Grow your team
When you become an Inclusive Employers’ Member you grow your I&D team.
Your account manager works with you to understand your goals, your challenges and achievable next steps.
Do you need more support for your inclusive culture to thrive?
Thriving multicultural workplaces are vital for impactful global inclusion. Global Inclusion Week (GIW) 2024 has come to an end, but the lessons learned during the week are important for everyone involved in creating thriving multicultural workplaces.
The GIW 2024 theme, Cultural Intelligence: Inclusion Across Cultures, highlighted the importance of cultural intelligence for organisations operating cross culturally, who are committed to global inclusion. Embedding cultural intelligence allows organisations to deepen the impact of their inclusion activities.
In this blog, Matheus Carvalho, Director of Global Services, shares key learnings from GIW 2024, that he hopes will support you to create thriving multicultural workplaces.
Key conversations from Global Inclusion Week 2024
Our second-ever Global Inclusion Week (GIW) brought together members and industry leaders to discuss multicultural workplaces and celebrate inclusion through a global lens. It featured five online events inspired by the GIW 2024 theme; Cultural Intelligence: Inclusion Across Cultures.
I couldn’t be happier with how the week resonated. We had packed-out events and we learned and engaged in inspiring conversations. Two key themes emerged, from the conversations during the week:
- How leaders of multicultural workplaces and teams can be better prepared to engage with multicultural staff.
- How global organisations can better navigate the complex waters of international law and legislation when rolling out their inclusion and diversity (I&D) initiatives.
Webinar recordings of the GIW events are available to watch. I recommend that you share them with colleagues across your organisation, as well.
Insight from the Members’ Networking Roundtable
One of my favourite events of the week was the Members’ Networking Roundtable. Members came together to share best practices and ideas about two very practical issues.
The members were divided into two teams and assigned two challenges, to work through. The groups engaged in meaningful conversations in true hackathon style, sharing best practices and working collaboratively to develop solutions.
Learn what the scenarios were and the solutions the teams came up with:
Challenge 1: Multiculturalism is underrepresented at senior level, leaders fail to see its benefits
Issues: Senior leaders fail to see the benefits of multicultural workplaces, some of the approaches are too US or UK-centric, and don’t resonate across other regions.
Solutions:
- Appoint Employee Resource Group sponsors: Assign sponsors for Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to enhance leaders’ understanding of different demographics.
- Define executive sponsorship: Provide clear job descriptions for executive sponsors outlining advocacy, meeting frequency, and allyship roles. Consider how sponsors from different geographic locations can play a role.
- Engage leaders in inclusion events: Invite exec sponsors to I&D events to engage with diverse networks and show commitment to learning.
- Implement reciprocal mentoring: Establish mentoring programmes connecting leaders with employees at all levels.
- Promote remote work and flexibility: Increase remote working options to accommodate diverse locations, which will help expand the diversity of your talent pool.
- Share success stories: Use case studies and competitor success stories to illustrate benefits of multicultural workplaces.
- Adapt to international cultural norms: Avoid assuming home country practices will work internationally. Work collaboratively with stakeholders from your different locations on your culture and product strategies.
- Clarify multicultural practicalities: Define expectations for meetings, participation, and communication in multicultural settings. Don’t expect everyone to engage in the same way!
- Observe cultural norms: Encourage leaders to understand cultural norms before integrating themselves into the organisation.
- Use data for informed decisions: Use engagement surveys and data to guide leadership decisions and highlight trends.
Explore our Global Inclusion training packages“Have you considered how our in-house training can support your global inclusion activities?”
Challenge 2: It is challenging for multicultural teams to engage due to misconceptions, stereotypes, and language barriers
Issues: Misconceptions, stereotypes, language barriers, disengagement from middle management.
Solutions:
- Promote inclusion awareness: Educate teams to recognise differences and foster discussions around inclusion.
- Address middle management disengagement: Implement inclusive practices at the middle management level, offering cultural awareness training to support them to manage multiculturalism in their teams.
- Leverage early adopters: Highlight and support early adopters to drive enthusiasm for inclusion, and engage with them so they can be your role models.
- Shift terminology from Unconscious Bias training to Conscious Inclusion: Transition conversations from unconscious bias (UB) to conscious inclusion, emphasising intersectionality.
- Use data to show demographic changes: Highlight changes in the demographics of your workforce and customer base using data, to reinforce the importance of multicultural understanding.
- Tailor engagement strategies: Customise approaches to engage individuals whose work dynamics don’t align with current practices, with values and behavioural expectations clearly defined across the organisation.
How to continue your focus on global inclusion
I’d like to finish with a big thank you to all members, guest speakers, and the team at Inclusive Employers who made Global Inclusion Week 2024 the success it was – we are already looking forward to 2025, and can’t wait to share our plans with you!
You can expect to hear more about Global Inclusion Week 2025 in the coming months. In the meantime, have you considered how our in-house training can support your global inclusion activities? We have designed four sessions, that explore these topics:
- Global leadership: succeeding in a complex and unpredictable world
- Cultural awareness: being inclusive across different cultures
- Global strategies for decision-makers: turning challenges into opportunities
- Global Staff Networks
The sessions are designed to inspire engagement with inclusion, and learners will be encouraged to explore challenges and solutions that will foster inclusion across the globe.
Grow your team
When you become an Inclusive Employers’ Member you grow your I&D team.
Your account manager works with you to understand your goals, your challenges and achievable next steps.
Do you need more support for your inclusive culture to thrive?
Learn more about Global Inclusion Week
What we have learned from our first Global Inclusion Week