As we continue to navigate the complexities of our modern world, it’s time to focus on taking the conversation further and dive deeper into what building an inclusive culture means. More importantly, how do we get beyond just conversations, how do we turn awareness into action?

Our ongoing DEI webinar series at OpenSesame assembles some of the brightest minds in DEI for discussions around how organizations can level up their workforces and build psychologically safe environments.

Are you measuring DEI progress with the right metrics? Take our DEI survey to find out.

Define your DEI anchor. 

“When it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion, it’s not something where you can fly in an expert for two hours, do one training and then you’re done,” said Tara Cooper, DEI consultant at OpenSesame. 

Achieving a true commitment to DEI takes time and practice. It’s okay if you don’t get it right on the first few tries. In order to hone in on an effective DEI strategy, it helps to define what your DEI anchor is as an initial step. An anchor for DEI is a key area or mission that you wish to focus your organization’s time and resources on. It helps you to set priorities and align on goals. The anchor can be socioeconomic, political or cultural in nature, but it gives you a lens through which to start building an action plan.

So leaders should take some time to self-reflect at both the professional and personal level. 

What should be the DEI vision for your organization?

Ensure you have support from leadership. 

The responsibility of promoting DEI within an organization cannot be assigned to just one person or consultant. In order to succeed, you need buy-in from leadership. Senior Leadership  buy-in is essential for the success of any DEI program. What is happening at the bottom typically won’t change if nothing is changing at the top. For organizations that are serious about improving the experience of underrepresented employees, senior leadership needs to take charge and drive the conversation. 

“Much of this work is pulling the wool back from peoples eyes and showing how insidious unconscious bias can be and how socialized we are to be discriminatory. We want people to slow down on their reactions to others and think about how they treat people,” says Cooper.

Start your organization’s DEI journey by accessing our DEI toolkit.

And it can’t be reduced to a mere, simple checklist. It is the responsibility of leadership to determine how deep the organization is willing to go and what they’re willing to invest in DEI. And that will look different for each organization. It depends where an organization is in its DEI journey. Are you at the level where you’re hoping to improve hiring practices? Or at a level where you’re requiring learning opportunities like unconscious bias training for all employees?

“There are trainings that aren’t super deep but their purpose is to just get conversations started. But if you’re wanting true transformational change, you’re using outside consultants, you’re taking those extra steps to ensure psychological safety and build that proper scaffolding,” says Cooper.

In addition to inclusive leadership training for managers, it’s important to seek advice from outside consultants and DEI subject matter experts. Bringing in a third-party helps to catch problems that leadership may not see and to execute a roadmap for the future.

Foster employee engagement and commitment. 

To effectively promote awareness and sensitivity towards DEI, organizations need to successfully harness the energy and curiosity of their employees in order to drive momentum. However, depending on where your workforce is in the DEI progress index some conversations with employees might feel new or uncomfortable. 

DEI should be a leadership directive, but says Cooper, it’s crucial that individuals are doing the work at every level of the organization. She also stresses the importance of affinity groups, also known as employee resource groups, for workers of marginalized identities. 

“I’m all about self-care. So if you need to have an affinity space to discuss the issues you need to discuss and build yourself up so you can be more productive in the workspace, then that’s what they need to be able to do.”

Affinity spaces sometimes come under fire for being “divisive” or a form of “self-segregation,” but Cooper encourages leaders who feel that way to look at the larger picture. The concept of affinity spaces are not new, as they tend to form organically and frequently occur in various settings.

“Think of all the instances where employees may separate into subgroups in an organization, the gatherings where it’s only men or only white people. If you only get nervous when the subset is around a certain race or gender, then you should question that.”

As organizations continue to embrace DEI initiatives in ever-increasing numbers, it is critical that employees fully comprehend their role in achieving DEI goals. To achieve this, dig deeper into what an inclusive workplace entails and the transformative impact it can have on your organization. In essence, your “why” must move beyond surface-level understanding and into a more profound exploration of the power of inclusivity, towards belonging.

The post How to Find Your Organization’s DEI Anchor appeared first on OpenSesame.

Now, as a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) professional, one of my main goals is to teach or remind others to empathize. You don’t have to wear the same shoe size or like the same shoe style. However, what it does require is that you try your best to slip on their shoes and, for a moment, walk in them to the best of your ability. They might feel too loose or too tight, but that’s all part of the experience. 

Empathy makes us ask ourselves:

1. How would I feel if this happened to me if I were in a similar situation?
2. How would I want to be treated if I were them?
3. Have I ever experienced a similar emotion that can help me better show support through my actions?

