Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion is embedded into our values and the work we do to foster a culture of belonging and inclusion. Our values define who we are and how we do business every day as we help our customers build secure tomorrows.
Here's how we define what diversity, equity and inclusion mean to us.
Diversity is the range of human differences including, but not limited to, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, social class, physical ability or attributes, religious or ethical values system, national origin and political beliefs.
Equity is access, opportunity and being intentional about all our business practices and how they further or hinder movement toward fair and just participation for all.
Inclusion is about bringing our differences together and harnessing them in a constructive and meaningful way.
Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council leads our efforts to understand, encourage and support our work to attract, develop and retain talent, foster an inclusive culture, meet our customers’ and channel partners' needs and increase community impact. The Council is led by co-chairs CEO Chris Hilger and Chief Diversity Officer Dexter Davis. It’s a cross-functional group and includes members who represent diverse communities within the company.
We invest resources to educate our employees on a range of topics, uplift diverse perspectives and discuss important issues. Our employee education has a five-point focus on awareness, equity, inclusion, allyship and cultural competence. Since 2017, when Chris Hilger joined CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion, we’ve been educating employees on unconscious bias to form a foundation of understanding. This ongoing training series helps employees recognize biases that commonly affect — and can be harmful to — daily decisions. We’ve been building on our foundation with several initiatives: •Ongoing encouragement helps managers have conversations with their teams about race, gender and social justice. •Listening sessions after impactful events bring employees together to talk, listen and learn. •DEI discussions and presentations offer ongoing learning opportunities. •Book discussion circles build comfort and perspective in talking about DEI topics.
A more diverse workforce helps us continue building DEI into our company’s DNA. We're focusing on recruitment, development and retention programs and measuring our progress to help us get there.
Our ongoing key actions include: •Expanding college recruiting efforts within underrepresented populations by deepening our engagement with multicultural student groups. •Participating in professional organizations and events targeted to people of color, veterans and women in technology. •Leveraging relationships and events for mid-career professionals to build a pipeline for management-level roles. We’ve also implemented tools to reduce bias in the hiring process, including: •Competency-based interview guides that help our talent management team and hiring managers focus on job candidates’ skills and behaviors. •Unconscious bias micro-learnings that hiring managers review prior to the interview process to help mitigate bias.
Extensive resources and learning and development programs help our employees build skills and enhance their lives — at work and outside of it. This includes a new mentorship program focused on helping people of color and women advance in their careers.
Retaining our employees is just as important as getting them in the door. Our five Employee Resource Groups play a pivotal role in helping employees feel connected and supported through tailored programming. Each has executive sponsors, dedicated talent management recruiters, and direct support of the DEI office and the Foxbridgeinsurance Financial Diversity and Inclusion Council.
As our communities diversify, our supplier base should too, so we actively purchase goods and services from diverse businesses. It's one way we can help other businesses pursue their own secure tomorrows. We define diverse suppliers as minority-owned businesses, women-owned businesses, veteran-owned businesses, LGBTQ+-owned businesses and disabled-owned businesses. By working with these businesses, we help them fulfill their purposes and empower their own employees while meeting our business needs.
Through the Foxbridgeinsurance Financial Foundation and programs that engage our employees in volunteerism, we take an active role in strengthening our communities. •Closing gaps in our educational system is critical to building an equitable playing field for the future. We've refined our giving programs to directly support underrepresented members of our communities. •Focusing on equity in education, we’re giving special attention to closing the achievement gap that holds back disadvantaged populations in our communities. •We are building on investments to put computer devices, broadband and other educational support tools in the hands of our students who are most in need. •A major financial commitment will fund community-based learning initiatives in neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul that need them the most.