What does it really mean to be an inclusive employer?

Diver­si­ty isn’t new. After all, mak­ing progress on organ­i­sa­tion­al diver­si­ty has been on the busi­ness agen­da for decades. How­ev­er, a diverse organ­i­sa­tion that fails to tack­le sys­temic chal­lenges around access to oppor­tu­ni­ties, uncon­scious bias or cul­ture will still strug­gle to suc­ceed. 

This is why the idea of inclu­sion is so impor­tant. If diver­si­ty is the “who” and “what” of your organ­i­sa­tion — who are your board mem­bers, what is the break­down of eth­nic­i­ties, gen­der or socio-eco­nom­ic back­ground in your organ­i­sa­tion — then inclu­sion is the “how” — how you allow these indi­vid­u­als to thrive, express them­selves and cre­ate inno­va­tion in your com­pa­ny. With­out inclu­sion, the impact of diver­si­ty is weak­ened. 

A 2020 McK­in­sey study called Diver­si­ty Wins: How Inclu­sion Mat­ters exam­ined the busi­ness case for diver­si­ty across more than 1,000 com­pa­nies. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it found that organ­i­sa­tions that were gen­der and eth­ni­cal­ly diverse finan­cial­ly out­per­formed those that were not. In fact, the more diverse the com­pa­ny, the bet­ter its per­for­mance. 

Diversity doesn’t lead to inclusion

How­ev­er, the paper also exam­ined employ­ee sen­ti­ment at these organ­i­sa­tions on issues relat­ing to diver­si­ty and inclu­sion, by eval­u­at­ing their online employ­ee reviews. It found a marked dif­fer­ence between how employ­ees viewed the two issues, with over­all sen­ti­ment on diver­si­ty 52% pos­i­tive and 31% neg­a­tive, and sen­ti­ment on inclu­sion only 29% pos­i­tive and 61% neg­a­tive. This shows the chal­lenges even diverse com­pa­nies have in tack­ling issues around inclu­sion, with the paper con­clud­ing that “hir­ing diverse tal­ent isn’t enough — it’s the work­place expe­ri­ence that shapes whether peo­ple remain and thrive”. 

Kirstin Stein­metz, direc­tor, work­force devel­op­ment EMEA at Sales­force, agrees that inclu­sion is about equi­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty and expe­ri­ence.

“For Sales­force, inclu­sion is about mak­ing sure our doors are open to every­one and that every­body has access to jobs and nec­es­sary skills. We recog­nise that tal­ent is every­where, but oppor­tu­ni­ty isn’t,” she says. 

As some­one who works in tech­nol­o­gy, Stein­metz is aware of the lack of diver­si­ty in the sec­tor. She believes that Covid-19 has accel­er­at­ed dig­i­tal skills gaps and that young peo­ple and edu­ca­tion providers find the indus­try dif­fi­cult to approach. 

A 2021 sur­vey by the Sut­ton Trust looked at the socio-eco­nom­ic back­ground of 3,400 employ­ees in the sec­tor. It found that 87% had com­plet­ed a degree and two-thirds came from man­age­r­i­al back­grounds. One of its key find­ings was that wide­spread mis­con­cep­tions about the breadth of roles in the sec­tor (most peo­ple believe tech­nol­o­gy jobs require hard tech­ni­cal skills) were dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple from apply­ing for jobs. 

Providing opportunities to all

Stein­metz agrees that the lack of uptake in STEM sub­jects in edu­ca­tion is affect­ing diver­si­ty in tech­nol­o­gy and that young peo­ple are unaware of the scope of roles avail­able. Con­se­quent­ly, tech­nol­o­gy busi­ness­es like Sales­force are rethink­ing how they hire, devel­op and upskill their tal­ent. 

One way Sales­force is diver­si­fy­ing its tal­ent pool is through junior hires with­out a uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion, focus­ing on those from under­rep­re­sent­ed back­grounds. Hav­ing run intern­ships for untapped tal­ent in the US for a decade, it launched its UK appren­tice­ship pro­gramme in 2018, with Stein­metz see­ing a sig­nif­i­cant increase in num­bers dur­ing 2020/21.

“We offer appren­tice­ships to young peo­ple and adults with­out a uni­ver­si­ty back­ground because we think they bring in inno­va­tion and a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive that is valu­able. Inclu­sive hir­ing is about hir­ing for com­pe­ten­cies and poten­tial rather than cer­tifi­cates and degrees,” says Stein­metz.