As empathy guru, Brené Brown says in her book Daring Greatly, “Empathy doesn’t require that we have the exact same experience as the person sharing their story with us… Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance.” 

Now more than ever, we need people to practice connecting with others’ emotions. For example, according to a 2021 Gallup poll, even with the ongoing racial tensions in the United States, 42% of U.S. adults rated race relations between Black and White Americans positively. Moreover, due to the pandemic, women are leaving the workforce in droves. 80% of the women surveyed in a Deloitte Global report stated that their organizations have not provided work-life balance during a time of increased pressure, workloads, and responsibility. 

These examples highlight how some people are still unaware of others’ experiences, while others have no desire to put themselves in someone else’s position to connect with and understand their feelings. When there is a lack of empathy, it can usually be attributed to the fallacy that our separate existences do not impact each other. However, the truth is that we depend on each other’s existences daily, especially on our jobs and livelihoods. In fact, independent studies show that organizations are more successful and teams perform better in more diverse and inclusive work environments. Some results are higher profits, higher revenue, and higher retention. 

As a DEI professional, I often encounter people who fear that they will be made to feel ashamed of their identity, especially when being part of the dominant culture. Empathy does the exact opposite. It maintains the story of the realities some people are facing while reducing shame. Shame does not effectively change hearts and actions, but relating to and understanding others does. Shame also paralyzes, whereas understanding moves people to make changes in how they lead, how they make decisions, and how they create policies. Most importantly, they become aware of how their decisions and behaviors impact people differently. 

Empathy does not necessarily mean we agree on every point as we make organizational decisions. It does mean, however, we will have more inclusive and equitable workplaces because we have truly put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

DEI Resources

To learn more about topics to foster empathy, we recommend the DEI courses in OpenDoors: What Is DEI?, the Microaggression courses, and the Allyship courses.

April Allen is the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at PeaceHealth and has acted as a consultant and trainer to executive and senior management on various DEI programs. She is also the best-selling author of the children’s books entitled, I Love Being Me and It’s Nice to be Nice, which helps children focus on embracing racial and ethnic diversity. April’s unique background includes a Juris doctorate degree from the University of California, Hastings College of Law, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in American Ethnic Studies and Political Science, and a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Washington.

The post The Power of Empathy in DEI appeared first on OpenSesame.

Now that 68 percent of companies expect remote work to be part of their new reality, that means your learners might live on opposite sides of the country or oceans apart. And the coming of age of Generation Z means for the first time ever, there are now five generations in the workforce, each of which relate to the Digital Age differently. This leads to people arriving to elearning from countless avenues with wide-ranging expectations and varying capabilities. How do we make learning and development accessible for everyone?

1. Our workforce is forever in flux, so the ways we learn must be also.

It can be a challenge to know the best approach to learning and development for the world we inhabit now. No two brains are exactly the same. So why should learning ever be one size fits all? We process new information differently  and have different experiences and skills. How we learn should be adaptable to those differences.

There’s no right way to learn. It’s however you learn. By having a diversity of materials that embrace all types of learning styles, you can make sure you’re engaging everyone. That means more opportunities to upskill, reskill and cross-skill—no matter where your employees happen to be in their career development journey.

2. Different learning styles mean we need more ways to capture attention.

The advantages of a wide catalog is you never have to choose between quality and quantity. You can have both. A marketplace like OpenSesame with tens of thousands of courses from many publishers allows you to match the type of content to the type of learner. Instead of elearning content that’s made in identical styles and treatments, you have modalities that are as diverse as your workforce.

It’s commonly understood that there are at least four learning styles: visual, auditory, reading/writing and kinesthetic. This is known as the VARK Model and was popularized by education researcher Neil Flemming in 1987. 

Read six tips and strategies for cementing engagement in your training initiatives.

Visual learners best process information by seeing it graphically represented. So think of charts, diagrams, animations and sketches. Visual aids for these types of learners can be useful in helping them remember what they’ve learned. 

Auditory learners need to listen to someone explain a concept before they can fully digest it. Hearing information out loud or having key takeaways repeated during a course can improve retention. These folks might enjoy podcasts and audiobooks.

Reading/writing learners love the power of the written text. Reading ebooks and pamphlets allows them to really sit with new information or just quickly skim it for what they need. 

Kinesthetic learners might enjoy interaction and gamification. So courses where they take quizzes and collect points throughout would better motivate them to complete each module. 

3. Individualized learning paths help to democratize career development.  

The various learning styles go beyond just what’s above. Someone who has a short attention span might enjoy bite-sized micro-learning that they can do in 10-minute bursts. Someone who is a tactile learner likely would appreciate workbooks and handouts to accompany lessons. Learners don’t always neatly fall into just one column but may be a combination of several modes. 

