SHRM26 Debrief · Modern Employee Experience · #1904

Inclusivity as a Virtue: Virtue-Based HR Habits for Building Ethical Cultures

with Quiera Harris

& Rashida Kimbrue

▶ Watch on the SHRM portal ~54 min, distilled

virtue ethicsinclusive culturepsychological safety

"You do not arrive at inclusivity. You rehearse your way there. You practice it. It's one habit built at a time."

What it was about

Inclusivity is not a static HR initiative but a practiced habit built through five character virtues: fairness, humility, empathy, moral courage, and practical wisdom. HR professionals must intentionally rehearse these in everyday functions like hiring, onboarding, and performance management.

Key notes

Pick one small, doable habit per HR function instead of trying to overhaul entire systems (e.g., pause in every calibration meeting to ask whose perspective is missing).
Apply the five virtues — fairness, humility, empathy, moral courage, practical wisdom. deliberately to specific HR functions like hiring, benefits, onboarding, and performance management.
Use practical wisdom to decide which virtue is needed in a given moment and how to apply it well, rather than treating all virtues as interchangeable.

The contrarian takeFreedom and open dialogue as cultural values (e.g., Netflix's 'freedom and responsibility') are not inherently inclusive — without fairness, they can simply amplify the voices of those who already hold the most power and influence.

Take this back Monday

Do this for your team

In your next calibration meeting, pause and ask out loud whose perspective on this team is missing before finalizing decisions.

Say this in your next leadership meeting

Inclusion isn't a policy we wrote once — it's a habit we have to practice in every hiring, onboarding, and performance conversation.

Watch out for

Treating inclusion as a written policy or one-time initiative rather than a continuously practiced habit.
Leaders speaking for or over the people they claim to be helping (performative inclusion), which takes away the person's own voice.
Giving 'freedom' or open dialogue without fairness, which lets the already-powerful dominate the room while others stay silent.

Fun fact · Rashida Kimbrue

Before this session, Rashida had already guided more than 650 school leaders across 19 systems toward people-first practices.

If this landed, see these

↳ Go deeperPlays Well With Others: Civility for Grown-Ups at WorkTurns 'practice fairness in every meeting' into concrete neuroscience-backed scripts for the moment it counts.⇄ The counterpointSeven Steps for Perfecting Your DocumentationA reminder that lived virtue still needs a documented paper trail if you land in court.✦ The unexpected oneHR Service Delivery and Culture Transformation: A Lean Six Sigma Diagnostic and RoadmapThe Six Sigma version of the same problem: habits alone don't fix a broken system.