Diversity Message

January 1: New Year, the first day of the year according to the modern Gregorian calendar, celebrated within  most Western countries.

January 1: Feast Day of St. Basil, a holiday observed by the Eastern Orthodox Church, commemorating the death of Saint. Basil the Great.

January 1: Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which is celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church, commemorates the naming of the child Jesus.

January 2-4: Mahayana New Year, a holiday celebrated by the Mahayana Buddhist branch, on the first full- moon day in January.

January 5: Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s birthday, the Tenth Guru of the Sikhs who initiated the Sikhs as the Khalsa  (the pure ones) and is known as the Father of the Khalsa.

January 5: Twelfth Night, a festival celebrated by some branches of Christianity that marks the coming of the Epiphany.

January 6: Epiphany or Dia de los Reyes (Three Kings Day), a holiday observed by Eastern and Western Christians that recognizes the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus 12 days after his birth.

January 6: Christmas, recognized on this day by Armenian Orthodox Christians, who celebrate the birth of  Jesus on Epiphany.

January 7: Christmas, recognized on this day by Eastern Orthodox Christians, who celebrate Christmas 13 days later than other Christian churches because they follow the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian version of the Western calendar.

January 13: Bodhi Day, a holiday observed by Buddhists to commemorate Gautama’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, India.

January 13: Maghi, an annual festival celebrated by the Sikhs commemorating the memory of 40 Sikh martyrs.

January 15: Makar Sankranti, a major harvest festival celebrated in various parts of India.

January 18-25: The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, during which Christians pray for unity between all churches of the Christian faith.

January 19: Timkat, a holiday observed by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians who celebrate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River on Epiphany.

January 20: World Religion Day, observed by those of the Bahá’í faith to promote interfaith harmony and understanding.

January 20-21 (sundown to sundown): Tu B’shevat, a Jewish holiday recognizing “The New Year of the Trees.” It is celebrated on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat. In Israel, the flowering of the almond tree usually coincides with this holiday, which is observed by planting trees and eating dried fruits and nuts.

January 21: Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorates the birth of Martin Luther King Jr., the recipient of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and an activist for nonviolent social change until his assassination in 1968.

January 21-23: Mahayana New Year, a holiday celebrated by the Mahayana Buddhist branch on the first full-moon day in January.

January 26: Republic Day of India recognizes the date the Constitution of India came into law in 1950, replacing the Government of India Act of 1935. This day also coincides with India’s 1930declaration of independence.

January 27: The International Day of Commemoration to remember the victims of the Holocaust. The anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in 1945 and U.N. Holocaust Memorial Day.

January 27 (sundown to sundown): Holocaust Remembrance Day, a time to “mourn the loss of lives,celebrate those who saved them, honor those who survived, and contemplate the obligations of the living.” — Former President Barack Obama

The Inclusion Playbook for Nonprofit Leaders

Build Your Personal Competencies for Inclusive Leadership

1. Seek out cross-cultural experiences that encourage awareness of other cultures or spend a day in the life of the community members you serve
2. Make the time commitment needed to build key skills—empathy, active listening, appreciative inquiry
3. Get feedback on your effectiveness as a leader from diverse stakeholders

Train for Key Behaviors and Hold Leaders at All Levels Accountable for Inclusive Leadership

1. Engage managers in meaningful opportunities to understand and learn about Inclusive Leadership
2. Provide opportunities for managers and team leads to explore best practices for creating an inclusive workplace culture
3. Use a performance evaluation tool that features inclusion as a valued skill to demonstrate in the organization
4. Reward inclusive leaders for their efforts and role modeling of key values and behaviors

Align Your Mission to Address the Equity Issues in the Communities You Serve

1. Review your services, outreach, or programs through the lens of inclusion to carry out your mission in culturally relevant ways and advance equity
2. Measure your program impact and success across diverse populations to create targeted improvements
3. Engage clients, partner agencies, civic leaders, and donors in an annual inclusion summit to bring emerging community perspectives into your services and programs

Set Milestones and Track Your Progress

1. Track the hiring, retention, and advancement of diverse staff at all levels to ensure standards of equal opportunity are being followed
2. Measure employee engagement by ethnicity, gender, generation, or tenure with the organization to track diverse staff experiences of your workplace culture
3. Review the impact and effectiveness of your organization's services across diverse constituents to track equal outcomes

Maria Hernandez, PhD is the practice leader for Global Consulting Solutions at InclusionINC and leads the company's engagements in the healthcare sector. Dr. Hernandez (@drmghernandez) is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. InclusionINC (www.inclusion-inc.com) is a woman-owned business founded in 2010 and headquartered in Minneapolis.

10 Diversity and Inclusion Best Practices

Even though many businesses are trying to create and manage diverse workplaces, many are not aware of some of the best practices to follow. Here are some of the must-follow diversity and inclusion best practices.

1. Establish a sense of belonging
   Establishing the sense of belonging is crucial for employees to bring the best out of them. Having a sense of belonging is one the most important psychological needs that need to be met in order for employees to feel connected with their employers and organizations.
   
   
2. Be fair towards all employees
   Fairness is one of the crucial prerequisites for employees to feel valued and accepted. Unfair salaries and benefits packages for employees from different backgrounds lead to unhealthy workplace culture and a lack of diversity.
   
   
3. Offer equal growth opportunities
   Opportunity to grow is one of the main factors that attract and keep talent within companies. Therefore, employers need to be careful about offering fair and equal growth and career advancement opportunities to their employees.
   
   
4. Rewrite your job descriptions and job ads
   If you want to attract a more diverse talent, the language you use in your job posting makes a big difference. A study on job postings found those using masculine-type words like “ambitious” and “dominate” were less appealing to female applicants.
   
   
5. Support innovation and creativity
   In order to build a diverse workplace, companies must support creativity within their organizations. If innovation and creativity are not one of your main business goals, it will be hard to build and maintain workplace diversity.
   
   
6. Educate employees on diversity and inclusion
   For diversity and inclusion to work within your organization, employees need to be educated about the benefits and best practices to support those initiatives. It is not enough for upper-level management to be aware of what diversity and inclusion mean for business success and company’s reputation.
   
   
7. Support teamwork and collaboration
   Teamwork and collaboration are what employees expect from their employers to support. Therefore, in order to attract and keep a more diverse workforce within your organization, collaboration should be one of your main company core values.
   
   
8. Support flexibility in the workplace
   Multiple research on workplace diversity found that one of the best workplace policies to attract diverse candidates is flexibility.
   
   • A PwC survey found that, compared to older generations, Millennials value company culture that supports work/life balance.
   • McKinsey’s research found that the #1 company value for women is a flexible work schedule.
   Therefore, offering flexible work locations and hours helps you attract and retain more diverse employees.
   
   
9. Restructure your recruitment process
   In recruitment, focusing on what company candidates worked at or what school they went to can often lead to a decrease in diversity of the candidate pipeline. However, a valid and reliable personality assessments are great tools to measure candidates’ personality traits, motivations, and skills.  A study of 150 companies found that those that used a personality assessment in their hiring processes had more racially diverse workforces.
   
   
10. Promote diversity and inclusion at all levels of the organization

In order for diversity and inclusion initiatives to work, all levels of your company’s hierarchy need to understand and support it. 

Diversity Officer at eBay, talks about the importance of humanizing diversity and inclusion.