Over the past month and a half Symantec has joined other leading companies and Triple Pundit - a global media platform that demonstrates how business can be a force of good – to facilitate Black Lives Matter & Beyond: Corporate Leaders Respond, a series of articles examining the challenges of truly fostering a culture of diversity and equality.
For example, how do you support employees in discussing controversial topics such as police violence and the BLM movement? How do you respect the views of others when they are very different from your own? And how can companies increase diversity in their ranks directly?
In the article “Talking About Race and Police Violence at Work” author Sherrell Dorsey discusses the unusual silence in corporate America around recent police violence and shootings. She highlights the example of Mandela Schumacher-Hodge, portfolio services director for social impact investment firm Kapor Capital, who spoke out publicly about her colleagues opening up to discuss recent shootings and violence in the US. Schumacher-Hodge’s boss Freda Kapor further discusses how Kapor Capital has fostered a culture where employees feel comfortable getting to the heart of sensitive issues like racial injustice, and what it takes to bring equality to the workplace.
“It’s our responsibility to educate ourselves and other white people, especially those in power,” she says. “It’s not our job to delegate [the responsibility of diversity] and ask others to clean up the mess we made.”
Additionally, in our Twitter chat for the series: #BLMandBeyond w Symantec, Ben & Jerry’s, Net Impact, we examined how companies should respond to national controversies like police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement. I was joined by Chris Miller, Social Mission Activism Manager, Ben & Jerry’s and Liz Maw, CEO, Net Impact. Some highlights from the speakers included:
Cecily Joseph: Talk about it! Don’t ask employees to leave a part of themselves at the front door of the office
Chris Miller: The best businesses have dynamic, diverse, and inclusive workplaces. You have to intentionally build that culture.
Liz Maw: Silence has perpetuated racial injustice; talking will help us heal
Diversity and equality is an ongoing journey and often it’s the issues and situations that make us feel uncomfortable that are the most critical. We are trying to bring light to some of these, and hope you will join us to read part or all of this series. We all need to start acknowledging the critical challenges and issues, but most importantly, we need to take these insights back to our companies, to our teams, to our friends, to our communities.
Cecily Joseph is Symantec’s VP Corporate Responsibility and Chief Diversity Officer