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The Case for Diversity and Inclusion In Your Workplace

By Albert Qian posted 02-17-2021 05:20 PM

  
By Nancy Estell Zoder, Director of Product Strategy at Oracle Cloud HCM

What’s better than the work you enjoy doing? How about work you enjoy doing with a team where you feel a sense of belonging? 

With more teams working virtually due to the lasting effects of the pandemic, staying connected now is key to building camaraderie, trust, and care amongst team members. While we may not think about it too much, over a third of our lives and a fourth of our week are spent working. Having a team that enjoys seeing each other every day makes tough projects more bearable and organizational successes more enjoyable.

The Emergence of Diversity and Inclusion in the Workplace

Diversity and Inclusion is the priority discussion for HR professionals, especially as customer demographics and employee profiles become more diverse. 

Diversity is about recognizing the individual differences in the workforce and understanding that it fosters creativity and productivity, while inclusion is about taking the differences and providing tools to enable workers, managers, and HR to ensure that each employee feels like they are on a journey with the organization. As a Harvard Business Review article from February 2017 states, “Diversity doesn’t stick without inclusion”.  Leaders are being asked what their plan for both diversity and inclusion is and how the company will show its commitment. The answers require some exploration. 
    
Identifying diversity gaps are easy. It is measurable, easy to define and report on, and is mandated by local governments since most countries around the world have compliance requirements to support diversity in the workplace.  Diversity is also about recognizing individual differences in the workforce, knowing that its presence fosters creativity and productivity.  

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Inclusion gaps, on the other hand, are not as easy to identify since they are difficult to measure and are subjective.  How do you ensure whether your workforce has a sense of organizational belonging? As Verna Myers stated, “Diversity is being invited to the party—Inclusion is being asked to dance.”   In the workplace—the party—diversity is not just about getting hired and being that token diverse candidate. Organizations need to cultivate an inclusive mindset as part of every experience by asking them to dance. This increases productivity and fosters creativity to ensure that workers have a sense of belonging, especially if they are working remotely. These experiences also ensure visibility and access no matter who you are or where you are located.

Every organization must identify the gap in their experience and implement the measures and tools to support inclusion as part of business activities such as hiring, transferring, promoting, and pay increases to ensure diversity is recognized and inclusion is part of every experience and relationship.

Tools for Belonging

Belonging and inclusion are needed and requested more than ever as both workforces and customer profiles become more diverse. Thankfully, HR leaders have the right tools available to develop the workplace of the future. 

Oracle Cloud HCM can help.  Connections provide workers with visibility to all of the relationships in the organization and provide workers with the ability to find others to connect with. Transparency to opportunities is critical for growth and Opportunity Marketplace provides workers with that transparency. Workers can review opportunities that will support movement within the organization.  

We cannot ignore the importance of workers feeling connected to the organization and feel aligned with the organization’s social objective. Oracle Cloud Experience Design Studio provides the configurability to ensure that inclusive behavior is part of every personalized experience. Oracle Cloud Volunteering compliments that experience by encouraging your workers to volunteer, connect workers with similar interests, and contribute to a common social objective—satisfying the worker's personal growth and social contributions.

Want to Learn More? Join Our Upcoming Virtual Summit on Diversity and Inclusion

Another way to connect your workers is with Mentoring, part of Oracle Work Life, where employees can request mentoring for skills they want to improve. An employee can search for and send requests to potential mentors and can select either mentoring and job shadowing as part of the request to expand their opportunities with the organization.

With so many opportunities to tell your workforce that they matter, why not implement the tools that will engage them and create a new workplace experience? 

Learn More 

We are seeing so much progress being made across geographies and industries to ensure a diverse and inclusive workforce. Oracle Cloud HCM is ready today to support your diversity AND inclusion needs today.

Finally, we would like to invite you to join us for our upcoming virtual summit, Addressing Diversity and Inclusion: Going Beyond the Benchmark. RSVP today and learn how you can spark meaningful changes in employee hiring, retention, and development. 

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