International Women’s Day is celebrated on 8^th March each year, and this year’s theme is ‘inspire inclusion.’

We are all encouraged to make a pledge around inspiring inclusion, but how can we help to make our pledges come to life and not just be words on our LinkedIn page...

Get your teams involved

Start by getting the leaders in your business involved. Their behaviours are so important to the business – if we see our senior leaders acting in certain way, then that’s the behaviours that we will all see as acceptable, bad or good.

When instructing your management on their pledges, make sure they think about how they will make the pledges tangible. How will these pledges look in the workplace? What improvements can colleagues expect to see from these pledges? They will also need to go back and review what they have said down the line to see if they have actioned on their words.

Our pledges might also encourage us to step outside our comfort zones and face our unconscious biases – even more reason to make that pledge!

Promote those pledges!

Communication is key, so think about where you can put these pledges to make the most impact in your business. Will they be most impactful in digital format or in print? Make sure you do your audience analysis and bear them in mind when communicating the pledges. Maybe encourage them to create their own pledges too. It’s something everyone across the business can get involved in.

Find out more about Internal Women’s Day: www.internationalwomensday.com

PS If you want to stimulate your brain outside of the workplace, check out the Philosopher-in-Residence blog – out fortnightly on Thursdays, courtesy of Make Me A Plan’s Principal Planner, Anna Pascoe. Browse the latest edition here:

https://www.makemeaplan.com/news/on-leaps