At Inclusity, we strongly believe in the power of inclusive communities – that’s why we were excited to support Hancock County and its IDE efforts   through culture assessment, consultation, and inclusion training!

Inclusity conducted a series of interviews and focus groups with a variety of members of the Hancock County community, including (but not limited to) young professionals, members of the clergy, the superintendent of schools, high school students, the mayor, and community leaders. Through this process, we gained a more solid understanding of the existing community culture, the specific benefits of inclusion for the community, and leadership’s role in becoming more inclusive. Inclusity then provided recommendations for actions Hancock County could take to become more inclusive, as well as led Cultural Humility and Health Equity and Conscious Inclusion Training. In addition, we developed an Inclusion Toolkit for Hancock County, which includes fundamental unconscious bias training, tools to help them create/amend policies to be more inclusive, and templates for climate survey

As a result of these efforts, The You Belong Campaign, a program spearheaded by the Hancock County Leadership Class of 2022, was launched. They have also partnered with the Hancock County Cultural Humility & Health Equity Delegation for the annual project. The delegation is comprised of local community members, establishing a Community of Belonging in Findlay and Hancock County, focusing on ensuring accessibility of all things and designing a code of humility.

One of the key goals of the You Belong campaign is to create a more accessible community. This means making sure that all individuals, including those with disabilities, have access to the resources and opportunities they need to thrive. This includes everything from accessible transportation to inclusive community events.

Hancock County has recently hit one of its Inclusive Milestones. The Hancock County Board of Developmental Disabilities has agreed to turn over daily operations of the preschool at Blanchard Valley School, 1700 E. Sandusky St., to the county’s public schools in the fall, ensuring all children with developmental disabilities in Hancock County will be served by their home school districts.

In April of this year, You Belong grantees participated in a Poster Gallery Session at the Findlay-Hancock County Public Library’s annual CommunityREADS event. It was inspiring to see and hear about each organization’s commitment to creating a Community of Belonging in Findlay-Hancock County.

Inclusity is proud to partner with Hancock County and so thankful to be a part of the community’s journey. We look forward to collaborating with other organizations and individuals to promote these values of inclusion, diversity, and equity – and to create positive change in Hancock County and beyond.

Since our inception in 2013, Inclusity has committed to building a culture that supports inclusion and fosters a sense of community. Our belief is that everyone should have equal opportunities to thrive and be successful, regardless of their background, gender, race, or ethnicity. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued, respected, and supported.

So, Inclusity was proud to sponsor the 10th Annual GEMS (Girls Empowered by Math and Science) Conference in SE Wisconsin.The conference objectives are to provide young women with opportunities to learn about the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in careers and to promote young women’s participation in STEM courses in high school and college. 

Pictured here: Inclusity-trained Relationship Skill Building facilitators at We Energies (Laura Halfmann, Elizabeth Ehrke, Clarice Zellmer) and Inclusity Facilitator Robin Smerchek helped at the conference.

With 450 girls attending the conference, most found it to be “fun”and “inspiring.” One participant shared: “No matter what background you come from you can become successful.” Another remarked “That getting denied a job because you’re a woman or a woman of color or because of your appearance shouldn’t stop you from trying again.”   

Keynote speaker Miss America 2023 Grace Stanke is using her title to advocate for education and support young girls. She has worked with organizations like Girls Inc. to inspire and support girls in STEM fields and has spoken about the importance of diversity and representation in STEM fields.

Inclusity was happy to again sponsor this event and support efforts that promote a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion that benefits everyone. 

Why Inclusion Comes First

The approach to diversity in our workplaces is constantly changing. While there are various acronyms for this work (DEI, EDI, I&D, EDIB), at Inclusity, we think that inclusion matters most. We believe this so strongly that we’re steadily shifting from DEI to use the acronym IDE, which places inclusion first. Making sure that Inclusion comes first forms a a strong foundation for a company’s culture, employee engagement, sense of belonging, and recruitment and retention efforts.

Inclusion Leads to Diversity

Over the years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on diversity with the assumption that inclusion will follow. However, once you bring diverse individuals on board, what is their experience of the workplace culture? If it’s not an inclusive workplace, diversity and belonging just won’t thrive.  This is why inclusion comes first, or at least why it should.

Diversity refers to the traits and characteristics that make people unique while inclusion refers to the behaviors that ensure people feel welcome. Inclusion is the conscious effort to support diversity. To sustain a diverse workforce, people have to be taught how to manage, lead, operate, and hire in an inclusive way, which creates an environment in which everyone feels comfortable to be themselves. If you get this right, you’ll naturally attract diverse talent.

Belonging Follows Inclusion

Let’s introduce another letter to the IDE framework – B for “Belonging.” It’s a goal of IDE efforts that people feel a sense belonging. It means people feel the psychological safety to bring their authentic selves to work and truly feel a part of something. Before employees can feel emotionally safe and accepted, there must be a level of inclusion so they’re not facing microaggressions, unconscious bias, and other forms of exclusion. Creating genuine feelings of belonging is a critical factor in improving engagement and performance. And making sure inclusion comes first will help diverse employees feel like they belong! 

“Organizations should focus on becoming intentionally inclusive – learning what behaviors lead to intentional inclusion,” Maria White, CEO and founder of Inclusity, shares. “Then, once they achieve that, they can set the course toward becoming a culture of belonging.”

Focus on Inclusion 

Following are five ways to make sure inclusion comes first:

Integrate inclusivity into your core values. Including inclusivity in your core values sets the tone for an inclusive company culture. It signals to both new hires and current employees the expectations surrounding diversity and acceptance within the business.

