On Wednesday, we hosted a Virtual Think IT Event on the topic, Diversity and Inclusion: Building Diverse Teams. A huge thank you to our facilitator, Meena Jambulingam, Sr. Director at Chewy, Inc. For sharing her knowledge with the group and creating a group discussion. Thank you to everyone who joined us as well!
Below is an image that was shared to break down diversity and inclusion.
Image by Nicola Whiting MBE on LinkedIn
What is the right size of a team?
First, it’s important to tackle what work the team needs to get done. That helps delegate how many different roles are going to be necessary. The next step is to see then how many team members you need to fill those roles. You then will be able to understand what it will take to fill your team, which may also have you wanting to look at more diverse talent pools for different skill sets.
Will going back into the office change the diversity within your teams?
While remote, organizations could have access to a larger talent pool which gave them more opportunities for diverse talent. Going back into the office will affect the diversity within teams because that will cause fewer opportunities for talent coming from areas other than around the office. Organizations are hoping to apply a hybrid model in the fall that may help attract top talent. Going back into the office also means that organizations will continue their DEI efforts.
- A concern from the group about have such a large and diverse talent pool is that it might stray away from building diverse talent here in the Twin Cities. There are achievement gaps that the Twin Cities needs to close, and they do not want to be losing IT jobs.
As we start to go back into the office, it is important to remember to continue to have conversations about your diversity efforts and understand where these DEI programs exist. Organizations are also working towards incorporating more diversity in terms of a customer standpoint and an employee standpoint.