Inclusion Isn't the Absence of Exclusion: Four Truths for Building Genuinely Equitable Organisations

We work with organisations across many different sectors and geographies, all at different stages of maturity in their thinking about EDI. All of our clients are different, and yet there are some conversations which span any organisation thinking about their approach to EDI.

1. Inclusion is not the same as an absence of exclusion

Not being discriminated against isn't the same as being included, and it certainly isn't going to make anyone feel included. Inclusion has to be proactive: it's the ongoing effort to make sure people feel seen, heard, welcomed, supported, and genuinely celebrated for who they are. As we've written before, diversity is made up of all the beautiful differences we have as individuals; inclusion is what happens when people feel able to bring their authentic selves to work, are recognised for their differences rather than despite them, and can collaborate creatively as a result. But inclusion doesn't happen by accident - unless you are consciously thinking about how to include everyone, you're almost certainly inadvertently excluding someone.

Inclusion has to be proactive, because a simple absence of exclusion isn't going to mean that people feel safe. There are some incredibly stark statistics which demonstrate this clearly. Over a third of LGBT staff have concealed their identity at work for fear of discrimination, 48% of people living with mental health condition avoid discussing it at work, and more than half of women have experienced workplace sexual harassment - yet only 27% ever reported it (Stonewall, 2018; Time to Change, 2014; TUC/Everyday Sexism, 2016, as cited in A New Normal's What is Diversity & Inclusion?). Let's be really clear - it's going to take more than just a lack of outright discrimination to ensure that people feel safe at work. If you can't see that your workplace is safe for and supportive of people like you, the chances are that you're not going to feel safe to be yourself.

2. The world is structurally unequal, and it doesn't switch off at reception

Structural inequality means a person's outcomes are shaped by systems and history, not only by individual choices or individual bias - and those systems don't pause when someone walks through an office door. We've set out some of the evidence for this before, and it's worth restating because it's easy to underestimate quite how early and how deep it runs:

• A child's socioeconomic future is, disturbingly, largely determined by the age of two. Black women in the UK face significantly higher maternal mortality rates than white women. Transgender people experience disproportionately higher rates of hate crime. Employees with disabilities consistently report less positive experiences at work. Women continue to carry the majority of unpaid caregiving responsibilities, and the gender pay gap persists as a result (A New Normal, Equity vs Equality).

• Black people in the UK are nine times more likely to be stopped by police than white people. In 2019, Black people made up 16% of deaths in police custody despite representing just over 3% of the population, and accounted for a third of those fatally shot by police that year. Drawing on John Amaechi and Reni Eddo-Lodge, we've written before about the "absence of challenge" that comes with privilege - the luxury of never having to think about any of this at all (A New Normal, Why "Checking Our Privilege" Is an Essential Part of Life in the UK).

• This isn't only a story about groups who are visibly marginalised. Rigid expectations of "traditional masculinity" carry their own structural cost: suicide remains the leading cause of death for men under 50 in the UK, and globally, roughly one man dies by suicide every minute (A New Normal, Why "The Patriarchy" Is a Bit Rubbish for Everyone).

None of these gaps exist in isolation, and none of them are caused by any single decision-maker being unkind. They're the compounding effect of systems, education, housing, healthcare, employment, that were not designed with everyone's starting point in mind. Because those systems shape the people who walk into our organisations and our services, the inequality doesn't stay outside. It shows up in who applies, who accesses our services, who feels like our organisation is there "for them", who's promoted, who's retained, and who quietly disengages.

3. Everyone has the ability to make a difference

None of this is only leadership's job to fix, and that's the encouraging part. We've written before about the importance of anyone feeling able to challenge microaggression - either in the moment or afterwards (A New Normal, The Power of Calling It Out (or In)). The strategies behind that outcome are ones anyone can use: it's fine to raise something later rather than in the moment; assume positive intent while still naming the impact; explain the impact rather than just describing the incident; and use "we" language to keep the conversation about collective standards rather than individual blame.

Making a difference isn't just about confronting poor behaviour. It's also important to educate ourselves about the different life experiences of others. But a word of warning: the responsibility sits with us to educate ourselves, not on people in marginalised communities to do the work. As we've said before, "there's no way that any of us will be better LGBT+ allies by instructing our gay colleague to educate us in the entire gay experience." Seeking out perspectives already out there, created by the people whose experience it is, is something everyone can do without waiting for permission (A New Normal, Become a Better Ally — Without Even Moving From Your Sofa).

This matters because it means the responsibility for building an inclusive culture is distributed, not concentrated. Policy sets the conditions. People, at every level, decide, moment to moment, whether those conditions get lived up to.

4. Difference is brilliant, but only if we design for it

This is where equity earns its keep as a distinct idea from equality. Equality means giving everyone the same resources regardless of circumstance; equity means giving people what they specifically need to reach the same outcome. Prescription glasses for someone who needs them isn't favouritism, it's the thing that lets them see (A New Normal, Equity vs Equality).

We've suggested five practical steps for organisations wanting to act on this: recognise that people have genuinely different needs; review policies through an equity lens (the gap between maternity and shared parental leave pay, largely unchanged since shared parental leave was introduced in 2015, is one clear example); address the unequal starting points institutional prejudice creates; shift the narrative from diversity alone to equity and inclusion; and share responsibility for inclusive practice across every role, not just HR's.

It's also worth taking intersectionality seriously here, not as a buzzword but as a design principle. The legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term in 1989, describes it as "a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects". Crenshaw cautions against treating challenges faced on the basis of race, gender, disability, and class as separate problems to be solved one at a time, when for many people they are experienced simultaneously and inseparably (Crenshaw, Columbia Law School, 2017). A policy that works for women in general, or for disabled people in general, can still fail a disabled woman of colour specifically, if nobody designed for the intersection.

The prize for getting this right is real. Inclusive teams have been found to outperform their peers by 80%. 60% of employees say they would leave, or already have left, an organisation that didn't feel inclusive (Deloitte Australia, 2013, as cited in A New Normal's What is Diversity & Inclusion?). Yet 72% of HR professionals say neurodiversity isn't factored into their people-management practice at all, and a further 17% don't even know whether it is, despite neurodivergent conditions affecting close to half the workforce when considered collectively, and despite the reminder that "no two people are alike" even within a single neurodivergent group (CIPD, cited in A New Normal's Neurodiversity Inclusion). That's the gap between knowing difference is valuable and actually building the conditions for it to show up.

Difference doesn't need to be smoothed away to be manageable. It needs to be expected, resourced, and genuinely accounted for. Get that right, and it stops being something to manage, it becomes the thing that makes the work better.

Bringing it together

Inclusion has to be a concerted, proactive, consistent effort - both organisationally and as individuals.The inequality people experience outside our workplaces doesn't won't be solved by ignoring it - we want our workplaces to be the highest common denominator, not a continuation of the structural inequity of the outside world.. Nobody needs a specific role to make a difference. And the organisations that get the most out of their people's difference are the ones that build equity and intersectionality into their design from the start, rather than retrofitting it after something goes wrong.

A New Normal is a UK-based EDI consultancy working with organisations to turn intention into practice. If this raises questions worth exploring together, we'd love to talk.