Celebrate and recognise your people. It does more for your culture than any training or team-building exercise.

Celebrating diversity and inclusion, especially at the beginning of a DEI programme, may seem premature or even too indulgent. But celebration is extremely important, and it is never too early to celebrate.

When deploying the Learn, Act, Celebrate (LACE) Framework in organisations, I've noticed something consistent. Leaders and diversity and inclusion experts lean more into Learn. They are keen to prioritise raising awareness, analysing data, and administering diversity training.  I understand the appeal. Those things are tangible and visible to everyone in the organisation. They are also readily willing to invest in Actions for the same reasons. Some actions are visible and make it easy to answer the question, “What are you doing about building an inclusive culture?” Also, doing something feels like progress. But, more often than not, they usually deprioritise Celebration, leaving it for later. That is also understandable. Celebrating diversity and inclusion, especially at the beginning of a DEI programme, may seem premature or even too indulgent. But what they don’t realise is that celebration is equally important, and it is never too early to celebrate.

To some, celebration feels soft. It's hard to put on a dashboard or in the annual report . And in plenty of British workplaces there's a cultural allergy to it, because British culture is less about fanfare and pomp. But there are ways to celebrate that do not feel over-the-top. For example, recognising people for their work and contribution can be powerful and does not need fanfare. On the flip side, under-recognition is perhaps one of the quietest, most expensive mistakes an organisation can make, and can drive your best people out the door.

Gallup's most recent global figures make sobering reading. Employee engagement has fallen to around 20%, the lowest since 2020 and the first time two consecutive annual declines have been recorded. No region of the world improved. The estimated cost is roughly $10 trillion in lost productivity, about 9% of global GDP.

Most organisations keep reaching for motivation fixes like new perks, new initiatives, or simply another survey asking the questions differently, hoping for a change in sentiment and engagement score. But disengagement on the levels we are seeing isn’t people being lazy. It's people feeling unseen, unattached, unsure if their contribution is noticed and appreciated. That is a connection problem, not a motivation one. Recognition is one of the most reliable, lowest-cost levers organisations can pull to improve connection.

So, what does it mean to celebrate diversity and inclusion? For starters, it does not mean a pizza on a Friday for everyone, a performative award that goes to the same confident voices every quarter, or a LinkedIn post about how much you value your people. It means truly making sure people are seen, appreciated, and celebrated. Here is what celebration may look like when done properly.

• Organic and optional. When celebrating diversity, for example by commemorating awareness days or cultural or religious events, make it an invitation so that no one in the organisation feels compelled to participate. Any sort of coercion is counterproductive.

• Provide space. Provide space and resources for those to whom celebrations matter to take a lead without feeling that they are stretching the limit of what is acceptable within the workplace. People feel they belong when they are trusted to exercise responsibility without seeking permission.

• Specific and timely. Make it a cultural norm to give specific and timely feedback, especially for all people managers. The goal is to go beyond a simple "Thank you" and instead say "The way you handled that client's accessibility concern changed the outcome, and here's how".

• Equitable. Recognition is one of the most unevenly distributed resources in any organisation. Often, the same faces, the same functions or teams, and the same personalities get all the credit. But often, your quiet or underrepresented talent is doing the work someone is getting recognised for. Ask those getting recognition to also recognise all key contributions. And monitor who is not being recognised, and either recognise them or provide support so they can produce work worthy of recognition.

• About progress, not just outcomes. If you only celebrate finished wins, you teach people that effort in hard, slow, cultural work is invisible. That's demoralising precisely for the people doing your inclusion work.

• A way of closing the loop. When people give you feedback or engage with an inclusion initiative and then hear nothing, they learn that speaking up is pointless. Telling them what changed because of them is one way of celebrating.

I've written before about the organisations whose inclusion dashboards glow green while their best people quietly leave. This is one of the mechanisms behind that gap. People rarely resign over a single grievance. They often leave when they feel like their contribution is not recognised and they don’t feel seen. And if celebration is not done carefully, you may not even realise that the people who actually do the work are leaving, because those who take most of the credit usually remain.

When it comes to recognition as a means of celebration, here is what leaders can do to move the culture to one that celebrates difference.

• Audit who gets recognition. If it maps onto seniority, gender or the loudest personalities, you have a problem hiding in plain sight.

• Recognise effort and progress in the slow work, not only the headline results.

• Make recognition specific enough that the person knows you actually saw what they did.

• Ask people to tell you when they feel compelled, not invited, to participate in events and celebrations.

• Ask your underrepresented people if they feel free to take the lead in celebrating what matters to them and if they feel welcome and included

On the LACE Framework, Learning and Actions get the strategy and action plan off the ground.  Celebration is what makes it stick and turns it into a truly inclusive culture.

If you want help turbo-charging your organisation’s culture into a truly inclusive one centred around learning, taking action, and celebrating, please get in touch. Emai advice@sias-uk.com