Racial Inclusion
What does racial inclusion mean for contemporary businesses?
2020 was the “Summer of George Floyd” and with it an upsurge in racial equity consciousness. The USA was the epicentre, but the ripples reached the entire world, with #BlackLivesMatter protests happening everywhere from Rotterdam to Bogota to Tokyo to Sydney.
The surge in expectations placed on organisations by the contemporary workforce, shareholders, key investors, and community stakeholders is that business has responsibility to focus on social, and environmental dimensions, as well as economic, more than ever. A quantum leap is being made by many corporates and public sector organisations to elevate equity, diversity and inclusion(EDI) as a strategic pillar and to work proactively on embedding racial inclusion in a sustainable manner. There is recognition that even amongst some of the most advanced organisations in the EDI space – racial equity has remained a blind spot.
This involves setting up the necessary infrastructure and providing resources and support in the form of executive commitment, critical for success.
Boards and executive leaders are recognising that they have power and privilege as the dominant groups, and they have an obligation to leverage that power and privilege to act as active allies to redress racial inequities. This is fast becoming the contemporary benchmark of an institution that people will consider to be both trustworthy and competent.
How can we help?
Symmetra offers a holistic range of solutions to help create racially inclusive organisations:
- Racial and Ethnic Inclusive Leadership Program to build leadership capability in an area where many fear to tread.
- Anti-Racism Systemic Review to remove any legacy of racial exclusion from their policies, systems and processes.
- Anti-Racism Toolkit to provide a practical, self paced and self managed learning journey to enable all team members to become active allies.
- First Australians Program to address the unique challenges of reconciliation and cultural inclusion for Indigenous Australians.
Racial and Ethnic Inclusive Leadership Programs
In this program we offer an interactive, blended learning journey comprised of workshops, assessments, coaching and personal, empathetic one-on-one interactions to build leadership capability and understanding of the lived experience of the racially and ethnically diverse people in their employ. This empowers leaders to:
Build confidence and become a role model of inclusive behaviour which will position them to access the full value of all diverse people and drive business purpose.
Become conscious of how preconceived notions and unconscious bias can lead to systemic bias as well as micro-aggressions in everyday behaviours towards diverse racial and ethnic groups.
Create psychological safety to address the issue of race with insight into how power, privilege, dominant, and non-dominant group membership impacts the workplace experience.
Understand how external social justice issues are permeating organisational boundaries.
Step up and take action as an active ally, as an upstander not a bystander, and lead inclusively.
We know that raising racial consciousness and integrating inclusive habits into the daily operating rhythm of leaders takes more than one workshop. It takes working together to become consistently more inclusive, day by day—in the way leaders run their meetings, communicate, interact, and make decisions, to the way they solve problems, allocate resources, and form teams.
How can we help?
Symmetra has been engaged by many global organisations to drive initiatives to establish racial inclusion. This includes programs for their executives and senior leaders on racial inclusion as well as systemic audits to remove any legacy of racial exclusion form their policies, systems and processes.
At the outset we offer an interactive learning journey comprised of a blended solution of workshops, assessments, and coaching to build leadership capability in an area where many fear to tread. This empowers leaders to:
Build confidence and become a role model of inclusive behaviour which will position them to access the full value of all diverse people and drive business purpose.
Become conscious of how preconceived notions and unconscious bias can lead to systemic bias as well as micro-aggressions in everyday behaviours towards diverse racial and ethnic groups.
Create psychological safety to address the issue of race with insight into how power, privilege, dominant, and non-dominant group membership impacts the workplace experience.
Understand how external social justice issues are permeating organisational boundaries.
Step up and take action as an active ally, as an upstander not a bystander, and lead inclusively.
We know that raising racial consciousness and integrating inclusive habits into the daily operating rhythm of leaders will take more than one workshop. It takes working together to become consistently more inclusive, day by day—in the way they run their meetings, communicate, interact, and make decisions, to the way they solve problems, allocate resources, and form teams.
Embedding inclusion: First Australians
This is a program designed specifically for the Australian workplace. The Embedding Inclusion: First Australians program has been designed to empower non-indigenous employees, supervisors, and managers with improved knowledge, understanding, and skills to behave inclusively and work effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
The workshop helps participants to raise their racial consciousness and develop the capability to relate to their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander colleagues, clients, and members of the community with dignity and respect.
Run by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal facilitators, the workshop utilises our highly engaging and interactive methodology with live audience response systems, video, and music.
While participants are given key insights into those cultural dimensions that are most likely to impact their work and interactions, the focus of this program is on creating racial inclusion and embedding an organisational culture that is equitable, inclusive and welcoming of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees, customers/clients, and community members.