This March, DMC launched our inaugural Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce, with the intention of evaluating and improving diversity/inclusion at DMC. Volunteers staffed the taskforce throughout DMC, and it included four sub-teams: Internal Initiatives, Marketing Improvements, Recruitment, and Hiring Process.
After seven months of effort, the Taskforce has moved into its closeout phase. Although diversity/inclusion efforts will be an ongoing and iterative process at DMC, we wanted to take some time to reflect on the results of this Taskforce and the DMC improvements it has helped promote.
Taskforce Members
The members of the taskforce span across multiple DMC offices. The team has biweekly meetings over Zoom and collaborate regularly. The members of the taskforce include Courtney Mitchell, Karen Hsu, Sam Weber, Becca Stussman, Anjali Bharadwa, Elizabeth Goodnight, Elisha Harris and Jason Mayes (from left to right in the picture above).
Internal Initiatives
The Internal Initiatives sub-team focused on DMC's company culture and policies as they relate to employees' feelings of inclusion and belonging. The team members worked closely with DMC's management, HR, and admin teams to review DMC's policies, collect employee feedback, and recommend potential improvements. Some of the initiatives that were created with the help of the Internal Initiatives sub-team are:
- Annual Inclusion and Belonging Survey
- Annual Diversity and Inclusion Trainings
- Self-guided web-training that employees complete on their own before the group training
- DMC-wide group training with all employees
- Manager-only group training for members of the management team
- Monthly bulletin board updates and email blasts to celebrate heritage months (Black history month, LGBTQ+ Pride, etc.)
Marketing Improvements
The marketing sub-team evaluated DMC's website, flyers, and other marketing content. The team worked closely with DMC's marketing team to create the following updates to our content:
- Creation of the Diversity & Inclusion website page, which provides transparency into DMC's thoughts/policies related to diversity/inclusion
- Revamped recruitment flyers to be "coded" in a way that's more inclusive to all candidates
Recruiting
The recruiting team implemented initiatives designed to diversify and widen DMC's candidate pool. The team worked closely with DMC's recruiting team, and promoted the following policies:
- Specific DMC outreach to University clubs with unrepresented engineering candidates. (Society of Women Engineers, Society of Black Engineers, etc.)
- Sent emails to underrepresented candidate clubs at all schools where DMC recruits.
- Planned/attended events with underrepresented candidate clubs at some schools where DMC recruits.
- Created a plan to evaluate the success of the email/event initiatives, so we can allocate resources in a way that helps us reach the most candidates.
Hiring Process
The Hiring Process sub-team worked closely with DMC's Hiring committee to evaluate and update DMC's hiring process to make it as unbiased as possible. The Hiring Process team helped implement the following modifications to DMC's hiring procedure:
- Revamped our evaluation form language to mitigate the potential for bias
- Implemented anti-bias coaching for DMCers involved in the interview process
Next Steps
DMC is really excited about all of the improvements we've implemented with the help of the Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce. However, we understand that inclusivity is an ongoing process, and our work towards it is never entirely done. That's why DMC anticipates continued steps to improve our diversity/inclusion.
These continued steps include forums to collect feedback from DMCers, expansion of initiatives that demonstrate the most value-add, and the potential creation of a second Diversity and Inclusion group to continue exploring diversity/inclusion efforts.
Learn more about our Diversity and Inclusion Efforts and check out DMC's open positions.