Kate Morris
Celebrating important holidays and observances is one concrete way workplaces can create a culture of inclusion. Much like the annual holiday parties that happen at this time of year, the very best gatherings foster team spirit and build personal connections between staff. With various workforces thankfully becoming normalized, let’s also plan events around other holidays as a way to find connections.
Holidays often combine the core tenets of religious beliefs or a historical event with a celebration of everyday life. For me, the Christmas period is one of reflection, reverence, generosity and ultimately gratitude. Other religious holidays tap into other virtues, from forgiveness and atonement on Yom Kippur to compassion during Ramadan. Perhaps if organizations can connect their core values with the purpose of the holiday in question, then every holiday becomes an opportunity to support organizational culture and purpose, and share and learn.
From intention to authenticity
At first glance, it seems like holiday celebrations and observances can be a great opportunity to foster diversity education for all staff, and to provide space for diverse employees to share their experience with their co-workers. But even that can set up an “us and them” model that has its own problems when it comes to building an inclusive culture.
At a deeper level, holidays let us learn about what matters most to our coworkers, to learn about where they are coming from, their family life and what their values are. That process can lead to identifying shared values. Holidays gives us permission to be connected and personal and to tap into personal authenticity as much as organizational purpose and culture.
Don’t assume diverse staff want to share their beliefs in the workplace
If not handled with sensitivity, holiday events can make exclusion a predictable, annual event. (Eg, tapping Black team members for their ideas only during Black History Month.) As anyone who has organized holiday festivities knows, coordinating these events are a lot of work. If diverse employees are tasked with coordinating such events as representatives of their own faith or identity, that work should be shared with others to not only increase the impact of learning but also to ensure that inclusion initiatives don’t inadvertently place the ownership for diversity just on various staff.
We also need to acknowledge that not all diverse staff will have a common relationship to their heritage, identity or religion, nor will they necessarily feel a desire to share it publicly in the workplace.
“I celebrate Nowruz, but I don’t need my employer to coordinate a celebration around that, no matter how well-intentioned doing so would be,” says Sam Sanjabi, a principal engineer at OKTA. “At the same time, if I did feel strongly about Nowruz celebrations, there could be an organic mechanism for me to bring the idea forward to our events team.”
Even within Christianity, there are different practices and observance days just related to Christmas that makes Christmas diverse. Making sure that an organization maintains and cultivates a welcoming, open, and safe environment for diverse experiences during Christmas holidays is important — whether that means offering mocktails or pork-free products or creating opportunities for staff to speak to their beliefs when and as they need to.
Listen and support staff how they want to be supported
Communicate available accommodations for religious reasons, cultural difference and differences based on identity, but where possible be open to feedback based on the specific needs of staff. Doing so builds relationships, invites alternative viewpoints into an organizational conversation, and lets managers understand what motivates their employees and coworkers. Ideally, it fosters organizational learning that is more culturally nuanced. But most importantly, doing so provides staff with the support they need when they need it.
Mohammad Raza, an account coordinator here at Kaiser and Partners, says that having experienced real religious persecution, he doesn’t believe in diminishing Christmas for anyone. Instead, he appreciates knowing that his organization has the willingness and bandwidth to give him the time and space he needs when he needs it — whether that is to celebrate Eid or to mourn and grieve the family of Muslims killed in London, Ontario earlier this year .
“It’s complex,” said Mohammad. “Do we have people in our organization who need recognition? Does the organization have someone who can speak truth to this topic authentically? Do we have ways to keep diverse staff involved in the activity, so that even while there may be some ‘outside looking in’, that experience is appreciated and allies are present, ensuring that all of their colleagues feel comfortable, included, and most of all, acknowledged? ”
Holidays give organizations an opportunity to reflect on any structures that may be in place that work against inclusion and measure whether the experience of diverse staff is being heard, shared and validated. Holidays also often share inclusive values — encouraging empathy, magnanimity, respect, and connection. As corporate cultures seek to imbed core values in day-to-day operations, holidays create a community that is primed to explore often elusive topics like purpose, value, virtues and mission and to do so against the backdrop of what is most important to them personally.
The pandemic has taught us that finding ways to stay connected to our core values is crucial. If more holiday events let us explore that in the workplace, it’s something we should definitely get behind.