The Quiet Ways We Signal Who Belongs

Your team just lost a top performer. Not to compensation. To a word.

The Subtle Defaults That Shape Culture

Language is habit. We default to "guys" in meetings and "Chairman" of the board in conversation because we always have.

No one intends harm. But intention doesn't shape culture. Impact does.

Leaders obsess over the precise wording of a press release or a quarterly earnings call. Yet, rarely apply that same rigor to the internal language that shapes organizational reality.

Research from BetterUp published in Harvard Business Review found that employees with high belonging show a 56% increase in job performance and a 50% reduction in turnover risk. For a 10,000-person company, that translates to $52M in annual savings.

Meanwhile, McLean & Company's 2024 research confirms that inclusive language in employee communications directly improves experience and increases the likelihood of retention.

Relying on masculine defaults subtly signals that the male experience is the prototype and everything else is a variation. This isn’t just a semantic issue; it’s a retention issue.

What signals safety to one group can signal invisibility to another.

Here's the question worth sitting with:

➡️ If your words were audited tomorrow, what would they reveal about who your culture was actually built for?

Masculine defaults. Ability-centric phrases. Generational assumptions. They accumulate and become the unspoken message new hires decode on day one.

Policing language is not the solution. The goal is to build awareness.

Audit your job postings. Revisit your onboarding materials. Listen to how leadership frames "culture fit." The patterns are there.

Belonging shouldn't be just a perk in the employee lifecycle. Build infrastructure grounded in inclusive excellence and achieve a culture designed for all.