RISING TO THE (EQUITY) CHALLENGE
“We value and respect each and every employee.” This phrase expresses our commitment to embracing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) as a cornerstone of our values at AAA Northeast. In a continuous effort to maintain an environment where every employee is empowered to share their story and voice, the club implemented a series of learning initiatives to ensure all employees have the tools and knowledge to embrace and celebrate differences.
Creating meaningful content for all employees was one of the greatest challenges. Additionally, our employee workspace is distributed, so delivering equitable learning experiences for hybrid and remote team members was an important consideration. Beyond the logistical challenges of training, the club wanted to design learning that would build upon and celebrate its best practices and culture. How could we create and execute an ongoing learning environment that incorporates our diverse employee voices and builds curious reflection?
To explore these questions, the club assembled a team of cross-functional leaders, subject matter experts, and instructional designers to develop the AAA Northeast Equity Challenge.
Program Details
The Equity Challenge is a series of daily digital content delivered directly to participants over a two-week period. The content allows learners time and space to learn about topics such as racial identity, gender, bias, allyship, and intersectionality. The Equity Challenge leverages eLearning tools, digital media, articles, videos, peer-to-peer discussion groups, and post-challenge workshops to deepen employees’ understanding of diversity, equity, and personal experience.
The AAA Northeast Learning & Development team utilized a threefold strategy for building the Equity Challenge:
1. Give everyone a voice. For a transformative learning experience to take hold, employees need to be involved in the creation, process, and even delivery of training. To get employees involved, our Learning team examined learners’ equity in educational experiences while listening to the stories of our employees from diverse backgrounds. Most of the Equity Challenge topics were selected based on feedback derived from surveys and conversations with employees. We also analyzed learning distribution; instead of driving compliance, our team wanted engagement through self-selected participation. Subject matter experts partnered with Learning and Engagement teams to gather meaningful content, offer learning recommendations, and review core themes of the Challenge campaigns. This multifaceted, cross-organizational collaboration allowed our team to examine many different viewpoints and help facilitate conversations among employees.
2. Leverage learning mediums. Simply rolling out eLearning or assembling employees in a conference room for training wasn’t a fit for the Equity Challenge. Instead, the team focused on several mediums to invite different types of learning to contemplate, discuss, and reflect on how inequity can affect lives and society. The complexity of DEIB content requires a depth of understanding, openness, and respect that cannot be conveyed in one microlearning, a meeting, or an eLearning—a true investment in DEIB demands thoughtfulness, engaging conversations, and collaborative investment. To drive learning effectiveness and keep engagement thriving throughout the learning experience, our program incorporated video, reading, discussion tools, and interactive exercises into a cohesive learning path.
3. Walk the talk. Building a diverse and inclusive culture requires genuine commitment, but it also requires willingness to be uncomfortable. We can have difficult conversations when every employee is willing to be curious, listen to others, and maintain respect, even if we disagree. Understanding that DEIB conversations can be a difficult topic, we chose to use the word, “challenge,” in the program title with the goal that people would be challenged to question their current views on race and equity. The Equity Challenge period was just 14 days, but diversity and inclusion are active in our culture daily. Walking the talk means that employees focus on DEIB as it is reflected in our everyday words, actions, and decisions. At the core of our DEIB initiatives are our organizational values—which are the keys to the success and longevity of our program.
The club continues to explore other equity challenges, including women’s equity and LGBTQ+. Employees have established robust employee resource groups (ERGs) to continue to support and celebrate diverse voices. Creating these groups offers a deeper understanding of employees’ personal experiences and fosters belonging and commitment to our organization.
Results
During the Equity Challenge, learners were asked to set a challenge goal. Equity Action Goals (EAGs) are actionable behavioral pledges that employees make to improve equity in our workplace based on what they have learned during the challenge. Before the Equity Challenge, the Equity Action Goal was for 75 percent of all employees to complete their goals. Within the Racial Equity Challenge, 100 percent of 488 employees completed their EAGs. The Women’s Equity Challenge campaign also surpassed its goal, with 99 percent of 427 employees completing their EAGs.
Beyond the powerful impacts of behavior change, the Equity Challenge campaigns directly affected how employees view the company’s value and respect of differences. Our DEIB training has improved our biennial All-Employee Feedback score on DEI to 4.51 of 5—making the practice of DEIB one of our top 5 performance categories within our All-Employee Feedback survey.
At the core of any AAA Northeast learning intervention is a commitment to our employees. By incorporating diverse voices and experiences into our programs, we open doors to discussion, to understanding, and to creating a workplace where people feel valued and respected.