Our team has 25 years of experience leading inclusive cultures training workshops for all staff, and for senior leaders and decision-makers. We’re fully versed in the business case for building more inclusive cultures at work:

• Successfully addressing unconscious bias

• Defusing difficult behaviours

• Demonstrating resilience during organisational change.

What are inclusive cultures at work?

Inclusive cultures are the result of individuals and teams who accurately understand and effectively adapt to their social and cultural differences. These differences might stem from any aspect of workplace diversity, including the protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 as well as other factors like class or socio-economic status. Inclusive leaders and managers display high levels of cultural intelligence, and are experts in cross-cultural communication. They display cultural awareness and sensitivity in everything they do at work.

Why are inclusive cultures important?

Developing inclusive working cultures is the key to unlock the business benefits of a diverse workforce, and to meet the increasingly diverse needs of employees, customers and service users.

“Culture interacts with all business processes, impacts decision-making, affects how change programmes work, and impacts the trust, engagement, wellbeing and productivity of employees.”

A duty to care? Evidence of the importance of organisational culture to effective governance and leadership (CIPD, 2016)

How can we go about building inclusive cultures at work?

It is now possible to measure and develop the intercultural skills of your individuals and teams using the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) psychometric tool. We use this tool to map your levels of cultural awareness against our Inclusive Cultures Pathway. This scale neatly highlights where you are now and where you want to be, giving you measurable targets to aim for in your learning and development.

Developing inclusive cultures with the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)

The IDI enables both individuals and groups to test and adapt their behaviour to diversity and difference, and to develop the leadership skills and competencies necessary to work effectively with social and cultural differences.

Our specialist IDI practitioners will provide an initial briefing for your staff. They’ll introduce the diagnostic, and explore the key attributes of cultural intelligence. After the 30-minute IDI psychometric assessment, they’ll also give individual feedback on your IDI results in one-to-one, developmental coaching sessions, and report on the group’s cultural awareness as a whole.

The Intercultural Development Inventory is a powerful diagnostic tool. Developed and rigorously tested in the United States, it has been translated into 17 languages and is now used in more than 40 countries. Most of the other assessment tools available only measure characteristics or behaviours thought to be associated with inclusive cultures. As a result, it is difficult to establish their validity and reliability. The IDI is different because it is grounded in cultural intelligence theory, and meets the standard scientific criteria for a valid psychometric tool.

The IDI methodology in full:

• Pre-IDI briefing (either by individual or group) to orientate users with the approach, principles and aims of the psychometric
• Users complete the online IDI psychometric
• Group IDI results workshop, if applicable
• One-to-one coaching session on each individual’s IDI results
• Delivery of full IDI report.