Speaking

Lack of clarity on what DEI is and fear of doing or saying the wrong things are often the biggest barriers to getting started with building a culture of belonging.

Through this interactive workshop, we simplify what it takes to initiate your organizational DEI journey. Your team will gain the clarity and confidence needed to break through initial barriers in order to put small steps toward building a culture of belonging into action right away.

Workshop outcomes:

• Shared understanding of foundational DEI concepts and terminology.
• The business benefits of a culture of belonging are identified along with key measures of success.
• High-level roadmap for how to embed DEI throughout the business to achieve benefits
• Easy to implement action steps to put DEI principles into practice right away.

Overview

According to new research in Harvard Business Review, 89% of knowledge workers have reported a decline in their workplace wellbeing since the start of COVID-19. Meanwhile, loneliness (one outcome of a lack of belonging) is on the rise, with staggering effects on business.

Given this landscape, leaders are focusing more than ever on workplace wellbeing. Increasingly, effective wellbeing strategies are including a focus on fostering employees’ sense of belonging – an accumulation of day-to-day experiences that enable a person to feel safe, foster genuine connections with others and bring their full, unique self to work so they can thrive.

Learning Objectives

1. Learn what belonging at work is and what current research is telling us about why it matters to employee wellness and wellbeing.
2. Understand how diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI) best practices contribute to belonging.
3. Gain easy to implement tips rooted in DEI best practices to build belonging in your meetings to support daily wellbeing among employees.

As we continue on our DEI learning journey, we must appreciate the role we each play in building a sustainable workplace culture of belonging. Part of that role means holding ourselves and others accountable for speaking up in support of DEI and belonging for everyone. The truth is, speaking up when you experience or witness behavior that is non-inclusive or inappropriate isn’t easy. It’s human to not want to rock the boat or create conflict with someone. With some simple strategies, however, speaking up can be less awkward and effective. And when more of us speak up, we fuel collective courage, confidence and commitment to DEI that is needed to sustain the work.

Join this interactive learning session to gain practical tips for speaking up when you experience or witness behavior that is non-inclusive or inappropriate. 

Agenda:

1. Kick off and session overview
2. Best practices for speaking up and how to apply them to real life scenarios
3. Role play applying tips to case studies in small break out groups
4. Recap and wrap up

As companies work to embrace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles to foster a workplace culture of belonging, many are experiencing barriers to progress due to disengaged and outright resistant employees. Without active engagement from employees, cultural transformation will remain an uphill battle, contributing to burnout among DEI champions and lower than expected return on investment. In this interactive workshop, participants will learn and practice strategies to reach leaders and employees who don’t see value in DEI efforts.

The ability to bridge across differences to build a culture of belonging is one of the most important leadership skills. In this interactive workshop participants learn what belonging at work is and why it matters as well as what it takes to develop and demonstrate inclusive leadership and communication skills in order to contribute to a culture of belonging. Take-aways include:

• Simplify and demystify foundational diversity and inclusion principles.
• Learn what hinders and what helps to foster belonging.
• Learn inclusive leadership and communication skills.
• Brainstorm easy ways to apply skills in daily interactions with others to foster a culture of belonging.

Diversity in the workplace can challenge values, relationships and productivity. When managed effectively, however, diversity is a catalyst for creativity, innovation and better decision-making. Learn behaviors and communication skills to harness diversity as a differentiator in meetings and foster a culture of inclusion.

Many companies wonder why their ED&I efforts fail to produce desired results. The key to achieving sustainable outcomes is to consider each decision in your diversity and inclusion strategic planning process from an inclusive lens before taking action. In this workshop I guide your team through a problem-solving methodology that integrates equity, diversity and inclusion principles with design thinking to develop better strategies to achieve your diversity recruiting and other ED&I desired outcomes.