How can you foster a performance culture that values diversity and inclusion?

Performance culture is where meritocracy is actively promoted and celebrated and sets the foundation for seeking right individuals for the right roles at all levels. Equal compensation and benefits across the organization drives trust and loyalty which in turn drives Performance Culture.

In my experience, in order to cultivate a performance culture within the workplace, you must constantly reinforce your core values. Core values are at the heart of any performance culture. Recognizing those core values, employees who strive to meet and exceed them, should be recognized for their performance. Consequently, those employees who do not strive to meet those core values, should be addressed in a way that helps to guide them to a higher performance standard. This includes critical assessment of their job skills, matched to their position, and understanding, whether or not they are fit for that role. This applies to all positions within the organization, it is critical to understand your employee base.

Consistency is key irrespective of how the team is formed, who is in it. Everyone has and work towards achieving a common goal(s), may that be based on core values and or KPIs etc. It's important to jointly recognise the end goal, the outcome that needs to be achieved. The plan on how to achieve that end goal may/will differ from person to person but a leader has to adapt and support. The leader has to ensure that ownership of defined goals/outcomes remains with individuals and bespoke support mechanisms in place as the needs, situations of each individuals are likely to vary. It's all about giving everyone an equal chance and right support to succeed.

What nonsense. "Diversity and inclusion" means evaluating people on their race, ethnicity, etc. and assigning opportunities based on those criteria rather than by merit and demonstrated skills. Thus, diversity and inclusion is opposed to a performance culture, because a performance culture can only be created by emphasizing performance... which is merit.

It is important to recognize the different backgrounds that your employees come from. Each unique experience can help contribute to the overall success of an organization. Learning how to leverage that background and harness those skills can create a better sense of cohesiveness among the employees and the organization.

I have a slightly different perspective on the above. Instead of assessing current D&I in your team, a better way to foster a performance culture that values DE&I may be through incorporation of specific DE&I objectives for managers & employees collectively. Progressing the DE&I strategy is the responsibility of EVERYONE in the organisation and the effort towards it can be evaluated as part of the performance processes. For example, 1. How actively did your team members partake in ERGs and other DE&I initiatives? 2. How did they promote a culture of speaking up and champion psychological safety? 3. How did they create an inclusive environment for their team members, internal stakeholders and/or external clients?

Before you begin co-creating and reviewing action plans and goals, it’s important to have a clear purpose for each goal. This means that everyone in the team should understand why the goal is important and what it will help the team accomplish. Having a clear purpose will allow everyone to better understand the goal and determine how to best reach it.

When creating goals, it is important to tie it back to the overall organizational goal, and understand how individual goals will help to achieve and contribute to that. I am a proponent of consistent feedback, in a 360° fashion. This helps to create a sense of transparency in the review and feedback process. This also allows for each person to have a voice, and eliminate the typical one-way assessment that is seen in many organizations.