It was in 2014 that Bert Bakker, Yphtach Lelkes, Alina Feinholdt and I established the Dutch Political Psychology Meetings for academics in the Netherlands and beyond with an interest in political psychology broadly defined. Little did we know that we would still be going strong nearly 10 years later. And while it can be especially hard to let go of successes, it is good to hand things over from time to time and make room for the next generation. Last Friday was my goodbye as a founder and organizer, and I was happy to yet again see a room full of both familiar and new faces. Very proud of what we accomplished and excited for (at least) another 10 years of inspirational talks and intergenerational exchange!
Wishing you all the best Maaike Homan, Chantal D'Amore, Ruthie Pliskin, and Bert Bakker!
English Handouts | Creating support for D&I Policy and SMART D&I Policy
Due to popular demand, our handouts with recommendations for making your D&I policies more impactful are now also available in English.
Check out the links below for handouts on creating support for D&I policy and for setting SMART D&I goals.
📖 Curious about how to create support for D&I policy? Read the handout here.
📖 If you want to know more about SMART D&I policy, click here.
These handouts result from a collaboration between Utrecht University, Foundation InclusieNL (Netherlands Inclusivity Monitor) and SER Diversity at work, supported by the Goldschmeding Foundation. For more information, see https://lnkd.in/epFS2Gdb
Handout All aboard | Creating support for diversity and inclusion policy
Handout Make diversity and inclusion policy SMART
Annual Report Goldschmeding Foundation: The power of connection | Striving for better together
The Goldschmeding Foundation recently published their annual report on 2022 The power of connection | Striving for better together.
It is a privilege to work with the Goldschmeding Foundation to link science and practice with the aim of contributing to an inclusive labour market. Through their annual report, we get an insight into the milestones of the supported projects.
💡 Read the annual report here!
A growing number of people change jobs, but companies often don't know why
Currently, the labour market is very tight. And so, more and more people are venturing to change jobs. Indeed, you can now negotiate better conditions. The companies where employees leave, however, often do not really know why people actually leave. And that is a missed opportunity!
Last Friday I was invited by Humberto Tan at NPO Radio 1 to talk about our research on exit interviews and their value for deepening diversity and inclusion policies in organizations.
🔉 Listen to it here!
💡 Curious about how to approach exit interviews? Find the handout here.
© ANP
BNR Podcast | The value of exit interviews for D&I policies
“Did departing employees feel safe, at home, and valued at the workplace?”
In a new episode of the podcast BNR Werkprofessor by BNR News Radio, I was interviewed by Wendy Van Ierschot about the value of exit interviews for improving organizational diversity and inclusion policies. I talked about our new handout Exit interviews: a wealth of information and why it is so important for organizations to think about diversity and inclusion not only in their recruitment, selection, and promotion processes, but also when guiding the exit of employees. Currently, organizations do not pay enough attention to employees' reasons for leaving, even though these may be indicative of a lack of inclusion and social safety in the workplace. By not inquiring about this in exit interviews, opportunities to gain crucial knowledge on this are missed.
🔉 Listen to the podcast (in Dutch) here!
💡 The handout “Exit interviews: A wealth of information” can be found here.
© BNR Werkprofessor
Dissertation Defense on LGBT+ campus climates
Congratulations to Dr. Zy Evangelista who did a fantastic job defending their dissertation on LGBT+ campus climates in the UK and the Philippines. It was a privilege to have been invited as external examiner and a pleasure to have discussed this important and well-executed research with Zy and internal examiner Lisa DeBruine. And I got to visit the beautiful city of Glasgow for the first time, which was an added bonus!
Congratulations also to Zy's supervisors Prof. Catherine Lido, Dr. Maxine Swingler, and Jason Bohan!
Handout | Exit interviews: A wealth of information
Organizations still do not pay adequate attention to diversity and inclusion in their outflow policies, while exit interviews can provide a wealth of information on how the workplace is experienced and whether specific groups of employees leave more quickly or for different reasons. These insights can then be linked back to initiatives regarding inflow, throughflow and inclusion of employees for coherent, systematic and evidence-based D&I policies.
In our new handout Exit interviews: A wealth of information, Lina Senen, Naomi Ellemers, Salem Yohannes, Valentina Djoemai, Leo Euser and I summarize our research findings and provide concrete recommendations for organizational practice.
Curious to know what valuable information an exit interview provides? Click here!
In the handout, we advocate that organizations can use insights from their exit interviews to make the processes surrounding recruitment, selection and promotion of employees more inclusive and thereby improve the working climate. However, the organizations surveyed do not currently ask sufficient questions. For example, only 15% of them ask about perceived inclusion in the workplace during the exit interview, including by asking whether the employee felt safe and valued in the workplace.
For companies that want to start addressing this, recommendations are provided on how to redesign the exit interview. We formulated 12 sample questions on diversity and inclusion that can be presented to departing employees, and three points of interest are highlighted.
This guide is a product of the project Het Moet Wel Werken, a collaboration between Utrecht University, Foundation InclusieNL (Netherlands Inclusivity Monitor) and SER Diversity at work, made possible by the Goldschmeding Foundation. Visit the Goldschmeding Foundation website to found out more about the handout and the project!
Not gender identity, but negative reactions harm non-binary people
Sociale Vraagstukken (Social Challenges) published an insightful piece on how negative reactions can harm non-binary people. The increasing visibility of gender diversity can lead to negative reactions. However, arguments used in this regard do not hold up under scrutiny. As such, it is explained why the argument about biological facts is problematic, that gender diversity has always existed yet there is only now the language to express this gender diversity and how acceptance of one's gender identity is crucial to one's life happiness.
Our research project on inclusion in the workplace also shows the importance of context for the impact of deviating from the norm. The paper by Sahin and colleagues (2019) indicates that if people who feel different from most of their colleagues see that differences are valued at work, they do not feel less included.
Podcast Travelling Concepts on Air: Episode on PRIVACY
The podcast episode on PRIVACY of Travelling Concepts on Air has just been aired!
For this episode, Dr. Martine Veldhuizen and I were invited by Dr. Tessa Diphoorn and Dr. Brianne McGonigle Leyh to discuss the concept of PRIVACY. You can listen to this episode on Spotify, on Apple Podcast, or any other podcast platform.
© Travelling Concepts on Air by Tessa Diphoorn and Brianne McGonigle Leyh
According to the organisers, Travelling Concepts on Air is a podcast series that explores the promise and ideal of interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinarity is increasingly projected as an objective goal within academia, framed as something that both encourages and facilitates collaboration across fields and disciplines. In this podcast series, some of these underlying assumptions are questioned by focusing on the idea of travelling concepts: concepts that ‘travel’ across disciplines and often act as the focal point for interdisciplinary efforts.
In this episode, Martine and I discuss the concept of privacy and to what extent/ how it travels between the disciplines of law, psychology and cultural history.
Masterclass: Looking at D&I policy through a different lens
I am very much looking forward to the new series of our masterclass on evidence-based D&I management, which I will co-teach with Melissa Vink and Onur Sahin, and starts on 15 March 2023 at Utrecht University.
In three meetings, you will learn to look at the D&I policy of your organization in a new way. You will bring in your own policy case to which you can immediately apply the new approach. And you will not do this alone, but together with a team of instructors and fellow participants who, just like you, want to get started with D&I in their organization.
No better recommendation than in participants' own words!
In the video above, Aurora Guds shares her experiences of our master class "Looking at D&I policy through a different lens" on how to successfully implement diversity and inclusion policies as an organization.
Curious to know more or looking to register? Check out the website.