carefully decide on what to prioritise and concern ourselves with. We’d certainly love to advance every possible cause supporting diversity and inclusion, but with the reality of limited time and resources, we must be purposeful regarding what we are able or unable to do.

Many organisations are also afraid to be specific about their positions on diversity and inclusion. For companies who have given a vague commitment to being inclusive, some are concerned that further emphasising the key issues they stand for may potentially cause offence or impact their branding and reputation. While it’s ‘safe’ for a company to simply say they support diversity and inclusion, it’s quite meaningless and unconvincing if there’s no detailed commitment or evidence of diverse and inclusive practices to back that up.

Companies that are interested in becoming diverse and inclusive are also confronted with some issues. Since diversity and inclusion is perceived as a large and abstract topic, some companies may not know where to start, while others may be too afraid to take action in fear of making mistakes or offending people. That fear can paralyse decision-makers, and the company ends up doing nothing at all.

How do we meet these challenges head-on? First, an admission – on an individual level, no one’s a real expert on this stuff; even I don’t think I’m an expert on diversity and inclusion, since my lived experience will be very different from someone else’s lived experience. In this profession, being humble in what we know and what we don’t is a good start. Furthermore, when others do make mistakes or say the wrong things, the best thing we can do is to acknowledge it, learn from it and then move on quickly. When you dwell on missteps for too long, it can feed into your fears, which then contributes to paralysis on the decision-making level.

If you find yourself giving an opinion on something that you’re not fully well-versed on, be humble about it. Be authentic and upfront about what you know and what you don’t: “Where this issue is concerned, these are my thoughts and opinions, and since I don’t know everything, I’m open to learning from feedback or being corrected.”.

Such humility is fundamental to anything which relates to diversity and inclusion. For instance, if you’re building a programme for workplace accessibility, you can’t just interview one person with one type of disability and use that result to represent the whole community of persons with disabilities. Besides being humble about the limits of your knowledge and understanding, you need to listen to a diversity of voices, thoughts and opinions – these will help you frame your thinking, inform your strategies and fully develop your programmes. Moreover, you need to be agile enough to continually adjust and improve your initiatives along the way, as new information flows in and you become more skilled at managing diversity and inclusion.

In some parts of the business world, making an effort to be diverse and inclusive is perceived as being ‘politically correct’. Personally, I find that hiding behind the label of ‘politically correct’ is a convenient escape route for those who are afraid to venture out of their comfort zones and learn from experience. It’s easy to frame the issue as not wanting ‘political correctness’ in the workplace, but I believe that the inaction also has to do with the fear of saying something wrong, or not knowing where to start. For such reasons, the first step towards diversity and inclusion is never made.

Yes, diversity and inclusion can be complex. It can be difficult and complicated, but so is standing up for a belief and committing to it. It takes courage and leadership to champion your ideals and put them into action. The common thread that unites leaders and trendsetters in the field of diversity and inclusion is a willingness to take risks and learn, to try something instead of doing nothing. It’s not a coincidence that risk-taking and an appetite for learning happen to be fundamental for running businesses successfully. Diversity and inclusion is hard work, and there’s no avoiding that, but ultimately it’s also greatly fulfilling for everyone.

Finally, to engage those who would fall back on the idea of ‘political correctness gone mad’, you can’t force them to embrace diversity and inclusion – it’ll only create more resistance to your approach. Instead, be willing to talk to them and hear their perspective, while challenging them to step out of their comfort zone. Meet people where they are. That way, both of you can then really get an understanding of why they feel the way they do, and the conversation can progress from there.

For leaders aiming to make their organisations more diverse and inclusive, the appeal of authenticity is universal – whether it’s society at large or the business world, people gravitate towards leaders who are authentic and humble. You could even consider being authentic a commodity. Leaders can start by being upfront and talking about the ‘why’ of diversity and inclusion. Why does it matter to you, as a leader? Why is it important for the organisation to be diverse and inclusive? Employees will appreciate clarity and authenticity about their leaders’ motivations on this aspect; once they know what their leaders stand for, they will be able to identify with those values. As noted earlier, even those in the profession aren’t experts at diversity and inclusion, and the same will apply to organisational leaders as well. In this field, everyone gets to learn something new every day.

