More and more companies have launched internal podcasts for entertainment, growing company culture, and employee engagement. But many companies have also started to use their internal podcasts to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
DEI initiatives are crucial for a variety of reasons, ranging from company culture to productivity to public relations and more. So it’s a good idea for your organization’s internal podcast to drive those initiatives, too. If you’re not sure where to start, read on.
Raise Awareness of DEI Issues
Firstly, you can use internal podcast episodes as opportunities to raise awareness of DEI issues, such as a lack of diversity in your current employee pool, difficulty reaching diversity goals in recruitment, and much more.
Many employees, especially those belonging to majority demographics, may not be aware of the unique issues that those belonging to marginalized groups face. Internal podcasts give you a chance to raise these issues in a format and medium that’s easier for many to internalize.
Furthermore, you can invite diverse employees to your internal podcast episodes. They can voice their unique experiences and humanize the DEI goals that your business is striving to meet. Your chief compliance officer, who is responsible for these issues, can oversee the process.
In other words, treat your internal podcast episodes as radio interviews, broaching complex but important topics with diverse employees to spread understanding throughout your organization.
Engage Employees with New Ideas (and Each Other)
Internal podcasts are excellent avenues through which you can expose many of your employees to new ideas and to each other.
In a lot of larger organizations, employees can feel siloed or segregated into different departments or groups, often through no fault of their own. For example, it’s feasible that a marketing specialist may simply never meet a manufacturing technician or vice versa. This can make it hard for your employees to understand each other, plus make it more difficult for your company culture to feel cohesive and unified.
With your internal podcast, launch some episodes discussing DEI initiatives and inviting employees to meet and talk with each other “on the air”. Those podcasts may result in new friendships and new understandings that tie your workers together, creating a strong, mutually beneficial social fabric in the process.
Handing the Mic to Under-heard Individuals
Most crucially, your company can use its internal podcast episodes to give the proverbial microphone to underheard or minority individuals. Many minority employees feel that their voices aren’t heard at their businesses, despite efforts from management.
There’s no better way to rectify this than to give these employees a chance to raise concerns or awareness about their feelings over a podcast. In many ways, this can feel and be more effective and more inclusive than simply telling employees to write complaints or suggestions on cards and leave them outside an executive’s office.
In the end, you can and should use internal podcasting to help to drive the DEI initiatives that your business aims to meet. Internal podcasting is a powerful tool to drive employee engagement; use it to its maximum extent!
Want to learn more about DEI strategies? Check out the recent event we did featuring Mark Kaplan!