Humanis
Rewriting the Tenets of Diversity and Inclusion (D&I)

Boardrooms across the globe are seeking out better and more constructive ways to foster a culture of D&I in their organizations.

However, there are still some instances of “slacktivism” or acquiescence, wherein companies simply want to meet compliance requirements or gain regulatory benefits. To put things in perspective, most organizations still believe that recruiting employees with a diverse mix of racial, ethnic, and gender identities can bring their D&I efforts to fruition.

What they miss is the fact that the idea of D&I goes far beyond determining a set of business KPIs and covering off-the-shelf parameters. An ideal D&I posture helps foster a diverse but also a compatible environment.

As Mary Bitouni, Managing Director of Humanis mentions, “D&I is not merely an ethical issue anymore; it is a mindset and powerful leadership tool for organizations to build responsible leaders, nurture high performing teams, foster a collaborative culture, and demonstrate excellence.”

"Different is not wrong, different is just different”

That’s where Humanis shines.

Founded in 2012 as a personal vision of Mary Bitouni, Humanis serves as a flexible boutique consulting company offering tailored training programs to foster a culture of increased commitment to personal and business transformation.

Setting the facts straight: Defining Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity is a value, established to leverage the power of differences, to create exceptional organizational performance, whereas Inclusion means an employee-supportive workplace where all employees experience equitable opportunity for personal success and to contribute to the organization’s performance.

Why in real life, do leaders fail to be inclusive, when this is such an obvious value?

As Mary Bitouni says, “people are ‘programmed’ to choose partners/colleagues who look and behave like them. This is just how human nature works and results from the unconscious bias that look-alike people are more likely to understand each other and communicate better. Subsequently, more often in business life, we hire, we develop or promote people based on our own beliefs and behaviors. And the astonishing thing is that we do not even realize it. As psychologists and brain researchers estimate, we are only conscious of 10% of our behavior, the rest 90% belongs to the subconscious”

“Without resolving unconscious biases and the corresponding behaviors, Inclusion is not possible to happen”

Today, Humanis helps people and companies overcome this unconscious bias and guides them to develop the mindset of equity as a part of organizational culture. M.B says: “different is just different, different is not wrong. A different voice in the team can chart the road of unexplored paths that drives the team to innovative approaches”

The Humanis Way for Personal and Business Transformation “We empower organizations to embed cultural transformation in their mission while aligning leaders to understand the ‘why’ factor behind their D&I initiatives,” says Mary Bitouni.

The pursuit is not turnkey but requires organizations to incorporate D&I within the company’s mission, align it with their business goals and promote it via holistic actions such as internal communication, systematic interventions for personal and business transformation, changes in leadership procedures and methodical cultural assessments.

In that pursuit, Humanis uses the “State of Mind Model”—a robust model developed by their partners Innovations International and Dr. William Guillory—that serves as a powerful means of implementing behavioral transformation through a dynamic mindset shift.

Following a holistic approach, Humanis starts with the assessment of the D&I culture and a deeper look into the client’s people and strategy. They then produce a collage of different interventions that, as a first step, aim in behavioral modification and then, personal transformation. Humanis focuses on interactive workshops that help participants discover personal beliefs and behaviors that prevent D&I and exceptional performance. It also helps them to resolve their unconscious patterns of exclusion and provide a systematic methodology for inclusive leadership and team effectiveness for maximizing performance.

From Diversity and Inclusion to Compatibility

Humanis and Innovations International through their partnership maintain that the ultimate goal of cultural transformation, that ensures constant high performance and business results, is a shift from Inclusion to Compatibility.

The principles of Compatibility are Collaboration, Reconciliation, Receptiveness, Resilience, Cohesiveness which identify an organizational culture where working with others ensures respect, trust, support, amicably resolving differences, in an open and transparent environment, proactively responding to adversity and aligned under a united organization of One.

Mary Bitouni specifically points out that there is a “serious shift in the way that we approach learning. We develop cognitive skills, change in mindset, attitudes, and beliefs, (for example for collaboration, resilience etc) where in the past we were developing functional skills (behaviors, processes, and procedures). In the past we were talking about behavioral transformation, whereas now we are talking about personal transformation. This maximizes the ROI in learning since personal transformation is permanent.”

An integrated approach in D&I Cultural Transformation

For people to change mindset, a training program that deals with unconscious bias is only the first step to personal transformation. It is important that organizations are open to, motivate and support changes to HR processes for recruitment, selection, on-boarding, development, performance management, talent, and succession planning. Humanis can help organizations redesign their strategies and develop an action plan with specific HR initiatives.

Relentless Pursuit of Excellence

At the heart of Humanis’ excellence lies an expert team of consultants with decades of industry experience and deep-rooted cultural transformation expertise. In addition, the company’s business subject matter experts can facilitate behavioral transformation guidance through coaching and on-the-job mastery of behaviors to ensure that the transformation is smooth and impactful.

No wonder several multinational companies, including Coca Cola HBC, Vodafone, Unilever, Dixons, Lidl, HSBC, Adidas, Mondelez , Ahold Delhaize, Landis & Gyr, Mytilineos Group, Titan, Latsco Shipping, and Eurobank EFG, trust Humanis when it comes to enhancing the skills of their people and addressing their varying cultural change requirements.

“We focus on employee well-being for professional development, and exceptional organizational performance,” says Mary Bitouni.

As a customer-first company, Humanis is always open to new ideas and ways of doing business. This is manifested by its ability and willingness to gather customer feedback to continually improve its service portfolio. To inspire a culture of increased commitment to personal and business growth, the company constantly pursues new HR trends to create value for clients by providing best-in-class solutions.

In the aftermath of the pandemic—the rapid shift to remote work environments and the changing map of required organizational skills—Humanis recognized the need to up-skill leaders to maximize their teams’ performance. Through its state of-the-art services, Humanis successfully enables companies to reinforce their perception of D&I and lends itself a managerial/ leadership tool in ensuring greater workplace diversity.