Blog five of five, in a series by Dr Chrissi McCarthy.
The study produced three key recommendations for organisations. Here’s what they mean in practice.
Recommendation 1: Recruitment and Valuing People
Firstly, they recommend a two-stage process that focuses on recruitment and a policy/procedure that focuses on helping people feel valued.
I agree with this in the main; however, as discussed in our earlier blogs, there needs to be recognition of perceptions of fairness and an uncovering of inequality if we are to achieve inclusion. We need to go beyond how people feel about their organisations and consider how those organisations value and treat them.
Recommendation 2: Assessing Inclusion Climate
Secondly, the Assessment of inclusion climate. I find this a strong recommendation; understanding where the organisation is can help determine the work that needs to be done. I would recommend breaking this down into two parts. First, the fairness climate: what are employees’ perceptions of fairness? Second, the EDI maturity: how does the organisation currently approach EDI work in terms of leadership, strategy, resources, and pressure? This can help you understand the environment you are putting work into and the level at which your work currently operates, enabling a realistic, stepped improvement that doesn’t overreach into chaos.
Recommendation 3: Inclusion at All Levels
The final recommendation is that attention on inclusion should focus on all levels of the organisation. I would agree, but add some direction. At COBE, we take a mission-oriented approach, aligning EDI work (or FIE, as we call it) with the organisation’s values and needs. So, you are looking at how to use EDI to achieve your overarching goals.
So what?
In short, the recommendations are sensible, but only work when grounded in fairness, feasible steps, and a clear organisational purpose.
We believe that to be effective, EDI work needs to operate within three clear pillars: value-led, context-driven, and coproduced.
At COBE, we created FIELDS, a methodology that upskills individuals to create coproduced, value-aligned, and context-driven inclusive culture strategies. Its evidence has been drawn from every paper in the blog series and from about a couple of hundred more, as well as from over 20 years of practice.
