Timely news for International Women’s Day, and for the remainder of 2018, Dell has led a call-to-action for organizations to unite and #PressforProgress. This means to think, act and be gender inclusive. Brian Reaves, Dell’s Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, has outlined what Dell is doing to help celebrate the annual event in his blog.
Here Reaves writes about Dell’s commitment to inclusion, which means “creating an environment where everyone–regardless of sex, race, age–feels welcome and able to be their true self. It’s intersectionality. It’s the idea of not categorizing people by gender, ethnicity, class, or sexual orientation, but realizing that most people hold a complex number of roles that make them uniquely who they are. For example, I’m a male, but also black. And I also strongly support topics associated with the empowerment of women.”
This follows on from CEO and founder, Michael Dell signing the Catalyst CEO Champions for Change initiative, along with more than 40 other industry leaders and CEOs. This was remarked on by Michael Dell as both a personal and an organizational commitment, one necessary to accelerate gender equality and inclusion in the workplace.
Dell has other initiatives underway to address gender issues as well as to promote diversity. These include Employment Resource Groups (ERGs), which are communities that provide opportunities for personal and professional development by connecting team members around areas such as gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and background. The groups aim to provide mentoring and leadership development.
According to information supplied by Dell to Digital Journal, currently more than 34,000 team members participate in one of our 14 ERGs and Dell has more than 300 chapters in 60 countries around the world. Dell has since set a goal for 40 percent of team members to be engaged with ERGs by 2020. This goal is set out in Dell’s Legacy of Good report.
In further initiatives, Dell was also the first IT company to participate in the Catalyst program Many Advocating Real Change (MARC) and it has committed to 100 percent executive participation by the end of 2019. This program was set up to engage leaders in conversations about the role of gender and diversity in the workplace.
As well as technology companies, firms like Mattel and McDonald’s are expressing the importance of International Women’s Day to their brand. These are more symbolic with Mattel introducing 17 new dolls and the hamburger chain flipping its logo upside down.
There is some interesting news from brand analysts Digimind, who have analyzed social mentions associated with the movement and found the top hashtags trending are #internationalwomensday, #womensday and #iwd2018. In communication sent to Digital Journal, Digimind has discovered an almost equal amount of men and women are talking about International Women’s Day on social (49 percent compared with 51 percent).
For related inclusion and diversity news, with a Canadian focus, see the Digital Journal article about the perception of high school girls to STEM subjects (“New study on Canadian kids attitudes toward STEM“) and the exclusive interview with a charity seeking to reform the education system in order to make access for young women to STEM subjects more easy (“How Canada can bridge its gender deficit in STEM subjects“).
