by Tova Sherman
If you’ve met me, you know I’m a big fan of sharing wisdom through short, pithy phrases. Important lessons should be easy to remember, so here are a few of what I call “inclusion-isms” that are key to building a diverse and inclusive workplace.
The Fish Stinks From The Head
When leadership doesn’t buy in to the value of a diverse team, progress in this area will be next to impossible. (Hence the fish stinking from the head.) Business owners, managers, and hiring agents must be demonstratively on board, practising what they preach, to ensure success from the top down. If your leadership isn’t buying into the value of diversity, provide them with some facts and figures to convince them. These are plentiful and easy to find, but you can start with this one from McKinsey & Company’s 2019 “Diversity Wins” report: when measured against the least culturally diverse companies (the bottom 25% measured), the most culturally diverse (top 25%) outperformed by 36% in measured profitability. Diversity has repeatedly been proven to be a driver of innovation and creativity. In the business world these translate into a better bottom line, and nothing motivates those at the head quite like profit.
Different Not Difficult
Hiring a person with a disability for the first time will be a different experience. Talking about disability can feel taboo for many folks at first, but it’s important to discuss how a disability will impact a candidate’s ability to do the job. On-boarding can look quite different too, as you discuss accommodations and perhaps changes to the physical workspace to make it more accessible for your new team member. All of this may be new and different, but none of it is particularly difficult. Especially not when you have the disability confidence to ask the right questions. Employees with disabilities know what they need to do the job and do it well, all you have to do is ask! (Or as another of my inclusion-isms likes to say,Stay Curious!)
Right Person, Right Job
This may be my most repeated inclusion-ism, because forgetting this principle is what leads to backlash against inclusive hiring practices. The dreaded term “DEI Hire” comes out of a misunderstanding of what inclusive hiring actually looks like. Nobody is being hired just to satisfy a quota, or at least they shouldn’t be. Inclusive hiring means broadening your search to include candidates who may traditionally have been overlooked. It means finding reasons toScreen In, Not Out, to use another of my favourite phrases. It doesn’t mean that every person can do every job. That’s setting folks up for frustration and failure. The right person for the job may not look, sound, or behave just like everyone in that role has in the past. But they still need to have the right skills and abilities for the job at hand. As a boisterous person living with ADHD, I’m a fantastic public speaker, and I’m the right candidate for that job. But I shouldn’t work in a library, and it would be frankly a little silly to pretend that I should.
Win, Win, Win
Hiring a talented, creative candidate who is thrilled to be on the team is an obvious win for the employer. When that candidate is a person living with disability, the win for them is a victory over some truly frustrating odds. Unemployment rates for people living with disabilities are often three times higher than for those living without disabilities. This is not a reflection of their ability to do the job. Just like I’m not applying to work at a library, the vast majority of applicants with disabilities are not applying for jobs they don’t have the skills or abilities to do. This rate is because of a lack of disability confidence on the part of hiring agents, and a lack of imagination, understanding, and perhaps even empathy on the part of many managers and business owners.
Correcting this imbalance is the third win, the win for your community. Ensuring your team is representative of the diverse population it serves helps make our community more equitable. It makes your business or organization more welcoming to neighbours who see themselves represented in your workforce and your attention. Add in the increased profits we already talked about and I’ve definitely gone over my three wins, but I’d hardly call too many wins a loss!
If your organization could use guidance on inclusive hiring and accessibility, the team at reachAbility has a lot more advice than a few inclusion-isms can contain. Give us a call at 902-429-5878 or email info@reachability.org and we’ll find some more wins together.
