Addressing employee FAQs on inclusion work

How to use this resource

Workplace culture leaders, HR leaders, and their corporate communications counterparts have an opportunity and an obligation to communicate clearly with employees across their businesses about their stance and strategy when it comes to creating inclusive workplaces. This guide offers insight into anticipated employee questions with recommendations on how to respond to drive understanding and alignment. 

In addition to leveraging this guide to prepare for impactful conversations in direct interactions with employees, you may also consider: 

1. Pulling the key messages into a slide deck to present at a town hall or other similar forum. 

2. Sharing this as part of a communications guide or messaging document for fellow leaders and executives across functions to ensure shared understanding and consistency in communication from the top. 

3. Distributing this guide to ERG leaders and encouraging them to lead conversations with ERG members around these questions. This allows them to practice their skills at communicating with peer colleagues and helps cascade and embed this messaging at all levels. And you can tap them for feedback about what’s resonating and what might need to be adjusted for your context. 

Question 1: What is our company’s position on workplace inclusion?

• For the health of our business and in keeping with our organizational values of [Insert Your Company Values], we are committed to creating an inclusive work environment where every employee can feel like they belong, has fair and open access to opportunity, and is able to thrive here at our company.

• We are motivated to do this because we know it will help our teams better solve problems, improve the engagement of our employees and impact their intent to stay. It will also drive innovation and improve employee wellbeing through outcomes like lower burnout.

• This matters to us because our most valuable asset is our people. Inclusion is good for all employees — and good for business.

Question 2: There are a lot of buzzwords around and I'm hearing conflicting messages about what inclusion, diversity, and equity are all about. What do we mean and why do we care?

• You’re right that these topics can look different from one organization to the next, and it’s not uncommon for people to have very different understandings of what these concepts mean, which can make it difficult to have productive conversations. Thank you for your openness to learning more about what this means to us here at our company. I’m happy to share some key elements from my perspective and I would also love to hear what it means to you.

• This is about talent and culture optimization. We are talking about removing biases and closing gaps that prevent employees from achieving their full potential, so all employees, as well as our teams and our business, can thrive. We do this so that our meritocracy can function the way it’s supposed to, with the best talent — no matter their background — earning the recognition and growth they deserve, free from barriers. It’s also about fair and respectful treatment for all to ensure we are living out our organizational values.

• Together, these elements contribute to the ability of employees of all backgrounds to join, stay, perform, and thrive in this organization so we can maximize all talent to the benefit of our business and give our best to them in return.

Question 3: How does inclusion work benefit me?

• Inclusion benefits everyone in the workplace. When everyone feels valued and included, we build a collaborative environment where people feel comfortable sharing diverse perspectives. This diversity of thought can lead to more innovative solutions and creative problem-solving.

• When employees feel respected and supported they are more likely to have higher job satisfaction and engagement.

• This work also ensures that everyone has fair and open access to opportunities for growth and advancement. That means that your hard work and talents are recognized and rewarded fairly, regardless of your background.

• On the company side we continue work to [Select as Appropriate] identify and remove bias from recruitment and performance systems, conduct and take action on pay equity reviews, equip all of our people managers to lead inclusively, and assess our policies for other ways to create a level playing field for all our employees.

Question 4: Shouldn’t this just be about hiring the best person for the job?

• Yes! It is about hiring the best person for the job. What our inclusion work helps us do is ensure that across the organization everyone has equitable access to opportunities. This involves working to remove barriers that prevent qualified individuals from getting opportunities based on merit.

• This enables all talent to get a fair shot at proving themselves and being seen by those making decisions as potentially the best person for the job without things like bias and systemic disadvantages getting in the way.

• That doesn’t mean everyone gets every opportunity they go for. What it does mean is that nobody — regardless of who they are — should feel like the door of opportunity is closed to them before they’ve even been given a chance just because of something like their gender or their race, for example.

• Great talent is everywhere and comes in all forms. If we close opportunity gaps and level the playing field by making things fair and objective, then we can be more effective at hiring the best people for the job. That’s what our focus on equity in hiring, performance evaluation, and promotion is about and we know that it will benefit our people and our business.

Question 5: As a leader in this organization, I want to be an ally and support a positive culture of inclusion but I feel at a loss for what to say and do in this moment. Where do I start?

• First, thank you for taking the first step to creating change, by choosing to move outside of your comfort zone to make all your employees feel like they belong.

• Start by embracing your curiosity: ask yourself questions and commit to exploring the answers, especially when they feel uncomfortable. Pursue ways to learn from experiences that are different from yours.

• Build and develop your empathy skills. Create psychologically safe spaces for your team to share, if they wish, with you and with each other.

• Be careful not to succumb to performative allyship by elevating your own platform; instead, take your learnings and find ways to lift the voices of others through your position as a leader.

• Find your next best step...and then the next. For example, are you part of any of our ERGs? Remember that you don’t have to share a specific affinity to be a member — allies are invited and encouraged to join. Think about who you are mentoring and sponsoring. Do those employees represent the full spectrum of talent we have here at our company? Your efforts to help us build a robust and resilient pipeline of next-in-line leaders of all backgrounds makes a big difference. Are you living our values through your leadership and holding your team and peers accountable for the same? Keep in mind that this looks like bringing visibility and celebrating examples worth modeling just as much as it means interrupting when behaviors are misaligned with our values.

• This will take practice, reflection, refinement, and repetition. Everyone holds implicit biases; learning how to recognize yours and course-correcting is part of the work. Taking risks and practicing allyship are important steps in dismantling the status quo and paving the pathway to meaningful change.