HR/Talent/#DiversityandInclusion Leaders - Odds are the aspiring allies were at peak bustle last week. 🙌🏿 Here are a few tactical tips for harnessing their energy & mobilizing them in meaningful solidarity with their Black colleagues.../1
#1 - Give allies a place to go. Leverage Slack or other internal chat tool to give allies a dedicated place to share their feels, NYT articles and Robin DiAngelo quotes. Importantly, this space should not include your Black employees, whose peace should be protected./2
A member of your team should remain active in the forum to keep the momentum going, help broker ideas from your Black employee group and share your people expertise. (If *you* are Black, I’m sorry - it’s a lot and it's weird and I see you...)/3
#2 - Give allies some parameters. You want to let people share freely but the tricky thing about online work spaces is that they bring out people’s everyday internet behaviors. You need a few guidelines to bridle the BLM passion./4
Share expectations re: how employees vet the quality of the information they’re sharing. A book recommendation? Cool. A non-predictive online quiz that spits out your “racism score”? A little less so, especially in a lowly moderated forum./5
Since a lot of us will be working from home for some time, it’s also a good time to craft some online inclusion tips so that allies have equal voice in the forum./6
#3 - Give allies explicit permission to engage. My teammate AJ and I believe there's no wrong way for an individual to get started on their ally journey. Encourage allies to pick one thing - anything - of the 100s of tips shared to dig into./7
Many will feel overwhelmed by the options. Try to pivot on the fear and position the wealth of options as an exciting opportunity to choose their own adventure./8
#4 - Get allies aligned. Amidst the book clubs & podcast shares, you eventually need workplace allies singing the same tune in ways that will resonate with Black employees. At Upwork, we’ve built freedom within a framework: Allies start self-learning anywhere that excites them./9
At the same time, we’ve designed a program to build community for aspiring allies. AJ will be leading participants through monthly meetings that investigate, develop and implement intentional everyday actions that confront systemic injustice./10
This is a research-backed (and measurable) curriculum steeped in identity development because you can’t build bridges with others unless you know yourself. We call the program Do The Work. (In case you can’t tell, we don’t mince words around these parts.)/11
So, if your inbox is full of requests for personal ally coaching, I hope this helps free you up to focus on the larger vision you're executing:
Namaste./end
Namaste./end
