Workplace Inclusion Initiatives Across the Globe: The Importance of Leader and Coworker Support for Employees’ Attitudes, Beliefs, and Planned Behaviors

Abstract

Despite the benefits of inclusion at work, organizational inclusivity efforts—such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) trainings—often fail. Thus, there is a need to investigate from an employee point of view which characteristics (including both organizational culture and inclusion training modalities themselves) may have the biggest impact when it comes to increasing inclusion in the workplace. Combining “planned behavior” and social constructionist theoretical approaches, this study uses logistic regression and data from an original survey with a diverse, international group of employees who have undergone inclusion training (n = 2043) to understand which factors matter for perceptions of inclusion success in the workplace. Findings indicate that coworker and leader support for inclusion predict employee optimism around the achievability of inclusion. In addition, leader and coworker support for inclusion predict employees’ attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of how their own actions matter when it comes to inclusion. Despite the difficulty with identifying a “one-size-fits-all” approach, this research finds that globally, employees are more likely to believe in inclusion—and to believe that their own actions around inclusion matter—when they perceive that leaders and coworkers are also committed to the cause.

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