These days, I often feel excited about our great Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion community – Inclusive Space as I am reviewing 2024. It gives me extra motivation to feel the positive changes we are making at our headquarters towards inclusion.
We have organized many activities with Inclusive Space Community, such as cultural celebrations, Inclusive Bar – Bringing friends to the Friday bar, raising awareness on important days like International Women’s Day and Movember, celebrating anniversaries, and training hundreds of people in CCO on Leading Inclusively and Psychological Safety. We also joined Pride and initiated to achieve Safe Space Certification.
I can clearly feel the impact of this community and receive a lot of positive feedback. Recently, we had an employee representative election, and many nominees proudly shared their contributions to Inclusive Space. One nominee mentioned that she would have never thought she would apply for such a role but now feels safe to do so because we talk about inclusiveness more in our head quarters.
I am amazed by the impact and the achievements we have made together. This collaborative effort was fueled by our company’s supportive culture and the enthusiasm of smart, dedicated people which I feel very lucky to work with.
So, I would like to share our experience here in my article for some inspiration.
Inspiration:
We had a Women Empowerment community in Turkey, in my previous company, which inspired me to initiate such a community here. Because I wholeheartedly believe that creating inclusion cannot be only one function’s role but should be a collective activity to create a real impact.
After signing the Women Empowerment Principles in Turkey in my previous company, I invited people to join the Women Empowerment community in one of our townhalls, and 35 members signed up. We shared our projects and empowered members to focus on different topics.
We initiated events such as training sessions on Gender Neutral Language, creating career opportunities for women in traditionally male-dominated fields like high-rise window cleaning, head chef roles, and operating ride-on floor cleaners. Additionally, we supported women facing domestic violence to achieve financial independence. The remarkable efforts of this group continue to make a difference in my previous company.
This rewarding experience motivated me to do the same at our headquarters.
Initiation:
Our journey began with connecting passionate individuals who were eager to contribute to DE&I initiatives.
- We held a working session to envision our DE&I goals for the next three years on posters.
- We established our core values and ground rules, focusing on quick wins to build momentum.
- By concentrating on actions within our control zone, we avoided frustration and stayed motivated.
- Our efficient meeting structure ensured that every discussion was productive and meaningful, making everyone feel that their time was well invested.
- We listened to each other and tracked our progress.
This positive momentum grew daily. Now, we have over 90 members in our community, with around 40 actively working in groups or as trainers.
Activation:
We use very simple but effective methods to work together and stay connected as a community:
- We meet under Inclusive Space umbrella to discuss the activities of each group monthly. We divide into smaller teams and then regroup to make decisions collectively within Inclusive Space.
- We formed 4 employee resource groups and 2 trainer communities, and smaller groups like a book library, to work on separate tasks.
- We follow an annual cycle and communication plan to coordinate our activities.
- We have sponsors who support us on our journey.
- We have a tidy team room where all the information is available.
- We create our meeting deck together in our team room.
- We created an intranet to add all information about us.
- We collaborate with Group Communication and Health and Safety to make the most impact.
Motivation:
We already feel the motivation internally, but the following factors have further enhanced our motivation:
- Our work improves our network within the company, allowing us to collaborate with people from various departments and backgrounds.
- We learn from each other with DE&I moments and while organizing each activity.
- Top management is engaged in our activities, and we have received recognition from the CEO and executive community members who have joined our meetings and training programs.
- We celebrate milestones, such as training 200 people on Leading Inclusively training. Actually we can celebrate more, we will do it more next year)
- Team members receive letters of recognition sent to their managers. This recognition is considered and voiced over during our annual performance cycle.
Outcomes:
We believe that our efforts have positively influenced the engagement survey results related to inclusiveness, with increases of 2 to 3 points.
Below is a snapshot of our achievements over the past year, which have far exceeded my expectations. I feel privileged to collaborate with such an outstanding team and accomplish great things together.
