How To Stop The Misrepresentation From Within

Sierra Heilman

sierraheilman19@gmail.com

As we've taken courses, learned about past mistakes of journalists and are constantly working to become well-rounded professionals in our industry, one topic that always appears is diversity. Increasing diversity and inclusion is a major key to success in the world of journalism and every other field for that matter. When there is a lack of diversity, problems arise and it can greatly damage a company's customer loyalty, a person's reputation, a newspaper's trustworthiness, etc. Sometimes, companies will try to show their diversity efforts and end up hurting themselves even more than if they didn't try. For example, Dove when they launched a new campaign that tried to include women of color turned out to be very offensive to women of color. Another example would be Pepsi showing their support for the Black Lives Matter movement and airing a commercial where Kendall Jenner hands a policeman a can of Pepsi to end police brutality among black people. That was an epic failure, to say the least. 

Why are companies still having these issue of misrepresentation in their messages? I believe it's the lack of diversity in the workplace and lack of conversations taking place that can easily solve some of these major message crises. Whether you are an advertising company, newsroom, public relations agency, etc., if you don't have a diverse body, then this problem will keep occurring. Here are a few building blocks I believe need to lay the foundation of every workplace.

Create an Inclusive Atmosphere

First thing is first – create an environment where everyone feels included. This has to happen first because if someone doesn't feel comfortable being themselves, then there will be a lack of confidence. A lack of confidence can lead to poor work performance, intimidation to speak up and share ideas and will ultimately take a toll on the workplace as a whole. 

Implementing things such as a breastfeeding room for mothers, a system that rotates meeting leaders, products in the bathrooms for women and celebrating holidays that are representative of the employees are just a few ways of changing the company's culture. There are many things you can do to create an inclusive atmosphere that values individuality and everyone needs to start implementing them.

Encourage the Conversation

Once you've created a company culture where everyone feels comfortable to be their true selves, I believe the next step to ending the misrepresentation of different groups is to encourage conversation that challenges one another to think differently. If everyone feels that their voices are heard and valued, then everyone can understand situations better, come up with successful solutions and achieve their goal of diversity and inclusion. 

Ways to encourage these types of conversation could be to have a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly table talks where everyone brings to the table their ideas, concerns and opinions on certain topics dealing with the company, clients, industry, etc. This could also help to create a stronger bond with your co-workers, which adds to a more comfortable work environment. 

Hire Diverse Professionals

We have learned in today's world, you can't be successful if you have a room full of people who only look just like you and have the same experiences as you. You simply won't have anything new to bring to the table and can easily become misinformed about different groups and cultures. The more diverse in all categories, including race, gender, ages, ethnicity, economic status, etc., the more successful and well-rounded your company will be. You can't just focus on your company though. You must believe in what you're doing to make diversity a core part of your workplace. Without it, your efforts to hire the best people, build an inclusive company culture and have those conversations will trickle away and enforce nothing. 

Some of the many advertising and marketing fails could've been avoided by having the input of diverse employees who could say, "You know what, I think that is a little offensive and could be taken the wrong way." Something as simple as that could help to stop future misrepresentation in the workplace.

The benefits of having a comfortable and confident multigenerational, multilingual, multiracial, etc., workforce will put you ahead of competing companies in so many ways. You will have more knowledge about the different audiences you reach, new ideas on including diversity in marketing and advertising pieces and can craft stories that better represent a group of people because you were able to invite those insightful conversations. All in all, diversity is a crucial building block to have in any industry and needs to be implemented.