Inclusive climates

Basford, T. E., Offermann, L. R. (2009, August). Creating diversity-inclusive climates What leaders can do. Paper and poster presented at the 117th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada. 

Our goal in this chapter is to share our conceptualization of inclusive climates as well as our thoughts on how one might design organizational change efforts for enhancing inclusion. Our focus is on the inclusiveness of work environments, with the assumption that people experience more personal inclusion when they work in an inclusive climate. 

We center in our work on inclusive climates. Climate, for our purposes, refers to employees shared perceptions of the formal and informal organizational policies, practices, and procedures with respect to a strategic focus of interest (Reichers Schneider, 1990)—for example, inclusion, customer service, or safety—in particular the extent to which that focus is a priority in the organization. It is the aggregate of individual climate perceptions that is of greatest theoretical and practical interest. 

The development of such meaningful connections that cross traditional demographic and functional boundaries is important not only because these connections promote the experience of social inclusion, but also because they help facilitate informational inclusion. Building on this, the third dimension of inclusive climates focuses on the adoption of mechanisms that facilitate inclusive decision making. The idea underlying this dimension is that an organization s ability to capitalize on the potential benefits associated with increased workforce diversity is contingent... 

The benefits that accrue to organizations from successfully creating inclusive climates are tremendous. We have developed a measurement scale that includes items measuring each of the three dimensions previously described (Nishii, in press) and have now analyzed data collected from employees working for a range of organizations to understand the individual- and unit-level... 

Thus the message is clear it pays to create inclusive climates. Next, we turn to a discussion of how organizations can go about... 

Creating Inclusive Climates in Diverse Organizations 355 Figure 11.3. The Logic Model... 

Assess inclusiveness of climate (1) Increased awareness of inclusive climates (2) Identification of problem spots and group differences in experiences of inclusion within organization (1) Launch efforts to dig deeper into sources of group differences and weaknesses (2) Design targeted interventions to address sources of identified problems More inclusive climates, higher felt inclusion among employees... 

Increased awareness of inclusive climates (2) Identified problem spots and group differences in experiences of inclusion within organization... 

More inclusive climates, higher felt inclusion among employees... 

A second step is to ask the question Do we have policies in place that support a healthy climate For example, is there a policy on bias-related incidents that asserts the university s lack of tolerance for ethnic slurs or homophobic jokes and that provides a mechanism for those who have been victimized to seek redress In the past decade, many universities have developed such policies as a way of affirming their commitment to an inclusive climate. Another important question is Do we have a policy on religious and spiritual observances that supports students, staff, and faculty in observing their diverse religious and spiritual traditions ... 

This graduate student summed it up nicely when she demonstrated the link between an inclusive climate and one-on-one communication ... 

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