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Newsroom & Blog

Feb 23, 2020   |   Blog Post

How equitable participation enhances our collective impact

By Hilary Hanbidge

Director, People

Diversity and inclusion is one of four organizational values that are the guiding principles behind everything we do. VillageReach is committed to improving racial, cultural and experiential diversity within our team. We believe that an inclusive environment enables and promotes employee contributions that are critical to achieving our mission.

Gender Equity Now, a Seattle-based organization partnered with Puget Sound Business Journal (PSBJ) to create the GEN Index, the PSBJ inaugural ranking list of Washington’s Most Equitable Workplaces. We were pleased that when the results were announced on November 15, 2019, VillageReach ranked seven on the list of fourteen organizations who were recognized.

VillageReach’s Diversity and Inclusion Group (DIG) is an active forum for employee collaboration to develop organizational best practices and policies that reflect our values of diversity and inclusion and delivers on our commitment. DIG members are actively working on initiatives that cover four priority areas: Human Resources, Internal Communications, External Communications, and Personal Learning and Development.

Beyond the resources on the “Our Values” page, The External Communications Group has developed guidance documents to ensure all VillageReach communications reflect our core values around diversity and inclusion. In addition to these guidance documents, we have also developed detailed internal processes for content review and approval to ensure all materials meet DIG standards:

We also recommend a series of other resources:

Seattle Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Community of Practice (CoP)
The Seattle DEI CoP is dedicated to establishing and enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion practices within Seattle area organizations, through community and collaboration.

Learn more

PwC Blind Spots 
PwC has created an excellent suite of easy-to-use tools and videos to help guide individual and organizational evaluation and discussion on unconscious bias.

Learn more

Microsoft Unconscious Bias Training 
Microsoft has developed unconscious bias training curriculum to support employee growth in the area. Modules cover different scenarios with a small quiz at the end to help gain a mastery of the module’s concepts.

Learn more

Share
We are always looking for great examples of thought leadership and organizational best practices related to diversity and inclusion. Please share with us – send articles, resources and tools to: dei@villagereach.org

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