The Must-Read Articles for Talent Professionals This Week

If you’re looking to create a culture of inclusivity at your company, one simple thing can help: Learn how to say people’s names.

“While mispronouncing an employee [or coworker’s] name may appear to be innocuous,” writes MIT Sloan Management Review, “it comes at a great cost. Proper name pronunciation is an often overlooked, readily attainable, and easily accessible practice to promote inclusion and belonging in the workplace, which may be particularly relevant to international employees or employees of color.”

To drive this point home, MIT SMR highlights a 2021 poll from Namecoach, a company that specializes in audio pronunciation tools:

Approximately 4 in 10 of the poll’s respondents said they’d had their name mispronounced at work.
Nearly 75% of respondents reported they had struggled to pronounce people’s names at work, leading some to even avoid calling on or speaking to certain colleagues.

“Research suggests,” adds MIT SMR, “that proper name pronunciation promotes belonging and psychological safety and, in the team context, fosters team formation, development, and cohesion. Our brains become activated when our names are used, and mispronunciation of our names has been shown to induce feelings of alienation.”

To learn more about the impact of mispronunciation — plus tips of what to do when you’re unsure of how to pronounce a name — be sure to check out the top spot on our list below of must-read articles for talent professionals. And further down our list, you can also learn why certain demographics are more likely to work remotely than others; why some are calling CHRO the hardest job in the C-suite; and how we can all better support workers with autism.