What We Mean When We Say Inclusive Work Culture

The Mill is a community of gig workers that aims to run on mutual trust, honesty and goodwill. In order to enable this it is important to have an inclusive work culture even when we are not a traditional agency setup. In a time when people are slowly realizing their importance, and shifting over to freelance or consultant roles, The Mill aims to be a space that promotes professional as well as personal growth. With frequent reminders to initiate self care, regular 1:1 or even helping gig workers find jobs all across the country, we’re here to slowly but surely build something the freelance community hasn’t seen before. All of this is possible because we believe in being inclusive.

Inclusive work culture is a buzzword that is being used by almost every new company now. From what we have noticed, unfortunately inclusivity stops at gender and religion… Some of the newer, more woke brands will end up giving a mental health day off every now and then, go gung ho about period leave and 4 day work weeks, but is this what inclusivity is all about?

Here’s what we mean when we say we’re inclusive.
Inclusivity refers to the true acceptance of every person: it refers to their mental health, their religious beliefs, their political preferences, gender, sexuality, all of it. The aim of an inclusive work culture is to get different kinds of people to work together. So if you ask us, inclusive work culture is not just a concept it is how you show up to work daily.

Some non-inclusive practices we don’t realize we indulge in:

• The ‘he said, she said’ drama that we’re so conditioned to. Not taking ownership and playing the blame games does not promote an inclusive culture
• Assuming someone’s pronouns
• Assuming relationship statuses
• Bullying
• Harassments
• Not being a good communicator (your communication is based on lies, assumptions, or you’re not a good listener!)
• Being a by- stander in anything that goes against company culture
• Having access to knowledge but not sharing it with your team
• Using abusive language
• Being overly critical, and never acknowledging work
• Not respecting time

Some inclusive practices that we ensure we have in place at The Mill:
- We function on the concept of openness and it grows into every other aspect of our business
- Diversity in our collaborations is important and we ensure this diversity is applicable across gender, religion, mental health status, the works!
- We have regular 1:1 with all those who we are working with closely because if we are taking up the responsibility of someone’s personal growth, it has to be a closely monitored practice and not something that you can review once a week. After having struggled through a lot of toxic workplaces Shalvi and I ensure that gig workers are not faced with the same problems. Yes, this is an added responsibility that we have taken up, but we are here to make this world a better place for freelancers. Call us wounded healers if you may, we’re here to do our job!
- We are sensitive to client and customer behavior and if a difficult situation requires us to take ownership of a mistake or stand up for our team, we will most definitely rise up to the expectations.
- Gender sensitization is something that we aim to do too. If we feel assumptions are being made about sexuality, pronouns or even when we find someone indulging in “harmless sexist jokes” we not only call it out but also explain why something is wrong
- An important inclusive practice is being open to learning and making mistakes even as someone who is leading a team, because there is so much that we can learn from each other. If we as founders function from a space of ego, not only do we come across as micro managers but also restrict ourselves in a box!
- We take mental health seriously everyday, and not just when it’s at its worst. Selfcare is propagated everyday, and we are not here to only talk about giving mental health days off. We are here to to take charge of our mental healths daily. While we may not be professionally equipped to handle breakdowns we understand and empathize and step in for anyone who may not be feeling their best. We have worked with people who have been diagnosed with a whole range of mental illnesses and that has never been a reason for us to complain. We are not saying this just for the heck of it, we have done & we will continue to do this. We have stepped into situations where we had to take charge of everything overnight, and never once did we blame a team member or make them feel guilty for their mental health
- Speaking of which, we have access to all kinds of therapists and never shy away from sharing our resources. As our community grows we are going to share our offerings publicly with everyone on a forum that we are currently working on
- We lead by example. It doesn’t get any simpler than this. We are honest, we are empathetic, we talk about the highs, we talk about our lows, and we have enabled a culture where our team members find it safe to approach us with personal as well as professional problems. We know where to draw the line and when we say that we are here for you, we make sure we deliver our promise.

How does you inculcate inclusive practices?
- The easiest way is to lead by example!
- Call people out on their wrong behavior!
- Educate and inspire
- Train. And this does not have to be focused on the job only; training should include gender sensitization, how to have a healthy participation in a discussion, what the work culture stands for and what are the practices enabling it
- Stay connected with regular 1:1

This is just the tip of the iceberg, and this is a conversation that we will continue having with different stakeholders. For now, I’d like to thank Ungender for inviting me to share my thoughts on a recent Twitter Space, and for enabling a safe space where people could understand how to identify and break out of a toxic work environment.