Diversity and inclusion is a very big topic, and as we work throughout this course, we're going to take a look at some of those key elements. One of the elements to take a deeper dive look at is the workplace change drivers that impact what's going on in the world and certainly in your work environment. Our goal here is to provide some context, and specific information, and tools and resources as you take a look at what are those things impacting your organization. One of the things I'd like you to think about as you're working through this stack, is where's your gap? When you look at current state [inaudible] organization in reference to diversity, in reference to inclusion, and what are the things that impact that you can change or leverage to make things a little bit better? Where are you now current state? Where do you want to be? How does that look a month down the road, two months down the road, a year down the road? What if you're doing a three to five year plan? What is it you want that to look like? When we write things down and we start to document them, we have a much better chance of turning those into action. There are many change drivers than impact industries and some industries have very specific things because of the technologies involved or the way the employment happens, lots of factors. This particular conversation we're going to have is just going to focus on six key drivers in terms of what is the impact diversity and inclusion. We'll take each topic, topic by topic, define what it is and how it may impact the things you might be able to think about and do as you move forward to create your own diversity inclusion plans, or to enhance what you have. Technology, right? Technology is every place. It consumes us in so many ways, it's had a tremendous impact to the industries that we work in, whether or not we're directly involved in the technology or scientific application of software or changes in hardware. But technology in the way in which we communicate, the way we do business, the way in which we send messaging, we need to think about, are we excluding any people because they don't have that technology in our organization? Is it limiting in any way to really think about what is the impact in the way in which we are communicating and supporting the employees and the people inside of our organizations? Technology is ever changing and it feels like we're always running after that train just trying to catch up. But what is the impact to your organization? How does it limit or how can it better support the messaging you're trying to provide in terms of creating the most diverse and inclusive organization? One of the reasons diversity and inclusion has become such a giant topic is because our worldwide population, even people that are here that we're sharing this planet with has increased, so has a sense of proportion. I want you to think about in 1960, the whole world had three billion people, 1960. It's projected that by 2050, there will be 9 billion people. That's three times what we saw in 1960. What are the implications for that other than natural resource implications? What are the implications for the space we share, the way we get along, the way we communicate? What happens in terms of that homogeneous thing? Are we going to stay all together in our own little family groups? Do we connect with each other in different ways? What are the impact? What will be the impact? In worldwide populations, will it change the way we work? Will it change the way we communicate? Will it change the way we do business? Food for thought. Now, world and the demographics in which we work in addition to the larger population is also changing. Some questions to think about as you are looking and developing your own diversity plan or just enhancing what you're doing, what is the diversity of your employee population in terms of race identity? Is it a very nice mix? Is it a good reflection of the communities in which you serve? What's the diversity of men and women or LGBTQ employees or contractors? Also in the tech industries for example, there's been a lot of conversation around it being so male-dominated that that frontier where women have had a little more of a challenge to get in there and move ahead or have been treated in ways that historically were acceptable, which are no longer. What's the diversity of mixed race employees? What is the impact your organization to the mix of who you have and impact to a nice conversation around acceptance no matter where we are and where we come from? These are just additional questions to look at as you review your own companies and demographics. For the first time in modern history, we have five generations at work, side-by-side, organization to organization, profit and not for profit. What is the impact of having multiple generations? Will each generation approach it's work differently because each generational cohort was shaped by the values and the experiences as they were growing up with each other. Is it generalization like that cohort growing up at the same time experienced the same historical events? Although across the country those events would also be different, but from a national perspective, often times those events were the same. That shaped their experiences. There's various levels of technology savvy. Just because I'm a more mature worker doesn't mean I'm not very technology savvy, but our younger cohorts are millennials and are Gen Z, have certainly grown up as digital natives. They don't really know any different. Gen-Xers had computers in a very early age, even though the internet was not as much a part of their experiences. They also had a great deal of experience. There's a large shift of seniority equals promotion. What we mean by that is it used to be you would just work up your way of the ladder, and the longer you work, to really the older you got, the more opportunity you probably have