Tackling Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Allyship - How Can We Do Better?
Geoff Curtis, IPR Trustee, Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Chief Communications Officer, Horizon Therapeutics
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This blog was originally published in Culpwrit.
For more than six months, I have been on a journey – one of education, understanding and action. While I’ve always considered myself an inclusive person, the recent and ongoing events specific to anti-Black racism, which have impacted me, my friends and colleagues, have made me realize that I have a lot to learn.
There are two phrases I have repeated a lot lately: “I have to be better” and “I have to do better.” Part of the journey toward “being and doing better” is having conversations with diverse groups of people to understand the “how” behind being and doing better. One of my recent conversations was with Dr. Tia Tyree, a professor at Howard University who teaches both undergraduate and graduate communications courses focused on strategic communications, social media and African Americans. Prior to Howard, her career experience ranges from the news media to public relations in the agency setting to public relations/information in local government.
With increased societal, and specifically corporate, focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and allyship, below are insights from our conversation that resonated most and that will help me and hopefully others find the “how” behind being and doing better.
Read the rest of Geoff Curtis' blog on Culpwrit to learn the "how" behind being and doing better.
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Effective Strategies to Encourage Employee Advocacy
Patrick Thelen, Ph.D., APR, Assistant Professor, San Diego State University, Chief Research Editor, IPR Organizational Communication Research Center
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Employers are becoming increasingly aware that their workers are a powerful and influential source of information when advocating the values of the companies they represent or praising the products and services offered by their organizations.
Not surprisingly, businesses such as Dell, Hewlett Packard, Zappos, Starbucks, and Reebok have encouraged their employees to be active on social media and share the company’s culture and content online. Although some companies have developed successful employee advocacy programs, others have failed and have received criticism. GameStop is an example of the latter. This past November, the video game retailer invited store workers to participate in an online challenge, and the winner of the challenge would gain access to 10 additional work hours during the Black Friday shopping week, among other prizes. The fact that GameStop was giving out shifts as a prize was perceived as exploitative and abusive. After receiving extensive backlash for their idea, the business subsequently took down the offer.
This example highlights that encouraging employee advocacy can lead to adverse outcomes if not managed appropriately. Therefore, an important question is: How should organizations and communication practitioners influence employee advocacy?
Read Patrick Thelen's blog to learn effective strategies to encourage employee advocacy.
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How To Counter Truth Decay and Disinformation
RAND Corporation
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Rand is helping fight the spread of disinformation through its initiative, Countering Truth Decay. For this initiative, researchers have developed a database of online tools to help information consumers, researchers, and journalists navigate an increasingly difficult information environment. Rand summarized its goals in three parts:
- To identify and collect a set of resources in one place that can help users confront disinformation, gain greater awareness of the media ecosystem, and become more-savvy information media consumers
- To inform funders and developers about the set of tools currently under development, those tools in need of funding, and areas where additional development would be beneficial
- To provide a map of ongoing projects and developed tools that could serve as an input to efforts to build a field around the study of disinformation and its remedies
Read more to discover different types of anti-disinformation tools and the main trends of disinformation.
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How Diversity in the Workplace Impacts Positive Employee Outcomes
Bernhard Mehl, CEO and Co-Founder, Kisi
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In a literature review, Bernhard Mehl explored four major elements of diversity (ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disabilities) to understand the state of workplace diversity and how a diverse workforce benefits corporations.
Key findings include:
- Teams that are more diverse than average reported innovation revenue that was 19% higher than companies with below-average leadership diversity.
- High-performance organizations are 37% more likely to hire people with a cognitive disability because they are good talent matches for open positions.
- LGBTQ-friendly workplaces lead to improved health, increased job satisfaction, better relationships with co-workers and supervisors, and greater work commitment among LGBTQ workers.
- 72% of job hunters who identify as LGBTQ allies would “prefer to work for an LGBTQ-friendly employer over a less inclusive one.”
Read more to learn about the state of workplace diversity and how diversity benefits other organizational factors.
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