Exploring Diversity Within Your Organisation

Supporting diversity in the workplace is a key element of good people management, and allows everyone to feel valued as both a part of the organisation and as an individual.

Current UK equality legislation covers elements such as age, disability, race, religion, sex, and sexual orientation, among others, but it sets out the minimum requirements.  An effective diversity policy should go beyond these minimum compliance targets.  Doing so contributes to employee well-being and better contribution and engagement from your team.

While diversity and inclusion usually apply together, they refer to different strategies.  In a nutshell, diversity refers to recognising people’s differences across the company and not solely those of underrepresented groups, acknowledging that those differences contribute to a richer working environment, whereas inclusion refers to how those differences are valued in the workplace.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has extensive resources that can help a management team develop practices and policies that address diversity in the workplace, and also provides an inclusion health checker tool that helps determine how inclusive a business is.

When considering diversity and inclusion it’s important to appreciate that a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t result in equality for everyone, so a good diversity and inclusion policy whilst being fair must also remain flexible to support both employee and business needs.

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