I was inspired by a talk I recently gave, about the stages of creating organisational cultures of inclusion that lead to people feeling a sense of belonging. In our sector, our work can be deeply personal, but feeling a personal connection with your workplace, team, or organisational culture doesn’t always exist. The talk led to some really interesting conversations which I’d like to share here.

What does Belonging mean?

The first step in building a strong organisational culture is fostering a sense of inclusion. This can take many forms and a long time as well, depending on where you work, the identities of your staff, and so many factors. This is a much longer process of course and there’s not enough space on this blog for it.

However, once you’ve established a strong system of inclusion where people feel seen, valued, heard, and listened to, it’s time to look inwards to the processes that keen that in mind. This includes hiring, visa sponsorship, HR, pay, and all kinds of other processes that our sector doesn’t necessarily consider as valuable as programmatic work.

Belonging then is an intangible feeling where there’s already a good inclusive culture in a workplace, and people can feel part of the organisation’s work. One way you’ll know you’ve got there is when your vision statement on the website aligns with what your teams would say if asked. They can see themselves in the vision, and see its value.

They aren’t only in it for the pay, they deeply value the work being done. They can see themselves in the work needed to get to your vision – if that’s a place where education access is universal, they can connect the dots between their work and the big picture goal they’re building towards.

Embrace JEDI in all its Forms

People need to see themselves in your work, and that means embracing inclusivity in its fullest sense. Everyone should feel valued, and that can be done by promoting and actively championing diversity in all its forms – gender, age, sexuality, race, citizenship.

But it also means going deeper than that, and working with people from different classes, with and without formal education, and encouraging people with different worldviews and industry experience to join your teams.

This not only creates a stimulating environment where your programme teams will be better connected with others who can help challenge their thinking and expand their horizons, but it demonstrates how you see diversity deeply.

In this way, your organisation can encourage people to bring their whole selves to work, if they would like.

We are never just one thing, and when work is so meaningful, it’s important that a workplace makes people feel comfortable and valued. It can look like not having a dress code at the office, which establishes how you value peoples’ physical expression. It can also be as simple as having flexible working hours and locations – so long as the tasks for that week get done, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world.

Unspoken Norms

Think about a space where you feel like you belong. I never found that in a workplace which is what led me down the JEDI path, and build a company where I feel like I belong.

However, I feel a sense of belonging in the city where I live. That’s because I do not stand out as a minority here, my language groups are represented, and I see people of all sexualities. People are free to be themselves and express themselves without being criminalised for it, which makes me feel like I can do the same and not get stared at. At the beaches for example, no one looks at each other, judges what anyone is wearing, or judges each other’s bodies. That’s because of something intangible in the culture where we’ve established norms – you do whatever you would like, and I will do the same, and we’ll give each other peace and space to just be.

Think then about what it would take to have that intangible feeling in your organisation. Think of one norm that everyone knows about, but maybe isn’t written down anywhere – sometimes the ‘normal’ lunchtime can be a good place to start. Work backwards to identify how to start adding other norms to your organisation and teams.

Encourage Open Communication

Once you’ve started on the journey, and you want people to feel like they belong, you need to encourage and actively invite feedback and criticism.

This can be as simple as an anonymous survey for people to openly reflect on what’s going well and what isn’t. The survey can be on Typeform, and if people fill it out in incognito mode their IP addresses/locations aren’t collected, so you can be absolutely certain that their privacy will be valued. This means therefore that your responses will be that much more interesting and relevant for you.

Take time during the year to ask people to fill it out – how have certain policies played out? What did people think of the last staff retreat? Their involvement at the latest strategy revision?

Then ensure all feedback gets read, reviewed, and discussed by leadership. Where possible, think through how you can act on recommendations shared. This can go into a roadmap, so high priority feedback like ensuring equal pay for all genders get sorted out within the next 6 months. Medium priority feedback such as better harassment policies and procedures can occur later, and may need external support to implement.

All of this shows people in your organisation that you are listening, value their contributions and presence, and are truly committed to acting to help make them feel like they belong.

Belonging isn’t something you can say you do – it’s for each individual to feel, and since it’s intangible, there are a lot of ways to get to this point. It’s something you will know if your teammates feel or not, and it’s encouraged by having systems, protocols, policies, and actions in place.