Happy Thursday Watchers!
Last Friday our entire team took the day off to complete our first ever Diversity and Inclusion training. We used this awesome course from Jennifer Kim to get started:
To be perfectly honest, I was both skeptical and nervous heading into the day. I was skeptical because I thought we were already doing a good job of building an inclusive culture. We have transparent salaries and have gotten a lot of praise for our hiring process. But all the full-time members of our team are white, and we’re almost completely male, so it seemed worth diving deeper.
I was nervous for two reasons. One, we have a lot on our plate right now and I was scared this was going to be a lot more work. Two, I’m still not always comfortable talking about diversity. It’s something I’m passionate about, but I’m still at a point where I’m scared of saying the wrong thing.
I don’t say this because I’m proud of it, but to be honest about where I am. It was a great experience though. The course was engaging and approachable. I learned about intersectionality, employee resource groups, and lots of small, practical ways for us to build momentum. Before I was focused mostly on hiring (diversity) but we’re shifting our focus towards culture (inclusion).
We still have a lot to learn, but building a diverse team is such a huge advantage (and the right thing to do) so I’m super excited to start investing more. We’re going to start by creating an employee task force and a D&I budget.
If you’re building a team, I highly recommend Jennifer’s course. The sooner you start, the better.
Cheers from Charleston ✌️
Andrew
Tweet
Share