Creating a truly inclusive and happy workplace means understanding and addressing the unique needs and feelings of each individual. This involves actively listening to and communicating with employees, recognising and addressing implicit biases, and creating a culture of trust and fairness.

Creating connections between teammates and increasing knowledge and understanding of each other's backgrounds and strengths will help foster greater inclusion and happiness in the workplace.

Femi Otitoju is the co-founder of EW Group, an equality, diversity, and inclusion partnership. She’s been helping organisations become more inclusive since 1988. In her conversation with Henry and Maureen, she tackles unconscious bias and how it can be addressed through training and recognition.

Femi’s tips for a happy workplace

• Assume good intent when people make contributions. Even if someone makes a mistake or uses terminology that might not be comfortable for everyone, start by assuming that they did not intend to offend anyone.
• Combat micro-aggressions with micro-affirmations. Consciously use small positive statements and gestures, like acknowledging people's presence, welcoming their contributions, and congratulating them on a job well done.
• When receiving feedback or criticism, assume good intent and respond with graciousness. Thank the person for their feedback and take the time to understand their perspective. Avoid getting defensive or dismissive, and recognise that feedback is a rare and precious gift that can help improve workplace happiness.

Links

• Connect with Femi via LinkedIn

Welcome to this issue of the Happy Manifesto podcast.

Maureen, who have we got on today?

We have got a fabulous guest and that is Femi Otutoju.

And she is going to be talking about diversity and

Yeah, that will be fabulous.

So what's created joy at work for you this week?

it's around this time when we do feedback, peer feedback.

And when I was thinking about that, I was like, well, that's really important to find out, one, how you can give feedback to your peers, and how you can also receive feedback, but we do it so simply here at Happy.

And it's like, what can you start doing?

What can you stop doing?

And what to continue?

And I think that's just such a quick and easy way to give some feedback.

So that's one of the things that I will share as a tip for to create happy workplaces.

How about you,

Well, I'm gonna do it outside of work actually.

Um, uh, last week I went cycling in the Nees five days from Andorra to p and I cycled one and a half times the height of Everest.

Um, and it was glorious.

I went up per Aspen the toole this day after the, the Tour de France did it.

I was actually looking out for you on the Tour de France.

I thought you'd be there.

You know, with your bright shirts as well, you know.

yeah.

They're a little bit faster than me, but, you know.

Okay, so that gave you joy.

So my joy at work, well it was actually outside of work, I managed to get Centre Court tickets to Wimbledon and I saw Djokovic play, I mean he's just amazing, he is amazing, but all the players that were on Centre Court were amazing.

We had a great day out.

Me and my friends sitting there, Pimms and Victoria sponge cake.

You know, people don't know I love cake, but it was an amazing day.

Okay, on to Femi.

My name is Femi, Femi Otitoju, and I'm part of EW Group, where I'm, my title is Founder, and we're an equality, diversity, and inclusion consultancy.

How long have you been doing this,

Well, I founded my company, which was part of the group, Challenge Consultancy, in 1988, I think we first registered, yeah,

Long before was a big thing.

I've been doing this work from the days when I used to have to take three biscuits to venues, to encourage people to come along to training on equality.

We used to call it equal opportunities, right?

Say, you know I'll get the venue, I'll get the biscuits, I'll make the tea.

Please just come and listen to me about equal opportunities.

And it's a very different, different thing.

Now,

Okay.

So what makes a truly inclusive organization for me?

interestingly enough, now I had, I was working with a group this morning and I said to them, you know what, what, what needs to be done to make a, an org a really inclusive organization for you?

And two or three of the people started straight away by saying, it's not so much focusing on what needs to be done.

We need to work out what people feel.

Because you might need to do different things in different places to make people feel the same thing.

So we want people to feel included.

And that means, what does that mean for my people, because I've spoken to them about it, it means that they want to feel comfortable at work.

They want to feel relaxed.

And then there was a lot of conversation about, Something that ended up being motivated, but they said, oh, they didn't want to feel on a Sunday night that they were worried about going to work on the Monday morning.

They didn't want to feel that they were concerned that they'd bump into people or that their work wouldn't be valued.

And in the end, they distilled all of that to motivated and energised.

safe, trusted that they're being treated fairly.

And so we need to find out from our people.

What will make them feel that and do that?

There's nobody coming up with a list of things that need to be done if that isn't what works for our people.

