Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, business leaders vowed to change organizational culture to increase diversity and inclusion.
Some companies established more robust employee affinity groups, others diversified the voices on their teams, and some invested significantly in underrepresented communities.
As the COVID-19 pandemic dragged on, executives worked to continue these efforts, despite supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and erratic consumer spending. Beyond the moral imperatives of confronting systemic racism, many saw the potential for inclusion and belonging to encourage productivity, collaboration, and innovation.
"But you can protect those gains if you remember the intention and motivation that sparked this movement in the first place."
As economic clouds form on the horizon, these efforts might seem less urgent to some. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have cut jobs and others will follow, perhaps losing some people hired during the past few years. Companies will look to shore up spending, perhaps investing less in diversity and inclusion. It could be a precarious time.
Leaders, you will be in a position to sustain the inclusive cultures you’ve built during the challenges ahead—or give them up at your company’s peril. Yes, it will be tough, especially when competing profit targets and employee demands in the new work models vie for priority. But you can protect those gains if you remember the intention and motivation that sparked this movement in the first place.
Fortunately, retaining the benefits of inclusion—and protecting the collaborative, innovative cultures that many organizations worked so hard to create—requires many of the skills executives already have, the time-tested leadership essentials.
What’s happening in your organization?
Spending time in reflection is vital. Most leaders need more time to reflect on the last meeting, never mind the last month or quarter. But the benefits of introspection can’t be overstated. Block out time on your calendar for quiet, honest thinking. Put away the spreadsheets and projections, turn off your phone.
Whether you write out your thoughts in a journal or talk with a trusted mentor, consider the current state of your organization and ask:
- What are our capability gaps?
- Does our current team reflect our current and future market?
- What is our talent pipeline and retention strategy?
If you’re not accustomed to reflection, it might feel weird, like you’re wasting time. But you would be wrong. In fact, reflection helps leaders make better decisions faster. Leaders must constantly assess a dynamic environment to gain contextual intelligence to make sound decisions. Through reflection, leaders gain a heightened sense of the impact of decisions on the operations and people.
How are your employees feeling?
After leaders look inward, it’s time to start looking outward, beginning with your employees. How are they doing after several years of upheaval and stress?
Talk with employees, and review changes in employee sentiment over time through company surveys. Are there any trends? What significant changes were initiated that met resistance? How were the effects of those changes compounded by other external factors?
How do your teams work together? What gets in the way? Understanding how teams facilitate collaboration will reveal opportunities to build stronger teams through active inclusion. Unlike passive inclusion, which is basically just being polite, active inclusion calls for using specific actions, like empowering junior team members and avoiding insider acronyms, to engage employees.
Workplace changes prompted by the pandemic have made employees more adaptable and flexible than before; however, persistent change without time to absorb and process causes fatigue. Leaders who are numb to fatigue make decisions that are perceived as tone-deaf to the company's real needs. Employees respond better when communication is clear, when leaders are transparent about decisions, and when they believe that they are part of the process.
What has your company achieved?
When you have a handle on your own experience and employee sentiment, it’s time to take another step back and consider the culture that your company has cultivated.
In the book Unleashed, authors Frances Frei and Anne Morriss use an “inclusion dial” to gauge the temperature of an organization—the degree to which employees feel that they belong. First, companies must make employees feel safe. From there, organizations can work toward making people feel welcomed, then celebrated, and ultimately, cherished.
Consider where your organization falls on the dial, and how it could improve to create a more collaborative and effective workforce. Identify the workplace changes that are worth safeguarding, including approaches that emerged early in the pandemic.
Some executives long for the days of yore, but were they that great? A recent survey of 10,000 executives by Deloitte found that pre-pandemic team structures and job boundaries limited outcomes, hindered innovation, and prevented agile thinking. Before remote work became more common, teams were clearly defined, job descriptions identified workflow, and teams likely formed based on location, proximity to the work, or siloed function areas.
"Cutting so many barriers has been disorienting for some executives—it’s tempting to go back to what’s familiar."
The remote and hybrid work that rose up during the pandemic helped break down these boundaries. Virtual meeting and collaboration platforms helped level the playing field by increasing meeting access and giving voices equal space at the virtual “table.” Eliminating geographic constraints allowed some companies to hire from a broader pool of candidates.
Cutting so many barriers has been disorienting for some executives—it’s tempting to go back to what’s familiar. But the lack of structure can also be liberating, freeing one to focus on the core requirements of inclusion sustainment.
Fighting bias will be key
Teams formed across department and location boundaries tend to be more diverse. What will it take for these teams to outperform during rockier times? Managing implicit bias will be essential to not only engage team members, but unlock their full potential.
Everyone has biases and blind spots—leaders must acknowledge that and companies must be vigilant about understanding shifts in thinking. Research by Harvard psychology professor Mahzarin Banaji and post-doctoral fellow Tessa Charlesworth found that implicit bias involving race, skin tone, and sexuality declined significantly in America between 2007 and 2020. However, bias remained constant for ability, weight, and age, the study said.
Creating a safe space for all voices to be heard requires leaders to take stock of their biases, both unconscious and conscious. Spending time with a coach or getting feedback from direct reports can help leaders. Reviewing team interactions, listening to team member exchanges, and examining follow-on actions help leaders assess whether the team effectively engages all members despite biases.
Keeping bias in check will be critical to not only maintaining an inclusive culture, but ensuring strong collaboration more broadly. After all, bias prevents empathy and trust—two key qualities in successful team collaboration.
So, if dire headlines flash on your phone or spending falls short of expectations, remember this: economic headwinds will eventually pass. But a strong culture of inclusion and belonging that stokes new thinking will flourish in its wake—propelling a company to its next innovation.
Hise O. Gibson is a senior lecturer in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. Nicole Gilmore is director of talent development at MITRE Corp.
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Feedback or ideas to share? Email the Working Knowledge team at hbswk@hbs.edu.
Image: iStockphoto/jacoblund