Updated April 25, 2023
Image source: pixabay.com
Inclusive in the Work Environment
Being inclusive is so much important in today’s professional life. Imagine you’re in your new job, and you see all your co-workers and colleagues eating lunch together and not inviting you. How would you feel? Of course, you won’t feel on top of the world. In any professional or personal setting, not being inclusive sucks. Most probably, you’ve heard this expression that what you give comes back to you. So when you know that not being inclusive is not good enough, why not commit not to make anyone exclusive at any moment?
The thing is, it’s a realization within yourself. No one can make you more inclusive. You need to do it yourself. Talk to yourself for a moment about this. And read this article. This article will help you realize the value of being inclusive and to help others feel inclusive too.
In this article, we will talk about what being inclusive means! Then we show you some practical ways to become more inclusive. Lastly, at the conclusion, we will discuss the benefits of it in a professional setting.
Sounds good? Let’s begin.
What Does Being Inclusive Mean?
Image source: pixabay.com
Promote inclusiveness by not excluding anyone from your area of connection. Recognize that everyone wants to belong and avoid judging or leaving others behind, especially new employees or introverts. Foster an inclusive environment by valuing diversity and making efforts to include everyone, regardless of their personality or background.
To illustrate this situation, let’s take a hypothetical situation.
You’re a new employee in an organization. It’s your first day, and you are nervous about how everything will go! Then to your utter shock, you see that you’re not even paying heed. During lunchtime, everyone around you sits and has lunch, and you’re completely ignored. Even at work, no one feels the need to introduce themselves to you, and as the day goes on, you’re feeling very much anxious.
So, what to do in this situation?
Promote inclusiveness by sharing your resources with others, even if they don’t include you in their group. Share your lunch or other resources to foster a sense of inclusion. Be proactive and include others in your group rather than blaming or complaining. Sharing resources is a simple tactic that can be applied anywhere to promote inclusiveness.
Being inclusive is easy. You just need to use common sense. You also need to realize that everyone is human and everyone is imperfect. So, there’s always room for judgment, mistakes, taking you for granted, making conclusions, thinking wrong about you, etc. So don’t let these obstacles stop you from being inclusive.
In the next section, we will discuss ways to become more inclusive. Just read and if you feel, take notes and apply. It may change your professional life.
Ways to Become More Inclusive
There are a thousand ways to become inclusive in an organizational setting. But we will pick the top ten which will help you become inclusive. All others are just the sub-parts of these tips. Let’s get started.
-
Share:
Sharing is a simple but effective way to promote inclusivity in an organization. Share feasible resources like lunch, tips, or books that can be sustained long. Don’t share personal belongings, and maintain your values and principles. Start small and gradually increase your inclusivity.
-
Initiate:
Overcome shyness and fear of initiating a conversation by understanding the source of your fear. In professional settings, most people respond warmly when approached. Give your introduction and leave room for the other person to share. Practice an introduction script and choose to initiate conversations to promote inclusiveness. Don’t wait for others. Choose inclusiveness and initiate conversations or small talk. Choose your time, people, and script, but take the initiative to foster inclusiveness.
-
Empathize:
Most people talk but don’t empathize. So to be more inclusive, you need to empathize. One recent research found that the leaders given a top rating by their subordinates are all empathetic and compassionate. They put themselves in the shoes of their employees and think from their perspective. Thus, instead of judging them, they allow the employees to expand. And thus, it creates magic. They become more inclusive, and the leaders also get a team supporting them in their projects. You can do the same. Instead of judging a co-worker for her comments, simply look into her eyes and try to understand her. Empathize in your heart, even if you cannot express it professionally. If you empathize, you can make yourself and others much more inclusive.
Image source: pixabay.com
-
Ruminate:
Before you ever become inclusive, you need to know why you need to become inclusive. Being inclusive helps you produce things that individuals cannot be done. We all are interdependent human beings. And that doesn’t change when we are in a professional setting. On the surface, we may be different. But actually, we all have an invisible chord connecting us in humanity. Every day before you jump off to make conclusions and judgments, take some time to meditate about why you need to be more inclusive. And it will do the trick.
