Allyship
What is allyship in the workplace?
Allyship is an active and ongoing practice where employees with influence, power, or privilege use it positively to support, advocate for, and uplift employees from marginalized or underrepresented sections. Allies work towards creating equitable opportunities and ensuring that all of their peers have access to the same privileges, support, and respect as they do.
What are the benefits of practicing allyship in the workplace?
Here are some of the key benefits of practicing allyship in the workplace:
- Builds a diverse, equal, and inclusive workplace by fostering a sense of belonging among employees
- Challenges biases, microaggressions, stereotypes, and other unfair people management practices that negatively affect employees
- Makes employees feel safer, supported, and valued, which in turn keeps them engaged and loyal
- Fosters trust among employees, which paves the way for positive work relationships and a collaborative work culture
- Builds a better reputation for your organization among customers, candidates, employees, and other key stakeholders
What are the key components of allyship?
Here are some of the key components of allyship at work:
Active listening
Allies have to be open to listening to different challenges that their peers face without judgment. This creates a safer space for employees to open up about their experiences.
Awareness
Allies have to become fully aware of the barriers that keep employees in marginalized communities from advancing. This fully equips them to advocate for others' betterment.
Empathy
Empathy helps allies understand what other employees actually go through so that they're able to offer more meaningful support. As a result, they can offer what employees truly need rather than misinterpreted solutions.
Accountability
Accountability is a positive attribute that encourages allies to reflect on their actions and the impact they have on the people around them. This self-reflection enables them to make more intentional choices.
Speaking up
Allies should be able to speak up against discriminatory actions, biases, and other exclusionary behaviors. Their voice goes a long way towards reassuring employees that their rights matter and prevents them from having to defend themselves or go it alone.
Taking action
Taking actions helps allies drive meaningful changes that others can benefit from. Actions like advocating for fair opportunities, challenging stereotypical practices, and creating inclusive policies show commitment and build trust among employees.
How can you adopt allyship at your workplace?
Here's how you can adopt allyship at your workplace:
Get leadership buy-in
Since allyship often requires cultural and policy-level changes, it's important to get your C-level leaders on board. When your C-level leaders actively support these initiatives, employees see them as role models and are more likely to adopt inclusive behaviors themselves. Also, leadership support means that you get the necessary time, budget, and resources to make allyship a sustained practice across your organization.
Select allies and train them
Once you have leadership buy-in, send out an announcement across your organization to understand which of your employees are interested in an official form of allyship. Use an assessment to select the most appropriate participants for your program. Be sure to include questions about why they want to be allies, what inclusion means to them, and how they’ve helped people from marginalized groups in the past. You can also have them answer scenario-based questions to understand how they’ll respond to different discriminatory actions and behaviors. Ensure that your allies showcase attributes like active listening, empathy, accountability, the courage to speak up, self-awareness, and more. Organize deep-dive training sessions that help employees strengthen their role as allies.
Set clear expectations
Develop an allyship framework that provides clarity on different attributes and support that can make allyship successful. As a first step, outline the purpose of having an allyship program at your organization. Provide a clear definition of what allyship actually means and how it works in the workplace. List down different behaviors and attitudes expected from allies—you can even develop a detailed guide that walks employees through the different steps involved in becoming allies. Offer information and examples on how employees can respond to discriminatory actions.
Create safe feedback channels
Create feedback channels that your employees can use to report any actions that affect them. These channels can be in the form of surveys, employee resource groups, monthly one-on-ones, learning circles, focus groups, and more to help people speak up without fear. These avenues should reassure employees that everyone, irrespective of their role, experience, and background, has the right to share their experiences and feel heard.
Apply allyship to your HR processes
Allyship should be embedded carefully in each of your HR processes to make it a core part of your organizational culture. Conduct a thorough audit of your HR processes, including hiring, training, promotion, compensation, recognition programs, and more, to identify any biases or exclusions. For instance, when it comes to performance reviews, do a thorough check of the existing promotion process. Ensure that these advancements are purely based on their merits and not influenced by affinity bias, recency bias, or primacy bias.
Monitor progress regularly
Allyship isn't a one-time initiative. It requires sustained efforts to become successful. The first step is to set clear goals and collect regular feedback from employees about your DEI initiatives. You can also run surveys to evaluate how employee sentiment has changed for the better. Tracking incidents of bias can also provide valuable insights. Doing this will help you get a clear idea about what’s working and what’s not, so you can refine allyship strategies to bring culture-level changes.