[austincheney]

I work for a ginormous monster huge bank. Diversity and inclusion are incredibly important values at all levels. It’s not just lip service as the leadership goes well out of their way to impose these values.

> What are your companies doing?

I have been away on military assignment since the chaos caught fire, but before that the company strongly encouraged people to socialize outside their comfort groups and treat people as family (the kind you like). The company didn’t especially focus on race as this is factored into diversity.

[haleymbryant]

Thanks for sharing and for your service. Love this. Does the company have any structure to help facilitate people socializing outside their comfort zone?

[austincheney]

The two most common things that come to mind are social events and extracurricular work meetings associated with awareness of other areas of business. It’s such a big company that employees really are encouraged to take time away from their scheduled responsibilities to learn about what other people are doing.

The social events are sponsored by leadership which sometimes provides funding but team members are encouraged to be the driving force as a leadership building opportunity. Usually these are just things like potlucks or games at the office which require almost no spending or travel but there are also recreation days to entertainment locations outside the office.

Some of the events require a bit more effort for me to participate because I commute 45 miles to work one way where most people live close to the office.

The company is so big and diverse that I honestly don’t even notice race there. The thing that sticks out most for me are accents of employees where English is not their birth language, which requires more effort to parse during long phone meetings.

What I have noticed about this company is don’t be shy about meeting people. People are always nice and eager to meet. For some reason I am really shy in the corporate world and this is really hard for me. I find that I don’t want to be seen as pushy, superior, or impatient. I find that quite humility I learned from the military dominates all my social engagements around new people in the office to my limitation. I find that so strange because in the military I have been a platoon sergeant and managed large numbers of people in a high confrontation environment.