Language is not neutral. Every word choice in a job posting, a performance review, a team meeting, or a company-wide email carries information beyond its literal meaning. It signals who belongs, who is being spoken to, who is being spoken about, and who the organisation was designed for. Inclusive language is the practice of choosing words that reflect and respect the full range of people in a workplace, rather than defaulting to language built around a narrow, assumed norm.
This is not about policing conversation or walking on eggshells. It is about precision, respect, and the measurable impact language has on employee experience, retention, and performance.
Before getting into what inclusive language looks like in practice, it is worth establishing why it matters at an organisational level, not just a personal one.
A 2023 survey by Grammarly and The Harris Poll found that 86 percent of employees and business leaders believe ineffective communication is a major contributor to workplace failures. But beyond clarity, language carries social signals that affect how safe people feel at work.
Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report found that only 23 percent of employees globally are engaged at work, and belonging is one of the top drivers of engagement. Language is one of the primary ways belonging is communicated or withheld, day by day, interaction by interaction.
For organisations working on building inclusive workplace cultures, language is not a cosmetic layer on top of the real work. It is part of the foundation.
Exclusive language rarely announces itself. It tends to sit inside habits, templates, and conventions that nobody has thought to question. Here are the most common categories where it appears.
The use of “he” as a generic pronoun, terms like “manpower,” “chairman,” or “guys” directed at mixed groups, and job titles like “salesman” or “stewardess” all carry a gendered default that signals, however subtly, that the role is associated with one gender.
A study from the University of Waterloo and Duke University found that gender-coded language in job postings significantly affected who applied. Postings with masculine-coded words such as “competitive,” “dominant,” and “leader” attracted fewer female applicants, while postings using more neutral or communal language attracted a broader and more diverse pool of candidates. The job itself had not changed. The words had.
Replacing “he” with “they” as a singular pronoun, using “chair” instead of “chairman,” saying “team” instead of “guys,” and auditing job descriptions for gendered language are practical, low-effort changes with documented impact on who engages with your organisation.
Phrases like “falling on deaf ears,” “turning a blind eye,” “lame excuse,” and “standing on your own two feet” embed assumptions about physical ability into everyday expressions without most people registering it. While these phrases are so common that their origins are often forgotten, their continued use signals inattention to how language affects colleagues with disabilities.
More direct examples include describing a chaotic situation as “crazy” or “insane,” or referring to unpredictable behaviour as “psychotic.” These terms borrow from mental health vocabulary and use it as a pejorative, which reinforces stigma and communicates to employees with mental health conditions that their experience is available for casual use as a metaphor.
Terms and expressions that reference race or ethnicity in metaphorical or historically loaded ways are more common in workplace communication than most organisations acknowledge. Phrases like “grandfathered in,” which has roots in post-Civil War legislation designed to disenfranchise Black voters, or “low man on the totem pole,” which trivialises Indigenous cultural objects, continue to circulate in professional settings.
Beyond specific phrases, cultural assumptions also show up in how names are handled. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research demonstrated that job applicants with names perceived as African American received 50 percent fewer callbacks than applicants with names perceived as white, despite identical CVs. The assumption embedded in that gap is not just about hiring. It is about whose name is treated as professional and whose is not.
For organisations tracking diversity in hiring and recruitment practices, this data is a direct prompt to examine what signals are embedded in every stage of the candidate experience.
Language that assumes a shared professional or educational reference point is common in workplaces and quietly exclusionary. Phrases like “it is not rocket science,” references to elite universities as shorthand for quality, or the casual use of industry jargon without explanation can reinforce a hierarchy where some employees feel perpetually behind or out of place.
First-generation professionals, employees from non-traditional educational backgrounds, and those who come from working-class environments often report a persistent sense of not speaking the right language in corporate settings. This is not about vocabulary deficiency. It is about the social coding embedded in how organisations communicate internally.
This is where language has the most documented, measurable impact on diversity. Textio, a company that analyses language in job postings across millions of listings, has found that the specific words used in a job description predict the diversity of the applicant pool with significant accuracy.
Postings that use words like “execute,” “drive,” and “aggressive” attract applicants who are predominantly male. Postings using words like “collaborate,” “develop,” and “support” attract a broader applicant pool. Neither set of words is inherently better. But if an organisation uses one set by default, it is shaping its talent pool before a single candidate has been interviewed.
Inclusive recruitment language also means removing requirements that are not genuinely necessary, such as specifying a degree where one is not required, using salary ranges rather than asking candidates to negotiate blind, and replacing vague phrases like “culture fit” with specific, measurable criteria.
Research from Stanford sociologist Shelley Correll found consistent differences in how performance reviews are written for different groups of employees. Women were more likely to receive feedback focused on personality traits such as “she can be too aggressive” or “she needs to be more confident,” while men received feedback focused on skills and accomplishments. Similar patterns have been documented along racial lines.
These differences are not intentional in most cases. They emerge from the language templates managers carry in their heads, which reflect the assumptions of the culture they operate within. Structured performance review frameworks that prompt managers to focus on observable behaviours and outcomes rather than personality assessments reduce the room for this kind of language to operate.
For organisations building equitable performance and feedback systems, this is a direct intervention point. Changing the question from “Is this person a strong communicator?” to “Can you give three examples of how this person communicated complex information to stakeholders?” changes the kind of evidence managers are prompted to collect.