-
Embrace diversity:
This is the age of globalization. Within seconds everything can be connected at a global level. Thus, many cultures, people, religions, and personalities naturally come together and work in a common setting. So, if you can’t handle diversity properly, you won’t be able to be inclusive. Imagine that you’re judging someone based on his culture and discriminating against him based on his upbringing. Will he feel included when you’re around? Moreover, will you be able to include him in your organization? No. So, go deep and look deep. Don’t judge people based on what is visible on the surface. Everyone is different. And you need to embrace that if you want to be inclusive.
Image source: pixabay.com
-
Open your mind:
A beautiful phrase speaks: “Be open to everything, attached to nothing.” If you open your mind to knowing a person more, you will be able to make yourself more inclusive and make him/her inclusive too. Instead of reacting according to the year-long programming in your mind, take some time and talk to yourself. Instead of judging someone, open your mind, and be curious. As you learn about a person, you can learn a lot from that person. A person is like a book with many, many years of experience. If you simply be curious and trying to learn what s/he has to offer, becoming inclusive will be much easier than you think.
-
Conduct informal meetings:
Create some framework that will allow you to conduct a monthly or quarterly meeting where all people from all cultures will share their cultures with all of you. It’s like taking a seminar from all kinds of people worldwide and taking notes and learning from them. There can be no big way to celebrate inclusiveness. This sort of informal meeting will not only make you more inclusive, but these meetings will also bind the whole organization in a beautiful bond. And if any crisis period arises in the near future, you will find that most of your employees are behind you, supporting you. This is called inclusiveness in its rightest terms.
-
Write thank-you notes:
If you own a company and make all the decisions for your organization, write a letter to each employee once a month or once a year. Don’t just say ‘thank you. Know why you are saying ‘thank you to them. Yes, it’s difficult to find out who is doing what. But it wouldn’t be a great issue if you could delegate the work to someone to learn what your employees are doing during the year. Just write the reason and say ‘thank you.’ And sign your name. It would be an honor for all your employees. They will feel appreciated. And being appreciated is one form of being inclusive. Do you know how people become more affiliated with an organization? It is to the extent they feel included. So why don’t you allow them to become more affiliated with your organization?
-
Do inclusive training every year:
This is costly for a lot of organizations. At least many organizations view the cost of training as an expense instead of seeing it as an investment. But if you value inclusiveness and know how it can help you, you would know how beneficial it is to do some sensitivity training programs on inclusiveness and diversity. They are not costly if you think of the long-term benefits.
-
Develop your culture to be more inclusive:
You must create a culture that naturally encourages employees to be more inclusive. You can post a coordinator in every corner of the office as an “Inclusion Executives” to oversee how people behave with each other. And if anyone (new employees or shy people) feels left out, they will help them connect with the group. If this can be done, employees working in the organization will understand the values of being inclusive and be naturally inclusive after some time.
Benefits
Image source: pixabay.com
There is no one benefit of being inclusive. But here, we will give you the top five so that you can understand why becoming inclusive helps you build and sustain your professional career and your organization.
- It helps you become more progressive and to create a bond among all employees, which can last a lifetime.
- It helps organizations create a synergy that helps them create better results and makes them more productive.
- Inclusiveness helps create more love in the workplace and reduces competition. Thus, the working environment improves a lot.
- Inclusiveness reduces the toxicity from the working environment and helps people connect irrespective of their varied cultures, personalities, and diversities.
- Being inclusive sustains an organization for a long time as it fosters growth, expansion, and interdependency.
This is a comprehensive guide to being inclusive. All you need to do is to read the article, pick the thing you can implement right now, and go ahead and implement it. Go. Being inclusive is the new form of efficiency in the organization.
