Inclusive Workplace Culture and Management
Pathways for Implementation
There are many evidence-based practices to establish an inclusive workplace culture and management. They are divided into these four groups:
Accommodations
This section explains how to handle requests for accommodations, how to provide them, and what to do if an accommodation needs to be changed or re-evaluated. You will also learn what your responsibilities are in this process.
Workplace Documents
Here, you will find tips on what to include in your workplace policies, reports, and even your department’s mission statement.
Human Resources-Related Practices
This section covers inclusive hiring practices, from finding candidates to keeping employees. You will also find ideas for topics to include in employee training.
Interpersonal Roles
This part takes a closer look at how people interact in the workplace and how to create an inclusive culture. You will find tips on communication, building relationships, and working together, with an emphasis on the important role of leadership in creating a culture where everyone feels valued.
Accommodations
Disclosures
- Recognize that employees do not need to automatically and immediately disclose private health information (i.e., their disability).
- Create a pathway for employees to disclose their disability status or request accommodations should they choose to. Refer to the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
- Ensure that you have the necessary infrastructure in place so that any required adjustments or accommodations can be made promptly following a disclosure. Refer to the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
Perspective on Accommodations
- Think of accommodations as support for your employees, not just as something you have to do to follow the law.
- Any employee should be able to get accommodations, even if they haven’t told you they have a disability.
- Keep in mind that not all people with disabilities need the same accommodations. For example, not all wheelchair users need accommodations, or they might need different things.
- Sometimes, accommodations don’t work perfectly right away. For example, it might take a few tries to find the best work schedule for everyone. It’s important to be patient and understanding as you figure things out together.
Providing Accommodations
- If you can, think about having someone whose job is to help with accommodations.
- When hiring, make sure to let people know that accommodations are available. You can do this in job postings, during interviews, or by mentioning the accommodations team or assistant, if you have one.
- Create a centralized accommodation budget. Refer to the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
- Work with other groups to help provide accommodations, such as special equipment.
- Recognize there are many ways to perform tasks.
- Accommodations can mean making changes to the work environment, like adding blue light filters or noise-cancelling headphones. They can also mean changing workplace policies, such as allowing someone to work from home or have their own desk even if the office uses hot desking.
- Think about adding some common accommodations to your workplace policies. For example, you could allow people to work remotely, have flexible hours, or take more frequent breaks.
Evaluating and Changing Accommodations
- Check in regularly to see if accommodations are working well. For example, after a new employee starts, it’s good to revisit their accommodations soon, since you never really know what you need until you begin the job. How often you check in depends on how much time you have. You could do it monthly, every six months, or whatever works best for you.
- Create a pathway for employees with disabilities to provide feedback on accommodations.
- Accommodations might need to change, especially when someone returns to work after a health or disability-related issue. If an accommodation needs to be adjusted, it’s important to follow the accommodation process again to make sure it still meets the employee’s needs.
- It’s okay if an accommodation doesn’t work out at first. Sometimes, what looks great on paper doesn’t translate well into reality. That’s why it’s crucial to check in and adjust solutions as needed.
Responsibility of Leadership
- As a leader, you should offer accommodations proactively, such as mentioning them in job postings and recruitment materials. Don’t wait for employees to ask—take the first step in creating an inclusive workplace.
- Make sure everyone knows who is responsible for each part of the accommodation process. This means clearly explaining each person’s role and making sure everyone understands it. Keep reminding people about these responsibilities.
- You have a big influence as a leader on how people talk about accommodations at work. It’s up to you to make sure everyone feels safe and comfortable sharing their needs. Leaders should always treat employees with respect and create an environment where people feel supported.
Workplace Documents
Harassment / Discrimination / Mistreatment Policies
- Make it clear that there’s zero tolerance for any kind of mistreatment, harassment, or discrimination based on disability. Treat disability harassment just as seriously as you would treat sexual harassment.
- Make sure your workplace policies include specific information about disability. Explain how you will respond to complaints, and promise to take them seriously, act quickly, and handle them the same way every time. Refer to the Canadian Human Rights Commission or the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
- If you can, involve people with disabilities when you’re creating workplace policies. Invite them to join focus groups or panels or ask them to fill out anonymous surveys. And make sure to thank them for their time by compensating them appropriately. You can pay them money, give them free passes to programs, or find another way to show your appreciation. Talk to them about what kind of compensation they would prefer.
Mission and Values
- Create a mission statement that shows you care about society and that you’re committed to hiring and keeping employees and volunteers with disabilities.
- In addition to a mission statement, create a list of values that show your organization supports inclusion and hiring people with disabilities. For example, you could include “compassion” and “respect” to remind everyone to be understanding of differences.
Other General Practices for Policies and Reports
- Think about adding some common accommodations to your workplace policies. For example, you could allow people to work remotely.
- If you can, involve people with disabilities when you’re creating policies. When you specifically ask them for their advice on a project (such as helping create a policy), make sure you thank them for their time by compensating them fairly.
How to Compensate
- Ask Them: The best way to thank them is to ask what they would prefer!
- Fairly: Make sure the compensation matches how much they are helping.
- Money: You can pay them with money.
- Other Gifts: Or you can give them gift cards, a letter of recommendation, or something else they find valuable.
Make it Easy for Them to Participate
- No Costs: They shouldn’t have to pay for anything to participate.
- Food: If you have meetings during mealtimes, provide
- Travel: If they need to travel, offer travel vouchers or help with transportation costs.
- Include disability as a major part of workplace inclusion and diversity policies.
- When evaluating how well your workplace is doing, include goals about disability inclusion in your reports. For example, you could track how many partnerships were created or how many hours of disability awareness training your employees have completed. Use these goals when you’re evaluating performance, both for numbers and for how people act.
- Create a team of people to look at your workplace policies and find anything that might exclude people. This team should include employees, HR managers, and diversity officers. If nobody on the team has disclosed a disability, make sure to get input from people with disabilities to help.
Human Resources-Related Practices
Enhancing Workplace Culture Through Staff Training
- Incorporate the following topics in employee training:
- Disability Laws and Rights
- Disability Definitions
- Etiquette for Interacting With Persons With Disabilities
- How Employees May Use Accommodations for their Job
- Diversity
- Allyship
- Emotional Intelligence
- Bystander Training – Training should also emphasize the importance of supporting employees with disabilities, and that discrimination against them is illegal.
- For people in charge (like managers, supervisors, and employers), it’s important to include the same training topics as all employees, and the following:
- Disability Issues and Creative Problem-Solving
- Communication Skills
- Challenging the Status Quo
- Commitment to Inclusive Workplace Culture and Mission and Accommodation Pathways
- Acceptance, Commitment, and Support for Employees with Disabilities
- Create training that helps people to show empathy, be open to new things, admit mistakes, and help others.
- When someone at work gets an accommodation or shares personal information, it can make coworkers curious. So, training should teach everyone to respect people’s privacy.
- Think of training and onboarding as a road to good relations between the employer and employees.
Hiring
- Job Development and Postings
- When writing job descriptions, it’s better to focus on what the person needs to achieve, not exactly how they need to do it. This way, you recognize that the most important thing is whether the employee can get the required outcomes. Refer to the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
- It’s a good idea to create flexible jobs that can change to fit each employee’s skills and strengths. This means letting employees shape their jobs to match what they’re good at.
- Try to build teams with a mix of the different strengths and skills people have. For example, some people are good at multitasking, some are good leaders, and some are detail oriented.
- It’s a good idea to hire an outside party to help you find ways to make your hiring process more inclusive.
- When you’re choosing people to be on the hiring committee, make sure it’s a diverse group. If possible, include people with disabilities.
- Recruitment
- Create ongoing internships or trial employment programs that support meaningful employment opportunities for people with disabilities and help them get permanent jobs.
- Team up with groups that help people with disabilities find jobs.
- When writing hiring material, make sure to say that your company values diversity, and that includes people with disabilities who may also have many different identities.
- When you advertise jobs, make it clear that people with disabilities are welcome to apply. Also, let them know that you can provide accommodations during the hiring process, such as for interviews.
