“There are enough people in the world who are going to write you off.  You don’t need to do that to yourself”

Susan Boyle

Diversity

Diversity is not only an important issue; it is the issue. It says everything you need to know about the culture of an organisation. And culture is often the deciding factor as to whether a potential stakeholder will team up with you or go to a competitor!

From past experience corporations fully appreciate the advantages to be gained from seeking to develop a pro diversity culture. The issue then becomes one of implementation.

Advice is never hard to come by, whether you are looking for a perspective on gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, religion or age. One could be forgiven for wondering whether these single issues compete with each other for attention and resources. Truth is, the right approach should seek to address diversity issues in a complementary way.

The best approach corporations can take to diversity is by developing strategies in a holistic fashion. We have seen that organisations can achieve real gains from investing time and thought in this area. Yes, it will require active engagement, flexibility, and possibly new bespoke models, and different ways of working. It can require new systems to be put in place to embed these new approaches into workplaces too.

Addressing diversity properly provides a direct benefit in itself, which is worth doing in its own right. But, getting your diversity practices right opens up a whole new levels of performance gains which in due course can be exploited. The right approach to diversity therefore has a great deal to do with improving overall performance, and is not hung-up on addressing specific needs at the tactical level. And improving performance is something to which all can subscribe. 🙂

Equity

Organisations appreciate the advantages of developing equitable workplace cultures, but they frequently don’t know where to start or how to develop such cultures.  There are strategic steps corporate clients should take to create and develop successful diverse and inclusive workplace cultures.

Inclusion

Inclusion is about giving equitable access and opportunities to disabled persons, and persons living with challenging conditions in the communities they live in as well as their workplaces. It means removing barriers of direct and indirect discrimination, harassment, and intolerance which prevents many qualified individuals, with or without accommodations, from using their education, knowledge, skills, and talents to perform essential functions of jobs. This applies to all levels and jobs within a company.

Organizations gain measurable employee performance levels through an improved understanding of some common, but sometimes erroneous, outdated, or stereotypical attitudinal assumptions, disability employment practices that impact disabled people, and persons living with challenging conditions. 

“Part of the problem is that we tend to think about equality is about treating everyone the same, when it is not. It’s about fairness. It’s about equity of access. And equity of access, whether to housing, health, education, or employment looks different for someone like me and the hundreds of thousands of us who cannot do things the same way, than it does for the majority of people who can. It involves ramps, wider doorways, bars, sign language interpreters, captioning, accessible technology, audio descriptions, documents in Braille, and personal assistance for those with physical disabilities, as well as those with intellectual disabilities”

Being Heumann, An Unrepentant Memoir Of A Disability Rights Activist, Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner