President and CEO of the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce Kaylin Risvold and her guests discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion on this episode of Inside The Chamber.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) affect all aspects of the work environment and it’s important to keep this in mind in relation to the culture of your workplace.
Kimberly White, the Executive Director of the Career and Networking Center in Naperville, is also the Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at the NACC. She discusses what employers and employees might not know about being inclusive in the workplace. Janice Parks, Chief Human Resource Officer with First Hospitality, talks about how the global workforce is changing as well, and how policies on DEI need to change with it.
Talking About DEI
Employers are changing the way they look at DEI to reflect the modern world. But it’s not only companies that are noticing the need for more awareness about diversity. “It’s no longer a need for companies to say, ‘this is the right thing to do for my business,’ but employees are saying, ‘you need to do this for us’,” said Parks. “There needs to be inclusion, there’s needs to be training, there needs to be cross-cultural differences that happens in the workplace in order to get the job done.”
White added, “Employees are now speaking up, they haven’t done that in the past,” in regards to new ways of conducting business at work regarding DEI. “I’ve been encouraged to see that just through my own lens, how employees are interested in it and basically demanding that businesses take action,” White said about diversity in the workplace.
Watch More Episodes of “Inside the Chamber”
Watch more episodes on today’s top business trends and issues, especially as they affect Naperville. To find out more about how the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce is driving economic growth through active engagement and advocacy for the business community, visit its website.
