Inclusion Education & Training
Challenge
Beginning our Rocket Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Journey (RIDE).
Actions
Educate the organization on inclusion and unconscious bias.
In June 2019, a group of 30 passionate Rocketeers gathered for the first ever Rocket Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (RIDE) meeting. These RIDE Ambassadors agreed a set of five priorities to focus on: Education, Corporate Action, Mentoring, Events, and Volunteering. The first of which, Education, is where our journey begins.
At Rocket we believe education is our first step in creating an inclusive environment that welcomes and celebrates diversity and ultimately enables all Rocketeers to thrive. We have 1400 Rocketeers around the globe and wanted to raise awareness and educate each one. We chose to partner with PDT Global an inclusion and diversity specialist to meet this goal. Building upon our organizational values of Empathy, Humanity, Trust and Love, we devised a program to meet our needs globally. This included 4 distinct but aligned training workshops.
- Inclusion as a Strategic driver
- HR Experts in Inclusion, Diversity & Equity
- Managing for Inclusion, Diversity & Equity
- Inclusion for all
Outcomes
1400 Rocketeers, educated by end 2020.
Our program began in early August with our CEO, Executive & Senior Leadership teams participating in our Inclusion as a Strategic Driver workshops, this led to a greater awareness and buy-in to this strategic imperative at the very top of our organization. Later that month, our Human Resources team attended the HR Experts in Inclusion and Diversity, giving them a greater understanding of the impact, they have in ensuring Inclusion, Diversity & Equity in our people management processes. Throughout September our 140 Rocket Managers, who are critical in driving and embedding change, attended our Managing for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity workshops. Finally, we began our Inclusion for all, workshops in late September & 1200 Rocketeers will have attended by the end of 2020.
Rocketeers are all at different stages in their own personal journey but together we have a vision to drive Inclusion, Diversity and Equity into the very DNA that makes Rocket, Rocket.
Quote
Our core values of Empathy, Humanity, Trust, and Love are foundational to our company culture. From this strong and authentic foundation, we are building a super-structure that explicitly – for the first time ever – identifies the values of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Opportunity, and Access. I am excited to launch this next chapter of Rocket growth by codifying these important extensions to our value system and driving the necessary change to have Rocket and all of our Rocketeers live these values.