Building a sustainable culture of inclusion calls for integrating culturally competent mindsets with optimized, inclusive HR systems. The result: An enhanced workplace experience and more equitable employee outcomes, says Chuck Adams, CEO and managing principal of Language and Culture Worldwide (LCW), which advises employers on building inclusive organizations. Many companies aspire to be best in class or the employer of record, but fail to embrace the synergy between mindset and systems. The result, says Adams, is inconsistent, irregular talent-management outcomes.

Adams presented a Thought Leadership Spotlight about “Building Resilient, Inclusive Organizations” during From Day One’s Chicago conference earlier this year. His model for a sustainably inclusive organization integrates the mindset development of leaders, managers, and frontline contributors with mature systems of tools, processes, policies, and technologies to support the talent-management agenda.

Mindsets evolve from emerging to developing to proficient, said Adams. Emerging mindsets generate instability and exclusion because leaders may minimize or pin negative labels on cultural differences. Developing mindsets generate vulnerability and inconsistency but slowly become more functional. Nevertheless, leaders at this stage still tend to perceive cultural differences as obstacles rather than opportunities. Proficient mindsets move from vulnerability and aspirational status to become more functional, stable, robust, and resilient. Leaders acknowledge and leverage cultural differences to drive performance, while employees experience feelings of safety, belonging, and engagement.

Organizations should be eager to move toward a position of resilience where optimized systems meet proficient mindsets. “An organization’s legacy of inclusion, skill-building, cross-cultural competence, and system optimization will help it weather disruptions in leadership, markets, and process,” said Adams.

Systems must complement mindsets. Organizations need policies, processes, tools, and technologies that minimize bias and value cultural differences.

Systems should guide every stage of talent management, from talent identification, recruitment, and hiring, to talent development, inclusion, and promotion. “Only then does an organization know it can hire, promote, and retain diverse, high-performing talent,” Adams said.

Like mindsets, systems reside on a continuum from unstructured to highly defined. Organizations often confuse system “islands of excellence” with systems that permeate every phase of talent management. “Systems must be well-known and understood, applied consistently, and optimized,” said Adams. “They need to be pressure tested, updated, and incrementally improved.”

LCW’s work brought Boston Scientific, a multinational, biotech engineering and manufacturing firm, to a position of enhanced engagement, innovation, and high performance, he said. The company won the 2022 Catalyst Award, which honors diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that drive representation and inclusion for women.

Adams outlined steps in a seven-year process of “dedicated and intentional work” and “programmatic change”:

• Roadmap: Develop a roadmap for where an organization hopes to go on DEI and sustainable inclusion.
• Bias Training: Deliver tools and training on unconscious bias.
• Inventories:  Tap into tools like the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) to assess capacity for managing cultural differences.
• Learning: Invest in cross-cultural inquiry and learning. Ask HR leaders and DEI team members to explore scenarios and case studies with the goal of sharing why they see the world differently.
• Survey: Conduct an engagement survey to surface perceptions of workplace opportunity, including the disconnect between employee experience and leaders’ perceptions.
• Audit: Implement a talent audit to build out metrics that enhance talent management systems. For instance, Boston Scientific created a 10, 20, 40 campaign that focused on becoming a top-ten inclusive workplace, with 20% of management from diverse groups and 40% of management and leadership roles filled by women.
•  Systems: Reimagine talent systems, including talent acquisition, talent development, promotions, and talent review. “Interrogate and test systems to ensure bias was mitigated or eliminated,” said Adams.
• Mindset Revisited: Be willing to revisit mindset. “Well-intentioned people who lack cultural competence may try to get around the systems,” said Adams.
• Bootcamps: Expand training. Boston Scientific conducted boot camps on building a culture of inclusion and managing talent acquisition so recruiters could recognize the roots of their bias.
• Reinforcements: Push out content that reinforces DEI messages via e-learning, guides, and toolkits in a variety of languages.
• Goal-Setting: Revisit DEI campaign goals. For example, Boston Scientific raised the bar on becoming an employer of choice, recruiting diverse employees, and bringing women into management and leadership roles.

“Policies are no substitute for lived experience,” said Adams. “Attention to mindset will prime managers and leaders to accept the cultural realities and truths of the workplace.”

But avoid examining mindset on its own, he said. “As you develop insights on mindset, examine the systems that will move the organization to a position of resilience,” Adams said. “If you work on mindset alone, managers and leaders may engage in disruption and refuse to see the bias.”

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Language and Culture Worldwide, who sponsored this thought leadership spotlight.

Joyce Flory, PhD, is a Chicago-based freelance writer with decades of experiences in public relations, marketing, and thought leadership with a focus on the health care industry.