So it’s important to find a course vendor that can deliver courses in every format you can think of. With a variety of options, you can personalize a learning path for each individual. And with a feature like SmartPath, elearning experts at OpenSesame can curate the perfect blend of courses and styles relevant to each learner at your company. These customized curriculums are based on your specific goals and tailored to your specific learners.

Every mode of learning has a part to play when it comes to unlocking human potential, and utilizing different types of elearning content is what keeps learning interesting. Flexible learning that varies in style, format and even language has the power to bridge the gap between diverse learning needs. By catering to our learning differences, we ensure that elearning can truly be for everyone. 

Book a demo to see how SmartPath can match the needs of every learner!

Spencer Thornton is the Senior Vice President of Curation at OpenSesame. He has more than 20 years of learning and development expertise. Before joining OpenSesame, Spencer served in leadership positions with several global HCM organizations, including SumTotal Systems (SkillSoft), GeoLearning and Dice.

The post Why Elearning Can’t Be One Size Fits All appeared first on OpenSesame.

Voices of OpenSesame Juntos Employee Resource Group (ERG): 

I spent most of my childhood summers visiting my abuela who lived in the foothills of a mountain in the southwestern part of the United States. I loved to run through the arroyos, eat from her apricot trees, and catch lizards who became my summer companions. Whenever I went inside her house, I was met with love from her big, warm hugs, her large plates of food with her homemade tortillas, and her affectionate “mijita.” Outside of her affectionate address, I was rarely met with one thing: Spanish. 

Even though my abuela was bilingual in Spanish and English, she never spoke Spanish with me. This was the same at home; my mom never spoke Spanish with me either. There are many contributing factors, with one being that I lived in a multicultural home, and my dad didn’t speak the language, nor was he Hispanic. Thus, our language at home was only English with a sprinkle of Spanish words and phrases. However, the main reason I never grew up speaking Spanish was because of the generation I was born into. 

My mom’s family is part of the Hispanic community in the U.S. who predates the United States itself. They lived on the land in the southwest that eventually became a state. My family never immigrated to the U.S., but were instead living in areas where “the border crossed us.” For my mom, she faced discrimination for speaking Spanish, especially in school, and was faced with all aspects of assimilation. My mom’s perspectives on Spanish grew from this experience and impacted how my sister and I would grow up without it. 

I went through my childhood never questioning my lack of Spanish and thought of it as something fun to listen to when overhearing my mom on the phone, for example. I even took high school Spanish because I thought, “Mom speaks it. It should be an easy class.” It wasn’t until I was older and when my abuela passed away that I began to truly contemplate the important relationship between language and cultural identity. Whenever I asked my mom why my sister and I never learned Spanish, she would always respond by saying, “I felt English was more important because I wanted you to have opportunities.”

Into my adulthood, I began to feel like something was missing, like I wasn’t a “real” Hispanic because I couldn’t speak the language. And from interactions with some Spanish-speaking Hispanics, that became more obvious as they would usually shame my mom for not teaching me our cultural language. But they didn’t understand what contributed to my mom’s decision. My generation didn’t grow up speaking Spanish. My sister didn’t. My first cousins didn’t. We were the result of the effects of discrimination and assimilation that our parents grew up with, where English trumped Spanish at every turn. 

Now, as an adult, I’ve been trying to learn my cultural language with the disheartening fact that I’ll never be a fluent Spanish speaker like my abuela’s generation or even my mom’s — as she jokingly calls it — “Spanglish” generation. I still question if I’m Hispanic enough. But with that comes an additional question: How do I self-identify now?

Latinx is one option.

The term Latinx is something I see and hear all the time. It’s in the news, in textbooks, on social media, and even in our company’s courses. However, I don’t use the term. Honestly, I don’t even like it. If there is one way I would not self-identify, it’s as Latinx. 

According to Pew Research, most Latinos don’t use the term. And for someone like my mom, along with 76% of the adult Latino population, they haven’t even heard of it. The term is more commonly known among young adults and college graduates. 

I can understand how adding an “x” is trying to make the term gender-inclusive. However, the “x” represents another form of erasure to me. My cultural language was taken from me because of the assimilation that tried to erase the language from my mom and her generation, and that assimilation met its goal with many in my generation. The addition of the “x” is just another reminder of that. 

The “x” doesn’t follow the grammatical conventions of the Spanish language, and that is the very reason for its use. The “x” attempts to erase the gendered conventions of a language spoken by over 550 million people — in the name of inclusion. However, there are other inclusive equivalents that I believe are more respectful to the Spanish language. There is a term that already exists in English: Latin, as in Latin music and Latin America. There’s even a Spanish version that fits its grammatical conventions, Latine. It uses –e instead of –o or –a. These are more favorable options that don’t try to erase the Spanish language. The “x” seems like a way to fix something that isn’t even broken. 

