Research points to the importance of establishing inclusive workplaces. Yet, the same research also suggests that getting employees to buy in and engage in these sorts of inclusive behaviors can be a challenging endeavor. While the current literature offers some practical suggestions for garnering inclusion among employees, most recommendations center on programs and contexts with direct ties to inclusion (e.g., diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings), which at times have limited success. Our article diverges from this approach by considering the impact of employee volunteering—a practice without explicit inclusion-related objectives—on employees’ inclusive behaviors. Drawing on a set of theories about cognitive processing, we propose that employee volunteering presents an opportunity to foster inclusive behavior by enhancing perspective taking. We further suggest that these benefits are contingent upon an individual’s motivation for volunteering—in particular, that the perspective-taking potential of volunteering is best realized when employees volunteer for prosocial motives and not for self-protective motives. We find support for these predictions in a combination of a laboratory experiment, a quasi-field experiment, and a multisource field study. The results advance our understanding of the types of unconventional activities—such as employee volunteering and volunteer motives—that can be leveraged into more inclusive behavior among employees.

中文翻译：

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获得视角：利用员工志愿服务改善包容性行为


研究指出了建立包容性工作场所的重要性。然而，同一项研究还表明，让员工接受并参与这些包容性行为可能是一项具有挑战性的工作。虽然目前的文献提供了一些关于员工包容性的实用建议，但大多数建议都集中在与包容性直接相关的计划和环境（例如多样性、公平性和包容性培训）上，而这些建议有时取得的成功有限。我们的文章与这种方法不同，它考虑了员工志愿服务（一种没有明确的包容性相关目标的做法）对员工包容性行为的影响。借鉴一系列有关认知处理的理论，我们建议员工志愿服务提供了一个通过增强观点采择来培养包容性行为的机会。我们进一步认为，这些好处取决于个人志愿服务的动机——特别是，当员工出于亲社会动机而不是出于自我保护动机而志愿服务时，志愿服务的换位思考潜力才能得到最好的发挥。我们通过实验室实验、准现场实验和多源现场研究的结合找到了对这些预测的支持。研究结果加深了我们对非常规活动类型（例如员工志愿服务和志愿者动机）的理解，这些活动可以用于提高员工的包容性行为。