National Inclusion Week: what it is and how to make the most of it
Sep 16, 2026
National Inclusion Week is an annual opportunity for organisations to focus on inclusion at work.
For HR teams, L&D teams and leaders, it can create a useful moment to start conversations, share resources and look at what inclusion means in practice.
But it can also create pressure to do something.
You don’t need a packed programme of events to make National Inclusion Week worthwhile. A smaller, more focused approach can often be more useful.
What is National Inclusion Week?
National Inclusion Week is an annual campaign run by Inclusive Employers. It celebrates inclusion and encourages organisations to act on building more inclusive workplaces.
Organisations across the UK take part each year through events, conversations, learning and other activities focused on workplace inclusion.
Each National Inclusion Week has a theme. That gives organisations a starting point for conversations and activities.
But you don’t have to build an enormous programme around it.
National Inclusion Week can simply provide a useful reason to pause, pay attention to inclusion and consider what might make a difference in your organisation.
What can organisations do for National Inclusion Week?
There is no single way an organisation has to mark National Inclusion Week.
You might run:
- A talk or learning session
- A team discussion
- An internal campaign
- A leadership conversation
- An employee network event
- A short activity encouraging people to reflect on inclusion
- A review of something that already happens in the organisation
What matters is whether the activity is useful for the people taking part.
A single conversation that helps a team notice something about how they work together can be more valuable than a week full of activity that people struggle to engage with.
You don’t need to do everything
Awareness weeks can quickly become another project.
Someone starts with the idea of sharing a few useful resources. Then there is a webinar to organise, communications to write, speakers to find, activities to create and five days of content to fill.
If you have the capacity for that, great.
But you don’t have to.
Especially when teams are already stretched, inclusion activity shouldn’t create so much additional work that the people responsible for it are exhausted before the week even begins.
Instead, decide what would actually be useful.
You could choose one question you want people to think about.
For example:
Where do our everyday ways of working make it harder for some people to contribute?
That could lead to conversations about meetings, communication, physical environments, recruitment, management, flexibility or workplace culture.
You don’t need to solve all of those things during National Inclusion Week.
The value can simply be noticing something worth looking at more closely.
Use National Inclusion Week to look at everyday work
At Differing Minds, our focus is neuroinclusion. And one of the most useful things organisations can do during National Inclusion Week is connect the bigger conversation about inclusion to the everyday experience of work.
A neuroinclusive workplace does not come from asking everyone to work in the same way. It considers how environments, systems, management and culture can create unnecessary barriers for people who think, communicate and process information differently.
So rather than creating something completely separate for National Inclusion Week, you could use the week to look at something your organisation already does.
For example:
Meetings: Who tends to contribute easily, and who might be excluded by fast-paced discussion?
Communication: Do people have different ways to access information and contribute their ideas?
Feedback: Are people being assessed on the quality of their work, or are particular communication styles being mistaken for capability?
Environment: Are there aspects of the physical or digital workplace that make concentration or participation unnecessarily difficult?
Change: When things get busy or uncertain, which inclusive ways of working tend to disappear first?
These are relatively small questions.
But they bring inclusion into the places where people actually experience it.
Three simple ways to make the most of National Inclusion Week
If you’re deciding what your organisation should do, keep it manageable.
1. Start with what people actually need
Before creating another activity, consider what is already happening in your organisation.
Where are people experiencing barriers?
What are managers asking for help with?
What are employee networks talking about?
What keeps coming up in engagement surveys, conversations or feedback?
Use National Inclusion Week to give attention to something that already matters rather than inventing a topic because you feel you need one.
2. Choose one useful conversation
You don’t need to cover every aspect of inclusion in one week.
Pick something relevant and explore it properly.
For example, a team could spend 20 minutes discussing:
What helps you contribute at your best in this team, and what sometimes gets in the way?
You might learn more from that conversation than from sending five different awareness emails.
3. Decide what is worth carrying forward
At the end of the week, ask:
Is there anything we’ve learned that should change what we do next?
Perhaps managers need more support around giving feedback.
Perhaps you’ve noticed that your meetings favour people who can process and respond quickly.
Or perhaps the conversation has highlighted a wider need to think about how your organisation creates a genuinely neuroinclusive workplace.
You don’t need a ten-point action plan.
One useful change that continues after National Inclusion Week is enough to make the week worthwhile.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is National Inclusion Week?
National Inclusion Week is an annual campaign from Inclusive Employers focused on celebrating inclusion and encouraging organisations to think about how they can create more inclusive workplaces.
When is National Inclusion Week?
National Inclusion Week takes place annually in September. The exact dates change each year, so check the Inclusive Employers website for the dates of the next National Inclusion Week.
Who runs National Inclusion Week?
National Inclusion Week is run by Inclusive Employers, an organisation focused on workplace inclusion.
What should workplaces do for National Inclusion Week?
There is no requirement to run a large programme. Organisations might use the week for learning sessions, conversations, internal communications or practical reviews of how inclusion shows up in everyday work.
The important thing is to choose an activity that is relevant and useful rather than trying to do as much as possible.
Final thought
National Inclusion Week can be a useful moment to bring attention to inclusion.
It doesn’t need to become another enormous initiative.
Choose something relevant. Start a useful conversation. Notice where barriers exist. Then decide whether there is one thing worth doing differently.
Progress doesn’t have to mean doing everything at once.
What next?
If your organisation wants to turn conversations about inclusion into practical changes to how people work, we support leadership teams, HR functions and all colleagues to understand neuroinclusion and reduce barriers in everyday working environments.
