Inclusive Language Guide

Community
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For a while now, we’ve been on a journey as a brand and as a business to hold ourselves accountable and do the best we can by our world, and by our people. As a super fund, our people are our members. As an employer, our people are also our staff. As a business, our people are also other business leaders.

Here, we’re deciding to share one part of that journey: our learning (and unlearning) of language. How, as a business that prides itself on being ethical and progressive, can we make sure that our language upholds those values? That our language includes, not excludes; welcomes, not dismisses; and witnesses, not ignores?

This is our constantly work-in-progress Inclusive Language Guide. We’re sharing it with you not to tell you that you’re right, or that you’re wrong. Not to chastise or claim superior knowledge of how to not be problematic. No; we’re sharing it to let you in on what and how we’re thinking about language. To invite you to add your experiences, your thoughts, your knowledge to this piece of work. And to hold ourselves accountable to making this work real in the way we go about doing our business.

We would LOVE any feedback, ideas or references you have of others who are doing this well. Please feel free to share with your staff but we haven’t made it public yet.

Here’s the guide’s current workings.

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Thanks so much for sharing! I will share with my D&I committee which has content writing people on it and pass on any feedback from their experience of inclusive language.

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Thanks for sharing Grace. This is great!
@Kiraday

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Would love that. The team is keen for input, even if they’re just vibing it it’s helpful to sense check with people outside of Future Super.

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This is great! I love that you’re opening this up to feedback and ideas along the way too!

Code for Australia open-sourced their policies when they became a B Corp, and one of the amazing things that stood out to me was their ‘policy glossary’ - which includes how they define important terms at the start. They include language guidelines as well and would probably love to see this. :slight_smile:

@DanielleDuell you might also find this great for purposeful marketing!

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Grace thank you so much for sharing and seeking input and collaboration. It’s exactly the sort of thing I’d hoped for when kicking off this community initiative, and it showcases the great work we can all do together! Will be sure to loop our People & Culture Director Lauren into this, she’ll be interested.

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