With the world globalising at a rapid fire rate, cultural diversity in our workplaces is becoming more commonplace. Thankfully, this provides so many opportunities for business owners to celebrate their company’s own diversity, and encourage the development of interpersonal relationships between staff and perhaps even across departments.
Yes, celebrating diversity in the workplace does provide a surprising array of benefits. But how do you go about respectfully honouring all the many faces and cultural backgrounds that make up your modern organisation? We’ll be answering just that question today.
If you’re interested in building a workplace where culture and diversity are celebrated, read on. We’ll cover five great ways of doing just that.
1. Acknowledge Cultural Events In Your Every Day
You want to build a workplace where cultural diversity is not merely tolerated, but celebrated. This means integrating cultural acknowledgements into your everyday schedule. A great place to start is by mentioning upcoming cultural events that your staff observe just as you would celebrate upcoming staff birthdays.
You could even encourage your staff to get into the festive spirit by designing decorations to hang up around the office in the lead-up to that cultural event. For example, later in the year you could get your staff to design Dussehra posters to commemorate the upcoming holiday. These posters could then be swapped out for Halloween decorations a week or so later, making your office feel vibrant and celebratory all through the calendar year and across both western and non-western holidays and events.
2. Invite Guest Speakers & Performers
You may also opt to invite third-party speakers or even performers to your office space to really deepen your cultural acknowledgements in the workplace. Imagine being able to kickstart Diwali celebrations with a dance or musical performance! It’s basically the same as getting a Santa Claus at your work Christmas party.
Inviting cultural performers and educators into your workspace during cultural events can also deepen enrichment and engagement of the day, equipping all your employees with a stronger understanding of their cultural celebrations they’ve partaken in. Having third-party speakers and performers come along can also help take any pressure off of employees that fall within those cultural groups to educate their fellow coworkers. After all, it’s their day – they should be able to revel in their culture rather than feel some kind of responsibility to play the unofficial role of the educator.
3. Commemorate Diversity Day
Alongside commemorating different cultural events as they happen throughout the year, business owners are also advised to include some celebrations for Diversity Day in their company calendar. Diversity Day celebrations tend to be a melting pot of all your office’s cultures, with employees bringing in food and music that showcase their culture’s artistic expression superbly.
The benefit of this melting pot is that it fosters passionate discussions as employees can share all the things they love about their own cultures simultaneously. After all, one of the most important factors of creating a safe environment where all cultures are celebrated is to encourage dialogue between those from different backgrounds. As Diversity Day provides everyone with the opportunity to share, it can be a great way to break the ice and allow employees to connect on mutual interests.
And if you manage a larger business or a branch that’s part of a larger multinational company, you should also ensure that your Diversity Day celebrations include your other offices and teams as well. Thankfully, tools like social media and chat apps have made it easier to stay connected both inside and outside the office. These platforms are always getting better, making it even more convenient to stay in touch.
4. Be Inclusive Of All Religions
When embracing and engaging with other cultures, you’ll naturally also need to think about how your workplace can be respectful towards a diverse range of religions. After all, religion is a sensitive topic in any context, and should be handled with care in the workplace. Managers and business owners should do their best to understand their employees’ religious needs and accommodate them where reasonable.
It’s also important to keep in mind that different religious groups celebrate holidays at different times of the year. Also, some religions may also require fasting on certain days whereas others won’t. Some employees may not want to come to work during these times, and some might come in but not be at a hundred percent. You’ll want to be sensitive to these differences when managing your staff, and ensuring that all your employees feel that they have your support in maintaining their religious practices around their professional life.
4. Acknowledge Discrimination – Don’t Shy Away From It!
Speaking of being inclusive of all religions, an important component of celebrating your company’s diversity is being ready to tackle the big discussions that may surround some religions or cultures around the world. Discrimination is a sad reality of the world in which we live, and the workplace is not immune to it. So business owners should always preface cultural events in the workplace with a reminder that employees should be respectful and honour the fact that their office and work community is a safe and inclusive space.
A great way of doing this is by commemorating days aimed at championing inclusivity alongside commemorating cultural events themselves. The UN’s International Day to Combat Islamophobia is a great example here, as it’s always set to take place during or in the lead-up to Ramadan, and can thus be taken as an opportunity for education and enrichment that may then help support your Islamic employees as they prepare for fasting.
As mentioned, cultural education is an important step. However, it’s also important to have clear rules in place to stop any sort of discrimination from happening. Your workplace also needs a way of responding to potential incidents should they take place. You can come up with a system that includes warings, suspensions and even dismissals to act as a deterrent. Be sure to work with your HR team to ensure that these safety and security measures are developed and maintained.
5. Host Cultural Parties & Potlucks
Finally, just as Diversity Day fosters sharing of all cultures, so too do office-led cultural parties, potlucks, and other initiatives. So one of the best ways to celebrate culture and diversity in your workplace is simply to host office parties centred around specific holidays.
When choosing which holidays to celebrate, you’ll want to take into account the backgrounds of your employees, as well as the place in which you live. Parties and events are great ways to help people feel visible, and allow them to live out their culture in their place of employment.
Parties are also a great way of boosting the overall morale of your office. Nobody can be switched on a hundred percent of the time, and some downtime to relax and socialise will be greatly appreciated by your employees.
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As we mentioned, workplaces are growing more diverse, and this is a good thing – because our differences and diversity is what makes us stronger. Cultural diversity is something to be celebrated, as it ensures that your office is equipped with all the diverse perspectives it needs to tackle even the most complex problems. If you manage a workplace made up of individuals from diverse backgrounds, there’s no better time than today to take the steps to make it more inclusive and a safer place for everyone.