Promote diversity and belonging

Being able to speak up safely, is crucial for the development of a sentiment of belonging.

In an economy where more than half of the workforce is either not engaged or actively disengaged, nothing will give your organization a bigger competitive advantage than creating a culture where all your employees feel they belong.

A place where they know they can bring their authentic selves no matter how different they may be from the crowd.

Developing a strong belonging mindset among your people will help you not only in raising team engagement and keeping great talent but also unlock better performance. It will also enrich your planning and execution process.

A lens into our clients life

In today's market, we are serving customers who are all different. All the research done on consumer habits says, that it is rare to find a large group of clients, who use the same product in exactly the same way. Each client is unique, but since we don't have the time and resources de customize the product to each one of our users, and we don't have to, because that level of granularity in target is not necessary. That same researcher concluded that the clients will use a product that is slightly different from what they expect if it provides them with the value they need. We tend to create what is called a subset of the market, a smaller group of the overall consumer base that has a unique characteristic that plays a big role in their choice of the product category we are building, AKA their consumption habits. This often gets more exacerbated if the company is working on a niche market since you will have to deal with the uniqueness of the whole market and the uniqueness of each subset of it. So, we need as much representation as possible of these customer segments when we are deciding, and we need their unique voice to be heard, to be a lens that will provide us the insight needed to be able to better serve that subset of the market, you cannot deliver value to a client if you have no idea how the client perceived the value in the item you are building.

It is like we often tell startups founder, if you want to build a product that delivers unique and real value, that customer will love enough to buy it again and again, you should not start with the product, you start with a problem, something you know people will pay to solve, and the fastest and more reliable way to find a real problem, that you can use to build a successful business model is to look at your daily life and see what problem cause enough trouble that you are willing to pay to have them fixed, and how you can fix them.

yes, market research can help you get a broad idea about what each group and subgroup might need you to build, this is why it is used in a lot of companies, but it is not a valid substitute to having someone from the group been a part of the product development process.

And this stays valid, no matter how big your company becomes. because in a workplace where we are different, and each person seems to value their uniqueness. It is more important than ever to try to create a diverse workplace. So, it is a shame to see companies going through the hardship of hiring the right people to build diverse teams while making it almost impossible for those people to speak up and give the same insight that they were hired to provide. Ending up by having a facade of diversity. A place where from the outside it looks that a company has all it takes to create a culture of belonging for all, but most of the employees stay silent, disengaged, or decide to leave.

To build a workplace where everyone feels they can be authentic and forthcoming, they don't have to hide their real selves, start by making it easy to speak up, by making it psychologically safe to voice any opinions or concerns. At Fiill we can help you facilitate the process of creating this kind of place, a culture where people feel they belong.