to become the director or vice precedent. Well, because of technology, because of other factors, that dynamic has shifted. A 25 or 28-year-old could be the supervisor for many baby boomers who are in their 50s and 60s. What does that look like in terms of the way we work side by side? What is the impact to diversity to that dynamic? That's different generations often have a different definition of work ethic. Work ethic, does that mean I worked long and hard or does it mean I work smart and use the technology and leverage everything so that I get things done quickly? That's another interesting conversation when we put different generation side-by-side. Generations are a part of the diversity thing because of the age and the impact of the expectations we have and the stereotypes around different generations. George Orwell said, "Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." So for me as an educator, this quote was something that I really thought long and hard about as I was doing research for our millennials when they come into the workplace and then their Gen Z, brothers and sisters are coming right behind them, are they really such a different generation than generations before? Doesn't every generation want to come to the workplace and change things up and be all bright and shiny and sound ready to change things up? Well, I think the answer to that is yes, every generation does. But our millennials and certainly our Gen Z's, have grown up in a world that's very different. The world has changed because of the technology. The older rules and the old paradigms of grabbing knowledge and having seniority, those things have been challenged because of the technology. Our ability to learning and interact can be held in the palm of my hand with our mobile devices. The world is a different place and I really encourage you to think about how it's changed as we look at these different change drivers. For your organization and for the people that you employ, what are some of those factors? What are some of the things that are different? I hope you find that inspirational. Corporate Social Responsibility is defined as the integration of social and environmental concerns in business operations and interactions with key stakeholders, thinking about the impact that we have, whether it's our carbon footprint or the way in which we do business and being kind and friendly to the environments that we serve has become a very big point of conversation. Thirty or so years ago, companies were not talking about Corporate Social Responsibility, and now many organizations have teams and departments that are dedicated and focused on this particular intention. How do we support that? Additionally, for some of our, especially our younger cohorts that come to work for our organizations are very interested in what are we doing in corporate social responsibility. How are we supporting as an organization the communities that we serve? Some organizations have one day, a month, they allow their employees to go and support YMCA or the Boys and Girls Club, and that's part of their employment process. Some of those younger employees are very attracted to organizations that offer those things. It becomes an ability for us to attract and perhaps even retain key talent that focused on how we fit into the bigger picture, which is part of what looking at all these change drivers implies. It's no longer a single lens. We need to look at all these different factors as we talk about creating a diverse and inclusive in an organization where people feel like they belong and hopefully what they contribute and what they do matters. Each organization is unique. These questions here as we walk through them are intended to start the conversation. What are key workplace drivers for your organization when you think about where your business is right now, when we certainly all are experiencing in the middle of this pandemic? That also is a workplace driver for most organizations right now. What are those things and how is it impacting? How might the focus on them support a more diverse and employee friendly environment? What can we do to incorporate the diverse mindset? As we think about ways to better support the environments that we serve, how do you partner younger employees with more mature workers? I'd like to call this partner mentorship, where we take an employee who is less tenure, doesn't have quite as much experience and perhaps they are tech savvy where they bring some other very important information to the workplace, with somebody who is more mature perhaps and knows even more about the political way the business works, customer relationships. So we connect those employees as partner mentors. One gets to share information with the other, starting to bridge the differences. That's when we get to know each other a lot better. We definitely see things as, wow, we aren't so different after all, versus, wow, I think that person over there that looks different than me, sounds different than me, is a different age than me, we don't have anything in common. There's another opportunity to bring people together. The benefits for that are tenfold. When people start to break bread, get to know each other, share on a task force or share common goals, the difference and the gap starts to disappear. What is your organization doing to capture the tribal knowledge? It's really important to think about different organizations are impacted differently. Though baby boomers are not retiring in the same numbers, they still are retiring. What are you doing to make sure you've captured that tribal knowledge of theirs and shared that with the rest of your employees? I wish you much success on your workplace teams driver thought. Give it a lot of good thought and begin to put into words and practices things that are impacting your organization, and will continue to talk about the impact of diversity and inclusion.