- Make sure your online job postings and other recruitment materials follow accessibility rules. Refer to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind for more guidance.
- When you’re hiring, think about how committed every candidate is to the inclusion of people with disabilities. This should be seen as a good quality that everyone brings to the job. Refer to the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
- Onboarding
- When new employees start, give them a clear plan to follow. This plan should include everything they need to know and a schedule to help them get settled in.
- Set up a buddy system where every new employee is paired with someone who already works there. This is for all new hires, not just those with disabilities. The help that buddies give should depend on what the new employee needs and what the buddy is good at, but could cover workplace culture, work-life balance and the social environment. Refer to the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
- Keeping Employees
- Offer flexible work schedules.
- Allow employees to shape their jobs according to their skills and strengths.
- Provide assistive technology (AT) to employees who want to use it. Partner with outside groups to get more AT, learn how to use it, and support employees better.
- If a new employee wants to include other people in their onboarding process, such as people they know, organizations they’re connected with, or job coaches, be open to it. Supervisors and managers should regularly meet with job coaches to demonstrate how to effectively interact with, train, and supervise their employees. Some examples are “Ready, Willing, and Able” from Inclusion Canada and the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work.
- Set up semi-structured mentoring or buddy programs that continue after new employees are settled in. This should be for everyone, not just employees with disabilities. Refer to the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
- When putting together project teams, focus on finding the right fit for each person. Match job duties to the employee’s skills and match the person to the role according to things such as how much structure they need, what kinds of tasks they like, and how much responsibility they can handle.
Interpersonal Roles
Supervisory and Manager Activities
- Commit to creating diversity in leadership roles.
- Obtain ongoing feedback on accommodations and address feedback with concern, action, and urgency.
- Try to put people in roles and tasks where they feel comfortable and confident.
- Create mentor roles and/or a buddy system where coworkers can support each other, especially when new employees are starting out or transitioning into the workplace.
- Create a workplace where people are open to change. You can do this by checking in on the workplace culture and helping managers understand how to improve it. Refer to the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for more guidance.
Leadership Style and Responsibilities
- Supervisors and managers aren’t there to control employees. Their job is to give them the power to come up with new ideas, adapt to changes, and solve problems on their own.
- Leaders need to keep learning and changing their style to support everyone on the team, not just those with disabilities. This is a continuous process.
- Leaders should know that they are role models for all employees. They set the tone for how everyone behaves and are key to making positive changes in the workplace. Intentional effort from leaders is a must for big change to happen.
- Good things can happen when leaders switch from being controlling (autocratic) to building relationships with their team.
- Help leaders feel more confident managing employees with disabilities by role-playing and training, encouraging them to take the opportunity to manage employees with disabilities.
- Work to truly understand disability by recognizing there are many ways to view it. Ultimately, see disability inclusion as part of the bigger picture of diversity.
- Create a workplace where everyone is valued for their unique skills, interests, and what they can bring to the team. The company culture should be flexible and adapt to employees, not the other way around.
- Collaborate with nonprofit organizations, therapy centres, and other community organizations to help build capacity.
- Leaders need to have these important values:
- Knowledge: Know about disability and make sure employees feel safe to share their needs.
- Empathy: Be patient and
- Communication: Be able to explain things clearly by showing, writing them down, and breaking down tasks.
- Openness: Be open to new ideas and different ways of doing things.
- Tolerance: Be okay with things not always being clear or certain.
- Commitment: Want every employee to succeed and do everything you can to help them.
Social Inclusion
- Create fun social activities at work, such as ping pong, a daily crossword puzzle, shared meals, sports after work and a social club, to help people build relationships and feel good about their jobs.
- Initiate team-building activities or projects that pair employees who don’t know each other well to get to know and value each other.
- Leaders (such as managers and supervisors) set expectations as to how everyone should treat each other and how to work well with all employees, including those who are neurodivergent.
Miscellaneous
- Think about hiring a consultant to help create a workplace where everyone feels included and things are open and honest. Refer to the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work for some more guidance.
- Create both casual and structured ways to help people at work understand disability better and be more understanding.