A 2019 McKinsey study on inclusion in meetings found that employees from underrepresented groups were significantly more likely to report being interrupted, having their ideas credited to someone else, or being spoken over in professional settings. Language that acknowledges this, such as directly attributing ideas (“Building on what Maya just said…”), explicitly inviting quieter voices (“We have not heard from everyone – James, what is your read on this?”), and naming interruption when it happens, changes the social dynamics of group communication over time.
Pronouns are also a meeting and communication issue. Normalising the sharing of pronouns in introductions, email signatures, and meeting platforms reduces the burden on transgender and non-binary colleagues of having to correct misgendering repeatedly. A study from the Williams Institute at UCLA found that employees who are misgendered at work report significantly higher levels of psychological distress and lower sense of belonging. Proactive pronoun normalisation is a low-cost, high-impact language practice.
How an organisation writes its policies, internal announcements, and employee handbooks communicates who the default employee is assumed to be. Parental leave policies written only around “maternity” and “paternity” exclude non-binary employees and same-sex couples. Wellness communications that assume employees have no caregiving responsibilities, financial security, or stable living situations miss significant portions of the workforce.
Plain language is also an inclusion issue. Overly technical, jargon-heavy, or verbose internal communications create barriers for employees who are not native speakers of the organisation’s dominant language, those with lower literacy levels, and those with processing differences like dyslexia or ADHD. The Plain Language Association International estimates that unclear communication costs businesses significant time and resource through misunderstanding, rework, and disengagement.
This objection treats inclusive language as ideological rather than functional. But the evidence that language affects behaviour, performance, and organisational outcomes comes from peer-reviewed research in psychology, linguistics, and organisational behaviour. Dismissing it as political avoids engaging with the data.
This argument puts the focus on individual responses rather than systemic patterns. If a single employee finds a phrase offensive, that is one data point. If consistent research across thousands of participants shows that certain language patterns reduce belonging and performance across demographic groups, that is a structural finding. The distinction matters.
In the short term, changing habitual language does require conscious effort. But the same was true of every communication shift that is now standard practice. The shift from using job titles like “stewardess” to “flight attendant” was considered a disruption at the time. It is now simply how the role is described. Language adapts. Teams adapt.
Many of the highest-impact changes to inclusive language require no financial investment. Updating email templates, revising job posting language, and normalising pronoun sharing in meetings cost nothing beyond attention and intention. The cost of not addressing language – in attrition, disengagement, and recruitment pipeline narrowing – is demonstrably higher.
Start with job postings. Use a free tool like Gender Decoder or Textio’s free tier to analyse the gender coding in your existing job postings. Look for unnecessary requirements, vague criteria, and salary practices that disadvantage candidates who cannot afford to negotiate.
Review your performance review templates. Ask whether the language prompts managers to evaluate behaviour and output or personality and impression. Consider whether different groups of employees receive qualitatively different types of feedback, and build structures that reduce that variation.
Examine your internal communication defaults. Who is the assumed reader? Are policies written to include employees with caregiving responsibilities, disabilities, or non-traditional work arrangements? Is the language plain enough for someone new to the organisation or working in their second language?
Create a living style guide. Rather than issuing a one-time mandate, build a shared resource that teams can refer to and contribute to. This treats inclusive language as a practice rather than a rulebook, which is both more accurate and more effective.
Involve employees in the process. The people most affected by exclusionary language are often the most knowledgeable about where it appears. Creating structured channels for employees to flag language issues, contribute to style guides, and give feedback on communications builds both trust and institutional knowledge.
For organisations building this capability from the ground up, Diverseek’s resources on workplace inclusion provide practical frameworks that connect language practice to broader DEI strategy.
Psychological safety – the belief that you can speak up, disagree, and be yourself at work without negative consequence – is consistently identified as one of the strongest predictors of team performance and innovation. Language is one of the primary mechanisms through which psychological safety is built or eroded.
When employees hear their identity described with casual negativity, when their name is repeatedly mispronounced without correction, when the pronouns they use are ignored, or when the language of meetings and policies assumes they are not the intended audience, psychological safety is diminished. Not dramatically in any single instance. But cumulatively, over time, the signal is clear: this place was not built for you.
Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the number one differentiator between high-performing and low-performing teams, outranking individual talent, team structure, and access to resources. If language is one of the mechanisms through which that safety is created or destroyed, it is a strategic priority, not an afterthought.
Inclusive language is not about achieving a perfect, inoffensive vocabulary. Language is living, context-dependent, and always in flux. What it is about is the orientation: the willingness to treat words as consequential, to stay curious about the impact of habitual phrasing, and to update practice when evidence shows that current habits are causing harm.
The organisations that handle this well do not treat inclusive language as a sensitivity exercise. They treat it as a communication quality issue, a talent strategy, and a performance variable. Because that is what the evidence says it is.
The starting point is not a comprehensive overhaul. It is a more honest answer to a simple question: does the language this organisation uses every day communicate, to every person who works here that they are seen, valued, and expected to contribute?
If the honest answer is no, the next step is to start finding out where the gaps are. And then to close them, one word at a time.
The Diverseek podcast aims to create a platform for meaningful conversations, education, and advocacy surrounding issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in various aspects of society.