Setting policies in practice

Ensuring everyone in your practice or workplace understands what is expected of them is crucial when it comes to addressing and preventing microaggressions. By putting the right policies in place, it will ensure accountability and responsibility are clearly assigned.

Just as project teams only work well together if there are agreed responsibilities, scopes of services, key performance indicators, and ways of working, the same applies when it comes to dealing with microaggressions – especially in workplaces with a large staff.

This does not mean that personal interventions should be discouraged – far from it.

However, giving everyone a shared understanding of what microaggressions are, how they arise, and how staff are expected to treat each other to avoid microaggressions, can help everyone.

The policy should have standard operating procedures to deal with foreseeable problems, tailored to the business. These could include:

a way to explain the system to staff when they join
a way to refresh staff understanding over time
a set of optional ways to handle microaggressions to cover different situations, with defined outcomes

For best results, the policy should be developed with colleague involvement and acceptance, and its functioning should be monitored, with the resulting feedback used to improve it over time.

Implementing a policy to address microaggressions

A policy establishes the minimum standard of behaviour expected of staff, explains the rationale and objective, and manages the staff expectations. It should set out:

1. The ethical, business, and overarching social justice rationale for addressing and preventing microaggressions
2. The business’s main objectives in addressing and preventing microaggressions
3. The business’s overarching commitment to addressing and preventing microaggressions
4. Definition of relevant terminology
5. Colleagues’ responsibility for advocating for social justice, especially when their co-workers are involved
6. The behavioural and verbal attitudes staff should adopt when addressing microaggressions
7. The possible ways to call out microaggressions, including ways to raise environmental or procedural ones
8. The possible employer-supported remedies for dealing with microaggressions
9. The possible employer-supported consequences of repeatedly not following the policy

Businesses seriously committed to addressing and preventing microaggressions should make sure that no worker can justifiably claim not to know their stance or be in any doubt about their seriousness. The following actions can help in setting out this stance.

Employer-supported strategies for avoiding microaggressions

These are just some examples of employer-supported strategies to address and avoid microaggressions in the workplace.

Man giving a staff training induction to group

Staff induction

Job applicants should be told that the business is committed to addressing and preventing microaggressions in the workplace.

Successful candidates should receive the microaggression policy on their first day and undergo introductory training in it as soon as possible. It makes sense to wrap this up with other induction training so that consequences of breaching the policy can be linked to formal disciplinary matters.

Man in a wheelchair at a desk with computers

Internal communications

Businesses should be clear in their commitment to inclusion and diversity with internal communications. Part of this can be regular reminders – in group emails or staff meetings, for example – about the risk that microaggressions pose and the benefits that can accrue from calling them out.

Two women role-modelling for a younger student

Ongoing refresher training

Practice-wide regular, perhaps annual, refresher training for staff to remind them of the policy and update them about any changes, possibly as part of a wider refresher training day devoted to tackling social justice.

Again, this ensures that everyone can stay engaged in the issue over time.

Older and younger woman on a sofa looking at a piece of paper

Role-modelling and allyship

Practice leadership – directors, managers, partners – should lead by role-modelling the behaviours and attitudes expected of staff. This normalises the desired behaviour and reduces any anxiety in exhibiting it. Ultimately, it generates trust among staff that inclusion and diversity are taken seriously, and it is safe to call out microaggressions where they happen.

How does the organisation show allyship? A clear stance and speaking up for others sends a wider message about the values of the practice which is empowering for both witnesses and individuals.

Employer-endorsed strategies for dealing with microaggressions

These are just some examples of employer-endorsed strategies to address and avoid microaggressions in the workplace.

Microaggression procedures

There are many possible ways to commit a microaggression and to handle any calling out that follows. This makes it rather difficult to have a one-size-fits-all procedure for dealing with them. Instead, your practice might look to establish several options for escalation – including against itself for any environmental or procedural microaggressions.

Whatever systems are applied, they should:

aim to avoid apportioning blame to microaggressors (unless they are repeatedly resistant to making reasonable adjustments in line with the microaggression policy, in which case there ought to be a route to it becoming a formal disciplinary or legal matter)
account for and accommodate victims’ and bystander witnesses’ needs and sensitivities
set out an optional list of possible ways to call out a microaggression that the leaders will support
set out an optional list of possible outcomes from calling out that the leaders will support

Group of young architects around a table drinking coffee

Employee resource groups

Employers sometimes support inclusion and diversity objectives by setting up staff groups to give underrepresented groups a voice in the workplace. Not only does this help to build solidarity and trust, but it also provides a feedback loop for staff to have a say in relevant policies.

There are two varieties of staff group:

An employee resource group, where people with particular characteristic discuss and report on issues relevant to their experience
A staff network, where staff operate as a collective to influence organisational policy.