What is inclusion?

Inclusion refers to the process of making any employee feel welcome in a workplace, regardless of their race, gender, religion, disability, or other identifying feature. The inclusion of diverse backgrounds and elements of employees in a workplace fosters a strong and highly versatile staff.

When companies use inclusive practices they tend to use the DEI training approach. DEI stands for Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity.

Diversity refers to the presence of differences in a specific work group or staff. These differences may include, but are not limited to:

• Race

• Gender

• Color

• Religion

• Sex

• Disability

Equity focuses on the promotion of social and legal justice for specific groups. It also includes the aim of fairness, impartiality, and equal opportunities for specific groups of employees concerning matters such as professional advancement, and participation. Equity seeks to mend structural inequalities through the use of specific:

• Procedures

• Practices

• Processes

• Distribution of resources

Inclusion refers to the process of making any employee feel welcome in a workplace, regardless of their race, gender, religion, disability, or other identifying feature. The inclusion of diverse backgrounds and elements of employees in a workplace fosters a strong and highly versatile staff. Here are some examples of DEI that are commonly used:

• Unconscious bias training

This focuses on developing actions and behavioral shifts to address and ideally mitigate or completely remove those implicit preconceptions.

• Allyship training

Allyship training's focus is to enable those in positions of privilege or power to support or amplify the concerns or needs of an employee or group of employees that come from a minority group or historically marginalized community. Like its name suggests, it helps individuals in powerful roles become allies to those in need in the workplace.

• Bystander communication training

This form of DEI training instructs employees on how to speak up when they witness another employee being discriminated against or if they see that the coworker is being harassed in any way.

• Specific training on hiring practices

This type of training involves human resource departments, hiring managers, recruiters, and any other employees that take part in an organization's hiring process. A company might make a point of committing to more inclusive hiring practices, which can result in a varied perspective and a diverse and dynamic workforce.