Webinar Recap: Building An Inclusive Culture Worthy Of Employee Expectations
December 1, 2022 (Replay at end of page)
During the pandemic, arts organizations have focused significant attention on building more inclusive cultures, starting with public statements of intent, anti-racist training, creation of affinity groups for traditionally marginalized groups among other steps.
Last week, the Advisory Board for the Arts (ABA) hosted a webinar on building an inclusive culture. During the event, we shared selected results from a first-of-its-kind survey of arts-professional career preferences, a framework for thinking about the stages of cultural inclusion and case examples of organizations that have made significant progress toward a truly inclusive culture worthy of employee expectations.
Differences About What An Inclusive Culture Means
Two disconnects between leadership and staff have created challenges seeking to make progress on building inclusive cultures during the pandemic. The first disconnect is misalignment about where to start. After George Floyd’s murder, arts leaders proposed that orts organizations use their platforms to speak out on anti-racism and catalyze change in their communities. Staff was in favor of that, of course, but wanted organizations to start “at home” by creating organizations that lived those values internally.
The second disconnect is around objectives. Leadership framed inclusion primarily in terms of welcoming and belonging. Does everyone feel like they are a wanted member of the community? Staff sees it primarily in terms of power. Do they have a meaningful say in even the biggest decisions the organization makes.
New Precision About Staff Employment Preferences
Across 2022, ABA conducted pioneering work on what arts professionals want in an employment offer in order to help organizations attract and retain staff in increasingly tight labor markets. We collected survey responses from 1500+ employees across arts genres using a tool called conjoint (or “tradeoff”) analysis. Conjoint analysis asks respondents to choose between two offers with different characteristics. That could be cars or shoes or, in our case, employment offers.
After individuals choose between two offers multiple times, it’s possible to mathematically calculate what elements they care about the most and how much more they care about each element compared to others. As a result, it’s possible to draw conclusions about whether employees care more about manager quality or flexible work hours, job security or organizational commitment to DEI&A.
It’s even possible to place a financial value on non-financial job attributes. This is true because we included compensation as an attribute for every survey respondent. So, if an individual is willing to trade off ten percent of her salary for more vacation days, or to work more days from home, it’s possible to place a financial value on those job attributes.
It’s also possible to place a financial value on improving organizational performance–say, from “average” to “very good” on elements of the job offer. In the chart below, we have calculated the financial value of moving from good to great on various elements of the job offer for an employee getting paid an average amount in our survey (roughly between $50,000 and $60,000). The size of each pie slice is the financial value of moving from good to great. We’ve chosen to clump job attributes into those “pies” based on the kinds of things organizations are likely to try to make progress on together.
Importantly, this chart shows the dominant importance of an ‘inclusive culture’ to staff. If an organization is able to move from good to great on key elements of culture–transparency, DEI&A commitment, job accountability, and inclusive decision-making–it’s the equivalent of receiving a $5,700 raise.
Organizational commitment to DEI&A issues, as it turns out, is especially important to younger employees. In fact, for GenZ, DEI&A issues are the third most important job attribute, behind only healthcare benefits and manager quality. For baby boomers, organizational DEI&A commitment is barely in the top 10. In the graph below, you can see the surprising attribute younger staff are willing to trade away–artistic reputation. The value that younger and older staff place on “DEI&A commitment” versus “artistic reputation” are mirror images of one another.
What Is an Inclusive Culture?
It’s one thing to know that staff want an inclusive culture and another thing to understand exactly what that means. ABA staff dug deeply into the academic and business literature and combined those findings with arts organization interviews to develop a framework for thinking about the components of an inclusive culture. You can see that framework below, build broadly around the personal identify (the ability to bring your whole self to the work environment), voice (empowerment to use your voice fully and have it valued by the organization), and power (having a seat at the table for important decisions).
Most people associate inclusive culture with the first two categories on the left–creating a welcoming atmosphere for diverse staff and a sense of belonging for everyone, built around commitment to shared values. But the power of this framework is the emphasis given to the elements of inclusion further to the right.
Perhaps the easiest way to interpret this page is by thinking how individuals feel at each stage. We’ve named the feelings at each stage in that first row under the column titles.
In the first column, the most basic sense of inclusion is when someone feels allowed to be in an environment. If nothing else, this means that no visible cues exist that one should not be there.
In the second column, an individual feels more than just allowed. They feel understood. Some kind of values alignment. An individual’s full personhood has been seen and accepted. The individual is more than a collection of traditional credentials.
Then, in the third column, individuals feel connected to the organization. Staff feel plugged-in to what’s going on. They have access to information. There’s an expectation that all staff are willing to share their knowledge, not hoard it.
In the fourth column, individuals feel valued. The organization is proactively looking for opportunities to develop individuals outside of their reporting structures. These growth opportunities represent an investment in the individual, and an organization would not invest in someone they don’t value.
Moving to Column 5, the organization has enabled individuals to take part in decisions beyond their department or hierarchical slice. This makes employees feel invested in the organization as a whole, not just in their department or hierarchical slice. To accomplish this, the organization must help staff develop a common language for coming together and getting things done across silos.
And finally, in the last column, staff essential to the organization. Not only do they have a seat at the table for important organizational decisions, but the feel like the organization needs their diverse perspective in order to make better decisions than it would using a traditional hierarchical framework. At this stage, leaders must be willing to share power. This advanced notion of inclusion is a long way from simply feeling “allowed” that characterized employee sentiment in the first column.
A Truly Inclusive Culture Requires More Structure, Not Less
Of course, the further right an organization pushes, the greater the challenges it faces. Some key challenges include:
How do we provide the psychological safety staff need to feel like they can use their voices freely?
How should we decide which decisions warrant collective input and work? We cannot include every staff member in every decision.
How do we enable people who don’t normally work together to collaborate effectively?
If we’re sharing power, who ultimately is accountable for forward progress and final decisions? In a hierarchy, accountability is clear. Outside hierarchical workflows, it can be confusing.
How do we decide who gets limited growth opportunities that become available?
The Advisory Board for the arts is hosting three upcoming webinars showcasing organizations that have addressed challenges associated with “moving toward the right” on the inclusion framework above.
Katie Maltais, Managing Director of Stages Houston outlines the process, structures and rules of engagement that she has put in place to strengthen organizational decision-making through broader power sharing.
(Members click here to learn more about Stages’ approach)
In January, Emmanuel Maxwell, Chief Talent Officer at the LA Phil will share his organization’s portfolio approach to talent management that distributes opportunity and reward strategically rather than in reaction to “squeaky wheels” or threatened departures.
(Members click here to learn more about LA Phil’s portfolio view of talent)
In February, we’ll examine the McCarter Theatre’s clever use of User Guides, “operating manuals” that individuals write about themselves to help colleagues interact with them more effectively. These guides have been shown to increase the psychological safety needed to reach higher levels of performance.
These case studies bring to life efforts of arts organizations to move beyond traditional interpretations of inclusion to foster an inclusive culture truly worthy of employee expectations.