ESSU Meeting Minutes & Active Memberships
ESSU Diversity in the Workplace 11/11/2015
November 11, 2015
Duration: 6:00 p.m.-7:20 p.m.
ESSU Diversity in the Workplace
Brian Cloyd from Steelcase came and spoke to us about the benefits, challenges, and solutions of diversity in the workplace. Brian has worked at Steelcase for the past thirty-seven years, where he was in Human Resources for twenty-five years but has held many different positions. He is currently in charge of diversity and inclusion among other positions that he holds at Steelcase. He stressed the importance that diversity can be more than just race and gender.
He started out his presentation telling us the importance of finding what we are passionate about and how we should focus our career on that. He discussed how there are currently four different generations in the workforce, which include the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomers, Gen X, and the Millennials.
With having these four different generations in the workforce, he talked about the importance of learning how to connect and communicate with different types of people. He discussed how everyone can learn from everyone else; we just have to take the time to do so. Over time, as a collective group we have been able to make incremental changes in our thinking about diversity. He talked about the sooner we learn to adjust to different types of diversity, the better off we are. He also talked about the importance of exploring and getting out there to experience different places and cultures.
He gave us three major take always at the end of his presentation to utilize in our future careers. The first was to learn about the organization you are working for and see how you fit with the values and norms of this company. The second was to stay committed and the third was to never stop learning. This was such a great presentation because many of our members are graduating soon and now are aware of how to handle diversity in the workplace!