Four people sit round a table in discussion, with one woman speaking whilst others listen; a quotation about company culture is displayed in large text above them.

Keeping Inclusion Relevant: How Everyday Decisions Shape Culture

Joanne Lockwood

Tags: Employee Experience, inclusive leadership, Psychological Safety, Positive People Experiences, workplace culture, workplace inclusion, Belonging at Work, reasonable adjustments, employee voice, equity at work

Keeping Inclusion Relevant: How Everyday Decisions Shape Culture and Belonging

“Of course we support that.”

It is a reassuring thing to hear when you ask for an adjustment at work.

Less reassuring when you are still waiting three weeks later. Your manager thought HR was dealing with it. HR was waiting for a decision on cost. Nobody was quite sure who could approve the equipment. Meanwhile, you are finding your own way through each working day.

So here is my question for leaders: how many times does someone have to ask before your commitment to inclusion becomes action?

Most organisations I work with have good intentions. Many have values that speak warmly about respect and belonging. They have people who genuinely care. The gap often appears between an encouraging first response and what happens next.

That space matters. It is where someone waits for support, chases a concern, questions an unfair decision or wonders whether it is worth speaking up again.

It is also where everyone else learns what kind of workplace this really is.

The second ask

I think we learn a great deal about a workplace by looking at the second ask.

The first ask can be relatively easy to receive. Someone raises a need. We listen, express concern and promise to look into it.

The second ask tells us whether anything moved.

Did someone take ownership? Was there a decision? Did the person know what would happen next? Or were they left to chase, explain themselves again and manage the consequences while everyone else carried on?

To the organisation, this may look like a request moving through a process. To the person involved, it can feel like being invited to speak and then having to fight to be heard.

Recent Acas research into disability-related conflict makes this painfully clear. Disabled employees described requests for support being questioned or treated as performance concerns. They described adjustments that were delayed or poorly managed, and lengthy discussions about who would fund equipment they needed to do their jobs. The research drew on interviews with 30 disabled employees who had experienced conflict, so it gives us insight into those experiences rather than a picture of every workplace. But the questions it raises deserve attention.^[1]

What happens when someone tells us the way we work is creating a barrier?

Do we remove the barrier? Or do we make them responsible for navigating it?

Everyone else is paying attention

It would be a mistake to think a poor response affects only the person who made the request.

Colleagues may see them struggling while they wait. They may hear a manager question why support is needed. They may notice that a complaint is quietly parked, or that someone who spoke up is suddenly treated as difficult.

They draw conclusions. If I needed help, would I get it? If I challenged something unfair, would anyone back me?

They also notice when an organisation responds well: when a manager listens, takes responsibility, acts promptly and checks whether the solution worked. Nobody needs access to a colleague’s private circumstances to see whether their workplace takes support seriously.

Research on employees who witnessed uncivil treatment of women at work found links between what observers saw and their own trust in the organisation, job satisfaction and thoughts about leaving. It examined a specific form of mistreatment, but it illustrates something we recognise in everyday life: how we treat one person can change how others feel about being here.^[2]

Your culture is what people encounter after they ask — and what everyone else learns by watching.

From belonging to speaking up

Timothy Clark describes four stages of psychological safety: inclusion safety, learner safety, contributor safety and challenger safety. In plain language: can I belong here, ask questions and make mistakes, offer what I know, and challenge something that is not working?^[3]

Think about what the second ask tells someone at each stage.

If I have to repeatedly justify an access need, do I feel included? If asking a question makes me look incompetent, will I risk learning in public? If my ideas are routinely ignored, why would I keep offering them? If I raise a concern and nothing happens, why would I challenge the next problem?

Being allowed to speak is a low bar. People need to know that what they say will be taken seriously.

Action does not always mean agreeing with every suggestion or granting every request exactly as proposed. It does mean responding fairly, explaining decisions, addressing problems and following through.

A study of healthcare professionals found that past experiences of not being listened to could make people reluctant to speak up later. Some participants believed there was little point raising a concern if nothing would change. Although the research took place in healthcare, that question is familiar in many workplaces: why bother?^[4]

We sometimes call the withdrawal that follows “quiet quitting”. I would be careful with that label. It can sound as though the employee is the problem. Sometimes someone still does their job well but stops offering ideas, flagging risks or giving the organisation the benefit of their experience. If we want their voice back, we should look at what happened the last time they used it.

