8 Essential Tools and Resources to Ensure Your Company Is Using Inclusive Language

In today‘s diverse world, using inclusive language is an essential part of building an equitable and welcoming workplace culture. Inclusive language avoids biases, slang, or expressions that discriminate against groups of people based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, and other factors.

Using inclusive language consistently is not just the right thing to do – it also has tangible business benefits. Research shows that diverse and inclusive workplaces:

• Are 35% more likely to outperform their competitors (McKinsey)
• Generate 19% more revenue than less diverse companies (Boston Consulting Group)
• Experience 2.3 times more cash flow per employee (Bersin by Deloitte)

But getting inclusive language right is often easier said than done. Unconscious biases, outdated terminology, and lack of knowledge about what terms are considered offensive can lead to unintentionally exclusionary communication.

That‘s where inclusive language tools come in. From Slackbots to browser extensions to e-learning, there are now a variety of solutions available to help your team identify problematic language and consistently communicate in a more inclusive way.

Here are 8 essential tools and resources to help you get started.

1. Better Allies Slack Bot

Is your company one of the 77% that uses Slack? Then the Better Allies Slack bot is a must-have for inclusive language.

Here‘s how it works:

1. Install the Better Allies bot in your Slack workspace
2. The bot will automatically flag non-inclusive words and phrases in public channels and DMs
3. Users have the option to accept the suggested alternative, reject the suggestion if it was made in error, or customize the suggestion
4. Set your own custom words/phrases to avoid and preferred alternatives
5. Get analytics on your team‘s inclusive language progress

Some common non-inclusive words the bot suggests alternatives for include:

Gendered language:

• Guys (try folks, people, everyone, team)
• Man hours (try person hours, engineer hours)
• Manpower (try workforce, personnel, staff)

Non-inclusive phrases:

• Peanut gallery (has roots in vaudeville and minstrel shows)
• Grandfathered in (has roots in laws that prevented Black Americans from voting)
• Crazy/insane/psycho (stigmatizes mental health conditions)

2. Inclusive Language Guides

An inclusive language guide lays out general principles, problematic terms to avoid, and alternative terms to use instead. It‘s an invaluable reference for creating more inclusive content across your company.

While you can find many inclusive language guides online (we‘ll share some great ones later in this post), we recommend working with your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) team to create a guide specific to your company.

A good basic structure for an inclusive language guide is:

1. Guiding Principles: Lay out the "why" behind your inclusive language efforts and what you hope to achieve. For example:
   "At [Company], we believe inclusive language is critical to making everyone feel welcome and respected. Inclusive language helps us build stronger relationships with our employees, customers and community."

2. Terms to Use With Caution: Share categories of language that can be discriminatory with examples of terms to avoid and more inclusive alternatives. Common categories include:

• Gender and sexuality
• Race, ethnicity and nationality
• Disability and neurodiversity
• Age
• Socioeconomic status
• Religion

3. Continuing Education: Share resources for employees to learn more about inclusive language and bias, such as books, articles, videos, and e-learning. Encourage employees to participate in ongoing education.

4. Inclusive Language in Practice: Give examples of what inclusive language looks like in different contexts, such as job postings, marketing content, customer service emails, etc.

5. Reporting Concerns: Detail how employees can report concerning language they encounter at work and the process for investigating/addressing it.

We‘ll share some of our favorite public inclusive language guides later in this post. But first, let‘s look at some more tools to help implement your guide and scale your inclusive language efforts.

3. Textio

Textio is an augmented writing platform that helps you create more inclusive content across all areas of your business. It uses AI to analyze your company‘s written communications, identify areas for improvement, and provide real-time suggestions.

Some key Textio features for inclusive language include:

• Tone Meter: Analyzes documents for appropriate and inclusive tone, with explanations of potential issues. For example, Textio might flag a job posting that uses overly masculine language and explain why this could deter female applicants.

• Bias Meter: Scans for phrases related to different types of bias and suggests alternatives. Textio looks at biases related to race, gender, age, disability status, and more.

• Inclusion Meter: Provides an overall inclusion score based on the language patterns in the document. The score updates in real-time as you edit.

• Custom Language Models: Create language models tailored to your company‘s communication standards. For example, you could train Textio to flag disability-related terms your company has decided to move away from using.

Textio integrates with common platforms like Gmail, Microsoft Word, and LinkedIn. This makes it easy to get inclusive language suggestions directly in the apps where you‘re already writing.

4. Diversity Style Guide

The Diversity Style Guide is a free online resource that provides guidance on inclusive language related to race/ethnicity, disability, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, age, and more.

The guide combines glossaries of terms to use/avoid, key concepts, and links to further reading on each topic. It also shares insights from topical experts.

Some examples of problematic language the Diversity Style Guide covers:

• "Minoritized groups" instead of "minorities" – using minoritized as a verb highlights that people are actively minoritized by others, rather than being inherently minor
• "Accessible parking" instead of "handicapped parking" – puts the emphasis on equality of access vs. deficiency
• "Historically marginalized groups" or "people of color" instead of "non-White", which centers whiteness as the norm
• "Native Hawaiians" instead of "Hawaiians", since anyone born in Hawai‘i is Hawaiian but may not have indigenous ancestry

The Diversity Style Guide is a great supplement to your company‘s internal inclusive language guide.

5. Inclusive Naming Initiative

The Inclusive Naming Initiative provides language guidance specifically for the tech community. It aims to help remove harmful language from software and replace it with more inclusive terms.

Some of the most common harmful terms in tech the Inclusive Naming Initiative recommends replacing:

Problem Term	Suggested Alternatives
Master/slave	Primary/replica, Leader/follower, Active/standby
Blacklist/whitelist	Denylist/allowlist, Blocklist/permitlist
Man hours	Person hours, Engineer hours
Sanity check	Confidence check, Coherence check
Dummy value	Placeholder value, Sample value

The initiative‘s site includes a full word replacement list, a language evaluation framework, and implementation guidance for transitioning to more inclusive language in your code, documentation, and UI.

If your company has an engineering team, the Inclusive Naming Initiative is a must-bookmark resource for writing more inclusive code.

6. Implicit Bias Tests

While tools like Textio and Better Allies are great for catching biased language, it‘s also important to help employees understand and confront the unconscious biases that lead to this language in the first place. Harvard‘s Project Implicit offers free online tests that uncover hidden biases related to race, gender, sexual orientation, and more.

Here‘s how it works:

1. Choose from 14 different Implicit Association Tests (IATs), such as the Race IAT, Gender-Career IAT, Disability IAT, etc.
2. Complete the assessment, which takes about 10 minutes
3. Get a detailed, private report of your results, including your level of implicit bias preference for one group vs. others
4. Reflect on what the results reveal about your unconscious attitudes and stereotypes

Encouraging your team members to take implicit bias assessments can be a powerful starting point for conversations about bias, privilege, and discrimination. Pair the IATs with a group discussion or debrief session to help employees process the results and commit to action.

7. LinkedIn Learning Courses

LinkedIn offers a variety of LinkedIn Learning courses on DEI topics, including several focused specifically on inclusive language in the workplace:

• Communicating about Culturally Sensitive Issues: Learn how to approach difficult conversations about diversity, identity, and discrimination.

• Communicating with Confidence: Build the skills to communicate and present your ideas with clarity, credibility, and conviction.

• Unconscious Bias: Understand how unconscious bias works, recognize your own biases, and develop strategies to eliminate them in your work.

• Skills for Inclusive Conversations: Learn how to call out bias, have difficult conversations, and become a better ally in the workplace.

If your company has a LinkedIn Learning subscription, consider assigning these courses to employees as part of your inclusive language education efforts. Many of the courses also have free previews or trials available.

8. Inclusive Language in Action

For more inspiration on using inclusive language at work, look to companies that are leading the way. Here are a few examples:

• HubSpot: HubSpot has made inclusive language a key part of their diversity, inclusion, and belonging efforts. They‘ve developed an internal inclusive language guide, trained managers on unconscious bias, and run inclusive language workshops for employees. By making inclusive language a company-wide priority, HubSpot has seen a significant shift in how employees communicate.

• Buffer: Buffer has an extensive public inclusive language guide that covers terminology related to race, gender, disability, age, and more. They also default to using gender-neutral language in their product and documentation. For example, instead of "hey guys," Buffer uses "hi everyone" or "hey team."

• Atlassian: Atlassian has taken significant steps to remove harmful language from their code and documentation. For example, they‘ve replaced terms like "master" and "blacklist" with inclusive alternatives like "main" and "blocklist." By proactively auditing and updating their language, Atlassian is role modeling inclusive communication for the larger tech community.

Driving Inclusive Language at Your Company

Using more inclusive language is a journey – not a quick fix. But by investing in the right tools, training, and resources, you can help your employees understand and adopt language that makes everyone feel welcome and valued.

Some key action steps to get started:

1. Assemble a cross-functional inclusive language task force to assess your current language landscape and develop a plan.
2. Create an inclusive language guide specific to your company‘s needs.
3. Implement tools to help identify exclusive language and suggest alternatives in the platforms your teams use most, like Slack, email, and documents.
4. Invest in interactive training to help employees understand their biases and communicate more inclusively.
5. Recognize and celebrate employees and teams that are leading the way on inclusive language.
6. Make inclusive language part of a comprehensive DEI strategy that encompasses all aspects of your organization.

With dedication and the right tools, you can create a workplace where everyone feels like they belong. And that‘s good for people and profits.

Special thanks to Better Allies, Harvard‘s Project Implicit, and the Inclusive Naming Initiative for their great work in this space. All images in this post are from Unsplash.