The Diversity Partnership Resources
Embedding Inclusive Cultures - A Virtual Workshop
In September 2023, Diversity and Inclusion consultancy HSM Advisory, met with a group of independent publishers and literary agents to discuss what is needed to Embed Inclusive Cultures in the publishing industry. This session was recorded and has been developed into this virtual workshop, made available to publishers and literary agencies to provide an overview of best-practice when it comes enhancing Diversity in Publishing.
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Diversity and Inclusion has long been on organisations’ agendas, across sectors. This manifests in different ways, from diversity metrices to anti-bias training, but it is not always clear what actions we are expected to take, or the end-state we are working towards. This is often because diversity and inclusion are different things. Diversity is about how we differ from one another, whereas inclusion is how we navigate those differences to create a thriving, high-performing culture, together.
To respond, we are working in partnership with HSM Advisory, experts in the Future of Work, to equip publishing industry professionals to action and embed real change. We will take an intersectional approach – exploring insights and thought leadership in I&D best practice in a discursive way, co-creating specific actions and behaviours for individuals, leaders, and organisations.
Why Embedding Inclusive Cultures is Essential
Inclusion is the cornerstone to any work to promote Diversity, however it often gets overlooked. This is because many organisations see Diversity as purely a numbers game. We have seen many large organisatins being reactive in the last few years, suddenly scambling around to hire diverse staff after years of not doing so. We have even seen significant drives by large publishers to do the same, especially when it comes to bringing in authors from more diverse backgrounds, to redress an imbalance which had become considerably one-sided over recent decades. However, the result has been high levels of turnover, culture clashes, and new staff and authors from working class backgrounds, diaspora communities, or Black and Asian heritage feeling alienated and having to do considerable work themselves to fit into an existing overarching dominant culture.
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But it is not all doom and gloom, especially when it comes to the work small presses and smaller literary agencies are already doing. When it comes to Diversity in Publishing, small presses and smaller literary agencies are already the cornerstone of the Diversity and Inclusion agenda in publishing and have being doing more proportionately to champion new writers from different backgrounds and take on the financial risk from publishing diverse literature. Therefore, this workshop aims to give us the knowledge and skills to expand on this work. The resources have been funded by the Arts Council England to bring culture and how we work with staff and authors to the forefront of our minds, and understand how five specific areas of focus (or Levers) can help our small presses and literary agencies create an atmosphere where all authors and all staff feel accepted and thrive, setting a gold standard for publishing.
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The Basics of Inclusion
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The first step to fostering an inclusive culture is to understand the behaviours which we, ourselves, feel make us most accepted. During the facilitated workshop with HSM, two stood out with participants - Empathy and Acceptance. Other key behaviours such as Learning, Listening, Accessibility and Equality also form cornerstones of an inclusive culture.
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I want to start by taking a look at why we’re talking about inclusion today. The business case for inclusion reflects on the number of ways a more diverse and inclusive workforce performs better, are more creative, are more innovation and there is a better mitigation of risks. However this misses the essence of inclusion So at HSM we move away from focusing just on the business case, towards the social case. so this is the idea that one of the most compelling reasons is because of the self-evident social good, making societies and organisations more fair, more equitable and more equal.
There is a changing of expectations among consumers who are expecting more and demanding organisations drive social purpose. There is also a growing sense of inequality that organisations are only serving the needs of certain groups and not society as a whole. We are also seeing shifts in ethical values which contributes to a broader discourse on ethical issue especially inclusion. And finally, people have greater visibility of organisational inclusion and diversity which are reported through surveys, the media and social media
At HSM Advisory we have identified 5 levers for an inclusive culture
1) Overcoming Unconscious Bias
2) Helping People Bring their Whole Selves to Work
3) Learning from Diversity of Thought
4) Encouraging Flexibility
5) Embracing Co-Creation
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Overcoming Unconscious Bias
Unconscious bias describes the quick judgments and assessments that our brain makes outside of conscious awareness that are influenced by our personal experience or societal stereotypes. We know that people have a psychological preference for people who are familiar to them, who are like them, and in an organisational context can take place through an organisation’s process, their data collection, clouding judgement and invertedly leading to bias.
To overcome unconscious bias many organisations have gone straight to unconscious bias mandatory trainings. However research shows these are often anti-productive – they don’t lead to longer term behavioural change and they can backfire causing people to feel resentful and focus on unhelpful stereotypes. So instead, we need practical tools to sense check decisions for inherent bias and removing opportunities for bias to occur.
How Can This Apply to Publishing: When discovering new authors or bringing in a new staff member or a freelancer, altering the environment where decisions are usually made i.e. removing references to gender or ethnicity from submissions or CVs internally, or examining the profile of unsuccessful writers or candidates cross referencing against any over representation of certain groups.
Also, consider the data we are using to measure representation. Are national averages appropriate for our specific press, or do we want to look at regional representation figures? For example, in London the proportion of Black and Asian people is significantly higher than the national average. How well are we representing class?
