Cultural competency must be pervasive throughout the organization in order to support our mission of creating extraordinary experiences for our employees and customers. We believed this would be difficult to accomplish through traditional diversity training.

Once a month, Community Forum brings together a small, diverse, cross-functional, cross-departmental, group of employees, led by impartial, trained, internal and external facilitators. Facilitators lead the group to engage in dialogue that supports discussion, collaboration and action  planning on specific challenges facing the company related to inclusion. The forum provides the structure for employees to:

• Develop trust.
• Hear different perspectives and experiences.
• Confront perceptions and belief.
• Develop a shared understanding of a problem.
• Create mutual accountability.
• Collaborate on actions that impact attitudes, practices, and policies.

Community Forum goals are focused around:

1. Workforce Diversity. Recruit from a talented and diverse group of applicants to build a high-performing workforce drawn from all segments of society.
2. Workplace Inclusion. Cultivate a culture that encourages collaboration, flexibility, and fairness to enable individuals to contribute to their full potential.
3. Sustainability. Develop structures and strategies to equip our leaders with the ability to support and manage diversity, be accountable, measure results, refine approaches, and institutionalize a culture of inclusion.

Since 2014 when the program began and has successfully facilitated hundreds of courageous conversations that have led to significant organizational process and policy changes. The program has empowered and enabled more open conversation internally and externally around diversity and inclusion and has inspired many friendships within the organization that would not have evolved without a deliberate effort to bring people together. Our partners and our entire senior leadership team have participated in Community Forum as well as several hundred line managers. Our goal is that every Bozzuto employee will have a Community Forum experience.