Fix Your Team

Chapter 7 LACK OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION: The risks of a white bread workforce

SYMPTOMS

• Everyone looks the same, everyone has always looked the same … and everyone probably looks like the boss!
• They may not mean to be disrespectful, but team members are discouraging and offending customers, colleagues and stakeholders from other cultures. For example, they are impatient with customers who speak with a strong accent.
• If anyone in the workplace looks, sounds or thinks a bit differently, they don’t get heard at all. As a result, they tend to keep to themselves, keeping their head down and making sure they don’t give anyone a reason to target them.
• Capable staff who have different personal characteristics are not even considered for desirable work opportunities such as training and new projects.
• Because of how they are planned, social events that are supposedly for the whole team always seem to end up excluding some people. A couple of colleagues never attend.
• If a member of the team can’t make themselves available outside work hours, they are seen as failing to contribute and as less valuable.

WHAT’S GOING ON

If a stranger were to walk into your workplace today, what would they notice about your team? There may be some notable, visible characteristics of the group to which you may not have really given that much thought. For example, are the team members all around the same age? What proportion of employees shares the same skin colour, cultural background, sexuality and ...