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Bringing Our Whole Selves To Work
Research shows there are around 7 important identities we have: our gender, our class, our sexual orientation, our nationality, our faith, our heritage, our life outside work. Which are we comfortable to bring to work, which would we be uncomfortable sharing.
How Can This Apply to Publishing: Can your organisation support staff and writers to feel comfortable to share their identities at work? Can you create an atmosphere where people feel encouraged to share these parts of themselves, without feeling judged? This may need to start with leaders, for example, sharing they have caring responsibilities so other members of the team feel comfortable to share their responsibilities too
Learning from Diversity of Thought
Publishing is uniquely positioned to share perspectives of a diverse range of people – different writers, from different backgrounds, across different genres, cultures and languages. We build inclusion through shared interests or common experience, however we need to evaluate what it is that makes people feel included, and a lot of industries are overrepresented by a particular demographic leading to a tension between diversity and inclusion.
In publishing, there could be an overrepresentation of middle-class making working-class people feel like they don’t fit in, feeling they have to hide different aspects of their identity in order to progress.
How to benefit from diversity of thought without sacrificing inclusion?
Willingness to share – people need to be willing to share perspective informed by the difference. What makes people willing? Think of the responses that will make this achievable – are the responses from leaders and others grounded in respect, trust, safety, fairness? These are the aspects which will make people more willing to share aspects of their difference.
Readiness to Listen – Building skills that facilitate learning such as communication, conflict resolution, problem solving and consensus building. A lot of the time we takes these for granted at our organisations, but time and resource constraints do make listening or actively seeking out different perspectives challenging. As is hearing alternative thoughts about how your organisation is run without feeling some defensiveness. Therefore, safeguard time to catch up with others and consider what atmosphere can encourage open sharing.
Opportunity to Speak Up and Be Heard – Reduced hierarchy, cross functional teams, having a space for people to share ideas are all vehicles for people to speak up.
Encouraging Flexibility
Understand what people want from their career. Previously we assumed people moved in similar steps depending regards their age and career lifecycle. But in reality people are living multi-stage lives. People are retraining or seeking out higher education later, or taking career breaks or sabbaticals to spend more time with their family. Organisations cannot assume Age equals Stage. Therefore, the more you can offer flexible experiences, the more you can encourage diversity.
Identify ways to maintain and support wellbeing and manage boundaries between work and home. Think how the working day is designed to achieve high performance. Do people have enough moments to replenish energy after busy periods – is there a reset day after a book fair? Are there moments for people to collaborate with different team?
Provide opportunities to leverage flexibility in time and place. Time can be used as a lever of flexibility – is there flexibility to alter working hours to suit those who need to balance work and home life. From an organisational perspective this means checking in with people that our hours are feasible and not contributing to burnout. Also make sure there is not a hierarchy of needs i.e that flexibility is not offered only to certain groups or have provisos associated with it. Also be communicative that there is not an expectation for people to work in the same way as you.
Co-Creation
Bringing in other voices. Understand other people’s needs – both employees and writers. Then, encourage conversations to create a collective understanding of the challenges and opportunities for your organisation. Can you create opportunities for conversations to talk through the previous 4 pillars and what people’s opinions are.? Can we create more opportunities to meet as an industry and have a co-creation space to share thoughts between independent publishers and literary agents to see what others are doing and what we can emulate? For example, creating a workshop for ideating and creating a collective vision for the future – we can bring together people across different organisations in publishing to hear from experts, share perspectives, and generate a collective sense of excitement for the future of inclusion in publishing. Ideas and actions are then taken to executive teams and implemented.
Summary
To build and embed inclusive cultures we need to think about these 5 levers:
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Are you thinking about the environment decisions are being made, and considering what data you are using?
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Are you aware of the different aspects of people’s identity? How do you encourage people to be more open in sharing them?
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Are you making sure people are willing to share their thoughts and that people are willing to listen to them if they do?
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Do people have different experiences? Are you leveraging flexibility of time?
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Are you bringing in the voices of a diverse range of people so there is a sense of a collective vision for the future?
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Next Steps: A Virtual Hackathon on the 5 Levers
We now want to hear your thoughts on how we as literary agencies and publishing professionals can utilise the 5 Levers explained in HSM Advisory Embedding Inclusive Cultures Workshop to make publishing for inclusive to authors for different backgrounds.For each Lever, we have listed a series of guiding questions trying to tie Overcoming Unconscious Bias, Helping People Bring their Whole Selves to Work, Diversity of Thought, Encouraging Flexibility and Embracing Co-Creation, directly to the publishing industry, especially the parts of publishing we work mostly closely with. Feel free to ask new questions that we should be considering
Additional Discussion – How to Encourage Co-Creation in Small Publishers and Literary Agencies?
In smaller organisations we can be more innovative, move faster and take actions more quickly. Make sure there are moments of co-creation embedded in how people work, such as bringing people together for a monthly meeting to co-create around a particular challenge. We can bring in the voices others to solve problems through bringing together those within our team or creating networks and looking for outside voices.