At the beginning of March this year, we shared our 2020 Diversity goals and introduced our Belonging Program goals to the Redox team. We were excited to share our goals and get to work on the expansion of our Diversity program. Our Talent Acquisition team began work on building relationships with potential diverse candidate resources. The next step was to launch Belonging initiatives in Q2, making sure that we don’t only open the door wider to differences but we strengthen their role in the culture of Redox.
…And then Covid-19 took center stage across the globe, and as it did with so many other companies, it impacted Redox.
Collectively, we had to adjust to the changes that resulted from the pandemic, both in our personal lives and at work. One big Redox adjustment has been the need to limit hiring for the foreseeable future. An obvious question for PeopleOps was, What does this mean for our Diversity and Belonging programs? It’s a disappointment to go slow when you’re looking forward to all the ways a company can benefit from employees who bring different experiences and points of view to the table.
Diversity remains extremely important to all of us at Redox. However… if we’re not actively hiring, it will be next to impossible to move the needle right now on our diversity metrics. Expanding our diversity and meeting our goals with Redoxers of Color and Redoxers > age 40 will not happen in a significant way until we are able to resume hiring. At that time, and we don’t know when it will be yet, we’ll adjust the timeline for our goals and ramp up our focus to welcome diverse people. In the meantime, we will put those goals into play for any critical hires.
We’re making progress in new ways, however, as we continue our support for Diversity at Redox. We’ve created a new Diversity page on our website. We’ve also updated our Values and Careers pages. It’s a start, and we look forward to the ways it will progress.
We’re using this space to share and highlight our culture, our diversity goals, and our amazing team to the outside world, our clients, and our future Redoxers. We look forward to adding many new and remarkable stories to it as we grow and change.
Progress toward diversity goals may be on hold for now, but the sense of being an important part of a community we call “belonging” isn’t—and it’s more important than ever. Tough times can bring teams together in ways we didn’t anticipate. We need to support each other, our brilliant differences, our unique approaches to problem-solving, and all the ways humans need each other. We also want to prepare for future growth with strong Belonging capabilities that have become ingrained in our culture.
So where exactly are we going to begin with Belonging at Redox?
In order to get a baseline of where we’re at with Belonging, we looked back at the related responses to questions on our October 2019 survey. From this benchmark we can measure Redoxers’ feelings of belonging going forward.
Results show that we’re doing well in several areas. Redoxers feel welcomed and accepted, feel we can make a difference, and feel connected to each other. We have room for improvement in our commitment to social responsibility, providing equal opportunities to people from all backgrounds, and increasing meaningful connections beyond the scope of our jobs alone.
One way to affect these areas is through Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). We’ll begin building structure and purpose into our current Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Right now they are Slack channels to facilitate discussions, but not much more. We’ll build a framework for ERGs, with leaders and ideas to expand participation in and celebration of each unique ERG.
We’ll also be working to build participation in our Diversity & Inclusion Slack channel. It’s a great place to share ideas, ask questions, and read articles. We’ll work to make this a more useful and engaging resource. We want more Redoxers to join the conversation!
One of the key goals for Diversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) at Redox is to grow into a learning community that seeks to better and more broadly understand the important topics as well as one another.
We are such an amazing group of people, with learning in our DNA; let’s collectively expand on our curiosity about DEI topics. There are so many opportunities to expand our knowledge around equity, intersectionality, race, hidden biases, and more. I’ve personally been consuming more DEI literature and podcasts, and I’ve been very humbled by how much more I have to learn. I’m excited to learn more and to understand the experiences of others in our society.
To expand our learning, we’ve put together our new Confluence Space for all things Diversity and Belonging. This resource will house our internal Diversity stats, with quarterly and annual updates, suggested readings, blog posts, a vocabulary section, Implicit Bias survey links, and information about how to be an ally.
This is just the start. The resource will grow as our programs and learnings grow.
We’re looking forward to working as a team to build and expand these additional resources for the Redox team and growing as a team where all are nurtured by our knowledge that we truly belong. We are so much stronger and better together. Being united in our shared mission, our values, and our understanding of and support for one another is one of our biggest strengths.
Stay in the know! Subscribe to our newsletter.
Related Posts
Redox hydrates new GenAI solutions from Google Cloud
Google Cloud’s new generative AI-backed physician search was announced at HIMSS 2024. Learn how to maximize and accelerate this exciting new functionality with real-time data streaming via Redox.