Exactly.

That's really, really interesting.

I've not heard it from that perspective, from the feeling space.

It's like a little journey, isn't it?

You've got your eye all the time on the destination.

It's like looking at a Google map and seeing that little flag.

That's where I'm trying to get to.

But how you get there, what route you take has to be guided by others.

So it's maybe like using one of those apps where all the other drivers who are on the road can tell you what the road's like going forward.

So your people can be like the people on one of those location apps, one of those navigation apps.

They can tell you what the road feels like for them now, and then you can make a decision about what route you're going to take to your destination, which is this inclusive, happy company.

So I suppose the key in all of that then it's communication, isn't it?

You can't know what your people need and therefore, you can't do it unless you talk to them.

Well, either that or you develop telepathic skills.

Henry, you've got that, haven't you?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So can you give us an example of a client you've worked with that did become more inclusive?

Yes, and I think there's been quite a few interesting ones, but I'll choose this big global NGO who had pockets and they literally have people all over the world.

And they had pockets where people were.

Really happy, loved their bosses, super motivated, and therefore very productive.

And other pockets where people were less so.

And the people who were less so were always grumbling about how happy the other people were.

They were jealous of their happiness.

And so a very, I think, astute business partner, HR business partner, went along to the places where people were happy and said, why are you happy?

What are you doing?

Explain your happiness.

And they did explain their happiness and they kept pointing, verbally and physically at their managers, saying they'll listen to me, they respond to me, they try and identify what I need and they try and meet my needs.

And they went, okay, that's really good.

Then they went to the places where people were unhappy and said, well, what's the matter with you?

And they said, inconsistency, lack of clarity, and so on.

And so then, and this I thought was really clever, they said, well, what we want is to learn from those pockets of good practice.

Get the people from the pockets of poor practice to have a look at what they like about what's good.

And then we will develop a common approach to management.

So out of that became a set of behaviours that the managers, the leaders then agreed that they would try and do.

So that was good.

But even better was they then said, when we codify that common approach to management.

We're now going to give it to all our staff.

We'll give it to the people who were being managed by the managers who've agreed to do this thing.

And so it was much easier for the staff to say, when if they were in one of the pockets that wasn't very happy at various points, they could look at the common approach to management and go, hmm, these are the bits of the common approach that are missing from mine, and they could go up to their manager and go, you see, these things that you said you were going to do, this common approach, I don't feel like I'm quite getting that bit.

Could I have some of that, please?

And they really shifted the culture, literally not just in head office, but right across the organization.

And it didn't actually take terribly long to ask those questions, to distill them into the common approach, and to communicate that common approach to all staff.

And then of course, it became part of everyone's induction.

And I think that has led to a very, very happy organisation.

So, so it sounds like you're talking about how to get good management.

Does it matter then whether, a global majority or BME people?

Is it just good management that helps them?

Well, inclusivity, recognizing and working positively with diversity is, I think, a key pillar of good management.

It's, it's virtually possible to be, particularly if you're working in a very diverse organization that's got a global reach, uh, if you're gonna be an effective manager, you really will have to engage positively with diversity.

So good leadership and good management, and actually, you know, good working culture, whatever level you're at in the organization means recognizing and engaging with diversity.

I mean, that brings us on to like one of the biggest topics at the moment.

So what's been going on for quite a while is about unconscious bias.

Well, let's start with unconscious bias and whether it's actually a thing, first of all.

Okay.

Secondly, whether you can train people to work differently around it, whether you can actually tackle people's unconscious bias with training, and then also what you do to mitigate, ameliorate the impact of unconscious bias.

So let's start about whether it's a thing.

The answer is we're biologically designed to develop unconscious bias.

We don't have time, we don't have the bandwidth to make logical, evidence based decisions all day, every day.

How long would it take us to delegate a piece of work every time I had to go back and read through everybody's appraisals and see how well they were doing?

I don't.

I go Who can do that piece of work?

And I default either to my most recent experience or with the person that I tend to feel safest with or the person that I know.

That.

Is implicit association, which is a better term, less judgmental sounding term.

That's unconscious bias.

It's not a deliberate attempt to, um, to undermine disabled people or to, to, to, to, to isolate people who are L G B T or anything like that.

It is literally just an automatic response.

So then people say to me, oh, so you are talking neuroscience.

You're talking biology.

