Interview with a professional How do you or your company address and encourage diversity and inclusion in the workplace? WISI is an equal opportunities employer. Diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) is crucial for our organization to ensure a positive employee experience and to achieve optimum employee engagement. Now more than ever DEI is a key competitive strength for any business. While diversity represents the combination of people we have in our workforce, inclusion speaks to how well we function as a team and the way in which each individual’s contribution is valued. I believe that diversity, equity and inclusion work hand in hand so fostering a culture of belonging and inclusion allows us to embrace our differences or rather our uniqueness. We have employees from different cultures, backgrounds, religions, ages, races, sexuality, welcome to bring their game and join our team. There are a lot of things to consider when creating, maintaining and improving diversity and inclusion in the workplace from the gender-neutral language in job postings, ‘culture encourage innovation and boost productivity and we can only truly do that through the integration of people.
How has diversity and inclusion changed in the past twenty years? With the My dad enjoyed history and I remember reading a book about World War II. Believe it or not, diversity in the workplace goes back as far as that time. Many men were carrying out their military service so it opened up the workforce for women to enter and many did. But even in the following decades, women had a hard time taking an active role in the workplace and it wasn’t until the late 80s or 90s that women began entering the workforce more that diversity in the workplace could bring. For example, different age groups were brought together which challenged the traditional norms (from the younger generation) but they
brought a heightened sense of awareness about diversity. It’s made us more aware in terms of celebrating our differences and holding each other accountable for our actions but also in educating us about different cultures, habits and attitudes and how unique the world in which we live is.
