Ale Thomas, Frontend Engineer at Amazon, came on the podcast yesterday to discuss mentorship, the importance of representation, and finding your favorite coding language.
On the podcast, Ale shared that one of the things that she does before accepting a job is inquiring further about the diversity, equity, and inclusion at the company.
She shared:
“Things like [asking questions about diversity during interviews] I think are very important.
[But so is] just being very observant, because it’s obviously very easy to just say like, “Yeah, our culture is great”. but it’s a very important decision, [to take a job] because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with these people.
You want to know that it’s going to be a safe place for you.”
We know through this episode and through experience/history that hiring diverse employees at a company, while extremely important, is not enough to foster a safe, inclusive, and comfortable workplace for everyone. It is important to create and recreate systems that are deeply rooted in care, healing, equity, and liberation.
We would love to use this as an opportunity to ask you all what practices you have seen or would like to see in the workplace in order to uphold these qualities.
With that, our main question for today is:
Besides hiring a diverse team, how else can employers foster welcoming and inclusive workplaces?
ICYMI— find that episode below or wherever you get your podcasts:
Send us your thoughts below and don't forget to give it a listen here or wherever you listen to your podcasts! 💜
Top comments (3)
One of the biggest cultural impacts I've seen at companies is how its leaders communicate. I don't just mean what they say, but also how they say things, when do they communicate with people and how frequently, how do they listen and handle communication being shared with them.
(When I say leader here, I mean anyone in a position of authority of any kind...from CEO down to a team leader.)
If leaders consistently interrupt or talk over people, eventually those people stop talking altogether. If someone shares a thought and leaders frequently ignore it or side-step it, eventually people will stop sharing. If leaders get defensive or argumentative when they're questioned, eventually people will stop asking questions.
I firmly believe that if an inclusive and welcoming culture is to thrive, open, honest, and respectful communication must be encouraged and valued above all else. For this, I would highly encourage anyone in a leadership position to read some books on communication. I don't think a company requirement for leaders to attend training or ready specific books would be such a bad idea either. It could be made a qualifier to even be considered. In order to be considered for a leadership position, you must have first attended N training, and read these 2 books.
I would love to hear other's thoughts!
Love this. If you have any book recs I would love to hear them too!
1 book I would absolutely recommend is Crucial Conversations. It's helped me tremendously!