You're saying that we can't, there's nothing we can do about it.

We're bound to have them.

And to an extent that's true.

But the other side of that is we have other biological impulses that we learn to control.

Right, I'm starving, you've got food, I'm going to take your food.

We manage that somehow.

So that's true with implicit associations as well.

When we recognize which ones we've got, when we're in a place where we think this is a place where this bias might come into play, I know I've got a weakness for a Liverpool accent, someone who's played hockey, people who, you know, whatever it is.

When I hear somebody who sounds lovely.

I have to ask myself, what is it about them that sounds lovely?

Why am I warming to this person?

Oh, that will be my thing that I know about.

So that takes me to the next bit.

Can I be trained?

Can I learn not to default to my biases?

Can I recalibrate my biases?

And the short answer is your biases or implicit associations were formed by regular reminder about the way you see things.

So if we regularly see the opposite, we will recalibrate that implicit association.

So going to training helps surface our implicit associations, helps us recognize our biases, and a bias recognized is more easily neutralized.

Thank you for sharing that.

And I think it goes back to what you said about communication, being able to have those conversations.

You know, because as you said, all of us have that, and it goes back to the beginning of what we were talking about, how to create truly inclusive organisations.

So can you tell us any stories around where you've had challenges, you know, trying to, you know, work with organizations to actually turn this around?

Well, I think the challenges are very often for the business and then they call me in to come and work with the business and come up with ideas, but I came up with a business that was saying, look, we are so different here, we've worked really hard, we're very pleased with ourselves, we've got people from different religions, we've got Muslim people and Jewish people, we've got people with no faith at all, we've got lesbians and gay men leaping about the place of all sorts, we're doing really well, except, oh, the big one was age, where the oldest person was Nearly 70, the youngest was just coming up for 20.

And they were saying, we're so culturally different.

Actually, it's very hard.

The fridge is a mess because we can't eat the food.

What do we do?

And they came up with a very lovely device which brought staff together, first once a month, then regularly for a while.

They called it Download Fridays.

It's charming.

Download Fridays encouraged everybody to bring a little something to a lunchtime session on a Friday.

And it included what are you reading, what are you watching, what are you listening to, so TV, films, theatre, books, podcasts, just so that people understood a bit more about what's going on for them.

And then when somebody comes along and goes, actually I'm not reading anything because it's Pride and I've got to do this, this and this and this, or it's Black History Month and I'm preparing that.

And the greater understanding between what was going on between the staff at all levels, a recognition of how the differences affected the way in which they led their lives, I think created connections.

And that brings me to the next bit.

The most common challenge I have with creating happy and inclusive environments is when people don't know each other well enough.

Those challenges are geography because you've got, you know, the di the disparate teams when you working from home.

I've already mentioned age, culture, that there isn't a common understanding of what the organization's values are and an interpretation into how they translate into behaviors.

That's the consistent thing that I, that I find that is a, is a, is a challenge.

And so the devices that we know about are quite important to put into place.

Things like, OK, we've got the common values.

We do workshops around the values.

We translate it into behaviours.

We have a behaviour outline that everyone's supposed to adhere to.

But the one I really like is where people get a chance to say to their managers how their management style is affecting themselves.

And this is the gap that sometimes there.

Each people manager.

Gets to speak to their manager about each individual member of their team on a regular basis.

That needs to cascade upwards, not just downwards.

Because I might not be engaging with you terribly well, more, and it's unlikely, but it's possible.

And, um, you've tried to tell me, but I've gone, oh, you're not quite tough enough for this environment.

You need to toughen up a little bit and, you know, knuckle down a bit.

Now you know that I should be doing better than that as a manager.

You all, but you don't know what my manager will be like.

You don't know what the HR business person will be like.

So you struggle in that environment.

And because my management of you stays with me, pretty much, I can get away with not doing what I should.

But if.

On a regular basis, I have to say to my manager, well, Henry's been doing this, and Maureen's doing that, and my manager says, uh huh, and what steps have you taken to develop these people, and how are you finding them, and how can I?

It has to cascade up all the way, not down.

Too much management goes on downwards, not upwards.

Happy workplaces mean not just that communication goes between people at the same level.

That I report up on what's going on for the people that report to me.

I don't see that enough.

But how does that work in a flat organisation?

In a flat organisation, I think that's everybody reporting to others.

So you might have small groups of people who meet because they work in a certain part of the business, so they would talk regularly about it.

