Building Inclusive and Respectful Workplaces

In today's episode, we dissect Donna Hicks' Dignity Model to help business owners elevate their workplace culture and environment.  

We uncover the need for more than just being seen and heard, but also, the inclusion, respect, and cultural acceptance that forms the bedrock of social dignity. Further, we address the often-ignored necessity of redressing past violations to create a healthier work culture, and also touch on legal dignity and its application in the workplace.

In this episode, we aren't just talking about being recognized but about cultivating a culture of physical and emotional safety, fairness, and autonomy. 

Thank you for listening!

If something you heard today brought a smile to your face or a spark to your heart, and you’d like to connect with me, here are a few ways you can do that.

One is my newsletter, it’s where I put most of my time and energy when I’m not working with clients or on this podcast. Sorry social media! It’s a mix of real life stories, tips and tricks and of course updates on what’s happening with the podcast. Whenever something is going on with me or in my business, it always comes out there first.

Another resource that I have for you is my Guide to Doing Work Differently. The guide takes you through four inquiries into how you can build a more sustainable and equitable work environment for yourself and your team. It's a great place to start.

Last, if you’ve got a burning question, a comment, or a situation you’d like my eyes on, you can email me at candice@fortressandflourish.com.


If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe to know when the next episodes come out, and if you’re feeling generous, leave a review. Reviews help other like-minded folks find their way to this resource.

Learn more about Candice and her work here.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

The hearth is for you if you're a business leader with a team. Here we have conversations about how to keep growing. When you feel you've reached your capacity, when what you're doing is working but you're starting to see the cracks, when there's a gap between where you're at now and where you want to be, here we find ways to transition through the struggle of survival toward creating a thriving business that supports you and your team as whole humans. Your host is me, candice Elliott. I'm a business strategist and mentor who specializes in working with business owners who are going through periods of growth. Especially when you're adding more people to your team, the practices and systems that worked when your team was smaller just don't seem to fit anymore, and when you're caught in stress and reaction, it's tough to reimagine the way that you created your world of work, both your own personal one and the one that you created for others. I help people align their values and business practices to build practical, sustainable, thriving work ecosystems and no, this isn't just some work utopia talk. To do this, I bring forward my decade-long professional background in human resources and organizational development, working with growing businesses across many sectors, and my decades-long search for meaning and wholeness, which includes researching the history of work and how it came to be what it is today, practicing a trauma-informed approach to business and integrating work, life and spirituality into a meaningful whole. Let's take this journey together. Hello, welcome back to the Hearth. And today we're going to be.

Speaker 1: 2:32

I'm going to be talking about building inclusive and respectful workplaces. Over the years of working with so many different workplaces and then also digging into some research around inclusion and respect at work, it occurred to me that there might be an entry point for this right In workplaces where things are not inclusive or where things are disrespectful. What can we put in place? What's an idea that we can talk about which can help to make that shift towards inclusion and respect? And I came across the work of Donna Hicks, and she created something that's called the dignity model, and this idea of dignity being that entry point, I think is really powerful. Donna Hicks defines dignity as the glue that holds all of our relationships together and the mutual recognition of the desire to be seen, heard, listened to and treated fairly, to be recognized, understood and to feel safe in the world. I think this is what is missing in those workplaces where there isn't inclusion and respect. It's like we're not seeing the other person, we're not recognizing their whole humanity, we're not making fair decisions. We might be making decisions that make sense to us or that are informed by our society or data or what have you, but they may not actually be fair.

Speaker 1: 4:44

I think, also this piece of being understood and feeling safe, these are not necessarily things that we spend time creating time for in the workplace Recognition as well, I think in a lot of workplaces where, just like you did the job, great, let's move on to the next thing. Not even great, you did the job, here's the next thing. You did it, here's the next thing. Or I guess this is good enough, let's keep going, or I mean that'll work, but we have to keep moving forward. We can't spend any more time on this, let's do this. So, instead of stopping having the conversation of recognition, giving feedback, providing training, providing mentorship, you know, helping people to feel seen, to feel understood and to feel safe, we just have this never ending cycle of things that we need to do.

