How to Become More Inclusive at Work: A Straight-Talking Guide That Actually Works

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The day I realised I was part of the problem was when Sarah from accounts quietly mentioned she'd been mispronouncing her own name for three years because no one bothered to ask how to say it properly. That hit me like a brick wall. Here I was, running workplace communication training sessions across Melbourne, talking about building better teams, and I couldn't even get my colleague's name right.

That was 2019. Four years later, I can tell you that most of what passes for "inclusion training" in Australian workplaces is absolute rubbish. Companies tick boxes, run mandatory sessions that everyone sits through like they're getting a root canal, then wonder why nothing changes.

Real inclusion isn't about walking on eggshells or memorising a list of what not to say. It's about fundamentally shifting how we operate as human beings in shared spaces. And frankly, most of us are terrible at it because we've never been taught how to do it properly.

The Problem With Most Inclusion Efforts

Walk into any major Australian corporation and ask about their diversity and inclusion program. You'll get shown a glossy brochure, maybe some statistics about hiring targets, and probably an invitation to this month's cultural awareness morning tea. What you won't see is systemic change in how decisions get made, how meetings run, or how career opportunities actually get distributed.

I've worked with manufacturing companies in Geelong where the leadership team genuinely believes they're inclusive because they hired two women last year. Meanwhile, those same women are consistently talked over in meetings, excluded from after-work drinks where real networking happens, and passed over for project leadership roles.

The mining sector is even worse. I spent six months with a resources company in WA where management proudly showed me their new parental leave policy while simultaneously maintaining a culture where taking any leave longer than two weeks marked you as "not committed."

Here's what I learned: inclusion isn't something you add on top of existing workplace culture. It requires dismantling and rebuilding fundamental assumptions about how work gets done.

What Actually Works (And Why You're Probably Not Doing It)

Start with your meeting structure. This sounds boring, but meetings are where most workplace decisions happen, and they're usually designed to favour the loudest voices.

I worked with Atlassian a few years back – brilliant company, really gets this stuff – and watched them restructure their decision-making process to include written input before verbal discussion. Game changer. Suddenly, the quiet strategic thinkers had equal voice with the charismatic extroverts.

Round-robin discussions work too, though they feel awkward initially. Force everyone to contribute before opening general discussion. Yes, it's uncomfortable. Yes, some people will hate it. But you'll be amazed at the insights that emerge from people who normally never speak up.

Rethink your social events. Friday drinks at the pub excludes parents, people who don't drink, various religious groups, and anyone dealing with addiction issues. That's probably 40% of your workforce right there.

Instead, try lunch-and-learns, morning coffee catchups, or team activities during work hours. I know, I know – "but team bonding happens naturally over beers!" Maybe for you. Not for everyone else.

Question your feedback culture. Australian workplaces love the "straight shooter" approach. We pride ourselves on giving direct feedback. But what feels like honesty to you might feel like aggression to someone from a different cultural background.

This doesn't mean becoming wishy-washy. It means recognising that effective communication looks different across different cultural contexts. Some people need context before criticism. Others prefer written feedback before verbal discussion. Some want to understand the bigger picture before diving into specifics.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Unconscious Bias

Everyone has unconscious bias. Everyone. Including me, including you, including that person in your office who posts about social justice on LinkedIn. The goal isn't eliminating bias – that's impossible. The goal is building systems that account for it.

I used to think I was pretty enlightened. Then I started tracking my own behaviour. Turned out I was consistently interrupting women more than men in meetings. I was also more likely to ask men about their strategic thinking and women about implementation details. Same questions, different assumptions about who was responsible for what.

The data was humbling. Also actionable.

Track your patterns. For one month, pay attention to who you turn to for different types of input. Who do you ask for creative ideas versus operational feedback? Who gets invited to informal decision-making conversations? Whose suggestions get built upon versus dismissed?

Most managers are shocked when they actually measure this stuff. We think we're fair, but our instincts are shaped by decades of social conditioning.

Create structured opportunities. Personal development training often focuses on individual growth, but inclusion requires collective skill-building.

Monthly "perspective rounds" work well – structured sessions where team members share different viewpoints on current projects or challenges. Not brainstorming sessions (those favour extroverts), but organised opportunities for diverse input.

Job rotation helps too. Let your technical people contribute to marketing discussions. Include operations staff in strategic planning. You'll be surprised how often fresh perspectives identify blind spots that "experts" miss.

What Inclusion Actually Looks Like in Practice

Real inclusion is messy and imperfect. It's not about creating a perfectly harmonious workplace where everyone gets along. It's about building environments where differences of opinion, background, and approach are leveraged as competitive advantages rather than sources of conflict.

At Canva – another company doing this well – I watched a product team deliberately seek out disagreement during design reviews. They'd specifically ask quieter team members to identify problems with proposed solutions. They'd rotate who led different types of discussions. The result wasn't consensus (which is often groupthink in disguise), but better decisions informed by diverse perspectives.

The Business Case (Because Someone Always Asks)

Look, 67% of companies with inclusive leadership teams report better financial performance than their competitors. That's not feel-good corporate speak – that's measurable business advantage.

Diverse teams identify market opportunities faster, solve problems more creatively, and avoid costly blind spots that homogeneous groups miss. They also attract and retain better talent, which matters in Australia's tight labour market.

But here's the thing: you can't fake this stuff. Performative inclusion – the mandatory training sessions, the diversity hiring quotas without culture change, the cultural celebration lunches – actually backfires. It signals that inclusion is something you do occasionally rather than how you operate fundamentally.

Common Mistakes That Kill Progress

Mistake #1: Treating inclusion as HR's responsibility.

HR can facilitate, but inclusion happens in daily interactions between colleagues. Every manager, team lead, and senior staff member needs to understand their role in creating inclusive environments.

Mistake #2: Focusing only on hiring.

Bringing diverse people into non-inclusive cultures doesn't solve anything. It just burns out good people faster. Fix your culture first, then diversify your hiring.

Mistake #3: Avoiding difficult conversations.

Inclusion requires talking about things that make people uncomfortable – privilege, systemic barriers, different communication styles, conflicting values. If you're not having awkward conversations, you're not making real progress.

I've seen teams spend months discussing whether to use "guys" as a group greeting while completely ignoring the fact that all their senior appointments go to people who went to the same three universities. Focus on systems, not just language.

Where to Start (Without Overwhelming Everyone)

Begin small and specific. Pick one meeting format to experiment with. Choose one decision-making process to modify. Try one new approach to gathering input on projects.

Measure everything. You can't improve what you don't track, and good intentions don't count if they're not producing actual change.

Most importantly: expect resistance.

Some people will complain that structured inclusion feels artificial or slows things down. They're not wrong – it does feel artificial initially, and it might slow some processes temporarily. But the alternative is excluding valuable perspectives indefinitely, which is both unfair and bad for business.

The companies that get this right treat inclusion as an operational capability, not a moral obligation. They build it into how work gets done, not just how people feel about work.

Change is uncomfortable. But so is watching talented people leave because they can't succeed in environments that weren't designed for them.

After working with hundreds of Australian businesses over the past decade and a half, I can tell you this: the companies that figure out inclusion aren't just better places to work. They're more profitable, more innovative, and more resilient when facing uncertainty.

Worth the effort? Absolutely.

Even if it means learning to pronounce your colleagues' names properly.