For smaller companies that lack a HR division or an established diversity and inclusion strategy, the most powerful thing they can do is invite diverse voices to the table. You’re not going to have diversity when all your employees look the same, come from the same educational background and share similar lived experiences. One way to overhaul that sameness is to look outwards and invite people from varied backgrounds who can offer their opinions, advice and guidance for improving diversity and inclusion in your small organisation.

At Bloomberg Australia, we’ve signed up and recently published our Reconciliation Action Plan. This public plan features a set of commitments on how we, as an organisation, can contribute to supporting reconciliation between the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-indigenous people. We realised that we didn’t have any staff who identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander peoples, and we lacked the expertise to engage with them.

Hence, we invited some indigenous people from different communities to form an indigenous advisory group. This group would meet with us every few months and we’d highlight some issues that we were grappling with or propose some strategies under internal consideration. They’d give us real, honest feedback on what they thought and share their viewpoints on the likely impacts of our proposed initiatives.

Both large and small companies could also go down this path and organise advisory groups for implementing diversity and inclusion, bringing together different perspectives and voices to help inform their decision-making. They can also reach out to those who work in the profession of diversity and inclusion – we’re always open to sharing ideas and best practices, since it’s not a competition or a zero-sum game.

More often than not, we’d love to accept invitations to speak to other firms, as our work is to promote diversity and inclusion across the global business landscape. The nature of diversity and inclusion means that when more people join and collaborate with us on our mission, everyone stands to benefit and learn from one another. That’s why many of us are more than willing to come and speak to organisations small and large and share our best practices and lessons learnt.

Empowering Storytelling

When it comes to diversity and inclusion, simply leading with data points is insufficient. If you don’t connect with your people, they’ll naturally shut off and stop engaging with you. Narratives and stories help bridge the relatability gap and provide a human element for your implementation strategy. You’ve got to make it real and personal for them – where data helps is by bringing diversity and inclusion’s practical benefits and business opportunities to light.

What do I mean when I talk about stories? Here are two examples from personal experience. I used to work at a bank that had an employment programme for refugees. We’d take refugees with the right to work in the country and station them close to their communities, doing this throughout our branch network. On a particular stretch of road, we had two bank branches; one had a refugee placement while the other did not. We discovered that all the customers from the other branch switched to the branch where the refugee was employed, since they wanted to be served by someone from their community. The employee could connect with them on multiple levels – his appearance was like theirs; he could speak their language and he understood their circumstances.

While our job placement programme for refugees only ran for three months at a time, we had measurable, tangible results at the end of the three-month period. Not only did sales go up, we also saw an increase in usage of banking services by small businesses and individuals. Since the local community had many small businesses, they chose to use our services in association with the refugee we placed at their local branch. Through positive word of mouth, this branch started to attract customers of the same community from other banks, and we were able to really support the community at large since we had people who understood them.

I then went to work for one of the oldest and most traditional universities in Australia. There wasn’t much of a progressive culture at that university, and when I began to plan the institution’s LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi and transgender) strategy, the vice-chancellor’s speechwriter approached me. The speechwriter was questioning his own sexuality at that time – he talked about the fact that he preferred to wear women’s clothes in his free time, something he felt uncomfortable doing at work given the very traditional institution and leader he worked for. Suppressing this aspect of his sexuality made him feel like he couldn’t bring his whole self to work.

Not long after we had developed the LGBT strategy and rolled it out, we saw the university’s culture begin to change. More diverse and inclusive conversations sprang up, and people started to gain awareness and understanding of our goals and viewpoints.

Meanwhile, the vice-chancellor’s speechwriter felt empowered and accepted as the culture surrounding his workplace became more open and respectful of differences. He came to work one day wearing a dress, and no one commented on the sight – that’s when we knew we had succeeded, because it was now seen as something normal and acceptable. But the best was yet to come, since he went from ‘I’m just the vice-chancellor’s speechwriter’ to ‘I’m a leader in my own right, and I can contribute to our LGBT efforts’. Through incremental changes, one person was inspired to believe he could. When I left the institution, he was a driving force for its LGBT strategy encompassing 60,000 students and 20,000 staff members.

