Having a diverse workforce and ensuring the inclusion of everyone within an organisation – regardless of race, gender or beliefs – help grow a company’s corporate culture, enhance one’s competitive edge and contribute to its bottom line. Entrepreneurs share their experience and tips on how they uphold diversity and inclusion in the workplace.
“Throughout my journey as an entrepreneur and even as an individual, I have been very fortunate to meet people from diverse backgrounds who helped me get to where I am now. I believe diversity and inclusion occur when different people from different experiences come together with their shared stories and talents to work collaboratively.”
- Anou Khanijou, Director of IFOTA Group and Managing Director of anouconcept
Anou believes that practising diversity and inclusion in the workplace is essential for a thriving business. “It encourages innovation, creativity and a sense of belonging and purpose. In my companies – IFOTA, a uniform wholesaler, and anouconcept, a PR and marketing firm – we have team members from diverse backgrounds. We have a work culture that embraces diversity and promotes equality. Culture may seem amorphous and vague, but to us, it means concrete actions in the workplace. These include, for example, having both men and women in leadership or management roles, hiring people from a variety of backgrounds, asking team members to contribute ideas, and respecting those ideas by turning them into action. Even simple activities like shared lunches from different cultural backgrounds and joint birthday celebrations are ways in which we promote unity in diversity,” Anou cited.
“I work with a lot of creative minds and being inclusive means acknowledging their skills, giving them the freedom to be innovative and to make suggestions, and allowing them to be themselves at work. Promoting diversity and inclusion also involves having the right attitude towards challenges and mistakes. We need to recognise that not everybody has the same experience and lessons in life. I got to where I am today because I learned from my failures and I was given second and third chances. My team deserves the same, and I see mistakes as learning opportunities,” she continued.
Recognising the value in people’s diverse experiences and backgrounds, Anou mentioned three tips to effectively promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace:
Know your staff and know them well. Know what they have to offer and encourage them to participate based on their unique skills and needs.
Be open to learning. Listen and learn from and together with others.
Practice what you preach and set an example. By doing so, you create an empowering work environment where your team members trust you and want to collaborate with you.
“Diversity and inclusion have become - and rightfully so - one of the hottest topics across corporations in recent times. At Sharp & Carter, our guiding pillars are Trust, Generosity, Care and Humility.”
- Anthony Holdstock, Partner at Sharp & Carter
Sharp & Carter is more than just another recruitment agency. It is a team of individuals who aspire to change the way the recruitment industry is perceived and who believe that success can be achieved by putting people’s interests first.
“As such, we work with several blue-chip listed companies and many corporate responsible organisations to try and achieve better diversity and inclusion, not only in our workplace but also in theirs,” Anthony avowed.
“Guided by our pillars and values, our leadership group developed a set of non-negotiable behaviours that we, as leaders, must always uphold and remain constantly accountable to. This, in turn, has resulted in a culture of inclusion where employees feel safe to be themselves, and safe in the knowledge that if they come to us with any issue or concern, we will always respond from a place of these four values. Ensuring that we at ‘the top’ always act in this manner assists in growing a culture whereby every staff member follows the lead and checks themselves against these values in their interactions,” he professed.
Anthony also pointed out interesting aspects of promoting diversity in an organisation. “For example, language and communication in writing advertisements are important to attract a diverse range of candidates. Using phrases like ‘up and coming’ can promote ageism, while unconscious bias terms such as ‘strong foundation’ are found to attract more male candidates, whereas phrases like ‘multi-faceted’ will attract more interest from females.”
He has a few pointers for those who want to develop diversity and inclusion in their respective businesses:
Awareness is the first step. For those looking to become more aware, there is an excellent book called “The Art of Thinking Clearly”. This book explains about biases and talks about eliminating bias to make better decisions.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Having the right people on the bus, people who genuinely care about making the workplace the best it can be is key. It starts from the top and cascades to the rest of the team. If this is pushed through the organisation and all the people and all the leaders believe in it then it will be driven through. If this breaks down and only happens in pockets you have the wrong people on the bus.
Assess, review and challenge. The best leaders self-assess and are constantly striving for improvement. Better habits more consistently lead to better outcomes.
“For us, the key to inclusion is to ensure that we appreciate the differences in each other while bringing everyone back to our core values in the business so that we’re all on the same page, looking to achieve the same core goals within the business.”
- Nyree Hibberd, CEO of Koh Living
“In terms of diversity, at Koh Living, both myself and my business partner, Tui Cordemans, are out and proud gay! I remember 15 years ago when we were first hiring staff, we would routinely ask if they had an issue working with people that we're gay. Today, it’s absurd to think that we even asked those questions, and we’re grateful for our growth and changes in society to not see ourselves as different at all,” Nyree shared.
Having a joint purpose, no matter what their role in the business, has always kept Nyree and Tui on track. “We focus on the things we have in common, not the things we have that are different,” she stated.
Because human connections and relationships are at the heart of their business, ‘Making people feel important’ is one of their corporate values where they promote and practise respect and responsibility. Whether it’s a customer, supplier or service provider, everyone is important at Koh Living.
With that, Nyree shares a few tips to those who want to advance diversity and inclusion in their teams:
Be aware of the diversity within your teams, especially if there are any staff that are sensitive to particular things.
Ensure that there is no room for sarcasm and putting down. In my experience, Australians can be rather cruel with jokes without being directly nasty – so in our warehousing environment where there was a lot of casual staff, we make it clear what is and isn’t acceptable.
Ensure each team member understands the important role they play in the overall goal of the business. We do this quarterly, having a quarter goal, and weekly. We check with each person their high priority activities for the week to help the business achieve its quarter goal. We find that it makes everyone feel they are on the same team, and there is little room for not feeling included when you’re part of the big picture.
“I firmly believe that a culture of diversity and inclusion in the workplace starts with the leadership team. We have assembled a leadership team from unique and diverse backgrounds who have different experiences and views on the world.”
- Costa Vasili, CEO and Founder of EthnoLink
Highlighting leadership as a significant part in diversity and inclusion in an organisation, Costa elucidated that “By starting from the top down, this culture developed in the leadership permeates through the rest of the company, helping to foster the diverse and inclusive culture that we want for the entire company.”
As one of Australia’s leading providers of professional translation services to corporate and government organisations, EthnoLink Language Services caters to clients with diverse composition or those that reach out to multi-lingual stakeholders with different backgrounds. Thus, diversity and inclusion are prevailing in Ethnolink’s internal and surrounding environments.
Costa then shares his tips for those who want to be better in this area of their business:
Be real and honest with yourself about how your company is performing on diversity and inclusion. It's a typical response to be defensive and thinks that everything is fine in your company, but if you want to make meaningful change, you need to be completely real with where you're currently at.
Take on the mindset of "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept". If you see or hear something that doesn't align with your company's endeavours to foster a diverse and inclusive culture, call it out and seek to educate.
When advertising for positions with your company, let potential applicants know that you are a diverse and inclusive workplace and that you encourage people from unique and diverse backgrounds to apply. Each of our job ads has a statement to that effect which can help improve the talent pool that you source new talent from.
Now, you can take these pieces of advice to your business and see how you can apply them to ensure you have a diverse workforce and inclusive organisation. Share with us your experience by leaving a comment below or sending us your story at communications@eomelbourne.org.