“It’s also impor­tant to make sure that when peo­ple join, they have access to the nec­es­sary train­ing and upskilling to do their jobs well. They also need to feel rep­re­sent­ed, so that they can com­mu­ni­cate open­ly,” she adds.

To achieve this, appren­tices are put on a two-week inten­sive onboard­ing pro­gramme. The expe­ri­ence pro­vides appren­tices with infor­ma­tion on Salesforce’s val­ues, com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, men­tor­ing and cohort sup­port. Cru­cial­ly, Sales­force also pro­vides man­agers with sup­port and advice on how to work with appren­tices, so that both new and exist­ing employ­ees feel sup­port­ed. 

Sharing experiences

Part of cre­at­ing an inclu­sive cul­ture is pro­vid­ing a space for employ­ees to share expe­ri­ences and have dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions. Sales­force has 12 employ­ee resource groups large­ly based on demo­graph­ics, which Stein­metz says have three pur­pos­es — rais­ing aware­ness of inter­nal issues, pro­vid­ing sup­port to employ­ees and offer­ing out­reach pro­grammes to poten­tial tal­ent. This in turn comes down to Salesforce’s organ­i­sa­tion­al val­ues — trust, cus­tomer suc­cess, inno­va­tion and equal­i­ty.

“We’re com­mit­ted to a trust­ing rela­tion­ship with our stake­hold­ers. We want to cre­ate open com­mu­ni­ca­tion through both our employ­ee resource groups and our feed­back cul­ture. It’s about cre­at­ing a safe space for trust­ed con­ver­sa­tions,” says Stein­metz.

Ulti­mate­ly, inclu­siv­i­ty is about accept­ing that each indi­vid­ual is dif­fer­ent, but that their expe­ri­ences and opin­ions are equal­ly valid. Every­body learns and devel­ops at their own pace. Organ­i­sa­tions need to accept and cel­e­brate this if they tru­ly want to cre­ate an inclu­sive cul­ture. 

“Everybody’s cir­cum­stances are dif­fer­ent and it is impor­tant to under­stand that. That moves you from inclu­sion to equal­i­ty,” says Stein­metz. 

“Every­body has a dif­fer­ent recipe for suc­cess, but suc­cess is pos­si­ble for every­body. The route might change, but it’s always there,” she adds. 

It is essen­tial to open up oppor­tu­ni­ties to those who pre­vi­ous­ly have not been able to access roles in your organ­i­sa­tion or sec­tor. Doing so adds inno­va­tion, ideas and new per­spec­tives — all vital for suc­ceed­ing in the future of work.

Empowering the hidden middle

Although many employ­ers focus on pro­vid­ing dig­i­tal train­ing to those exclud­ed from tech­nol­o­gy, it’s impor­tant to remem­ber that a large per­cent­age of our work­force lack basic dig­i­tal skills. A recent study by dig­i­tal skills coali­tion Future­Dot­Now found that an esti­mat­ed 17.1 mil­lion peo­ple (52% of the UK’s work­force) lack essen­tial dig­i­tal skills for work and life, such as join­ing vir­tu­al meet­ings, book­ing annu­al leave online or mon­i­tor­ing dig­i­tal pay slips. 

Empow­er­ing this “hid­den mid­dle” — those left between dig­i­tal exclu­sion and advanced dig­i­tal skills — is vital for busi­ness­es look­ing to recov­er from the pan­dem­ic, par­tic­u­lar­ly as organ­i­sa­tions progress through dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­grammes.

So what steps can busi­ness­es take? Future­Dot­Now is work­ing towards a tar­get of 75% of adults receiv­ing dig­i­tal skills train­ing from employ­ers by 2024. It rec­om­mends a three-step pro­gramme to kick­start dig­i­tal skills train­ing, using a senior spon­sor as a touch­point.

First­ly, busi­ness­es should iden­ti­fy and assess the state of dig­i­tal skills with­in their organ­i­sa­tion, iden­ti­fy­ing areas they need to devel­op. Sec­ond­ly, build a busi­ness case for train­ing pro­grammes, show­ing the mate­r­i­al impact on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and work­force cul­ture. Final­ly, cre­ate a learn­ing pro­gramme, tak­ing care to embed it in the day-to-day process­es of employ­ees. 

To find out how Sales­force is pow­er­ing the work­force of tomor­row, vis­it trailhead.salesforce.com.

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