Essential skills to develop and deliver an inclusive post-pandemic response

This post is written by Andee Pittman, Lead Designer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

• The problem: The post-pandemic response could miss those most in need without adequate resources and research.
• Why it matters: The response will likely be unequal for minorities.
• The solution: Being inclusive and intersectional can help balance out inequalities.

Everyone in the world experienced the covid-19 pandemic, but did we all experience it the same way? While policy responses varied by jurisdiction, most of us experienced some limitations on our freedoms, watched those in our community suffer, and saw many die who did not need to.

While this shared experience can unite us, it can also create and strengthen implicit biases. In turn, this can leave us blind to the differences of impact - emotionally, economically and other - that people have faced due to their race, abilities, socio-economic status, gender, and other compounding identity factors. Approaching post-pandemic recovery being aware of and including these groups of multiple marginalised identities can be described as taking an intersectional approach, and is essential in ensuring your response is inclusive and works for those who need it most.

Why you need an intersectional approach

Why is an intersectional approach essential in post-pandemic responses? Let’s look at the Canadian context.

According to the 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability, more than six million Canadians aged 15 and over (22% of the population) identify as having a disability. In Indigenous populations, the rates of disability exceed that of the non-Indigenous population: First Nations (32%), Inuit (30%) and Metis (19%) (Statistics Canada, 2019). Access to support and services such as health care before the Covid-19 pandemic was a challenge more pronounced among Indigenous peoples (Davy, Harfield, McArthur, Munn, & Brown, 2016; Liddy, McKellips, Armstrong, Afkham, & Fraser-Roberts, 2017). The impacts of the pandemic are compounded by pre-existing health care inequalities that stem from the impacts of colonisation.

An intersectional approach is critical, however, it alone is not enough. Inclusion starts internally. To explore and apply intersectionality in a comprehensive and effective manner, teams need to have an ability to empathise, work effectively with a diversity of perspectives, and support each other through the stress and trauma of researching marginalised and racialised populations. This can be described as emotional intelligence, which is important at the individual level and collectively at a team level. This article will discuss how to realise inclusivity from research to delivery through cultivating collective emotional intelligence to effectively apply intersectionality.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) at a group-level

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to be aware of and regulate one’s emotions in order to effectively manage interpersonal relationships. This is usually seen as an individual competency, however, is it important to foster collective EI within all levels of an organisation. This is made even more pressing, as the diversity within teams increases, so does the need to be aware of the systemic injustices and possible triggers teammates may experience.

How to cultivate and foster team EI:

• Support individual and team activities that practice grounding, mindfulness and meditation. Consider starting a meeting with a “heart check-in”: allow everyone a few seconds to become present and share what emotions and thoughts they are having.
• Schedule time for expressing emotions, thoughts and needs, for example on a topic the team has surfaced, or be open-ended.
• Designating a shared space, “safe” does not necessarily make it so. Safety is created by everyone in every interaction, so it is essential to define what that is for all participants ahead of engaging in any collective dialogue.

Intersectionality

Intersectionality is a framework that supports investigating the space where multiple social and political identities overlap, which creates a compounding effect of the problem space being explored.

In the example above, we are looking at two identities: having a disability and being Indigenous in Canada. Each of these identities on their own experience unique challenges receiving health care. For example, in addition to lack of access, racism against Indigenous People in the Canadian health care system has been documented and reported on by both independent and major media outlets alike. Anti-racism and cultural competency training are just one of the seven healthcare-related Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

For persons with disabilities, the health care system still has barriers, such as non-accessible examination tables, lack of communication support, and a lack of awareness of disability. When investigating what health care looks like post-pandemic, it is critical to look at the experiences of people who are most vulnerable and subject to harm - those who are both Indigenous and with a disability. It would also be prudent to investigate those with other ethnic backgrounds, gender presentations, sexual orientations and religions.

Here are some ideas to consider:

• Ensure you have the commitment from your leadership to give appropriate time to research that will support understanding intersectional impacts. Know that in virtual research contexts, the time it takes to develop trust and achieve an adequate depth of inquiry takes longer. Before the pandemic, I would have recommended conducting field studies where intersectional identities are likely to be present. This is still possible virtually. We can email, pick up the phone, video call and build maps of pre-existing relationships and begin to establish our own. This has the added benefit of developing more sustainable, ongoing research engagements throughout the lifecycle of a business or service. For example, in the case of understanding the lived experiences of Indigenous persons with disabilities, building a relationship with a friendship centre (non-profit organisation offering services to Indigenous People living in urban settings) and co-creating a research relationship may support uncovering how these identities and other factors impact how these individuals access and receive services.

• For leadership, it’s essential to support and value qualitative research alongside emerging, iterative processes, such as those conducted in human-centred design. This is the only research approach where it’s possible to apply intersectionality at all levels and capture the significance of the impacts of a problem on intersectional identities.

• Test solutions where they will be implemented with those who use the service. Testing early with a smaller sample is a great opportunity to select for intersectional identities, as they may be harder to capture in a random sample. Ensuring your design works for the most marginalised will ensure a better product for everyone.

As someone who is currently working in a central federal agency, and conducting research related to diversity and inclusion in the public service, I hear about the need for emotional intelligence and intersectionality the most from the organisations and employees I serve.

As a human-centred designer, I can attest that these are the skills that have helped me to solve the complex, systemic problems I have tackled. And so I believe these will continue to be essential to navigating everything we are facing in the COVID-19 pandemic recovery. Inclusivity and the working cultures that support it are still being developed in many organisations, and there is still much uncertainty in how to achieve these environments. At the team level, working inclusively through developing our individual and collective EQ is a critical first step. And this step will unlock many opportunities, such as enabling the capacity for intersectionality, that will deliver results that work for those most impacted by the pandemic.

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