Championing inclusivity: make your meetings more insightful
Andrew Terry, Senior Consultant, AtkinsRéalis
AtkinsRéalis’ Andrew Terry outlines how introducing inclusivity champions to your meetings can deliver multiple benefits.
The value that equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) offer organisations can’t be understated, driving innovation and original ideas, improving recruitment and retention, and creating a positive working culture. But to reap these benefits, inclusivity must be embedded at every level of your organisation, and present throughout every interaction. One approach that can help you to understand your organisation’s ED&I adoption is to introduce ‘inclusivity champions’ to your meetings.
Inclusivity champions are representatives who track how inclusive a meeting is. They then feed this back to the other attendees taking part, to enable continuous improvement. The inclusivity champion doesn’t have to be the facilitator/chair, or the most experienced person in the team – anyone with ED&I expertise can take on the role. In fact, the inclusivity champion shouldn’t be a single, fixed person: by asking different people in the team, over time, to undertake the role, everyone learns about inclusivity and is encouraged to stop and think about ED&I’s importance in real-world practice.
Measuring inclusivity
The chair or facilitator is key to ensuring that everyone feels they’ve had the opportunity to participate in a meeting. The inclusivity champion will be looking at whether the chair encourages participation – is everyone given a chance to contribute, with quieter members given space to join in with the conversation? Inviting input via different channels, such as posting in a Teams chat or through an email to the chair, recognises that people think differently. There are many reasons why someone may not want to contribute at a meeting: they may be cognitively diverse, lacking in confidence, introverted by nature, or even suffering from imposter syndrome. By using different methods for interaction, they can be empowered to share their insights.
An inclusive meeting sees the chair welcoming everyone at the start and creating a supportive, psychologically safe space in which a range of different perspectives are encouraged. All contributions are acknowledged equitably, and group dynamics – such as people talking over each other – are monitored and addressed. Jargon and acronyms are explained, individuals’ pronouns are used appropriately, and people’s names are pronounced correctly. After an inclusive meeting, everyone feels their participation has been valuable.
The meeting organiser (who may or may not be the chair) can also promote inclusion through the agenda. Circulating it early enough gives people time to prepare, as not everyone likes to think ‘on the spot’; many like to consider subjects in advance. Attendees should also be invited to add to the agenda: if it’s created by everyone it’s owned by everyone.
Monitoring microaggressions and biases
The inclusivity champion will also look out for any biases and microaggressions, such as someone dismissing another person’s input as not valuable or rolling their eyes at something someone says. They might see someone being unprofessional – talking during another person’s presentation, perhaps, or audibly sighing or commenting because a parent has to leave a meeting early to pick up their child. These behaviours can drag down the whole meeting.
While the person demonstrating the bias or microaggression may claim it was unintentional, their behaviour can still hurt the person it is directed at, impacting their self-esteem and future actions. Any biases or microaggressions must be addressed promptly, and the person subject to them must be happy that they have been suitably dealt with. Respect, openness and consideration must be clearly evidenced.
After the meeting, the inclusivity champion provides feedback and, if needed, could offer suggestions for positive change to the group. This could be via a simple scoring system, with ratings for the elements described above rated from one to five – where five shows the criterion has been met and one shows a significant need for improvement.
Making meetings better
It should be stressed that the inclusivity champion’s observations aren’t a ‘test’ of the group; they’re about making meetings run better, getting the best out of the time you have together by enabling everyone to contribute. By giving people the opportunity to observe others’ behaviours and think about them within the ED&I context, they may begin to reflect on their own behaviours. Importantly, the champion is not just looking for negative behaviours; they should highlight the positive actions as well.
To measure progress, it’s helpful to baseline the team’s current feelings through a short survey and run the same survey 12 months later. Different meetings will be more, or less, successful: each inclusivity champion, as the role moves around, may offer a different viewpoint. So, as you may see your scores go up and down over time, it’s important to monitor progress over the longer term, rather than expect immediate results.
Meetings that include inclusivity champions can be run at all kinds of levels – from board strategy meetings to team meetings. The inclusivity champion approach is likely to work better, however, in larger meetings of more than five or six people. Your organisation can use an inclusivity champion as little or as often as they want: it doesn’t have to be every meeting. A roadmap to introducing inclusivity champions could start by ensuring that everyone has had a foundation of basic ED&I training. The next step would be to hold a meeting to talk specifically about the topic and what it means to the organisation, then to work through a presentation talking about the different aspects in detail before implementing. The introduction of inclusivity champions should be led by senior leaders – it must have sponsorship at the highest level in the organisation – and supported by people who can promote the concept and act as role models.
Inclusivity champions offer a multitude of benefits to your business – if everyone has a chance to share their views, your organisation benefits from this diversity of insights. People who feel included are also more likely to stay with you, increasing retention. Through bringing ED&I to the forefront, inclusivity champions help you ensure that every one of your employees is valued, heard and respected.
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