5 Conversations To Get Your Workplace to Beyond a Hashtag and Doing the Real Work
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It’s the start of a new week and while there is still an incredible amount of work to be done that will result in permanent change, many employers are feeling like we’ve done the hard work.
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We sent an email, we donated money, we created space for the team to talk last week, we used the appropriate hashtag and shared on social media.
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In short: We’re good, we’ve done the work. The reality is, though, the work has truly just begun.
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In the same way, we personally have to get beyond temporarily using a hashtag, so do the companies we work for. Here are 5 suggested conversations to start at your organization, in order to ensure real change is happening internally. These are a starting point and by no means the only conversations you should have. The goal is to start somewhere and to not let an email be the only action that is taken.
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Note: For full transparency, these are conversations that I’ll be having with my organization too this week but want to remind White Leaders and Colleagues: the burden should not fall to BIPOC on your teams. Take these suggestions and initiate these dialogues yourself, just being sure to not move from dialogue to solution without BIPOC voices involved.
- How are we planning to ask each person to “do the individual work”?(and yes, especially the Leadership team)?
This conversation is a great starting point to dig into now, especially if some level of action (an email, a post, etc.) was taken that acknowledges that change is needed. Some questions to start this conversation:
Will there be a course that everyone is required to take to start?
Continued conversations that will ask people to continuously address their own biases and actively work towards becoming anti-racist?
How are we making sure our internal team is doing the work of learning and reflecting on an on-going basis?
2. How are we continuously creating space (without penalty) for continued dialogue and not just last week?
