How Are Successful Companies Mentoring For Diversity and Inclusion? Know Here.

For modern firms, cultivating a culture of diversity and inclusion is vital. It lowers turnover rates, makes employees happier, more motivated, and engaged, and improves overall morale. You, as an owner, must make sure that your staff is satisfied because they are the backbone of your company.  

It is pointless to have a multi-talented team if the members do not feel represented, their needs are met, and their views are heard. If your team did not feel valued, comfortable, and understood by the management and their colleagues, your organization as a whole will be the one to bear the brunt of it.  

Modern, successful companies have realized this and have marked mentoring for diversity and inclusion as a critical part of their culture. According to UK News, 87% of mentors and mentees feel engaged by their relationship and develop more prominent trust.

Here are the different ways that they have managed to achieve this:

• Create a sense of community

For each employee to feel comfortable enough to share their ideas and voice their opinions, they need to feel like they belong. Building a close-knit community driven by a sense of belonging is one of the first steps companies must make to train their employees for diversity and inclusion. Well-known global companies like AT&T understand how crucial this is and have made numerous efforts to make every employee feel like they belong. One of these efforts is creating employee networks (ENs) and employee resource groups (ERGs).

• Make use of quality mentoring software

Today, companies can take advantage of quality, user-friendly and comprehensive mentoring software such as MentorCloud to provide mentoring programs on diversity and inclusion to their employees. It’s simple, easy, and effective. While the benefits garnered from mentoring for diversity and inclusion are massive, just the act of mentoring itself contributes to strengthening a culture that understands the importance of diversity and inclusion. MentorCloud has unique features that make mentoring a simple task for both mentor and mentee.

• It is essential to have an empathetic leader

Often, people think that diversity and inclusion in the workplace should be initiated and taken care of by HR. However, this is only a tiny part of the act. To incorporate these values into your company’s culture, for every one of your employees to understand its importance and embrace it, leadership plays a key role. As a leader, you need to believe in the importance of diversity and inclusion. You must want your employees to feel valued and comfortable, both professionally and emotionally. Only this way will you bring about real change.

• Acknowledge (if not celebrate) holidays of various cultures

A great and fun way to spread awareness of diversity and inclusion and their importance is to acknowledge holidays of different cultures and religions. Your workforce isn’t constituted of only one group of people from the same background. These are people from different cultural and religious backgrounds who have come together to work for your company. By acknowledging and maybe even celebrating their holidays, you show that you accept and respect their experiences.

• Make everyone aware of unconscious bias

There is a possibility that you, your co-workers, or your employees may have an unconscious bias against people of certain groups. You must address such tendencies to establish a truly inclusive and diverse workplace. People must be made aware of these and how unconscious bias-driven actions and words can affect other people. Encourage people to reflect on their assumptions.

If this post was helpful, please consider sharing it with your network - you never know who needs to hear it. Also, sign up for a demo here! Our vision is to create a mentoring planet in which true equality is achieved, and hard work is rewarded, but it's only possible with your participation.

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