Two questions: –
1. How well do your diversity and inclusion (D&I) policies and actions help you recruit, retain and promote the skills you need to meet the different needs of your customers?
And:
2. How well does your learning and development maximise the contribution of all your people?
Many organisations will have a diversity & inclusion policy and associated statements, possibly made with the best of intentions.
Unfortunately in many cases the action does not meet the rhetoric. Research has show that many pronouncements on D&I are just empty shells (See the work from Hoque and Noon, 2004).
For example, an analysis based on seven indicators of diversity reporting on a sector of the creative industries (Block, 2018) concluded that that the actions taken by the sector, or individual companies, are not sustained nor embedded in the industry, they are ‘merely’ empty shells. They are not alone.
Company boards, owners and managers need to ‘walk the talk’ and demonstrate that their D&I policies are supported by practice to which all workers employed by the company can access and subscribe. The aspiration to have a diverse workforce across all sectors remains questionable without organisations being more robust in their actions and evaluating those actions.
So we challenge you to see how your organisation measures up on the PeopleMax Index
It is a quick, clear & simple D&I benchmarking tool, and, it is an open access tool.
It is free.
This maturity model will help you assess your current status as the first step in building your organisation’s performance.
This could help you develop your capabilities to build a skilled, diverse and engaged workforce that is highly effective in meeting the different needs of your customers and local communities
This is not the first time this quote has been used but it is worth repeating:-
Diversity is like being given an invite to the dinner,
inclusion is actually being given a seat at the dinner table.
If you want to have a free review of your organisation’s level of maturity in its efforts to have an inclusive and diverse workforce, just get in touch…