While Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) strategies have made strides over the years in addressing race, gender, and neurodiversity in the workplace, another dimension of this seems to be consistently overlooked: job role inclusivity. This time, it’s not about the person who is hired—it’s how we value different kinds of work within the organisation. 

With all the advancements in our modern working world, it’s common to hear someone complain that they regularly need to explain the fundamentals of their roles to their own managers. Perhaps job function literacy deserves the same intentional understanding we apply to other areas of diversity. After all, genuine inclusion requires empathy for each person’s unique professional context and challenges.

For certain departments, across different organisations, being systematically unrecognised is the norm – at times it’s because as the workplace evolves, new specialised roles emerge that few people, including those in leadership positions, fully understand in terms of complexity, impact, and required expertise. Often though, it’s because their contributions don’t fit into commercial or revenue-driven narratives. 

But when whole fields of work are left out of bonus structures, decision-making processes and even career progression, this isn’t just an operational oversight. It reflects a deeper cultural bias: that the most visible, revenue-generating roles are the most valuable and worthwhile rewarding, while essential but behind-the-scenes work is somehow secondary.

Payroll is one of the most sensitive and business-critical functions in any organisation—ensuring legal compliance, accuracy, and trust in how employees are paid. Yet payroll professionals frequently report being excluded from key decision-making that directly affects their roles: from changes in employment policy to new HR software rollouts. Often being looped in only at the implementation stage, asked to “make it work” with little input, and rarely acknowledged as strategic partners.

The exclusion signals that their knowledge and responsibilities are seen as operational rather than strategic, despite their integral role in shaping employee experience and ensuring compliance. This process is not only frustrating—it’s demoralising. And demoralised employees are hard to keep hold of.

A Wider Cultural Pattern

Unfortunately, this is not just a workplace issue—it reflects a broader societal pattern. Just as many roles within businesses are undervalued, so is the unpaid or invisible labour that sustains families and communities. There are parallels: just as women have historically done unpaid domestic labour that underpins households but is rarely recognised as “real work,” certain roles within companies quietly uphold the entire system without reward or recognition.

It’s no coincidence that many of these undervalued business functions—often HR, payroll, administration, intellectual, creative and care-based roles—are disproportionately staffed by women. In this light, job role inclusivity becomes part of a wider gender issue, class issue, and cultural issue, all at once. It reflects how our society, not just our businesses, decides what counts as valuable.

The Cost of Invisibility

When reward strategies are aligned only with visible outputs or commercial metrics, companies create internal hierarchies of worth. This breeds resentment, disengagement, and turnover in departments that feel overlooked—not because their work is less important, but because it’s less understood.

For organisations to thrive, every job function needs to be recognised, seen and valued. And when key roles like payroll or IT are excluded from strategic discussions, businesses increase their own risk by failing to account for practical complexities and unintended consequences.

Companies serious about DEI should apply the same principles of fairness, visibility, and inclusion to roles, not just identities. That means:

Equitable reward structures that recognise different types of value—not just commercial results.

Inclusive decision-making that brings in those who will be directly affected, like payroll and HR.

Recognition systems that shine a light on the essential, everyday work that keeps organisations running.

Education for colleagues to learn about and understand each other’s roles and the unique value they bring to the business

Job role inclusivity is the next frontier in DEI. It’s not just about asking who is in the room, but whose work is being truly seen and valued. Until we can confront the structural and cultural hierarchies that place some roles above others, a narrow and incomplete version of inclusion will continue to be reinforced.