The Other Side of Inclusion

You can tell great stories, clearly outline your key values and display humility, but your diversity and inclusion initiatives won’t succeed if you lead with a ‘do what I say, not what I do’ approach. You need to focus both on what you say and what you do. In fact, what are you saying? What words are you choosing to use, and how are you demonstrating your inclusiveness, both consciously and unconsciously? That’s what true authenticity means.

One thing that I tended to do quite often was to refer to colleagues as ‘guys’, regardless of their gender. Someone approached me and said, “I’m not a guy, and you’re making me feel really awkward when you say, ‘Hi guys’, because I feel that you’re only addressing half the room.”. That represented a wake-up call for me. I’m not an expert, and even today I’m still learning new things about being diverse and inclusive. Like most others, I had taken the word ‘guys’ for granted as a generic term, but it’s really a gendered term. Being a woman does not give me a pass to ignore others’ gender sensibilities – I’ve had to switch my thinking around that and be very purposeful. Now when I address everyone, I use neutral terms like ‘Hi team’ or ‘Hi everyone’ to be more inclusive.

Why do these seemingly ‘minor and irrelevant’ issues matter? It’s because diversity and inclusion is being challenged on things we’ve taken for granted all this time, under the understanding that it’s ‘normal’ to say and do these things. If you don’t live by your words and actions, no matter how small and irrelevant they seem, then it’s hard for others to believe your commitment to diversity and inclusion.

As a leader, people watch what you do and draw conclusions accordingly. Take flexible working for example, in an era before the COVID-19 pandemic pushed everyone towards it. When you tell everyone it’s okay to work from home, but you’re not leading by example, you’re sending a signal. That signal is confusing, unclear and will be interpreted by others as being implicitly unsupportive of flexible working arrangements. With flex-working, as with diversity and inclusion and everything else, you’re only leading well if you back up what you’re saying with what you’re doing.

In one organisation I worked for, we made our most senior people undertake flex-working for four weeks. We didn’t define the term for them and didn’t set clear pointers on what they could or could not do. Our general counsel came to me and expressed his concerns.

“Alisha, I’m nearing retirement and I’ve never worked flexibly in my life. I don’t see how someone in my position could.”

I had to get the CEO on board to convince him to undergo the trial. The result?

“For the first time in 15 years, I was home in time for dinner with my family. I could go to my grandchild’s recital, and only then did I feel the loss of not being able to attend any of my kids’ recitals.”

Because he could fit in these things into his flex-working schedule and was able to reconcile himself with all the experiences he gave up for many years, he felt less stress and guilt while becoming even more productive. The work-from-home initiative also transformed his entire legal team – before the change, lawyers always had to work long hours, sacrificing their family and private time. Since then, he’s been supportive of flex-working, because the experience has taught him to better prioritise his time and tasks.

As a leader, when you say that you value diversity and inclusion, where does it lie on your list of priorities? How are you demonstrating that priority in the workplace? If you tout its importance but keep putting it off to some other time or otherwise treat the issue lightly, you’re not really that invested in diversity and inclusion, and the rest of your company can see it.

Neither is it just about the visible initiatives. When you have a high-profile project for another business unit and you’re assembling your team, who’s going to make the shortlist? Consider if you’re picking people based on your assumptions, biases and generalisations. For instance, “I can’t pick this person because they’ve got a family and it may affect their business travelling.” Or “This person is always quiet and fails to speak out. Are they really up for the task?” Aren’t these biases hurting the inclusivity you stand for? To champion diversity and inclusion, you will need to examine your blind spots for hidden prejudices and assumptions.

No one is perfect. But when we work together to demonstrate our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we can learn to do better. We don’t have to start big either – if we do just one thing in each of those categories every day, we’ll have contributed to a real cultural shift in the business world and society at large.

“Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” – Vernā Myers, VP Inclusion Strategy, Netflix

1 Examine Your Biases

We all have blind spots, implicit assumptions and biases about certain groups of people. Examining your biases helps you find areas to improve and become a better advocate of diversity and inclusion.

2 Lead by Example

When you don’t lead with your words and deeds, others will doubt your commitment to diversity and inclusion. No matter how small the cause, issue or mistake may be, you need to own it.

3 Watch Your Words

What you say is also important to signal your commitment to inclusion. If you’re not using inclusive language, you’re not leading by example when it comes to diversity and inclusion.