🇨🇦Unsure how to roll out your DEI strategy in your everyday communications?

How to get people on board and not offend anyone

Now you’ve officially launched your DEI strategy and its main components, are you wondering how your communications need to change to reflect your goals? Are you having difficulty equating your inclusivity training with your daily reality? Are you conscious that there are some words that shouldn’t be used, but you don’t know which ones or why? Are you worried about communicating across cultures in an inclusive way?

Whether you’re working for a large, multi-site organization that operates across borders, or a smaller company in one of Canada’s urban centres, you’re likely to be communicating “cross-culturally”. By that, we mean that your target audiences – potential or existing customers, employees, commercial partners, investors, or the general public – are made up of people that intersect different “cultural” groups, such as geographies, disciplines, races, ethnicities, genders, sexualities or abilities. Additionally, almost one in four people who live in Canada were born elsewhere (23% according to the 2021 census), and most of those probably come from a different ethnic culture. If you’re in Québec, you also have the language aspect to consider.

By now, you’re aware your choice of words can exclude certain groups. Or show you don’t have an understanding of the issues. And that means you won’t engage them, nor get a chance to convince them.

This multiplicity of factors certainly makes for a potential minefield for communicating, so how do we navigate it without offending our diverse audiences?

What makes communications inclusive?

According to the Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Benchmarks (GDEIB), communications play a key role of aligning and connecting people and efforts for greater inclusion – what it calls “bridging”. And it can be difficult to do if we look at things only from the perspective of getting our point across effectively.

Here are some examples of situations that have come up in our work with clients:

👩🏻 We want to show we’re raising the visibility of women in our industry.

🤔 Can we say the internal, women-only event “promotes the role of women in a predominantly male industry”?

🤔 To succinctly show the number of women in executive positions, should we use the heading WOMEN or FEMALE? What about the signs♀and 🚺?

👨🏾We want to highlight that our company appeals more and more to “diverse” populations.

🤔 We can’t use the term “people of colour”, right?

🤔 So can we say, “Our workforce now includes 20% diverse people, up from 10% previously”?

🏳️‍🌈 We want to be an ally during Pride month.

🤔 How can we avoid rainbow-washing?

🎄We want to create a sense of belonging as the year comes to an end.

🤔 Should we avoid any reference to Christmas, so as not to offend non-Christians, and just talk about the “Holidays”, because everyone celebrates New Year?

🤔 Should we spotlight Canadian Christmas traditions because we’re Canadian, and most people celebrate, even non-Christians, so we’ve heard?

Like Simon Sinek, at Usher & Spur we believe that everything “starts with why”, and we therefore encourage our clients to question themselves, their DEI Councils and their DEI specialists, to ensure that what you want to do when you communicate is aligned with DEI strategy. For organizations that are truly committed to being inclusive, the overall strategic goal, with DEI, is probably some version of making space for everyone to feel seen, accepted, safe, and valued. If that’s the case, our communications need to align and connect our audiences to that goal.

How to make a positive impact on DEI with inclusive communication

Before we develop each individual communication, it can be helpful to ask ourselves, “what is our intent here?” and “will this communication fulfil that?” As we are developing it, we can ask ourselves, “what impact does this communication have?”

Because, to have a positive impact, nothing must get in the way of our audience understanding rapidly (if not immediately) what we are saying, and relating to it. Putting ourselves in the shoes of certain groups in our audience enables us to identify any bumps and barriers that trip people up or stop them in their tracks.

Here are some questions to help you answer the above:

👩🏻 What do you think women working in a predominantly male industry want from an internal, women-only event? Do they need to be made aware of “the role of women” in this industry (which is the goal of promoting)? And how do you think they would feel about the role of women in this industry being promoted to them – since they already work there? Do they perhaps need recognition and role models of women who have succeeded (so they stay in the industry)? How about saying that the event “highlights the women who work in the industry”?

👩🏻 Are you sure what your organization means by “woman”? Did you know that you can be a woman (a gender identity) without being female (biological sex)? That, therefore, if you use woman 🚺 and female ♀ interchangeably, with the goal of varying your writing, you exclude trans and intersex women? Have you thought about the fact that anyone with awareness of this particular issue could also find it alienating?

👨🏾 Why is it important to stress that your product (or company) appeals to “diverse” populations? By “diverse”, do you mean “non-white” or “non-white men without disabilities”? Or do you mean that your customer base (or workforce) includes people of varying ethnicities, cultures, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, and ages, among other dimensions? What messages are you conveying if you’re highlighting difference from the majority?

🏳️‍🌈 Is this Prideful stand aligned with your brand? Have you asked your organization’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group’s representatives to poll members on how they feel reading/viewing/listening to your post or ad? Could you establish a relationship with them to learn how to be a better ally in your communications?

🎄 If you were a newcomer to Canada and had never celebrated Christmas, which scenario would make you feel most welcome, included, respected, like you belonged? As a born-here Canadian of several generations, are you curious about the different customs, traditions and experiences your colleagues know? How might you feel if the organization highlighted key Canadian Christmas traditions and also included other perspectives? How do you think your colleagues from other cultures and religions might feel about sharing their own end-of-year customs, related to Christmas or not, celebrated in December or not? What does your Newcomer ERG say?

❓And finally: would you be more likely to pay attention to future communications, whatever their nature, if you felt understood and included, or treated as different and other?

In short: To bring your DEI strategy fully to life on an everyday basis, your organization’s communications need to align and connect your organization’s intent with the communication’s potential impact. Do you feel confident doing that? Would external expertise, and guides and lexicons help you?