Are your inclusion efforts at the top of your priority?
Listen to this month's newsletter.
Approximately 70% of organisations that come to me for support on Inclusion engage me because something internally or externally has gone 'wrong' at some point in time - this is usually the root catalyst that has driven them to begin this work. I call these house fires - the work is reactionary. Their house is on fire.
The other 30% understand that Inclusion is important just like any other area in the business - the work is proactive. They want to get their house in order so that everyone inside is safe and cared for.
So when clients/partners say to me that they are delaying their Inclusion work because we are nearing Christmas and things are 'hectic' - I sigh..
I've always said how organisations approach inclusion tells me a sh*t load about where inclusion is at as a business, culture, leadership team and as individuals/leaders.
It's not the strategy or the delivery of inclusion, it's the approach.
If you are
putting it off till 2023 (for whatever reason... all of which sound perfectly justified, reasonable and logical)
pressing PAUSE on key parts of the work in Q4 2022 as things are just way to 'busy'
are doing the 'bare minimum' as you've got to much on and have 'other' burning priorities
are taking 1-6 months to pass the work through internal decision making processes
don't have a decent budget
Then I know this is not high up on your todo/priority list and my experience tells me that you will unfortunately be one of those organisations who experience an inclusion crisis in the short to mid term.
I once told a client/partner that sadly, the reality is that some organisations/leaders need to experience an inclusion crisis to understand that this work can't wait.
In my experience, the cost of inaction is high.
The biggest cost/risk to a brand is having a label attached (reputation and risk). Once it sticks (regardless if it feels 'true or not for you') it is often difficult to unstick with current and potential employees and consumers. For some brands this has meant closing up shop.
Then there is the fiscal cost/risk - in my experience, if an organisation has a workforce/team of 100-3,000 people and have a proactive approach to this work, the D&I budget is generally $60K-150K (provided they are not a holding group or public company structure).
If an organisation is reacting to this work because of a crisis, then in my experience the costs can easily balloon out to $500K. This doesn't include the cost of engaging the leadership team if we calculated their time for endless crisis management meetings x current hourly salary plus lost input/productivity on BAU (business as usual) tasks.
Then we also need to include the emotional and mental labour that leaders pay to deal with a crisis - a cost that impacts them professionally and personally and therefore their ability to perform in all areas of their role; and other costs, such as working more intensively with creative, media and PR agencies to change the narrative of the brand/rebuild community and consumer trust, working with crisis communications experts who generally operate on a retainer fee, lost revenue/sales due to consumers choosing to boycott brands, cost of closing stores for training and the list goes on and on.
The most severe cost, is the cost to humans. Those that were hurt and/or harmed.
This is what the work is all about - preventing that.
As organisations and leaders we have a due diligence to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our people which includes our consumers to the best of our ability. And that means prioritising the work of inclusion.
Inclusion isn't a 'someday', 'when we are less busy', 'when we have more time for it' or 'lets put it on hold till 2023' objective.
Inclusion is a right now objective.
Don't put inclusion off till 2023.
In case you missed it:
You can download your complimentary copy of the discussion paper, So you've done D&I training, now what?, to learn how to make D&I training effective and to discover other inclusion solutions that work.