Today I attended SHRM’s Diversity and Inclusion Conference (#SHRMdivcon) in Washington, DC. SHRM has the right platform for getting information that its members need to be successful as HR professionals. The association leads the way with new research and trends and pushes the buttons for change where needed. SHRM leaders implore that we are all game changers. As HR professionals, we must focus on ways to do things differently in order to develop Diversity and Inclusion programs that work for our organizations. You can get more information by going to #SHRMdivcon.
I interviewed Ms. Davis, a profound innovator and Chief Diversity Officer for SHRM. She is the go-to person for SHRM when it comes to #Diversity. Ms. Davis provided one of the keynote speeches during the #SHRMdivcon. She feels the different trends on diversity that will most impact the workplace are with globalization, technology, education, increase in social identity and the marketplace.
In the area of globalization, she focused on the fact that we need to “look at the large aging population” from a global standpoint. The second area was in technology, particularly in social media. Ms. Davis mentions, “people are leveraging social media” for recruitment purposes and for understanding more about a company. “Employees interested in finding out if companies are committed to diversity can simply do so by going to the companies’ website. They can look at annual reports and learn more from about those companies diversity initiatives.” Education was another area that Ms. Davis touched on. She states, “Our public school systems are not preparing our students and we [as a nation] are at a disadvantage. India and China are outperforming us in so many ways.” Her fourth trending area for diversity is with the increase of social identity groups. She refers to social identity groups as groups such as the LGBT, interfaith and religious groups and the immigrant population. The marketplace was the final trending area that Ms. Davis wanted to touch on. The marketplace definitely has an impact on diversity and we need to ensure that the decisions that we are making are in line with and are focusing on our strategic diversity initiatives. She mentions that we need to reshape and reinvent the game book. Human Resource Professionals, particularly the ones that are dedicating time to strategically serve their diverse populations, are the “game changers” that we so passionately speak of.
What types of trends can you add to Ms. Davis list?
As always, prioritize, set boundaries and live!
