Examining the Heart of Core Values: DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
Public awareness about disabilities surfaced more than three decades ago. While many businesses try to stay current, continuing to grow in their awareness of disabilities and have included “diversity” and “inclusion” in their core values, the pace is much slower in recognizing and identifying the ‘how’ of true integration; the ‘valuing’ aspects of our business communities with some of the simple nuts and bolts of how we can do more to make ourselves, our products, and our services more inclusive and diverse.
In discussing core values in the workplace, he Employee Experience Magazine identifies that: “A diverse workplace means a variety of skills, qualifications, culture, and values come together as one,” and “Embedding inclusion as a core value requires maintaining a state of feeling respected, supported, and valued, focusing on the individual needs of employees, and ensuring the right conditions for candidates to achieve their full potential.”
Integrating diversity and inclusion means practicing fair (non-discriminatory) treatment, incorporating “universal design” in any physical environments used for your business, and applying this design to your products and services.
Universal Design is invitational to all and includes the full spectrum of human motion. It is intended to give as many people as possible simplified access to your communications, products, services, and both physical and virtual environments.
Every thoughtful action taken, with regard to Universal Design, adds up in cultivating diversity and inclusion within your business, organization or group. Inviting growth and greater awareness in the workplace is a practice of transparency.
Thinking about how your business can be accessed, understood, and used to the greatest extent possible by all people (part of the original definition of Universal Design by architect Ronald Mace), is a question we need to be asking. Does your website measure up?
HOW WE CAN HELP
When there’s room for growth, there’s room for improvement! Here’s how we can help: Looking through the lens of your customers and employees, we explore with you in identifying the areas of service where diversity and inclusion can potentially expand to meet ADA standards of compliance. We promote a learning culture and work collaboratively to support the addition or revision of language, the integration of concepts for policies and procedures, and check the accessibility standards of your online presence (website, social media, etc.).
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