Workplace Inclusion

Through our work developing strategic partnerships that engage business professionals to create positive community change, we see two major STEM education challenges that skilled volunteerism can help address. Last week, we wrote about how skills-based volunteerism can help build capacity within the social sector to effectively deliver STEM education. Today we are sharing our perspective on how STEM education and volunteering can increase representation for women and diverse communities in both the social and corporate sector.

In June 2017, Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) reached out to Common Impact to engage the support of a skilled volunteer team in achieving an important but challenging organizational goal – one that many nonprofit organizations are similarly striving to attain. MEDA's mission is to strengthen low- and moderate-income Latino families by promoting economic equity and social justice through asset building and community development. To ensure their work would be truly impactful and align with core themes in racial justice, MEDA’s leadership aimed to create a workplace that was reflective of the community it served.

A group of West Michigan employers have been cited in a list of organizations doing “high-quality diversity and inclusion work.”

Diversity Best Practices, a division of New York-based Working Mother Media, released its second-annual “Inclusion Index,” and three West Michigan-based employers made the list, as well as two other Michigan-based employers.

Aflac’s Diversity Council hosted a world fair to raise awareness of the importance of celebrating diversity and its role in the company’s success.

August 26, 2018, marked 98 years since the U.S. passed the 19th Amendment granting the right to vote to women. It was also the 48th anniversary of the Women’s Strike for Equality demonstrations that elevated the women’s rights movement. And August 26 was Women’s Equality Day, proclaimed by the U.S. Congress in 1971 as the date to celebrate progress and recognize the continued fight for equal rights and privileges for all citizens, regardless of gender.

For three years now, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ civil rights group in the U.S., has awarded Nestlé Purina with a perfect score on its Corporate Equality Index. The organization’s national benchmarking survey scores businesses on their corporate policies and practices relating to the LGBTQ community.

While we are proud of our perfect score, we’re prouder of the hard work we’ve done to become a welcoming, inclusive employer.

We do this because it’s the right thing to do from a moral and business perspective. We firmly believe that all employees — regardless of their sexual or gender identity — deserve to feel welcome at work.

At Sysco, we strive to increase the diversity of our workforce, reflecting the communities we serve at every level of our organization.

Today, Walmart announced that the company has hired more than 206,000 veterans and promoted more than 30,000 to roles with higher pay and greater responsibility since launching its Veterans Welcome Home Commitment in May 2013.

Every Wednesday for eight weeks this summer, Ava Pittman rubbed elbows with some of the most successful and influential women Georgia has to offer. Cpl. Angela Florence at the Columbus Police Department. Kathy Bruer, owner of Belles & Beaus Etiquette & Manners and Aflac retiree. Teresa White, the first woman and African-American to hold the title of president at Aflac.

Latino Leaders researched the top employers for Latinos, using such criteria as number of Latino employees; programs to recruit, promote and retain Latinos; outreach programs (both internal and external); and Latino representation in the boardroom, management and supply chain.