Grow Together – DEI Awareness Campaign
Challenge
The purpose of Grow Together was two-fold: First, to spur action among employees as part of a company-wide initiative which would lead to individual employees learning about or taking action on social justice issues in a way that was appropriate for them personally. Second, the program sought to support nonprofit organizations aligned with Arconic and Arconic Foundation's social equity values.
Actions
To initiate action, CEO Tim Myers brought together various leaders and departments including his management team, HR, Communications, and the Arconic Foundation to develop a program called Grow Together.
The Grow Together awareness campaign launched in August of 2020. From August-November, employees could choose to take one of three types of actions: learning, donating, or volunteering. For each action taken and recorded via a survey, Arconic Foundation would pledge a donation of $25 to each of six selected nonprofit organizations.
To select the six nonprofit organizations, each of our six ERGs coordinated with Arconic Foundation to identify a nonprofit organization to receive the pledge donations. Each of these organizations presented a webinar to Arconic employees to share more about their respective missions and how to get involved.
Outcomes
Grow Together generated a large amount of participation and renewed energy from Arconic employees. Despite the restrictions imposed by COVID-19, locations found creative, socially distant ways to encourage participation in the program. As part of recording an action, the employees also filled out a survey which provided over 500 suggestions related to ways in which the company could do more to improve its efforts in social equity, diversity, and inclusion. These suggestions were the results of employee discussions that likely would not have happened without the Grow Together program.
Initially, Arconic set a goal of 2,000 collective actions. Arconic employees exceeded that goal and the final contribution was $60,000 to each organization for a total of $360,000. The program offered employees the opportunity to share their activities, learnings, and questions in a safe and supported space.
When the campaign ran again in 2021, employees more than doubled their actions and again exceeded their original goal.
While our leaders are often in a position to broadly represent the company’s efforts to cultivate an inclusive and diverse culture, all of our employees have a role to play in making sure we are strong allies for each other at work and in our communities. I’m proud of the way our employees continue to step up to learn more, take action and support efforts to advance diversity, equity and inclusion on our journey as we Grow Together.