Ensuring Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion is important in the workplace. These days, that workplace is most likely a remote one. And not just because of the pandemic, Employees increasingly prefer the flexibility of WFH (work from home). According to the Remote Work Report, 95 percent of U.S. knowledge workers want to work remotely, and 74 percent would quit if they couldn’t.
Which is actually a good thing for employers.
The advantages to employers that continue some form of remote working arrangement include increased productivity, lower overhead from reduced real estate expenses and greater talent retention. Another particularly important and desirable benefit is that remote working facilitates diversity and inclusion.
As Channel Futures points out, remote work helps eliminate biases encompassing disability, gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. However, it is equally true that email and messaging communications that help make remote work possible are also particularly vulnerable to toxic behaviors, tone and sentiment that serve to undermine diversity and inclusion. How then, to promote diversity and inclusion for remote work but at the same time protect it from toxic behavior that impedes diversity and inclusion?
Let’s take a look at:
How Remote Work Promotes Diversity and Inclusion
The remote work environment strips away certain factors that can sometimes cloud the judgment of individuals within an organization…many organizations that have been making the shift toward remote work are beginning to ask themselves an important question. Can remote work improve diversity and inclusion?… the correlation between remote workforces and diversity hasn’t always been clear to HR leaders. In a time when remote work isn’t so much an option or a benefit, it’s becoming easier to see that connection than ever before.
The relation between remote work and diversity and inclusion is fourfold:
- Provides access to a broader talent pool. Eliminating commuting eliminates the need to recruit within a geographic area. Which enhances the ability to recruit a more diverse workforce from literally around the globe, representing different cultures and perspectives. This promotes greater creativity and more innovation. “Individuals from various cultural and professional experiences frequently provide new ideas, alternative perspectives, and creative solutions to help companies achieve crucial business objectives,” notes this Impactlywriter.
- Closes the gender gap. However unfairly, women are still proportionately the primary child caregiver, and when adequate and affordable child care is not available, proportionately more women leave the workforce. This is particularly a problem for single working mothers. Remote work offers greater flexibility to balance childcare needs with work schedules, allowing more women to achieve their professional career goals.
- Increases opportunities for the disabled and those with special needs. While there are laws to ensure people with disabilities can access office buildings, remote work eliminates not only any physical barriers, it can make disabled persons more comfortable working from home where their needs are more easily accommodated. Moreover, they can develop relationships with colleagues where their disability isn’t perceived and, as it should, irrelevant to work tasks.
- Eliminates visual bias. Zoom meetings notwithstanding, most employee communications take place via email and messaging applications. This eliminates biased perceptions based on race, gender or sexual identity, as well as hairstyle, tattoos, fashion choices or any other personal appearances.
As Forbes writer Jason Richmond points out, “Taking advantage of what remote working offers in terms of sustaining diversity initiatives can only improve your company culture, employee engagement and respect from the communities you serve.”
However, to effectively achieve the diversity and inclusion benefits of remote working also means overcoming some of the potential pitfalls.
How Remote Work Can Endanger Diversity and Inclusion
The remote work environment strips away certain factors that can sometimes cloud the judgment of individuals within an organization…many organizations that have been making the shift toward remote work are beginning to ask themselves an important question. Can remote work improve diversity and inclusion?… the correlation between remote workforces and diversity hasn’t always been clear to HR leaders. In a time when remote work isn’t so much an option or a benefit, it’s becoming easier to see that connection than ever before.
The very anonymity of email and messaging communications underpinning remote work that can promote diversity and inclusion can also work against it. It is well documented that people are more prone to bad behavior in online communications. And researchers find an uptick in work email rudeness that affects employee well-being.
Indeed, office email and messaging platforms can create a “disinhibition effect” that allows for a rise in rude behavior. Making matters worse, employees are frequently reluctant to speak up about toxic email and messaging content that impedes gains in diversity and inclusion.
Here’s just one example as reported by CNBC:
One software developer who works for a tech company near Los Angeles, who asked to not be named for privacy reasons, says he’s noticed increasingly antagonistic online behavior from peers and managers…Team morale has plummeted, he says, thanks to a combination of overwork, under-recognition and combative messaging from leaders that he doesn’t believe would be tolerated in an office. He says he’s constantly on edge in what used to be a friendly and collaborate workplace. “At this point I’m used to it,” he says, “but I don’t want to be.”
The challenge to HR professionals and diversity managers is: How do you detect and stop behaviors in employee email and messaging that impair your diversity and inclusion initiatives?
How to Protect Diversity and Inclusion in the Remote Workplace
The remote work environment strips away certain factors that can sometimes cloud the judgment of individuals within an organization…many organizations that have been making the shift toward remote work are beginning to ask themselves an important question. Can remote work improve diversity and inclusion?… the correlation between remote workforces and diversity hasn’t always been clear to HR leaders. In a time when remote work isn’t so much an option or a benefit, it’s becoming easier to see that connection than ever before.
The answer to help protect your diversity and inclusion efforts in remote work environments is
CommSafe AI Safe Communications Software™. This easy-to-use technology identifies in real-time potentially harmful behaviors, tone and sentiment in employee email and chat communications. To be clear, it doesn’t supplant the HR professional and diversity manager with some robotic process. Rather, it makes the role of HR professional and diversity manager easier and more effective by flagging for review potentially toxic behaviors. You decide whether and how to proceed to stop potential harm to your diversity and inclusion efforts as well as the affected individuals.
To see how easy it is to ensure the positive aspects of remote work for diversity and inclusion, and virtually eliminate the negative aspect, take the demo.
