- Mitigating unconscious bias
- Inclusive leadership
- Gender equity
- Harnessing employee resource groups influence
- Leveraging generational differences
Recruiting and Retention Strategies
Learn how businesses and organizations have successfully implemented targeted recruiting strategies for top talent. We can assist you by designing targeted recruiting, and retention strategies for:
- Talent in STEM fields
- Under-represented racial/ethnic talent
- Women
- Millennials
- Veterans
Design a strategy
Organizations and businesses across various segments and industries have invested into building inclusive workplaces, thus they have increased productivity and innovation. Start your efforts with a strategic approach. We can help you design, and implement, a diversity and inclusion strategy to drive and achieve your business goals. Employers can improve employee engagement by building a more inclusive workplace. Let us help you tap and leverage the potential of your employees, and reduce turnover. We can help you:
- Implement employee engagement mechanisms.
- Understand how to motivate your employees and increase productivity.
- Promote team building in your organization.
Inclusive Leadership
Leadership teams across the United States, and the world, have been investing into strategies designed to recruit, leverage and retain a diverse workforce more effectively. To fully retain a diverse workforce, it requires strategic planning and training programs designed to meet business needs.
Workshop Objectives
- Discuss your organization’s Diversity and Inclusion vision, goals and its connection to overall business results.
- Define and discuss Inclusive Leadership and its benefits.
- Discuss how your role impacts the outcomes of Diversity and Inclusion efforts.
- Create an action plan and to be adopted post-session.
Workshop Outcomes
- Examine your organization’s goals pertaining to your workforce.
- Identify behaviors and leadership commitments that can systemically enhance team performance and talent retention.
Time Commitment
In this two-hour workshop, participants will engage in interactive exercises, and case studies to discuss key leadership concepts. Participants will benefit from a team building experience.
Who Should Participate
- Team leaders
- Business leaders
- HR leaders
- Leadership potential individuals
The Neuroscience of Inclusion: Addressing Unconscious Bias
Organizations have worked for years to help their employees understand the value of a diverse workforce. One of the primary obstacles we face in leveraging workplace diversity is our own unconscious bias. Research suggests that we instinctively place people into categories based on their appearance, educational level, social status, job title, and so on. Right or wrong, this helps us order our world and saves us time and effort as we process information about people. However, these stereotypes—or unconscious biases—lead us to make assumptions about others. These unconscious biases can affect who is hired, promoted, and developed in the workplace, which can ultimately derail your organization’s culture and diversity efforts.
Workshop Objectives
- Explore the concept of unconscious bias and how it plays out in the
workplace.
- Discuss case studies to illustrate unconscious biases in the workplace.
- Discuss strategies and create a plan to mitigate unconscious biases.
Workshop Outcomes
- Participants in this session will leave with an improved understanding of how the brain functions and shapes their behaviors, both consciously and unconsciously.
- Participants will also explore ways to mitigate their own unconscious biases.
Time Commitment
- In this 2-hour workshop, participants will engage in interactive exercises to apply key concepts. Participants will benefit from a team building experience.
Who Should Participate
- Managers
- Business leaders
- Team members and individual contributors
- HR leaders
It is no laughing Matter…
Ethnic and racial jokes are not a laughing matter. This training clarifies the boundaries of expressions in the workplace. What do we need to know to avoid the pitfalls of discrimination and inappropriate remarks, jokes and comments that put the workplace in jeopardy of lawsuits, poor human relations and a hostile environment?
Workshop Objectives
- Explore the concept of humor in the workplace
- Discuss case studies to illustrate circumstances that have gone wrong.
- Learn how to stop the insults that offend and isolate your co-workers.
- Learn how not to be a part of the “horse play” in the office that demeans co-workers that may seem different and help them “fit in”.
- Learn to challenge the bully in the workplace and keep your organization from the pain and consequences of a law suit or complaint of discrimination in the workplace.
Workshop Outcomes
- Co-workers will begin to respect one another and support each other in a civil manner.
- The work environment will be more cooperative and peaceful resulting in better employee relations leading to greater productivity.
- Your organization will avoid the costly law suits and complaints of discrimination because employees will begin to see each other as whole persons worthy of respect.
Time Commitment
In this 2.0-hour workshop, participants will engage in interactive exercises to apply key concepts. Participants will benefit from a team building experience.
Who Should Participate
- Managers
- Business leaders
- Team members
- HR leaders
- Everyone
Facilitator: Rudy Simms
Rudy Simms
Rudy Simms, Director of the Des Moines Human Rights Commission, 2006 – 2016 has been an advocate for civil and human rights in the state of Iowa for the past 40 years, Rudy founded and directed human relations leadership institutes in the 1980s for high school and middle school youth, and developed educational programs, forums and conferences around the annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday for many years.
In the past he’s been employed as EEO/Affirmative Action Officer for a major Midwest contractor, Mediator for Iowa Civil Rights Commission, Polk County Attorney’s Dispute Resolution Center, directed the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), and served as a private consultant to state and local government agencies. He retired as Director of the City of Des Moines Human and Civil Rights Commission in April of 2006 and is now President of African American Museum of Iowa, located in Cedar Rapids and is self employed as a Consultant on Civil and Human Rights, Human Relations and conducts Honest Conversations on Race Ethnicity and Culture.
Mr. Simms has received awards and recognition for his human rights work from a wide array of organizations, including Amnesty International, Des Moines Human Rights Commission, U.S. Department of Justice, Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Peace Award, Des Moines Area Religious Council, and the Iowa African American Hall of Fame to name a few. He continues to serve on various boards that benefit local communities. Rudy is one of the founders of the local Martin Luther King, Jr. Scholarship Fund (1986), The Greater Des Moines Friends of Human Rights, Inc. (2007) The Committee he organized in 1985 was responsible for leading the renaming of the Street after Martin Luther King, Jr. and encouraging the State of Iowa to hold the King Holiday on the same third Monday as the Federal Holiday.