Building Diversity and Inclusion Into Company Culture

While more employers realize the importance of creating a diverse, inclusive company culture, building those elements into the workplace can be daunting if they’ve never been done before.

At Intuit, our mission to power prosperity around the world is fueled by our belief that every employee should be able to bring their whole self to work. Diversity isn’t something we do — it’s part of who we are. We have seen that innovation thrives in a workforce that includes employees with a wide range of life experiences and a supportive culture that lets great ideas rise to the top.

There are steps everyone in the workplace can take to help encourage diversity and inclusion. Here’s a look at helpful tips for both employers and employees.

Tips for Employers

1. Hire with diversity in mind. Ensure you recruit a diverse pool of candidates for open roles. Considering the emphasis on diversity in today’s workplace, it’s also important to make your diversity initiatives clear to job seekers. When interviewing candidates, highlight the diversity programs you have in place. Let candidates know what role diversity plays in your company’s overall culture.
2. Develop talent. It’s not enough to recruit great talent. The creation of company-wide trainings that focus on diversity and inclusion have the opportunity to introduce new concepts and new ways of doing things to show that inclusion matters. They can also help make employees feel engaged and included.
3. Work on it from the top down. It’s not enough to create guidelines and programs. You also must get buy-in and support from the top down. Make sure all executives, managers, and recruiters know about your diversity initiatives and encourage them to lead the way by example.

Tips for Employees

While employers are responsible for implementing diversity and inclusion initiatives into a company culture, employees are also key in making it successful. Here are four ways that workers can help contribute  to its success.

1. Know your company’s diversity and inclusion goals. Understand what the company wants to achieve so you can determine how you fit into that picture. Give careful thought to how this diversity initiative affects your individual role within the company and how you can improve or contribute to its success.
2. Take time to learn. Familiarize yourself with the different cultures, races and religions of your co-workers. Check out if your company has employee resource groups you can join so you can directly contribute to diversity and inclusion goals. If you have questions about some of their practices or customs, don’t be afraid to ask for help understanding.
3. Take on the causes of others. Be willing to speak up on issues that may not affect you personally but that affect the culture of diversity and inclusivity overall. When more voices speak up, it’s easier to be heard. It often takes participation from different groups to create change.
4. Be open-minded. Be willing to listen to ideas that are different from your own and give them serious consideration. Listening to others’ ideas doesn’t only make people feel heard and appreciated. It can build creativity by introducing new concepts and new ways of doing things.

Our goal is a truly diverse workforce, not just for Intuit, but for all companies. Diversity and inclusion are parts of a company-wide effort that everyone should practice. When employees know how they can contribute, they can work together to create an environment that can allow your company to grow and thrive.