Celebrating Pride Month

June marks the 50th anniversary of Pride Month, a time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ members within our communities and to commit to creating a more diverse, inclusive and tolerant society.

At CO-OP, we believe this effort goes beyond simply eliminating workplace discrimination against age, disabilities, gender, race and ethnicity, and, of course, sexual orientation and identity. Which is why we launched our Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) Council, to commit towards fostering a workplace where every employee feels valued, respected, and connected. All year-round, our DE&I Council has helped create a dialogue and share information geared towards promoting equality in the workplace, including a webinar on gender and sexual identity earlier this month.

“Creating an inclusive environment helps to make sure that we get the best of people at work every day,” said Cheryl Middleton Jones, Chief People Officer. “Personally, I know that I function best in an environment that is inclusive and accepting of others, as well as accepting the ideas and thoughts of everyone.  Diversity breeds inclusiveness, and better ideas.”

And data suggests that inclusiveness leads to better outcomes. According to Forbes, inclusive teams make better business decisions up to 87% of the time and twice as fast.

 

continue reading »