And then all of them will talk about the progress of each person.

I think in a flat organisation it's slightly easier.

Because in a flat organisation, the communication channels, when you've got this level, lack of a hierarchy, the communication channels work by some kind of osmosis, you know, because the boundaries aren't so clear.

It's the hierarchy that can be a real obstacle to really happy workplaces.

We need that hierarchy to be slightly blurry, to be like a little nerve centre, rather than it just going in a linear fashion.

And so tell me, what are the first steps that you could put into place to create an inclusive workplace?

Well, first of all, it's to find out the things we have in common.

There is too much focus on the things that divide us.

Because, if I go back to my biases, I will gravitate towards people who I feel that I have some kind of connection with, an affinity with.

If you're like me, I'm likely to like you.

But, if you don't look like me, and you haven't told me that you're like me because you haven't worn a rainbow lanyard, or you haven't...

how do I know what we have in common, unless someone creates a space for me to find that out

? So my first step is let's all learn.

So I've recently just been on an away day and we've played a game called Diversity Bingo in which we have gone out to try and find someone who has things in common with us.

And we're a little group of companies, so we've got...

So different people with different disciplines, working in different locations.

And so I don't know what they can do, but I know more now, because we've had our day where we've spent some time finding out about what other people do.

So the first step is increased knowledge and understanding of what's going on across the business.

People use more prosaic methods.

They simply have organisational maps.

They often stop at role, title, don't they?

But if they said a little bit more, if there was something like a pen portrait of the person and a similar short outline about that the skills that they bring to the business and what they actually do, I think that that would foster greater inclusion and therefore greater happiness.

What we have at Happy is we have their five strengths and their communication style.

Yes,

That's lovely because otherwise I have to guess your communication style or I have to wait till I get it wrong and then you tell me.

Or I've got to be bold enough to ask a direct question.

Or to even know that it's, to ask the question would be pertinent, so I think that's a brilliant idea.

So I know we've talked for a little while.

What I would like to know now is that what are your three tips for a happy workplace?

going to take one that I've stolen.

Okay, we call them nickables,

The reason it's right at the front of my mind is because I didn't use it on a course today, and somebody said to me, now Femi, every other time I've been on a course with you, you've said this amazing thing and it stayed with me and I was waiting for you to say this amazing thing again.

Tether's the amazing thing.

Well, I was fortunate enough to work with the Canadian Broadcasting Leadership Team one day and they said, we've all committed here to work together positively and to that aim, we will always make an assumption of good intent when people make contributions.

Nice little slick phrase, an assumption of good intent.

And I thought, I'll have that, thank you.

So now at the beginning of my sessions, I say, look, we've all agreed, because I'm mostly doing inclusion, diversity, equity type belonging training.

We've all decided to come here today.

Even if your leadership team told you to come here today, you could have pulled a sickie, you didn't, you came along.

So if you make a contribution, even if you use terminology that doesn't sit comfortably with everybody, even if perhaps somebody makes a mistake, we are going to start with an assumption of good intent.

The assumption that you did not come here to offend someone today, that you didn't, yep.

And the willingness to do that, I think, makes people feel a much more comfortable to take risk and they're able to communicate better.

So that would be tip number one.

Yeah, I think we use that, we've got our value of that, haven't we?

We've got believe the best, believe the best, which is very similar.

Believe the best yet, that sounds great, exactly the same.

So whatever words we use, it's a generosity of acceptance, isn't it?

Number two, copious use of micro affirmations.

Rather than microaggressions.

Exactly so.

We hear a lot, don't we, about micro aggressions or micro iniquities or just even micro messaging.

I don't mind micro messaging so much because that doesn't have a value judgment built into it, does it?

They're just the messages that we give to one another.

And some of them are positive and some of them are negative.

But everybody or so many people focus on the negative ones, the microaggressions, the micro inequities.

But if there's a bad side, then there's probably a good side, right?

So I would say these are small statements, small gestures, just like the aggressions.

They might seem unimportant.

And like the aggressions, they can deliver powerful outcomes, but these do the opposite because they're positive.

And when I start to say them, you'll recognize them.

If I say greet people in the morning, everybody, not just the people that you work closely with, if I say at least acknowledge people's presence, if I say welcome people's contributions, if I say congratulate people on a job well done, you'll recognize all of that as positive feedback.

