Four Actions For Leaders to Accelerate Workplace Inclusion & Belonging – A Series

Inspired by participating companies in the Expanding Equity network, this post kicks off a four-part series that will lift up four actions leaders and organizations can take to accelerate inclusion and belonging in the workplace. (See WKKF’s Inclusion & Belonging Guidebook for more how-to information.)

Inclusion and belonging in the workplace starts and ends with people. People doing the work to show up better with and for their colleagues and coworkers. It’s about how an organization is going to be together, what their values are and how they’re going to relate to each other and collaborate with one another. Inclusion and belonging is about workers, all workers, no matter their race, gender, age, sexual orientation or educational background. We all want to feel welcomed, respected and valued wherever we work, and more inclusive and supportive workplaces are what more workers are expecting and demanding. Moreover, whether workers feel included and that they belong often determines whether they decide to join or leave an organization, and how engaged and productive they are while they’re there.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Expanding Equity program has helped 850+ leaders from more than 180+ companies develop, implement and sustain workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) strategies. Since 2019, more than 90% of participating companies have reported measurable progress on those strategies. In fact, when we started the program, we expected companies to focus their efforts on attracting and promoting talent. Instead, 94% of Expanding Equity companies are increasingly anchoring their DEI efforts on inclusion and belonging, leaning into the following:

• Prioritizing organizational culture work ¹ : Most organizations are deploying resources towards organizational culture initiatives, such as inclusive workplace surveys to better understand their employees’ sentiments on inclusion; employee resource groups (ERGs) to better prioritize employee belonging for a broad array of identities and backgrounds; and inclusive leadership training to better support managers and supervisors in leading their teams.
• Focusing on the frontline ² : In many organizations, the biggest inclusion gap is between frontline workers and senior leaders. In response, some organizations are prioritizing inclusion efforts that directly target support towards these workers in particular, like redesigning career paths, ERGs dedicated to frontline groups and frontline supervisor leadership and support programs.
• Reframing DEI initiatives to emphasize inclusion: Other organizations are redesigning initiatives so that they resonate with a broader audience (e.g., renaming the initiatives, shifting the communications or changing the approach), especially in the face of questions about DEI (e.g., “talent pipeline analysis” instead of diversity dashboards, and inclusive leadership coaching instead of unconscious bias training).

What the Research Says About the Impact of Inclusion & Belonging in Organizations

Leaders realize that their organizations are most effective when all employees feel meaningfully included. For example:

An increased focus on inclusion and belonging does not mean that broader DEI work is scaling back. Instead, DEI work is evolving with a strong focus on employee experience. A survey of 194 chief human resources officers (CHRO) from late last year revealed that none planned to scale back DEI initiatives, programs and policies in 2024, and 63% planned to focus on attracting and retaining a more diverse workforce. As such, 75% of CHROs in the same survey planned to strengthen the employee experience and organizational culture, largely focusing on improving employee engagement at all levels – from the C-suite to the frontline.

Yet, successfully building a more inclusive workplace can be challenging, even for seasoned leaders. Another 2022 survey revealed that only 30% of employees strongly agreed they were treated fairly by their employer. Advancing workplace inclusion can seem even more daunting as our communities – and consequently our workplaces – become increasingly polarized. A recent employee survey revealed that nearly 1 in 5 respondents reported difficulty working with colleagues with differing political beliefs, and over 1 in 10 said they felt bullied by colleagues due to their political stance. Furthermore, in 2022, 1 in 4 workers said they had experienced differential treatment based on political beliefs, up from 1 in 10 in 2019.

Four Actions for Accelerating Inclusion & Belonging at Your Organization

In our work with Expanding Equity companies, we have identified four action areas that leaders should prioritize to effectively build and maintain cultures of inclusion and belonging at their organizations, on their teams, and in their interactions. In our future posts, we’ll dive into each action area more deeply. Here’s a preview of what’s to come:

Exhibit: Four action areas for improving workplace inclusion and belonging

Becoming. The workplace is one of the few remaining places in society where we actually interact with people who are different from us in whatever way; race, class, education or ideology. Most of us long for places where there is less division and more collaboration; less conflict and more compassion; and less uncertainty and more security. Our workplaces can become those types of places, and we as leaders can help to build them.

But we must become better leaders in order to arrive there (me too), and I hope that you’ll join me on this journey of figuring out how in the coming weeks.