The Diversity & Flexibility Alliance is a think tank dedicated to creating work environments centered on inclusion and innovative thought leadership. The Alliance empowers organizations with the tools necessary for advancing women, fostering flexibility, and retaining top talent.
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Action Step -Structuring Affinity Groups for Optimal Success
The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center.
Organizations utilize affinity groups to build community among employees with shared identities, interests, and/or experiences. While fostering a sense of community is an important element of affinity groups, they can also lead to additional far-reaching organizational benefits. For example, affinity groups can provide training, push for new policies, and serve as a focus group to uncover challenges and bright spots to support the advancement of underrepresented groups. According to our 2017 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey, one-third of our survey participants have a working parents affinity group and over 20% have a flex affinity group in place. While it’s a step in the right direction for more organizations to utilize affinity groups, it’s important to strategically think through the structure of the group and its roll-out in order to reap the most benefits.
CLARIFY FOCUS: Our action step, It Takes a Community, explains that all affinity groups should focus on three overarching pillars – promoting community, fostering training and development, and monitoring the progress and challenges. Think through the specific goals within each of these pillars you hope to achieve; this way the group will have a targeted mission and clear milestones to measure success. We recommend conducting a quick survey before launching any new group to better understand your employees’ specific interests, needs, and challenges in this area.
Action Step -Including All Caregivers in Your Parents Affinity Group
The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center.
Affinity groups are an effective way to build a community, share best practices, and promote policies and programming in targeted areas. A number of organizations have working parents affinity groups, as it’s a great way for parents to bond and discuss success stories and challenges. According to our 2017 Law Firm Flexibility Benchmarking Survey, one-third of our survey participants have a working parents affinity group in place. However, a number of organizations have begun to expand their working parents affinity group to a broader caregivers affinity group. This would include all caregivers, including parents and those caring for elderly and ill family members. By expanding to a caregivers affinity group, organizations become more inclusive and recognize that all caregivers face similar challenges (i.e. billable hours requirement, flexible work needs, implicit bias, etc.). Organizations should keep certain considerations in mind in order for a caregivers affinity group to meet broader goals.
EXPAND GOALS: Think through the desired goals and focus of the new group. Without carefully considering your goals, you run the risk of simply changing your working parents affinity group in name only without any real meaningful transformation. We recommend conducting a survey, focus groups, insight interviews, and/or check-in meetings. This way, you can better understand the needs and interests of any new/expanded affinity group to help you shape the focus and priorities…
Action Step -The Importance of Diversity & Flexibility Bright Spots
The Alliance’s Action Steps are designed to assist organizations with implementing practical strategies and policies related to diversity and flexibility. Members can access full versions of all of the Alliance’s Action Steps in the Member Resource Center.
If you Google the term “Bright Spots,” you’ll find the heart-warming story of a Save the Children Fund missionary named Jerry Sternin who helped save an entire community of malnourished children in Vietnam. Rather than focus on what the families of the children were doing wrong, Jerry chose to focus on the few children in the community who were healthy and thriving – the “Bright Spots.” His theory was if all the families could replicate what the Bright Spot mothers were doing, then the entire community could benefit and change for the better.
Sternin called his approach “positive deviance” – focusing on what individuals are doing right, rather than what others are doing wrong.
While most of us are not in the position of saving lives, this Bright Spots theory is also effective in business. In fact, change experts and authors, Dan and Chip Heath, often advise organizations to “find a Bright Spot and clone it.” They recommend focusing on what’s working instead of emphasizing what isn’t and what needs to be fixed.
We couldn’t agree more…