But sometimes they are so small, like Fabi, thank you.

And you could, you know, if you didn't say it, you wouldn't think that was a big deal, but people will feel it.

So not saying it could be a microaggression.

Not getting somebody's name right could be a microaggression.

Doing the opposite, putting somebody's name in front of a piece of work when you present it to X, that's a micro affirmation.

And if we consciously decide to use those, if we occasionally slip and do a micro aggression, that just means that things are balanced out, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree, I

So just to finish off, that is copious or another word that works better, someone look up a signon for us and send it to us in the responses.

But yeah, regular use of micro affirmations.

And then for number three, there's something about graciousness.

Because if you, if you're gonna do this, if you're gonna say, right, I'm gonna try and affirm people, I'm gonna assume you mean well, and I'm gonna ask you these questions and get you sooner or later someone's gonna go Fuck off,

Yes, yeah, we go, is that, yeah, yes,

Whatcha doing?

Um, and you, you, you've got all these good intentions, so there's something about being gracious if you get it wrong, because otherwise people won't tell you.

So we've got to be willing to hear it and, and respond well.

So obviously someone says, I really don't like the first word like that.

The first word out of our mouth is likely to be, sorry.

The next one, or potentially the first one, certainly for me is Thank you.

Mm.

I love, yes.

Yeah, I hope some people have heard me say that before.

There are about seven different reasons why I should say thank you.

I'll just say the one, but there's seven reasons why I should.

So, thank you for even bothering to tell me, because you could have just gone, no, and left it.

Thank you for not just talking about me behind my back, because you could have gone, you'll never guess what that Femi just did to me, and then wind up your friend, who will also hate me.

Don't do that.

I could say, thank you for taking the time to frame a response to me, because there's a good chance that you've talked to three other people or whatever to try and get it right.

Thank you for not going straight to the HR people and saying, that Femi, I want to make a formal report.

Look, there's so many thank yous in there, isn't there?

I'll just say the one though.

So I'm sorry I did that to you, but thank you for telling me.

And then I suppose what I'll need to go there is to recognize that criticism and feedback are rare and precious gifts.

We don't get enough.

And they really help us be better.

So happy workplaces, I think, depend on this regular flow of feedback and potentially criticism.

No, I love that.

'cause it also opens up more communication, you know, it's permission to be able to share,

And then while we're at it, when that person has finally kind of put it together to say to you, this is how I'm feeling about things, don't then give them a new job to do and make them your teacher.

Now

important.

must educate me, let you just deliver all this lovely information to me.

So I suppose in a nutshell, that is take responsibility for your own learning.

So to the person you're talking to, it would sound like, I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to do that.

Thanks for telling me.

You might go, what exactly was it that bothered you?

Where exactly did I get it wrong?

And then you go, Right, thanks, I'll work on that.

Is there something particular you'd like me to do?

It would sound a bit like that.

And the, the commitment to do the work yourself needs to come before the request for support.

So the person doesn't think, if I tell this person, it's like now she can ask me like 100 questions, and I haven't got time for that.

I'm not talking to them.

Leave them.

They need to know that you will do the heavy lifting yourself.

So that's my three top tips.

And it's not full of good intent, a much, much use of micro affirmations, and graciousness when we make a mistake.

Excellent, excellent.

Femi, you've been fabulous.

Thank you so much.

thank you so much, indeed.

Femi always brings the goods, she does.

Doesn't she?

Those three tips, amazing.

But key things for me, it's about communication, you know, and getting to know each other.

I love that, I really do.

I love the micro affirmations as opposed to micro aggressions, that's a good one.

And I liked the concept of you go to the people who are happy, because they are in all organisations, you go to people who are happy and work out what it is that is different in that culture and particularly different about the manager, and work out how to get that in the unhappy workplaces.

Yeah, totally.

Do you find, Henry, from our podcast, a major theme is about involving people?

And she talked about, you know, the need to make sure that everybody is part of that conversation.

Absolutely, absolutely.

Yeah.

Involving people and also it's all about trust and freedom as well, isn't it?

Yes, yes, yeah, that's how we start, you know, by the communication.

So, we want people to give us some reviews.

We do.

It's great to find out what you think about the podcast and what else you would like to hear on the podcast as well.

And do, do you have any guests that you would like for us to interview?

You could email me@henryathappy.co uk.

You at Maureen?

at happy.co.