How to Become More Inclusive at Work: The Missing Piece Everyone's Ignoring

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Three weeks ago, I watched a senior manager at a Fortune 500 company completely shut down a brilliant idea from their newest graduate hire. Not because the idea was rubbish – it was actually spot-on – but because the kid had a thick Vietnamese accent and the manager couldn't be bothered listening properly. The kicker? That same manager had just finished bragging about their company's "commitment to diversity and inclusion."

This is the problem with workplace inclusion training these days. Everyone's focused on the wrong bloody things.

After 18 years of running communication workshops across Australia, I've seen every possible variation of inclusion training gone wrong. Companies tick boxes, HR departments run mandatory sessions about pronouns and cultural awareness days, and then wonder why their workplace culture remains as stiff as a two-day-old lamington.

The Real Problem Nobody Talks About

Here's what I've learned from working with over 200 Australian businesses: inclusiveness isn't about knowing which fork to use at the multicultural potluck dinner. It's about fundamentally changing how we communicate with each other.

Most inclusion training focuses on what NOT to say. Don't use this word. Don't make that assumption. Don't, don't, don't. But nobody teaches people what TO do instead. It's like teaching someone to drive by only showing them where the brakes are.

The companies that actually get inclusion right – places like Atlassian, REA Group, and Canva – they don't just avoid being exclusive. They actively create communication environments where different perspectives are genuinely valued. Not tolerated. Valued.

Communication Training That Actually Works

Real inclusion starts with effective communication training that teaches people to listen differently. I mean really listen, not just wait for their turn to speak.

Here's something controversial: I believe most diversity training actually makes things worse. There, I said it. When you spend two hours telling people all the ways they might accidentally offend someone, they become so paranoid about saying the wrong thing that they stop engaging authentically altogether.

Instead, focus on these three core communication skills:

1. Curiosity over Assumptions

Train your people to ask questions instead of filling in blanks. When someone suggests an approach you haven't heard of, don't immediately think "that won't work here." Ask "tell me more about how that worked in your experience."

I once worked with a mining company where the Indigenous liaison officer kept suggesting different safety protocols. The site manager kept dismissing them as "traditional knowledge" that wouldn't apply to modern operations. Turns out, those protocols had prevented serious accidents for thousands of years. The Western safety manual? Three years old.

2. Comfort with Discomfort

This is where most people fail spectacularly. Inclusion requires being comfortable with feeling awkward sometimes. You will say the wrong thing. You will make assumptions. The magic happens when you can acknowledge it, learn from it, and move on without making it all about your feelings.

I remember facilitating a session where a department head called their new team member "exotic looking." The room went silent. Instead of pretending it didn't happen or launching into a lecture about appropriate language, I asked the team member how they felt about that description. They explained why it made them uncomfortable. The manager apologised genuinely, learned something, and their working relationship actually improved.

3. Code-Switching Fluency

Here's another unpopular opinion: expecting everyone to communicate the same way is not inclusion – it's assimilation. True inclusion means recognising that people from different backgrounds communicate differently, and that's actually a strength.

Some cultures are more direct. Others are more contextual. Some people think out loud. Others need processing time. Good interpersonal communication training teaches teams to recognise and adapt to these differences, not eliminate them.

The Australian Context Nobody Mentions

We love to think we're naturally inclusive because we're multicultural, but honestly? We're often terrible at it. Our default communication style is quite direct and informal, which can be brilliant for cutting through bureaucracy but absolutely shocking for people from cultures that value hierarchy and face-saving.

I've worked with teams where the Aussie members think they're being friendly by using nicknames and casual language, while their international colleagues feel disrespected and excluded. Neither side is wrong – they're just operating from different communication frameworks.

The solution isn't to make everyone communicate like Anglo-Australians. It's to develop what I call "communication flexibility" – the ability to recognise when your natural style isn't landing well and adjust accordingly.

What Actually Changes Workplace Culture

After nearly two decades of this work, I can tell you that sustainable inclusion comes from three things:

Leadership modelling. If your senior people don't demonstrate inclusive communication consistently, forget it. Your training budget is wasted.

Systems that support inclusion. Meeting structures that ensure everyone speaks. Decision-making processes that actively seek diverse input. Performance reviews that measure inclusive behaviours.

Skills practice, not just awareness. You can't workshop your way to inclusion in a two-hour session. It requires ongoing professional development training that builds communication competence over time.

I worked with one tech startup that completely transformed their culture by implementing "perspective rounds" in every meeting. Before making any significant decision, they'd specifically ask: "What perspective haven't we considered yet?" Simple change, massive impact.

The Metrics That Matter

Most companies measure inclusion all wrong. They count demographics and survey satisfaction scores. But the real indicators are communication patterns:

• How often do quiet team members speak up in meetings?
• When someone disagrees with the popular opinion, do they feel safe expressing it?
• Are ideas from newer or younger team members given the same consideration as those from senior staff?
• Do people from different backgrounds socialise together, or do they form separate clusters?

The companies getting this right track these behaviours, not just hiring statistics.

Beyond the Buzzwords

Look, I'm not saying traditional diversity training is completely useless. Understanding cultural differences and recognising unconscious bias – these things matter. But they're just the starting point.

Real inclusion happens when communication becomes so naturally adaptive that people stop thinking about it. When asking clarifying questions becomes automatic. When different perspectives are sought out, not just tolerated when they appear.

It happens when that Vietnamese graduate's accent becomes irrelevant because everyone's developed the listening skills to understand valuable input regardless of how it's delivered.

The Bottom Line

Workplace inclusion isn't a HR problem to be solved with policy updates and awareness sessions. It's a communication challenge that requires genuine skill development.

The organisations that understand this – that invest in comprehensive communication training rather than just checkbox diversity initiatives – they're the ones actually creating inclusive cultures.

And here's what's interesting: once you develop these communication skills for inclusion, everything else improves too. Customer service gets better. Project collaboration becomes more effective. Innovation increases because people feel safe contributing diverse ideas.

Inclusion training that focuses on communication skills isn't just politically correct window dressing. It's competitive advantage disguised as social responsibility.

The question isn't whether your workplace needs to become more inclusive. In today's market, that's a given. The question is whether you're going to develop the communication competence to actually make it happen, or just keep rearranging the diversity statistics while your real culture stays exactly the same.

Most companies choose the latter. The smart ones choose skills over slogans.

That Vietnamese graduate I mentioned? Six months later, after the company invested in proper communication training, she was leading their most successful product launch. Same person, same brilliant ideas. Different listening environment.

Makes you wonder what other talent you might be missing while everyone's focused on saying the right things instead of hearing them.