Is all about challenging the systems and boundaries that were designed for the upliftment of certain groups of people only.

Addressing these systems takes many courageous conversations, thoughtfulness, empathy and vision.

For me, visionis the key. The reason I say that, is because we are biased and programmed by thousands of years, of laws, policies and behaviours that were designed to keep people unequal based on their culture, language, race, beliefs, religions, sexual orientation, disabilities, gender and more.

In order to address these areas of concern, we need to navigate our current systems, with a clear mind that is focussed on positive outcomes. It is superficial to say, that creating Affirmative Action programs and running Diversity and Inclusion programs will resolve everything, overnight and in the most equitable way possible.

It is also unfair to claim that Equity cannot be implemented in an adequate space of time either.

For me, vision speaks into the roles and responsibilities that face EVERY individual in the organisation or place of interaction that needs Equity to become the forefront runner in conversations. I am talking about Leadership of Self. The conversations always revolve around the Board of Directors, management or Leaders of a company. How many though, seek to address the injustice of the policies, systems and mindsets that drive those fixed behaviours?

It takes a collective mindset of positive, solution focussed interventions to create a new train of thinking, understanding and acceptance, before these systems can be sustainably changed and implemented. That means, everyone is responsible to engage in these courageous conversations.

Sustainability and Visionnow become partners in the quest to challenge the decisions surrounding Equity in the Workplace. Who else is the need for Equity for? It is certainly not the top levels of organisations.

That being said, we also need to be cognisant of the fact, that in the pursuit of Equity, we do this fairly, without discriminating against one group of people, in order to include others. As the saying goes, make the pie bigger and share it, rather than having a poverty mentality mindset that seeks to remove in order to take!

I have seen the impact in our own Country, in many parastatals. In the urgency to realign the injustices of the past histories of our Country, South Africa, many people failed to achieve the objective of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in a sustainable way. A way that includes minorities, previously disadvantaged communities, language groups, races, people with disabilities and sexual preferences too. The excitement to increase numbers, was a short lived fantasy, when recruitment processes and procedures were overruled, by tick box exercises, not reality of the skills needed for various positions.

Even now, some Internships are a joke. Most of the Learners and interns do not have capable senior people to correctly teach or mentor them on HOW they succeed or gain the necessary experience needed to succeed in the real world. Most interns are lost in a new world, that imposes restrictions, not openness for them. They lack the confidence to ask questions, do not know what the line of authority is, not sure if they will insult someone or be seen as incompetent, and yet, there is an expectation of them, to excel? They are used as cheap labour. Because most of the people who are in these positions of power, have no clue, are not educated for the role and are not correctly skilled either. It is a mess!

If a company is going to drive the conversation around inclusion of Diverse teams, then they need to ensure that they have a proven method of pairing skilled, experienced colleagues with the new people coming in. This is the conversation very few want to address.

Stop getting rid of the experienced mindsand in the quest to improve equity, you forget to upskill, upgrade and enable your new people to succeed, by giving them access to these talented colleagues.

The system everyone is forgetting that can easily be introduced into the work environment, is the collaborative one. Where everyone collaborates to ensure the successful running of operations, needs, understanding, skills development, sharing of information, compassion, communication across departments, cohesion in brain storming together, discovering alternatives and so much more.  It does not have to be scary. It just needs to be implemented!