Middle managers: the key to building the reality of a diverse and inclusive workplace

As a senior business leader, you will no doubt appreciate the well-understood and well-publicised benefits of cultivating a diverse and inclusive (D&I) workplace.  And, as a leader you will also of course be expected to fully champion and support the necessary changes in policy, processes and behaviours needed to effectively drive forward the D&I agenda within your business – that’s a given, but it’s not the end of the story.

In fact, the influence you have, and the degree to which change can happen, is also highly dependent on the level of buy-in, understanding and support you can garner from your entire workforce, but particularly your middle management tier.

Your middle managers are very much at the coal face of your business. They are highly visible across all touch points and the impact they have in successfully delivering change, particularly around D&I should not be underestimated.

So, if you neglect to engage them in driving your D&I agenda forward, you likely won’t gain the traction you need. With that in mind – how can you engage and empower your middle managers to make D&I a reality within your business?

Change the way they approach hiring

Your middle management tier both hire and manage the majority of talent within your business, therefore they are key to embedding your D&I principles in real, tangible terms, and importantly, in a way that is sustainable. That is, provided that they fully understand and accept the importance of these principles, and the impact they have on building and developing teams.

So, work with your middle managers to investigate their existing hiring patterns. As I mentioned in my last blog, you should be on the lookout for biases they might unwittingly have towards selecting or rejecting candidates on more obvious demographics like gender or age or on attainment versus potential. There may also be seemingly less obvious biases in the way they hire, for example around preferred ways of working, personality types and so forth.

Have an open, honest and non-judgemental conversation with your middle managers about the reality or risk of recurring biases when hiring, and why they think these are happening. And, importantly, educate them on why they need to be addressed. From here, you should then work together to develop revised guidelines and procedures for future reference, based on your discussion.

Delve deeper into how they manage and develop talent

So, find out how your middle managers manage talent day-to-day within their teams. Do any patterns which might stem from biases stand out to you? Making this assessment may require you to attend/shadow team meetings or performance reviews, as well as objectively analysing selection criteria and processes when it comes to awarding work and giving promotions. Of course, you should also invite feedback from team members themselves, in a safe environment, to gain some real insight.

From here, you are far better placed to 1. Identify any biases that exist, and 2. Educate middle managers around the negative impact these can have on their teams in terms that will resonate with them – for example, groupthink, a lack of innovation, lower employee morale and engagement, and ultimately poor retention.

Improve awareness around biases that may play out within their own teams 

It’s not just about how middle managers recruit for, and manage their teams, it’s also about the way that their team members interact with each other on a day-to-day basis.

The reality is that in many work settings, similar employees have a tendency to group together in cliques, and anyone who is “different” to these groups, can end up being in a minority and feeling isolated. This can happen in teams of any size and can impact on individual team member’s mental wellbeing in the workplace, how comfortable they feel contributing to the life and business of the team and limits the potential value and benefit that different perspectives and experiences can bring to decision making and performance.

Middle managers must therefore understand, be attuned to, and be mindful of the impact this can have on the specific dynamic within their own teams, as well as on company culture, employee wellbeing, productivity and retention. Ideally, they should be informed and supported to spot the signs of stress, withdrawal and even potential workplace bullying with their teams. This can be provided by peer learning, external training as well as support from leadership and HR.

Middle managers should also be encouraged and, importantly, have the confidence to inform and where appropriate, educate each new and existing team member, regardless of seniority, around the why and what of the D&I commitments made by the business and invite them to input their ideas and feedback if they wish to. By doing this consistently, middle managers can help you as a senior leader ensure that the wider workforce understand, accept and support inclusivity as part of your organisation’s DNA, and are more likely to act as ambassadors for your D&I principles.

Hopefully this advice will help you work in better and more effective collaboration with your middle managers, in order to really make your D&I vision a lived reality for every person within your business. In turn, you will together create an environment which benefits from everyone feeling valued and engaged.

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Author

Yvonne Smyth

Group Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Hays

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Yvonne is the Group Head of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for Hays plc, with over 23 years professional recruitment experience.

Yvonne spearheads Hays’ commitment to being recruiting experts by ensuring that our major recruitment linked activities and insights are designed to positively promote and create more diverse workforces and inclusive workplace cultures. Working directly with customers, in partnership with subject matter experts, community groups, and through colleagues, Yvonne has been responsible for creating and curating a suite of resources designed to inform, support and enable our customers to progress their D&I linked commitments and navigate their careers.

Yvonne is the national specialism director for Hays Human Resources, the largest HR specialist recruiter in the UK. She is responsible for the HR national strategy within this high growth and pivotal specialism consisting of over 70 consultants across 45 locations. Yvonne is also the national specialism director for Hays Legal and Hays Company Secretarial, a team of over 35 experts across 7 locations.

Recently Yvonne was featured in the SIA 2019 Global Power 150 Women in Staffing list, which recognises the female leaders and influencers in the global market space. Prior to joining Hays, Yvonne initially trained and qualified as a litigation lawyer with international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright.