Small Business Award spotlight: inclusion FACTOR

The next Small Business Award in our spotlight series goes to inclusion FACTOR, an organization spearheaded by Elise Ahenkorah. She works with companies across North America to build inclusive spaces for workers and employers through measurable diversity, equity and inclusion strategies.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) are fast becoming familiar and powerful words in today’s collective workplace culture. They define positive action to ensure a respectful, healthy, more viable work environment where everyone can thrive in their chosen fields without fear of discrimination based on race, colour or creed.

The team at inclusion FACTOR works with business leaders and the community to keep the torch of DE&I burning. “Our clients understand that training is only as effective as the daily leadership behaviours and workplace systems that promote inclusive actions from teammates or leaders,” says Ahenkorah, award-winning global inclusion strategist and keynote speaker.

Ahenkorah’s senior roles in crisis communications, marketing, stakeholder engagement, strategic planning, and DE&I for public and private-sector organizations prepared her solid foundation for the inception of her own company in 2017. “As an inclusion strategist, I design data-driven approaches to build inclusive workplaces and communities for clients across North America and the UK,” she says.

Experience plus talent

Building on her past career experiences and as a prominent local community builder, Ahenkorah also founded #shemeets four years ago and hasn’t looked back since. “My goal was to build a supportive resource for women of colour (WOC) entrepreneurs across the country, while offering them valuable experiences, mentorship, resources and guidance,” she says.

Utilizing tools such as skills training, workshops and networking, #shemeets is bridging Canada’s wealth gap and creating a community where WOC can build their ideas into reality. Thanks to Ahenkorah’s dedication and steadfast leadership, the platform has grown from 25 to 7,500 members across Canada and continues to grow.

Forward thinking as practice

Ahenkorah’s mantra at inclusion FACTOR—What gets measured gets done—is a driving force behind her work with clients to translate their vision into measurable and scalable DE&I tactics that are aligned to critical business outcomes. “We build award-winning solutions for DE&I audits, training, workshops, e-learning tools and strategies to build inclusive spaces for everyone to thrive,” she says.

Ahenkorah shares her own experiences of exclusion in the workplace in her keynote presentations. “I illuminate the correlation between respectful workplaces and higher employee engagement, talent, retention, innovation, productivity, collaboration and profitability,” she says.

Besides being awarded by the Calgary Chamber and the Calgary Black Chambers, she has received recognition from many other sources: the Black Business Professional Association (BBPA), the International Association of Business Communicators, the Ghanaian-Canadian Association of Canada, the Canadian Centre for Diversity, the University of Calgary and the UN of Canada.

Inclusion FACTOR’s impact and reach means she has also received honours as a L’Oréal Paris Woman of Worth, and she was an Avenue Calgary Top 40 Under 40 finalist.

New vision for a new generation

With over 380 projects and keynote presentations completed to date across North America and the UK, Ahenkorah is proud of her most recent innovation venture with a retail conglomerate. “I led the de-biasing of the company’s nationwide talent acquisition systems through AI software and tools for the first time in the company’s 100-year history,” she says. “I managed seven employee resource groups across Canada, comprising 27,000 employees.”

She also led the implementation of DE&I initiatives within the company’s retail spaces, such as sensory-friendly shopping hours, gender-pronoun nametags, leveraging receipts to share the company’s DE&I commitments, establishing local community partnerships and providing audible solutions for customers who are deaf, hard of hearing and multilingual, including braille product labels.

Ahenkorah’s future is looking bright, with lofty goals for her organization. “I am planning to increase expansion of inclusion FACTOR across the USA and Europe,” she says.

Visit inclusionfactor.ca to learn more about inclusion FACTOR.