The insights I share are drawn from my experience as a professor of educational leadership who has extensively researched and taught about workplace inclusion, as well as my time spent as a human resources professional dealing with these issues from an employer’s perspective. The bottom line is that true inclusion cannot occur when people continue to feel alienated.
To be clear, my proposed answer is not for employers to ignore identity entirely or take a “colorblind” approach — not least because that’s not what employees want. Instead, a better approach is for employers to be intentionally inclusive of people of all backgrounds, to allow everyone to feel a sense of belonging.
Building a better DEI training
Unfortunately, many of the most popular DEI efforts — for example, short, one-shot diversity training sessions — haven’t been found to be effective, at least not as they’re implemented. In other words, they haven’t been shown to improve workforce diversity, especially in leadership. In fact, they can sometimes even be counterproductive, reinforcing microaggression and bias instead of reducing them.
