We believe that fostering an inclusive workforce requires educating our leadership team about what inclusivity means, how it can be supported within our company and what those forces may be that can prevent the team from achieving the goals of a truly inclusive workforce.

To begin, we started with the foundation of implicit bias, realizing that people have underlying attitudes and stereotypes they unconsciously attribute to another person or a group of people. We assigned Unconscious Bias training to all of our people leaders with the goal of explaining what this type of bias is, how it can affect our decisions and how we as individuals can begin to change our thinking and behaviors. To further emphasize these points, we employed communications between each module to encourage mangers to reflect not only on what they learned but, more importantly, how to apply this understanding within our company.

Leaders who have completed the training have acknowledged the concept of unconscious bias and how it can impact their decision-making processes. The subsequent focus/conversation groups have encouraged frank discussions and promoted a greater understanding of what inclusivity means in the workforce and how it can be achieved.