Why your organisation needs a D&I workshop on allyship

Over the years, I’ve seen companies make a case for Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) by emphasing its benefits, such as "Hiring diverse people will enable expansion into new and diverse markets," amongst many other reasons.

For those of us sitting in Brussels working for a trade body, we strive to ensure equal representation of women and men on our event’s panels, avoiding the #manel label by The Brussels Binder. We eagerly look out for an increase in the number of female representatives on our association's board. We also boldly activate our social media during #EUDiversityMonth and International Women's Day.

However, despite our best efforts, we can’t help but notice the concerning disengagement of our activations in Brussels year after year. We find inequality worsening, and we begin to question whether tokenistic tweets, or alarming data could ever truly incite change and awaken those disengaged within our associations. And with so much on our plates, do we really have time for D&I? And why are you creating more work for us, Shweta?
 
But hear me out. As Europe experiences increased polarisation and hashtags like #BrusselsSoWhite trend on Twitter, we hope that our organisation (including our events, positions, employees) or industry is not implicated as contributing to the problem.
 
So, like your members, companies, and national associations, it’s time to bring D&I discussions to the forefront of our organisation's work and remove them from the buckets where issues are managed through one-off reactive statements and address them systemically through internal conversations beginning with Awareness | Allyship | Action. 
 
These efforts can start small, during team building excursions, leadership outing days, board meetings, quarterly employee trainings, etc., with the goal of gradually delivering a long-term D&I effort.
 
What do you say?

Awareness | Allyship | Action
 
#DiversityandInclusion #EmbraceDiversity #LeadTheWay