Speaker 1: 5:46

And so Donna Hicks looked at international disputes and organizational cultures that were dysfunctional, and experiences of indignity were at the heart of many of these things, and so introducing practices that affirm dignity actually helps to create a more healthy culture. So actively redressing past violations is especially important. So recognizing the ways in which people have not been treated with respect and not not recognized and then taking action to correct is a huge, important part of this. There are a lot of different types of dignity which I actually didn't even realize before I started getting into this and learning more. I think there's like 10. I looked at some of the ones that seemed more applicable to workplaces that I work with and then also the human resources kind of intersection with work. So one type is social dignity.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Social dignity is how feelings of dignity or indignity can be influenced by social interactions. So either like people approving or disapproving of different kinds of cultural conventions. When we think about cultural conventions, these are like the behaviors that we kind of don't even think about them because they're so much a part of our culture. Like it could be the way you give like a thumbs up. You know, in one culture thumbs up is like things are good and then in another culture thumbs up is like an insult, you know. So it's like things like that that people do because they mean something, but they can mean something in a different cultural context.

Speaker 1: 8:05

So other social things related to social dignity are experience related to inclusion or exclusion. So whether you feel like you're being included as a part of the group or excluded, you know whether you feel like you're being included or excluded. You feel like you are a part of the group, you are a part of, like, the majority, right. Or if you feel like you are not really a part of the group, if you are like on the fringes or the edge or not even included, and this can be as small as like inviting someone to go to lunch with the group, right. So it also includes respect or disrespect If a person is just behaving respectfully towards you or not, is in this realm of social dignity.

Speaker 1: 8:57

And then also cultural acceptance or discrimination. So let's say, you know I have a cultural practice, I celebrate a certain holiday or something right, like I celebrate solstices and equinoxes and full moons and things like that, and so if I can bring that to the group and have that feel accepted, that's a part of social dignity. But if I bring that to a group and it's discriminated against or criticized or any of these things, then that is decreasing the dignity that I'm feeling in the social environment and that's not to say that you can't disagree with a cultural practice, so like if, for example, there are practices that are associated with a way that something is celebrated and you disagree with them, it doesn't mean that you can't have a respectful conversation around that or inquire into why or ask questions. It's just that there has to be a respect and dignity. That's a foundation for it, right, like I have been in conversations with people who have vastly different belief systems than I do and we have been able to talk about how we think about each other's different beliefs without disrespect, and it has been respectful and it has actually grown and made our relationships stronger. And then I've been in other conversations like that where it's polarizing and it's disrespectful and it is harmful really. And so this is that part of social dignity that I think is really important is that we can be agreeable in our disagreement.

Speaker 1: 11:06

Another type of dignity that exists is economic dignity, so the feeling of dignity or indignity being influenced by the experience of wealth or poverty, employment or unemployment, prejudice or privileges based on socioeconomic status and the ability or inability to purchase basic life necessities. And so economic dignity, I think, is just so wrapped up in the world of work, because we work in exchange for money, and so our ability to participate fully in society, to be able to provide our own life necessities, to be employed or unemployed, and to have what we feel for ourselves to be an acceptable socioeconomic status is so reliant on our work and our ability to earn. And so this is why I think practices around pay and around the economics of your business and what it is doing, not just how well the business is supporting itself, which is essential, right but also how well the business is supporting all of the people that are a part of the business, and we have to build businesses that it has to be a reciprocal exchange, right. So people have to have economic dignity in their work in order for them to be included and for the workplace to be a respectful workplace. If people are unable to support themselves with the work that they are doing because they're not earning enough, it is the responsibility of the business to look at why and how to create jobs that will actually support a person in their needs, not just basic life needs, but also, you know, their ability to live the kind of life that they want to live.

