Inclusion & Accountability
Challenge
How can PURE Insurance leverage inclusion training after the workshops conclude?
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In the fall of 2020, PURE Insurance partnered with the NeuroLeadership Institute to launch a training program called INCLUDE: The Neuroscience of Smarter Teams. PURE’s entire executive team and all 167 people managers participated in this program, building on the three basic habits of inclusive teams:
- Find Common Ground: uncover shared experiences, while acknowledging and respecting our differences both in background and perspectives. Develop shared goals;
- Lift People Up: make your team a safe place to reach and grow. Ask for contributions from everyone. Share opportunities and credit;
- Help Create Clarity: share information, keep people in the loop, and explain your choices.
It takes intentional effort and practice to make inclusion a priority, so to continue the dialog after the sessions, we launched Accountability pods, where pairs meet regularly to share their progress, lean on each other for counsel, and hold each other accountable.
Outcomes
To ensure the effectiveness of our accountability strategy, we surveyed all of our INCLUDE participants. Four months after the program concluded, 92.9% of all respondents applied concepts from the workshops to be more inclusive at least 1-9 times in the previous week. All the respondents felt they became a more effective leader because of the concepts and strategies learned in the workshops.
Building smarter, more inclusive teams starts with leadership, but must include individual contributors. To close the loop on fostering inclusion, we are repackaging this program for our individual contributors, so they have the language to hold our leaders accountable when our reality falls short of our aspirations. We know cultivating the ability to activate more voices will fuel broader engagement, enhance decision making, and drive innovation, so PURE will continue to measure the impact of INCLUDE training by monitoring our mid-year and annual reviews, plus our annual Gallup Employee Engagement Survey results.
Quote
I found the INCLUDE Workshops to be extremely helpful. I have a better appreciation for some of the consequences of people not feeling included; and it reminded me that I often rely on too few people for inputs and often lack the patience to listen fully to contrary ideas. The Accountability pods our team established after the workshops gave me the space to practice subtle acts of inclusion, enabling me to improve decision making.