Diversity and Inclusion Starts With Hello September is coming fast as people return to work, school, and home. This is a great opportunity to strike up a conversation with new people and break out of social and work silos. There are three common threads through countless interviews and focus groups I’ve conducted in a wide range of organizations: 1- …
I applaud the decision to put Harriet Tubman, fugitive slave who helped hundreds of slaves escape to freedom on the face of the 20.00 bill. She was my childhood hero. Not everyone agrees. According to Donald Trump, she was a great person, but putting her on the 20 bill, is just about political correctness, whatever that means. Political correctness seems…
A reporter asked me for three reasons that mergersa and acquisitions fail. Here are the reasons I gave, along with solutions. 1– Not seeing mergers and acquisitions as a diversity and inclusion issue between organizations. When people feel left out and/or that they have no control of a situation, they create “facts’ and information to fit the gaps. This…
Why “Employee Engagement” Sometimes Makes Me Want to Plug My Ears There are times when I hear the term employee engagement and just want to add the words, “blah, blah, blah!” Here is reason number one of five. The other four will follow in additional posts. 1-Employee engagement has become a buzzword with no meaning in some workplaces. What some…
The best way to lose great employees is to promote the wrong people based on narrow criteria. The President of one of my client companies asked for my help. Women and people of color in his division were leaving and being hired by his competitor. When I spoke to the vice-president of that division, he complained that people of color and women…
Every organization has brilliant people who are “under the radar.” They are the geniuses who may not look like everyone else, think like everyone else, or who have been ignored because they don’t fit your image of success. Despite the focus on diversity and numbers, and adding the word inclusion, there are those people who are potential game changers, innovators…
When I first began Diversity and Inclusion work in organizations over 20 years ago, there were those in the D&I community who did not think that LGBT people had a seat at the Diversity table. Race and gender and other dimensions of diversity had a seat, but if you were a Black lesbian, a Jewish gay man, or a Latino…
Are Your Employees Sending Their Robot Surrogates to Work? Several years ago, we conducted an organizational assessment for the president of a mid-size company who wanted to build a more diverse workforce. As a result of the assessment, we helped his executive team revamp their recruiting and hiring strategy to be more inclusive, and increase diversity amongst their new hires….
Three Ways to Prevent Discrimination in Your Business Whether discrimination is unintentional or intentional, the impact is the same, and no amount of rationalization makes it acceptable. Here are three ways you can prevent discrimination in your business. 1- Be conscious of your personal biases and learns to filter them out. Bias and wrong assumptions won’t go away without intervention….
When Howard Schultz announced the “Race Together Campaign,” he was met with criticism by those in denial that there are any issues regarding race in the US, and by social activists who said he “did it wrong.” Schultz may not have “done his research,” or created a working foundation for baristas and customers to have constructive discussions on race, but…
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