Culture shows up in the handover

It would be easy to turn this into a story about managers who do not care. Sometimes poor judgement or prejudice is part of the problem, and we must address it. But we need to look at the systems around the manager too.

A manager may want to help and still have no authority to approve a change. HR may have a process but no clear route to a decision. IT may be waiting for a specification. Facilities may never have been brought into the conversation. Each person sees their piece of the request. The employee lives with the whole thing.

That is why I talk about Positive People Experiences. People experience an organisation through what happens to them and around them, not through the strength of its intentions. A warm conversation matters. So does the decision that follows it. So does the time it takes. So does whether anyone checks back afterwards.

There is a useful connection with Frederick Herzberg’s hygiene factors: aspects of working life such as policies, supervision, relationships and working conditions. In his theory, getting these basics right helps prevent dissatisfaction; it does not, by itself, create motivation.^[5]

We cannot expect people to feel connected and ready to contribute while everyday conditions keep letting them down. A fair process and a manager who follows through may seem unremarkable when they work. When they fail, the effect spreads.

The detractors in a culture are not always outspoken opponents of inclusion. Sometimes they are repeated delays, evasive answers and small acts of dismissal. Together, they teach people to lower their expectations.

Inclusion is a verb. Someone has to be able to do it.

Follow the experience

The second ask can appear anywhere in working life.

A candidate requests a different interview format and has to explain why to three different people. A colleague challenges the way opportunities are handed out, receives a warm response and sees the same choices made next month. Someone reports a racist remark and hears nothing about what will happen next. A person returns from parental leave to find that development conversations happened while they were away.

These situations call for different responses. What connects them is the gap between what a workplace says people can expect and what they actually experience.

If you want to understand your culture, choose one point where people regularly ask for something or raise a concern. Follow what happens from the first conversation to the outcome.

Take reasonable adjustments. Who receives a request? Who talks with the employee about what would help? Who can make a decision? Who handles a delay? Does anybody check whether the adjustment works once it arrives?

Then ask about the experience. Did the employee know what was happening? Could they raise a problem without feeling that their credibility was on trial? Did they have to chase? Did the eventual response make their working life better?

Ask what the wider team has learned, too. Do colleagues believe it is safe to ask for help, offer an idea or challenge a decision? What happened the last time someone did?

Acas advises employers to put an inclusion policy into everyday practice through an action plan that identifies responsibilities, timescales, measures and what needs to change if the plan is not working. That is a useful starting point. The harder and more valuable step is to listen when people tell you where it breaks down.^[6]

Measure the wait, as well as the welcome

Many organisations ask people whether they feel included. Keep asking. Their answers matter.

But a favourable survey score cannot tell you everything about what happened after someone asked for help. Alongside listening to people, look at the work itself.

How long do decisions take? Where do requests stall? How often must someone repeat information? Are concerns resolved and checked afterwards, or simply marked as closed? Who benefits from development opportunities, and who keeps being told to wait?

Look at patterns across different groups, while respecting people’s privacy. Race, disability, age, class, gender, neurodivergence and caring responsibilities can shape how a process is experienced. An average can hide a much harder journey for some colleagues.

And look beyond the number of concerns raised.

Silence does not prove that everyone is happy. It may mean people have learned that speaking up changes little.

Make belonging something people can feel

Belonging does not appear by magic, and we cannot deliver it with a slogan.

People notice whether their ideas are taken seriously. Whether the rules are applied fairly. Whether someone acts when behaviour crosses a line. Whether getting support is straightforward or exhausting. They notice what happens to their colleagues, as well as what happens to them.

Keeping inclusion relevant means paying attention to those experiences as your people and your workplace change. It means giving managers room to say, “I am unsure how to handle this, but I will find out,” and expecting them to follow through.

Employees can tell us what they experience. They should not have to design the solution, persuade every department to cooperate and chase its delivery on top of doing their job. Responsibility for changing how work happens sits with those who have the power to do it.

So this month, choose a request or decision that matters to your people. Follow it all the way through. Speak to those affected. Find out where they had to ask twice, and what everyone else learned by watching.

Then fix one point of friction and check whether the experience improved.

That is how we create Positive People Experiences: through decisions people can trust, support they can rely on and evidence that speaking up can make a difference.

Your culture is what people encounter after they ask. What happens next in yours?