10 ideas to foster an inclusive culture in your workplace

In workplaces around the world, Pride Month in June is an important time to educate, engage, and celebrate with employees, and it’s a significant opportunity to build a truly inclusive culture. Of course, diversity and inclusion shouldn’t be focused on only one month, so these tips should extend throughout the year as you consider your internal programs to engage your various employee populations. As we’ve been hearing quite a bit during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forever changed the future of work, this moment in time presents a great opportunity for HR leaders and People teams to foster a meaningful and lasting culture.

For Pride Month, we turned to Maven’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group and our People Team for their top ideas for HR leaders to bring to your workplaces to make this month more than just an occasion for celebration, and use this moment to spark meaningful conversations, educate your employees, and foster the type of inclusive work environment that today’s top talent wants.

Here are 10 meaningful ways to mark Pride Month—and drive an inclusive culture any month—in your workplace.  

1. Bring in experts to lead inclusivity trainings, unconscious bias trainings, and/or empathy trainings.

2. Invite your employees to participate in a roundtable internal dialogue around what it’s like to be out at work, what coming out to colleagues and managers is like, what the best and worst experiences have been, and tips for all colleagues to keep in mind.

3. Educate employees on pronoun best practices and embed those practices in everyday communications.

4. Ask your employee resource group if there are any readings, videos, and resources they’d like to share with their peers, or any local organizations they’d like to call attention to.

5. Partner with leading local organizations that support and empower the LGBTQ+ community.

6. Survey your employees and find out what sort of trainings or events they would be interested in participating in tied to Pride Month and beyond.

7. Bring in queer experts related to your company’s mission or core product. For example, if your company is a gaming company with engineers, you could bring in experts from leading LGBTQ+ tech organizations for virtual roundtables with your employees.

8. Facilitate lunch & learns with your own employees if any of them are interested in sharing their own stories and experiences.

9. Launch a training program to equip your managers with the tools, information, and practical steps to effectively support all employees.

10. Take meaningful steps toward improving diversity and inclusion in your workforce, like, implementing a biannual survey that tracks demographics anonymously and gathers feedback. Use all-staff forums to communicate the types of initiatives and learnings that the team is collecting and how you plan to act on them in the future.

“Bring in experts to lead inclusivity trainings, unconscious bias trainings, and/or empathy trainings.”