Speaker 1: 13:34

Another type of dignity, especially that relates to the human resources mess of how I help with businesses is legal dignity, and so this is feelings of dignity or indignity that are influenced by just or unjust laws, the existence or absence of legal protections and fair or unfair treatment. In this work by Donna Hicks, she talks about that as it relates to police officers and criminal justice systems, but I think that this also is a part of our businesses, and fair and unfair treatment by HR or the manager, the CEO, the COO, also falls into this realm, because there are so many legal agreements that are a part of work. There are so many laws that are enacted through our businesses or not enacted through our businesses, and so many legal protections that exist for employees in different kinds of ways that having an understanding of all of those things, being able to uphold just laws, to recognize unjust laws, to understand the legal protections that employees have, and then to be able to treat people fairly based on the agreements that you have with them this is all a part of legal dignity. So there are some steps that you can take to bring dignity into the workplace if it isn't something that's already there or if there are some pieces that you're struggling with. One thing that's recommended is practicing acceptance Accepting others for who they are and what they're doing, and not putting the pressure to be more, do more, take on more.

Speaker 1: 15:51

Another is being inclusive. So you know, intentionally reaching out to community members that are historically marginalized. You know doing that through your work. There is also ensuring physical and emotional safety. So you know, just creating safe space both for the body and for the emotions at work. If you want some tips on emotional safety, listen to my last solo episode. It's all about mental health and the workplace, and then with physical safety and work. There's so many different things that can come up, but just I guess a main one is making sure that all the equipment is working the way that it should, that people feel safe. You know, entering and exiting a building If there's a building that people have the ability to work with another person instead of alone. Those are some kind of basic not basic, but those are some foundational ones to think about.

Speaker 1: 17:00

Establishing and practicing fairness, so coming to an understanding of what fair decisions are, what those look like and this can look like. Including more people in the decision-making process. That's often a very effective way of establishing and practicing fairness. It's sort of decentralizing the leadership and including others in decision-making. And then also going along with that is supporting and developing autonomy or independence. And I don't mean that in the way of like a person should be like self-sufficient and do everything on their own. I mean it more in like an interdependence kind of a way where each person has their own piece of the work, that they're given full responsibility and ownership over it, that they have all the tools that they need in order to do it well, and that their work is interconnected with the work of others, so that they're not like feeling fully off out on their own, but they know how their work impacts the work of other teams and then also the work of the organization as a whole.

Speaker 1: 18:19

That sort of brings me to the end of this little discussion about inclusive and respectful workplaces. I have just so many. I could go on for a lot longer and I think that this is definitely a topic I'm going to be coming back to. It just touches on so many important things like having a sense of belonging at work and how important belonging is for people to feel like they are included. Friendship, and how friendship and work intersect. I've worked with some teams where you can just tell there are such strong friendships among people outside of work. It really helps, especially when times are hard. When there are those friendships and that understanding of people outside of just the work that you're doing together, then it also even gets into the whole productivity and learning space, because when people are feeling respected and included, when people feel safe, they're much more likely to speak up if they have an idea or they want to try a new way of doing something, or they heard about this thing and they want to check it out. I'm excited to continue down this road with you all.

Speaker 1: 19:54

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to send them my way. Also, if you've been enjoying the podcast, I would love it if you leave a little note. Maybe some stars that'll help other people be able to find the podcast so that they can learn all of this wonderful information as well. Hit subscribe to know when the next episodes come out. And if you're feeling generous, please leave a review. Reviews help other like-minded folks find their way to this resource.

Speaker 1: 20:33

If something you heard today brought a smile to your face or a spark to your heart and you'd like to connect with me, there are a few ways to do that. One is my newsletter, where I put most of my time and energy when I'm not working with clients or with my family, or working on this podcast Sorry, social media. The newsletter is a mix of real life stories, tips and tricks and, of course, updates on what's happening with the podcast. Whether something's going on with me or in my business, it always comes out there first. Another resource that I have for you is my guide to doing work differently. This guide takes you through four inquiries into how you can build a more sustainable and equitable work environment for yourself and your team. It's a great place if you're looking for somewhere to get started. Last, if you've got a burning question, a comment or a situation you'd like my eyes on, you can email me. All those links are in the show notes. Take care, brave soul, catch you next time.