How To Decolonise Work

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a new process we’d introduced at Diverse Leaders Group - Decolonising Work. We currently have half of our team - 4 of 8 - folks going through this process with a couple coming to the ‘end’ of the official period we’d originally designated for it.

It has, however, become crystal clear…

• How absolutely vital this process is for the mental and emotional health of everyone.

• How fundamentally broken our systems are - starting from the education system and continuing across our economic and commercial ecosystems - and how much damage they are doing to us.

• How much longer it’ll take to decolonise work for folks than the 2-3 months we’ve assigned; it will, in fact, be a several months (if not years) long process for many.

The Impact Of Work Colonisation

You might be wondering, “But what exactly is this and why is it a problem anyway?”.

Our work ecosystems and environments - like almost everything in most non-Global Majority (often also referred to as ‘western’) societies - has been impacted and heavily influenced by colonialist, patriarchal and capitalist perspectives, which typically manifest with the following traits…