41
© 2022 Fairygodboss. All rights reserved.
What is your company actively doing to reset or rethink its corporate culture?
During this pandemic-inspired economic downturn, some business execs are thinking, “We might as well take the time to think about our diversity situation.” They see it as an opportunity to think through how to reset the corporate culture – with attention to work/life balance, discrimination, and team dynamics as well as diversity in hiring. (The acceptance of working-from-home is almost a given, now, but that too is causing downstream effects, such as more patience with parenting needs.)
Or so I’m assuming.
I’m aiming to write a “here’s N things you can do to address company culture right now” article with the maybe-unspoken thought that when you’re ready to start hiring again, you can do a better job.
So I have two requests:
• Give me an example of what your company is actively doing differently, and their inspiration for doing so.
• For the practical “things you should do,” what should be on my list?
I'm interested in what businesses are actively doing -- and how to do them. Not a wishlist for what they ought to do! (I have plenty of fodder for that already.)
Kim CallinanPresident & CEO of Nonprofit
809
07/30/20 at 3:06AM UTC
Here's some of what we are doing. Note some of these are things we were doing leading into the pandemic and some are new.
1) We created a culture roadmap for the kind of organization that we aspire to be that includes our values, four distinct cultures, and working agreements
2) We created a management plan that goes along with the culture plan that gets into more specifics about how the organization is management; it's our attempt to state the unassumed elements of our culture that it often takes time to learn
3) the culture and management plan both fit on a back to front 8.5 x 11 piece of paper; they are laminated; given to all staff; and used as an ongoing tool in the management of the organization along with the strategic plan
4) We looked at ways that we could support our staff specifically through COVID, and implemented the following:
-- initial we did a mental health Friday; then we saw that it really helped and people needed more so we impelmented half day Friday from June - August
-- We contracted with a vendor for a new telehealth benefit that has a number of new services, but the one we were most interested in was free mental health counseling for staff
-- We told staff that they we were financially secure and that we did not forsee layoffs in the forseeable future and promised none for our next fiscal year (which is a year)
-- We made sure all staff had the equipment they needed to work from home and arranged if they did not
-- We allowed staff to work flexible hours so that they could coordinate care a bit easier around the schedule of their partner or kids
-- We let staff know that they were eligible for paid time off through the government program and worked with those staff who were eligible and wanted it to make sure they were taken care of
From a diversity perspective, we have done a lot, which started two years ago when our board adopted our diversity statement and we elevated diversity to a top objective in our strategic plan. Over the past two years, we have grown the diversity of our C-suite from 0 percent racially diverse to 40% and we have increased the racial diversity of our staff by 11% from 23% to 34% (I think we are slightly better now, but those are my last official numbers.)
To achieve this, we have done quite a bit. This is just a sampling:
Hired a national director of diversity, equity and inclusion
Secured a firm to serve as our partner in diversity efforts
Changed our practices around recruitment to ensure we were attracting diverse candidates
Conducted training to raise awareness about bias
Held hiring managers accountable for making sure their biases were not entering into hiring
Did annual pay equity reviews and adjustments
Since COVID our efforts continue, but they are not really because of COVID or police brutality, we were already on that trajectory, but some of the new items that are underway are:
-- efforts to improve board diversity
-- intentional efforts to evaluate diversity when hiring contractors and vendors
-- training of our volunteers
And more.
Linda Quarshie"What you think, you become" - Buddha
93
08/02/20 at 8:28PM UTC
Esther, thank you for asking the question and Kim, thank you for the comprehensive response.
this is just my guess based on my following of these discussions in on several different forums, I don't think most companies truly care enough to address this problem, but it is reassuring when i see companies like Kim's take it this seriously, i think a vast majority of companies have put out "light" statements "condemning racism" and also that "racism has no place in the company" to save face without actionable next steps for fear of alienating another group. it is unfortunate that doing that right thing has to be spliced and sliced several different ways to stay politically correct and to please everyone.
Anyway, I will stop ranting, but as a black woman in the corporate world, this subject is central in allowing us to live full wholesome lives.
Thank you to all companies taking actionable and measurable steps.
Erin GarganoBanking & FinTech Executive
62
07/25/20 at 8:04PM UTC
Unfortunately, I have noticed many company treat this as a temporary issue versus a long term impact to businesses. I encourage Companies to face this directly by rethinking goals that were set for the year & how we will measure success for the business & for teammates. Currently, teammates feel they are in a no win facing new struggles while being measured to pre-COVID goals. Good luck!
© 2022 Fairygodboss. All rights reserved.