What makes an employee inclusion story credible?

Employee inclusion stories need space for people to describe difficulties alongside hopes and shared experiences. For IBM's 2020 diversity and inclusion campaign, employees were filmed talking directly to camera about challenges they had faced, their hopes for the future and the things that unite people. Although the campaign set out to celebrate employees, authenticity and humility were central to its approach.

The practical lesson is to let employees' accounts carry complexity rather than make every contribution reinforce a uniformly positive corporate message. A 2026 Diversity Council Australia study found that 35% of Australian workers described their manager as inclusive, compared with 56% describing their team and 59% describing their organisation as inclusive. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development argued in 2026 that employees may withhold experiences when speaking up feels risky or futile, and that underrepresented groups need safe channels. A credible storytelling process therefore needs both room for difficult accounts and conditions in which employees can share them.

Representation needs to inform how an employee inclusion story is developed, not just who appears in the published account. Examine whose perspectives shape the initial research, who develops and presents the creative idea, and which images and authors bring the story to life. Diversity of thought behind the scenes matters alongside representation on screen.

A useful challenge is to ask whether a story would work better, or just as well, if it centred a different demographic. The aim is to question habitual choices rather than select people to appeal cynically to a particular audience. Representation also means showing the variety of roles people can occupy and the paths they take towards achievement. In 2025, Kyndryl and its NATIV inclusion network published accounts from 5 employees about Indigenous identity, community involvement and professional experience, including cultural reconnection, mentoring, recovery from injury and first-generation educational achievement.