What should our employee inclusion stories show?

Employee inclusion stories need room for past difficulties, future hopes and experiences that connect people. In the 2020 diversity and inclusion campaign for IBM, employees spoke directly to camera about their experiences of inclusion: the difficulties they had faced, their hopes for the future and the things that unite them. Authenticity and humility were central to the campaign's design, which needed to foreground inclusion while celebrating employees.

The practical lesson is to let personal accounts carry the story, rather than relying on a statement of corporate commitment. An account of inclusion can acknowledge difficulty and still express hope. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development noted in 2026 that employees may withhold experiences when speaking up feels risky or futile, making safe channels particularly important for underrepresented groups whose accounts challenge established views.

Credible representation depends on who shapes an inclusion story as well as who appears in it. Diverse perspectives should inform the initial research, the team developing the idea, the choice of images and the authors bringing the content to life. The same principle applies to B2B communications: representation matters throughout a brand's content, not only in prominent advertising campaigns.

Challenge assumptions about whose experience belongs at the centre of a story, including whether a different demographic could carry the account just as well. IBM's I Want You to Know campaign put the day-to-day challenges and idiosyncrasies of its diverse workforce into view. To hear different employee experiences, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development described in 2026 a combination of surveys, consultation groups, team meetings, intranets and employee representation.