The Beth-el Center:
Reducing Childhood Trauma in Homeless Shelters
Diversity and Inclusion Fair
Project Summary:​
All studies show the importance of diversity in the workplace. As a new employee I quickly realized that it was harder than one would expect to find out about the variety of diversity and affinity organizations. Traditionally it turned out that recruitment events only happened once a year, typically in January.
It also become apparent that different corporate buildings had different levels of engagement leading to low recognition in some buildings.
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Identify a Need
New employees weren’t given information about affinity groups upon hiring.
In some cases individuals were in their jobs for over a year before hearing about the organizations.
Most of the affinity group events were at other locations. This was reducing support and awareness.
Interview Users
I set up lots of informal meetings with other new employees to learn what they knew about our diversity groups.
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I then reached out to all of the affinity group leads to see how they felt about their recruitment efforts and what they had seen work in the past.
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It was also noted that there are actually more diversity events then originally understood. The problem was that they were poorly advertised at our building.
Our first event went incredibly well. We had 50 new members sign up during our first event and then another new 50 members sign up at our second quarter event.
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This showed that the original hypothesis that was right. There was considerable interest in diversity and inclusion but new hires hadn’t had a chance to meet a Diversity Group representative (putting faces to names) or understood how to get on a mailing list to hear about events.
Brainstorm
I reached out to the Diversity and Inclusion group to pitch a number of new ideas.
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The idea that they liked the most was a quarterly event that would allow the groups to advertise to new employees.
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Other ideas included a "Lunch and Learn" series where every quarter a different affinity group led a workshop. We also thought about including a new information sheet into the orientation packet.
Prototype a Solution
My final pitch was for a “career fair” type event along the hallway right in front of the cafeteria.
Each group provided a representative to be available to meet with staff plus designed and printed a poster that describes their organization, initiatives, and yearly events.