What Is Inclusion? Benefits, Tips, & Environmental Justice

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Inclusion is a concept that can build diversity within a community or organization. So, what is inclusion? Inclusion is a concept that creates a sense of solidarity and belonging for everyone.

This article explains the ins and outs of inclusion and ways to create an environment that supports it. So, check out the following information!

What Is Inclusion?

Inclusion is a concept that supports the diversity of individuals or groups, ensuring that everyone has equal access to resources or opportunities. It is not only about physical access, but also about understanding cultural differences.

Inclusion can also mean embracing and accommodating people who are discriminated against because of their gender, race, abilities, identity, and so on.

The concept of inclusion is often connected to diversity. Inclusion is more than just ensuring that an individual is embraced and listened to. This concept embraces diversity to foster a healthy, balanced environment where everyone feels involved and valued.

For example, in a company, employees are allowed to express their ideas and opinions freely during meetings. This will lead to two-way communication because it is not only the boss who has the right to express their opinion.

By ensuring inclusion, employees will feel that their presence and opinions are more valued. If this continues to be implemented, a healthy and motivating work setting will be created.

In conclusion, diversity is the variety of groups, such as race, gender, age, background, and so on. Meanwhile, inclusion is the process of accepting and embracing the values of these groups.

Warga Asri can find many examples of inclusive environments, such as in schools, workplaces, or communities. Examples of workplace inclusion include providing training for everyone and designing a more disability-friendly environment.

Common examples that Warga Asri can find in public facilities include gentle slopes for wheelchair users, accessible bathrooms for people with disabilities, priority seating on commuter trains, and patterned paths as guideways for friends with visual impairments.

Then, in schools, an inclusive environment can be created by designing a curriculum that meets students’ needs, offering diverse learning formats, conducting regular assessments to identify students’ needs, and providing books and resources that embrace all students regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or ability.

Why Is Inclusion Important?

There are several reasons why inclusion is important, including:

Enhancing Innovation and Creativity

Diverse groups generally have diverse perspectives and ideas. As a result, you can get diverse innovations and solutions. When applied in the workplace, companies can be better prepared to face changes that may occur faster than expected.

For example, in a company, a product development team can be composed of members from sales, marketing, and product teams. The sales team can convey consumer complaints to evaluate product development.

Then, the product team can design or develop products that meet those consumer needs through careful discussion with managers and consideration of the company’s business values.

Once the product is complete, the marketing team can promote it across all the company’s digital channels to ensure more customers are aware of the updates. By including diverse perspectives in the product development team, the products created are relevant to customer needs and ready to adapt to future changes.

Increasing Productivity

Inclusion can increase productivity by fostering strong team relationships and collaboration. Employees who feel included and listened to are highly motivated.

As a result, employees who work in an inclusive environment can fulfill their responsibilities more effectively. If this continues, their productivity can increase.

For example, companies can provide equal career development and training opportunities for all employees regardless of their educational background. Despite their degrees and diplomas, they can develop themselves by participating in special training programs, seminars, and workshops.

This certainly motivates employees to upgrade their skills and increase their productivity.

Improving Employee Retention

Inclusion in the workplace or community can also increase member retention. This is because they are provided with the right tools to work and the resources they need.

A specific example in a company is when it provides work tools that support employee performance. These work tools can be tailored to employees’ limitations and needs.

For example, visually impaired employees can get laptops equipped with text-to-speech features so that what is displayed on the laptop screen can be converted to speech. As a result, these employees can continue to work productively.

Members and employees who are “heard” by their company or community will feel valued, which will make them more motivated to work longer in that environment.

How to Be Inclusive

Inclusion means creating an environment that supports and accepts everyone. To achieve this, you can follow these tips:

Speak up: You can start speaking out against discrimination and prejudice against others.
Enrich yourself with new insights: You can read a lot of accurate information about other cultures and learn to appreciate the differences.
Create an inclusive environment: You can also provide easily accessible facilities and resources, and promote diversity in every policy you make.
Listen to and learn from the experiences of others: You can learn about other people’s perspectives and experiences to gain insights into different points of view.
Respect others: Be respectful of everyone, regardless of their background and abilities. By doing so, you will not be influenced by assumptions or negative stereotypes.

Understanding Environmental Justice

When it comes to inclusivity, Warga Asri may be aware of its social impacts. However, diversity and inclusion also affect the surroundings.

Environmental justice is a concept where everyone, regardless of race, background, ability, gender, or other factors, receives equal protection from health and environmental dangers.

This concept aims to achieve environmental equality, enabling everyone to participate fairly and ensuring climate protection. It exists to combat environmental injustice.

Environmental injustice is a condition where environmental damage and adverse impacts are not shared fairly, with low-income communities often being the most disadvantaged. This can be seen in slums with polluted rivers located behind elite residential areas and high-rise buildings.

Environmental injustice also affects health, as residents are constantly exposed to waste and garbage and are at higher risk of contracting various diseases. To address this issue, there is a principle of environmental justice that consists of three elements: distributive justice, procedural justice, and recognition justice.

Distributive justice: Environmental risks and benefits must be fairly shared across all levels of society.
Procedural justice: The community must be fairly involved in decision-making related to environmental protection.
Recognitive justice: There must be recognition and respect for the different conditions and vulnerabilities experienced by certain community groups.

That concludes the information about inclusion that’s important to understand. Inclusion is about creating an environment that embraces everyone, regardless of background or experience. Inclusion can be applied anywhere, whether in the professional sphere or in the community.

Speaking of communities, Indonesia Asri is an inclusive environmental community, as anyone, regardless of background, can participate in all Indonesia Asri programs to preserve the Earth.

Surely, this supports the concept of environmental justice, where everyone receives equal protection from the dangers posed by the damage to nature.

Indonesia Asri offers several programs that you can join, including #AksiAsri, as well as exciting campaigns that you should look forward to.

So, register now and join various programs at Indonesia Asri to help create a greener Earth!