What’s truly broken is the continued prejudice and discrimination against Spanish speakers and the idea that if they don’t speak English in the U.S., they should go back “home.” But that ignores the reality of the U.S. having “the second largest population of Spanish speakers in the world,” and for people like my family, we are home. We’ve been home for generations. We’ve never left.

For various reasons — with some being very personal ones — not all of us may agree with or even like the term Latinx, while some do. This is because the Hispanic and Latino population is not monolithic. We all don’t identify in the same way, and that includes the terms we choose for ourselves and for being more inclusive.

So, how do I choose to self-identify? For me, it’s complicated, but I’ll always be my abuela’s mijita.

By a Member of Juntos ERG

To learn more about how you can propel your DEI initiatives, use the resources below:

Essential DEI Resources →

DEI Progress Survey →

ERG Curated Course List →

The post Why Some of Us Don’t Use the Term “Latinx” appeared first on OpenSesame.

Diversity. It can mean different things to different people. One thing is for sure though, it’s a must-have for businesses these days. It’s a no-brainer that diversity brings more viewpoints and solutions into the workplace, but it also goes beyond your current workplace. Thanks to communication technologies, business interactions have become more global and more mobile every day. There is no denying diversity is crucial, but how does it really make a difference? 

• • Two-Dimensional diversity (2-D diversity): 2-D diversity is when inherited diversity (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc) is paired with experiential diversity (having worked in a foreign country, etc). 2-D diversity creates more communication, increases innovation and leads to teams working better together to solve business problems.
  • Recruitment: According to Glassdoor, two-thirds of people polled say diversity is an important element when choosing a company. 
  • Avoid turnover: Since employees value diversity so much, if they see a lack thereof in the workplace they may choose to leave. Lack of diversity can also be linked to a hostile work environment, leading employees to quit.     
  • Capture more of the market: Organizations are more global than ever- the more diversity, the easier it is to market your company around the world to people of different backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, ages, and sexual orientations.

Making Diversity Work

So you’ve hired a diverse workforce, all is well and done, right? It looks good on paper but that’s because the measurement was easy– it was a headcount. The trickier metric of diversity is inclusion. Numerous studies have shown that diversity doesn’t always drive inclusion. In fact, there is often backlash resulting from diversity without inclusion. A CTI study found these statistics to prove the backlash by researching sponsorship of senior-level managers of different ethnicities:

“Research on sponsorship and multicultural professionals, for example, shows that although 41% of senior-level African-Americans, 20% of senior-level Asians, and 18% of senior-level Hispanics feel obligated to sponsor employees of the same gender or ethnicity as themselves (for Caucasians the number is 7%), they hesitate to take action. Sponsors of color, especially at the top, are hobbled by the perception of giving special treatment to protégés of color and the concern that protégés might not “make the grade.” The result: Just 18% of Asians, 21% of African-Americans, and 25% of Hispanics step up to sponsorship (and 27% of Caucasians).”

From this, CTI came up with a method to measure and quantify inclusiveness, leading them to discover the four main levers that drive inclusiveness:

1. 1. Inclusive leaders: This type of leader is made up of six elements. Making sure team members speak up and are heard, creating a safe space to propose ideas, empowering teams to make decisions, taking advice and actually implementing feedback, and sharing credit for team success.
   2. Allowing authenticity: Research found that 37% of African-Americans and Hispanics say “they compromise their authenticity”, while this is true of 45% of Asians surveyed.
   3. Networking and visibility: For women and people of color, getting to the top requires overcoming the hurdle of sponsorship; a senior-level exec that sees the true value in them and can pull them up the ranks with advocacy for promotions and key assignments.
   4. Clear career paths: For women, LGBTQ individuals, and people of color, it’s hard to see the next move. There are a number of reasons for this, but a couple that CTI found are that they’re simply being passed over for high-level assignments and that 45% of women have to leave the workforce to take care of children, and more.

Diversity really is more than just altering a head count. It’s the ability to allow people with unique backgrounds to feel unified, in and out of the workplace. To learn more about improving and implementing diversity in the workplace, check out the 275+ inclusion and diversity courses on OpenSesame. Also, make sure to read the full Harvard Business Review articles to learn more about how diversity can drive innovation and how it doesn’t stick without inclusion. 

About the author: Parker Abena, a summer marketing intern at OpenSesame, is a senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He looks forward to moving out to the PNW after school.

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