How to embrace diversity in the workplace

Sam Hernandez Garcia talks about the importance of diversity in the workplace 

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Aspire

After the last three years we have lived through as a society, it is fair to say we might all be emotionally scarred in some way or other. Our sense of self has taken a hit; we are recalibrating priorities, detangling what has shaped us, who we are, where we really want to be and where we belong. Belonging, as the social tribes we are, is the glue that binds us together but how can we foster belonging as individuals and as an extended microcosm of society (i.e. organisations)?

When considering diversity – how we can be truly inclusive, how can we be active allies and move the needle from simple passive bystanding? In an increasingly diverse world, we must de-bias ourselves and, therefore, everything we do, from how we recruit people to all the AI we build, if we are to survive.

However, our still prehistoric brains haven’t yet caught up with the level of stimuli and cognitive overload we are under. So, we need to ‘wake up and smell the coffee’; we are inherently biased by the blinkers we often proudly wear. This distorted version of reality can cause us to take unfair and unequal decisions; bringing the unconscious into the conscious is often the very first step.

Often, diversity and inclusion appear as fluffy aspiration and well-meaning initiative – sometimes used as clean-up PR after things have gone (publicly) wrong, or an HR tick box exercise. The truth is that diversity is a reality. Inclusion, on the other hand, is still very much a choice, a choice that we must make day–in, day-out, through a series of intentional and ever so conscious actions to actively include and embrace differences instead of passively excluding (our default position).

Diversity, after all, is more a numbers game, and does very little without inclusion.