Beyond Inclusion: Building a Culture of True Equity

What does it mean for Drupal professionals to feel like they are included at their workplace? How does an organization foster inclusive practices, and move towards a sense of equity for all levels of technical and non-technical staff? What does it mean to truly build equity in a company, from worker-led policies to full employee ownership?

We’ll review ten ways to implement inclusive practices to retain, support, and provide growth opportunities for teammates.

We'll also review resources for learning how to move towards employee ownership, from the National Center for Employee Ownership.

When: Monday, June 5, 2023 - 15:00 to 15:50
Room: Room 317-318
Track: leadership, management & business

Learning Objectives

As we work with multifaceted and diverse teams to solve complex issues for our end users, many of us struggle to find ways to create a more supportive work environment. The challenges of remote work, generational shifts, and seismic demographic changes require thoughtful policy changes.

By becoming stronger, more empathetic communicators who foster diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across the organization, we better recruit and retain employees and reach our continuous goal of making a measurable difference for teammates, coworkers, customers, clients, and end users.

How do we better foster a sense of inclusion to allow for different types of people, with varied abilities and skills, to work together well? We’ll present ten tips for building a more inclusive workplace. These tips, published in our "Fostering Inclusion in Tech" series, arise from lessons learned at a 100% distributed agency that supports Fortune 500, enterprise software, higher education, and government clients.

Audience members will:

Evaluate their current state of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and brainstorm next steps

Receive a work-in-progress checklist of 40+ items to investigate implementing at their own organization

Determine an action plan and concrete ways to move forward with inclusive practices at their own organization

Prerequisites

Attendees with people management, HR, or recruiting, or who are interested in retention, are most likely to learn the most from this session.

Synopsis

Fostering a sense of belonging for all employees is vital for any organization: we’ll explore steps on how to initiate efforts that positively impact organizational culture, and discuss our experience converting to being completely employee-owned. Think global, act local: as Drupalers we can positively impact our own organizations and the Drupal community globally.