Sustainability, Diversity and Inclusion, and Employee Engagement

July 9th, 2009. Published under Sustainability and Employee Engagement. No Comments.

The world is clearly changing and with it business as usual.  Survival of the fittest will require not simply change but transformation.  Although it may seem that everyone is jumping on the sustainability bandwagon it is more than a fad, it is a natural and organic part of the transformation of the global economy from “greed is good” to “doing well by doing good.”  There is a strong business case for a sustainable approach to managing an organization.  Companies that have embraced the principles of corporate responsibility or sustainability have significantly outperformed the S&P 500 and even an index created of “Good to Great” companies.

A fundamental principle of sustainability is balanced approach to all stakeholder groups – customers, employees, partners, communities and shareholders.  Align the interests of all in such a way that no stakeholder group gains at the expense of other stakeholder groups.  A sustainable enterprise both creates and operates on the energy of employee engagement.  Because sustainability supports a long term view to shareholder value creation it encourages companies to invest in employees to create greater returns for the Company.  Companies that engage their employees in a new and different trust relationship are the ones that will successfully emerge from this economic crisis.

Sustainable companies draw on four key elements to build trust with employees:  respect for individuals, transparency, empowerment, and team building.  In sustainable companies each individual employee is viewed as a “whole person” rather than an impersonal “factor of production.”  Management demonstrates respect for individuals by encouraging employees to participate in company decision making, regardless of their rank.  These companies share financial and process information with all employees and cultivate an uncommonly strong sense of team participation.  In sustainable companies employees feel empowered to challenge processes and do what is necessary to please customers.

Diversity and inclusion are a stated value of sustainable companies.   Diversity and inclusion efforts contribute to respect, team building and empowerment.  A company’s diversity and inclusion infrastructure can be harnessed to support employee reengagement.  After all, managing diversity is about minimizing the challenges or barriers to a productive diverse workforce.  The reality is that most large organizations are diverse, through gender and age, if nothing else.  The more effective an organizational culture is at supporting diversity and inclusion the more engagement that company will experience among members of its workforce.

Diversity and inclusion efforts can help achieve three critical components of engagement; creativity, flexibility and inquiry. It has been repeatedly documented that a heterogeneous group generates interaction and output that is more creative than does a homogeneous group. The more opportunities you provide for teams to experience and apply their diversity the more creativity will be achieved.  Creativity is a fundamental catalyst of engagement.

Diversity also supports flexibility. The essence of diversity is difference. Flexibility is fostered by the development of skills to encounter and apply different ideas, approaches, backgrounds, experiences, styles, abilities, and philosophies. The ability to adapt, to change, to flex stimulates engagement.

A critical tool in creating a sustainable culture is to engage in inquiry with all stakeholders, internal and external.  The challenge of managing diversity is also best confronted by a culture of inquiry; asking questions of your managers and employees.  When you think about it what are we really trying to achieve through diversity and inclusion?  What does a diverse and inclusive company look like, feel like?  Fundamentally, the goal is to value each employee based on their performance and contributions to the organization, and to remove barriers to an employee’s ability to make those contributions.  Bias is what inhibits full and effective performance -perception versus reality.  When you distill diversity and inclusion to its essence it is the management of bias, both individual and institutional, and inquiry is the tool to address it.

All humans operate through a lens of bias.  We are programmed to fill in gaps in information with what we have learned from our personal life experience.  Where we were born, grew up, the people that raised us, how far we have travelled, what schools we attended, our religious values all contribute to filling in those gaps in information.  In most corporate cultures our personal life experience is rarely shared, so we don’t have any context for the ways that our daily decisions are affected by our cultural lens.  So, the organizational challenge is to create an environment that recognizes human bias and offers an opportunity for dialogue and a process to assess the relevance to the work.

When a Baby Boomer makes assumptions about Millennials it can minimize the value of the different perspective the Millennial can offer to innovate the way the work is performed.  When space is created for inquiry and dialogue there is a greater opportunity to bring the perspectives of these different generations into alignment.  Employees who are challenged to surface their biases and set them aside until they have given their coworkers a chance to communicate their ideas and goals will create more effective working relationships, with higher levels of trust.

Bias also plays a role in institutional choices.  For example, how is recruiting really done by the organization?  Does a bias toward employee referrals adversely impact the organization’s efforts to draw from a more diverse pool of candidates?  This type of inquiry should be routinely exercised by the organization:

• What policies and practices have a differential impact on different groups in this workforce?
• What changes can/should be made in these practices?
• What are the views and opinions of our diverse workforce regarding these policies and the changes?

Asking and answering these and additional questions manifests engagement in thinking, communicating, suggesting, deciding, and revising.

Organizations that have built a diversity and inclusion infrastructure can harness the staff, tools, and techniques to create a culture of sustainability.  A highly engaged workforce, with sustainable employee practices, is better able to address the needs of all of the company’s stakeholders; suppliers, customers, investors, and the community.   A balanced view of stakeholder needs is the proven path to a sustainable organization that can create long-term shareholder value and survive even the most brutal economic climate.