• Discrimination
• Diversity
• employees
• Inclusive practices
• well-being

Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace is one of the major trends of the last years. Globalization is creating linkages between people, cities, and countries, as a consequence people are more intertwined and work in a worldwide economy. Diversity issues are key for companies and are predicted to become even more important in the future. In this scenario, organizations have become complex and developed the necessity to build a global culture that attracts and retains employees with different backgrounds. Since managing diversity is a significant challenge for organizations, diversity management, and inclusive practices are becoming of vital importance to realize an inclusive work context that ensures tolerance and equal opportunities and in which people’s uniqueness is respected. Effectively managing diversity can lead to several positive benefits for both the organization and the employee. Some of the benefits for the organization are higher productivity and competitive advantages, whereas benefits for employees might be an increase in performance, well-being, commitment, and other individual-level characteristics. Unmanaged or ineffective managed diversity can become an obstacle for the organization and lead to different negative outcomes. With the current increase in workforce diversity, the challenge arises of channeling diversity into beneficial outcomes because diversity does not always bring benefits for the organization. For instance, it can lead to turnover, absenteeism, conflicts, and lower performance. These negative outcomes need to be eliminated and handled through the adoption of inclusionary practices. The study of the climate of inclusion is still in its early stages.
In this light, this master thesis aims to investigate first on a theoretical level the definition of diversity with all its dimension and the link between diversity and inclusion practices, and the effect that these inclusion practices have on employee characteristics such as performance, well-being, commitment, satisfaction. Through a systematic literature review, inclusion best practices are explored and the steps to implement an inclusive workplace are listed. Previous studies used to focus on diversity management only leaving out the concept of an inclusive workplace, which extends beyond diversity management encompassing a wider scope of diversity than what is simply represented within the organization’s boundaries. Furthermore, to give a more complete view of the topic three company cases have been taken into consideration: L'Oréal Group, The Kraft Heinz company, and The Walt Disney company. Finally, after having deeply illustrated and understood the topic of diversity and inclusion in organizations, there are the necessary tools to move on to the last chapter of this thesis, which leads to investigating the core hypotheses of this research, to provide a small contribution to the discussion, attempting to fill this gap. The empirical analysis will be conducted to study the impact of organizational inclusive practices on employees’ well-being, focusing on the mediating role of discrimination. Specifically, 5 regression models will be analyzed and a Mediation test will be performed, to understand the indirect effect that organizational practices have on employees’ well-being through discrimination.
As a conclusion for this research, the main findings, limitations, and suggestions for future research will be discussed.

Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace is one of the major trends of the last years. Globalization is creating linkages between people, cities, and countries, as a consequence people are more intertwined and work in a worldwide economy. Diversity issues are key for companies and are predicted to become even more important in the future. In this scenario, organizations have become complex and developed the necessity to build a global culture that attracts and retains employees with different backgrounds. Since managing diversity is a significant challenge for organizations, diversity management, and inclusive practices are becoming of vital importance to realize an inclusive work context that ensures tolerance and equal opportunities and in which people’s uniqueness is respected. Effectively managing diversity can lead to several positive benefits for both the organization and the employee. Some of the benefits for the organization are higher productivity and competitive advantages, whereas benefits for employees might be an increase in performance, well-being, commitment, and other individual-level characteristics. Unmanaged or ineffective managed diversity can become an obstacle for the organization and lead to different negative outcomes. With the current increase in workforce diversity, the challenge arises of channeling diversity into beneficial outcomes because diversity does not always bring benefits for the organization. For instance, it can lead to turnover, absenteeism, conflicts, and lower performance. These negative outcomes need to be eliminated and handled through the adoption of inclusionary practices. The study of the climate of inclusion is still in its early stages. In this light, this master thesis aims to investigate first on a theoretical level the definition of diversity with all its dimension and the link between diversity and inclusion practices, and the effect that these inclusion practices have on employee characteristics such as performance, well-being, commitment, satisfaction. Through a systematic literature review, inclusion best practices are explored and the steps to implement an inclusive workplace are listed. Previous studies used to focus on diversity management only leaving out the concept of an inclusive workplace, which extends beyond diversity management encompassing a wider scope of diversity than what is simply represented within the organization’s boundaries. Furthermore, to give a more complete view of the topic three company cases have been taken into consideration: L'Oréal Group, The Kraft Heinz company, and The Walt Disney company. Finally, after having deeply illustrated and understood the topic of diversity and inclusion in organizations, there are the necessary tools to move on to the last chapter of this thesis, which leads to investigating the core hypotheses of this research, to provide a small contribution to the discussion, attempting to fill this gap. The empirical analysis will be conducted to study the impact of organizational inclusive practices on employees’ well-being, focusing on the mediating role of discrimination. Specifically, 5 regression models will be analyzed and a Mediation test will be performed, to understand the indirect effect that organizational practices have on employees’ well-being through discrimination. As a conclusion for this research, the main findings, limitations, and suggestions for future research will be discussed.