Create an inclusive workplace taskforce. Create a team of people who are knowledgeable on the topic of inclusion and have a passion for it. Encourage the team to come up with strategies that can be implemented throughout your organization.

Assess the culture regularly and take action to address concerns. Confidential surveys, focus groups, and informal discussions can help identify concerns about the workplace climate and potential solutions. Employers should ensure that a diverse cross-section of the workforce is involved in identifying problems and potential solutions.

Expect leaders and managers to participate in behavior-based inclusion training. In addition to increasing awareness, IDE workshops will have the most impact if they are behavior-based. People need to be taught how to engage in the types of behaviors that organizations would like to see.

Practice inclusive leadership. Leaders need to create a safe team environment where all employees can speak up, be heard, and feel welcome. They should embrace the input of employees whose backgrounds differ from their own, foster collaboration among diverse staff, ask questions of all members of the team, facilitate difficult conversations, and give actionable feedback.

An inclusive culture  and making sure inclusion comes first is one of the best ways to create and maintain a healthy and diverse workplace that gives employees safe spaces where they can feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work. Pave the way for true cultural transformation by making inclusion a sustainable part of your organization. To learn more about how to put inclusion and diversity into action, explore our services.

As Inclusity’s Director of Research and Evaluation, Mitchell helps develop our programs and services and performs evaluations to determine their effectiveness. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Carleton College and a Master’s of Science in psychology and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

What aspect of your role as Director of Research and Evaluation do you enjoy most?

Honestly, I think it changes every week depending on what I’m working on at that time. Right now, I’m working on client assessment results from client surveys, focus groups, and interviews. That’s really exciting because the only knowledge I have about a client before we conduct an assessment is what we hear from their leaders. So, hearing from the people is fascinating, and it’s great to learn more about their unique challenges and the ways in which those things do or do not line up with what we hear from leadership. I’m also really pumped about creating LGBTQ+ awareness training.

What would people never guess that you do in your role?

One thing that I do when assessing our training or creating new training is actually read research literature. I look up the big repositories where all the journal articles are stored to see what work has been done on these topics before. And, since this is my area, I reach out to the researchers and ask them questions, especially because the academic work lives in a bit of a silo where there’s not much work that applies in the real world context. I have to do a lot of asking about it or thinking through how this can apply in the real world and not just in a lab setting.

What’s the most inspiring part of your job?

I think that in the future seeing the long-term impact of our work is most inspiring. And, because I also facilitate trainings, creating training content is most inspiring. I see the whole process from looking at the client assessment, seeing that there is a client need, creating the training, and implementing the training. I feel like I’m meeting a need and really helping people. So, for example, the training around LGBTQ+ awareness, we’re working with a client that in the client assessment, this was identified as a need for their organization and one of the people groups where they wanted to focus inclusion efforts. This was already interesting to me, because I’m a nerd about this stuff, but then figuring out how to structure this is very satisfying. Ultimately, we get to help people and that’s awesome!

What gets you excited about working for Inclusity?

I have a lot of confidence in the work that we do. I think the approach that we take to our work is not only innovative but also realistic. The founder of Inclusity views herself as a behaviorist, and I also consider myself a behaviorist. The best route that we have to changing things is trying to change behavior first. It’s exciting to me to be working in an environment where I have a high degree of confidence that what we’re doing is actually making a difference.

What’s a fun fact about you that people may not know?

I cross country ski competitively and do a number of races in the Midwest region. My favorite race is the American Birkebeiner, one of the biggest cross country ski races in the world. Earlier this year, I placed 69th out of about 4,000 people in this race. Also, my mom and stepdad owned a karate studio growing up, and I started karate at four years old and have a black belt.

Do you have a motto or personal mantra?

One way that I try to organize my life is by always doing the thing that is most life giving. The thing that I like about the term life giving is that it can be for me or for others. Life giving means something that is a combination of fulfilling and energizing. My work with Inclusity is life giving, as I try to help improve work situations for others. One of my personal goals is that I want to infuse more positivity into the world. In many situations where people may not think about the way they’re behaving toward other people, I try to be very mindful. For example, interacting with service employees is an opportunity where it’s really easy for me to do something that makes someone feel better and actively infuse positivity into their world.

What career lesson have you learned thus far?

Another lesson that I’ve learned is that every situation and client is different and they need different things, but there are commonalities across the clients that we work with that are sometimes unexpected. Clients that are in very different industries or that are different sizes or with different surface level cultures, sometimes have similar challenges.

What does inclusion mean to you?

Inclusion means really feeling that you can be your full authentic self and feel supported in working toward your goals. One of my deep personal values is that we should level the playing field as much as possible so people can do the things that they’re passionate about, explore their talents, and grow their skills and abilities by having access to all of the same resources. So, to me, inclusion is leveling that playing field and making people feel not just that their allowed to be somewhere but their actively being made a part of the things that are going on.

This article on HRDive.com speaks to two 2022 trends that Inclusity strongly supports:

• Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity (“DEI” is “IDE” to Inclusity) work is here to stay!  According to LinkedIn research,”78% of job-seekers expect to find DEI information on a company’s LinkedIn page.” LinkedIn’s Jennie Dede says, “Job seekers are not tolerating companies that are not taking it seriously …[candidates] really want to understand what the strategy is, what the investment is, how the company is doing things differently.”
• Leading with heart matters!  In part due to the reflection that the recent pandemic has afforded us, employees are more interested than ever in being cared for and treated like people, not just employees.

In a challenging environment in which securing and retaining top talent is super competitive, we urge organizations to consider engaging in or expanding their efforts to create inclusive workplace cultures where all people feel a sense of belonging and being cared for.  Learn more about how Inclusity can help your organization do that.