In recent years, growing awareness has seen diversity and inclusion pushed into prominence in the workplace. Many companies have established diversity and inclusion initiatives, and measurable targets on gender split parity, pay parity and gender leadership parity. And they’re actively removing boundaries by implementing measures like fair hiring processes and progression planning infrastructures.

Some big companies are coming into their stride on inclusion, driving initial ideas and initiatives into something more strategic. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has been praised for its employee resources groups, mentoring programmes and ‘Diversity University’, a dynamic website that helps employees understand the benefits of working collaboratively.  

And at Accenture, diversity training is broken into three categories: Diversity Awareness, Diversity Management and Professional Development. These aim to help people understand the benefits of working with a diverse organization, equip executives to manage diverse teams and enable women, LGBT and ethnically diverse employees to build skills for success. 

Diversity and inclusion are crucial drivers for the SAWiT Community Network. Access to opportunity for women in tech still isn’t transparent and it’s our goal to help fix that. 

Are we seeing any tangible change on a global scale?

Some progress has clearly been made, but how far down the iceberg have global businesses reached? How, for instance, are companies tackling unconscious bias? And how many businesses are truly putting the democratization of opportunity at the forefront of their diversity and inclusion programmes? 

The intention is good: companies are putting their money where their mouths are by funding diversity initiatives, but few - if any - have actually got to grips with the issue on a more fundamental scale. And little is being done to allow networks and opportunities to form naturally. Diversity networks and other similar initiatives may be an initial step in the right direction, but contrived networks and opportunities are always going to be less effective than those that form naturally and intuitively.

This is where the SAWiT Community Network can have a great impact on your organization. SAWiT members can access a vast array of networks that belong to different communities, and engage with them directly and intentionally recruit their talent for open roles. Smart collaboration tools make it easy to start conversations immediately, match shared passions and interests, and create communities within organisations that foster inclusion and diversity.

Most approaches to greater inclusion place a lot of emphasis on equipping people with the skills to make them more successful. But not much progress has been made in the process of how people actually get deployed on opportunities, which is rarely transparent or colourblind. 

Many companies have focused on preparing the ground but they're not getting to the heart of the problem. SAWiT is - and in a way that's completely neutral and focused on matching people to opportunities by their strengths, accomplishments and skills, rather than common networks. Common networks are still important, of course, but they shouldn't be the core focus when it comes to democratizing opportunity. 

How to create an inclusion surge

Creating a more inclusive business environment in general, beyond employees, is another challenge.

If you want to increase diversity in your company’s ecosystem e.g. increasing the participation of businesses owned by women or people of color, you need to invite large numbers of them to take part. This can’t be an incremental process: to truly shake things up, volume is vital. 

You also need to bring in unconventional voices. And equip the leaders in your company with the skills to listen and incorporate them. 

This should be reflected in the day-to-day running of your business, too. For example, how can you increase the diversity of your suppliers? The most effective way is by creating an ecosystem that includes your suppliers and freelancers, with a strong emphasis on women and people of color, and that also brings in community organizations owned by women,  people of color, and organizations with advocacy for issues such as Black Lives Matter at their hearts. It’s crucial to involve people who will provoke and challenge you and your business with their ideas and perspectives.

SAWiT can help you to create this network and bring voices together. And it will help your leaders to understand who's being matched for which opportunities and also create the metrics around it so it’s measurable and clearly understood.  

Creating rapid change from the bottom up

All too often, diversity and inclusion programmes are top-down and target-led. For a radical change, we need programmes that are bottom-up and environment/attitude-led. SAWiT gives you access to innovative AI, powered by Kalido, that helps everyone, regardless of gender, color or status, by suggesting opportunities for them. For example, numerous studies have shown that women are more cautious about putting themselves forward for opportunities and selling their skills; at SAWiT we level the playing field by harnessing the power of AI tech to truly match on skills and surface opportunity for everyone, everywhere. This can help even large and complex organizations to create rapid change.

In tackling the issues from the top down and focusing on superficial targets, many businesses ignore that nothing beats organic networking and opportunities that are genuinely open to anyone with the right skillset and attitude. In short, if diversity and inclusion initiatives were a meal, so far businesses have served up everything but the main course. And there's an appetite for plenty more.