When you're putting together your case for a diversity and inclusion recruitment strategy, one of the areas that's really important to think about is in fact, the role that diversity and inclusion plays in the well-being of your workforce and of individual employees. In terms of thinking about this, let's first go back and imagine the model that I showed you in an earlier module about inclusion having four parts. The first part is about being connected. The employee being connected to the organization and connected to their teammates. Respected. That the person, the individual, feels respected, feels that their views, their experience is actually acknowledged, understood, and while not always agreed to, is able to be put forward in that organization without fear. Contribution is the third one. That is very important. That we all feel that we're making a positive action, that what we do has value, whether it's value to the people that we're delivering a service to or whether in fact it's about producing a widget. But we must feel that in fact what we do is of value and that's acknowledged. The final one is that sense of progression. Progression often makes us feel as if it's going up but progression is movement. That in an inclusive organization people feel that they have the freedom to move, to be able to do something new, learn something new, perhaps even leave the organization. But there's a sense of activity, agency, I can do, I can go. If we had that model in our mind, it's not hard to think about well-being as being part of the diversity and inclusion piece. When we feel those things, we are more likely to feel well, to feel good about ourselves, good about what we're doing, good about our life and its extension. One of the things about well-being is that it's become a huge issue in organizations. In a later lecture, I'll talk in specific terms about mental health, which is a really major concern for countries around the world. Now, well-being is more than mental health. Well-being is a sense of feeling strong, feeling confident. A sense of well-being is when you get up in the morning, you actually might want to come to work. One of the things we know is that in those workplaces where people don't feel included, don't feel acknowledged, don't feel respected, that we're going to have low productivity. We're going to have people who are experiencing lapses in concentration. People who are not going to be putting forward ways of doing things better. Some organizations will argue that well-being is not part of their responsibility. That well-being, whether it be physical or mental health, is something for the individual employee alone. I guess there are boundaries. However, when we're working with people, whether it's in an informal way, we're at our children's school, we're talking to neighbors over the back fence and we're going to plant a garden together. Whenever we feel connected, whenever we are connected, the well-being of those people who are with us should be a priority. Occupational health and safety and safety at work have become, as I said earlier, very big. Something to think about is this. We often think about occupational health and safety as being about when somebody injures themselves and they are unable to work. Organizations do a lot to reduce that risk. We don't want people breathing in poisonous fumes. We don't want people dropping boxes on their heads. But there is a great risk in the non-inclusive environment. There is a risk where people don't feel included and don't feel valued. Now you might say, well, that's just life. We just get on with it. Work is for work and you just have to do it. Well, what we're seeing around the world, particularly since the pandemic, are people working away from their organizations, working away in freelancing roles, and also walking away to work with other organizations. We're seeing people change their hours of work. We're seeing people work less. We're seeing people, and what do they call it? They're calling it the great resignation. People making some decisions. Now, these aren't necessarily people who are suffering from a reportable illness, but their sense of well-being is such that they want to shift. Now, no organization can take that without some thought. Certainly, in terms of the business case for diversity and inclusion, the numbers of people choosing to leave their organizations is enough to at least have an organization check what's happening. Diversity and inclusion is not just about having different voices around the table. It's not about having a representation in your population at work of the greater community. But it's also about how people feel when they're working in your organization, what they're able to contribute. At the moment, if they're not feeling that they can contribute and that they are respected, they're putting their well-being ahead of your organization.
