Canada

 

Diversity

As one of CWT’s global six core values for all employees, diversity – and by extension, inclusiveness – are central to how CWT North America and our employees conduct our business every day.  This guiding principle includes “fostering respect and a team spirit in the workplace; embracing, and leveraging the multicultural essence of the company and providing equal opportunities to talented individuals.” 

 

The importance of diversity
CWT knows diversity and inclusiveness is important to our stakeholders, because they’ve told us. For example, 87% of North American employees who took our annual diversity survey in 2010 told us diversity is important to them as individuals.” Meanwhile, 64% of DiversityInc. magazine’s 2011 Top 50 Companies for Diversity are CWT clients or partners. Finally, the majority of requests for proposals (RFPs) CWT receives in North America include questions relating to CSR in general, and frequently about CWT’s diversity efforts specifically, particularly as it pertains to supplier diversity initiatives. 

 

Beyond that important stakeholder feedback, diversity and inclusiveness is important to CWT because it just makes sense. It’s the right thing to do, and it helps us attract and retain the talented and committed employees we need to ensure our clients and their travelers are receiving the best possible service at all times. The more CWT’s employee population reflects the individuals we serve, the better we’ll be able to anticipate and respond to those customers’ needs.  

 

CWT’s response
To ensure diversity and inclusion is a foundational part of CWT’s culture, the organization in 2007 established the CWT Diversity and Inclusion Council, which comprises more than 20 volunteers representing many levels and functions throughout the organization. The Council is organized into three subteams focused on the following priorities and initiatives:  

 

Future Development & Enterprise Initiatives
The Council’s Future Development & Enterprise Initiatives subteam is focused on developing employees and implementing company-wide efforts with a focus on diversity. In 2011 the team formally rolled out its executive-employee mentoring effort with 12 pairings, following a successful pilot in 2010. In the context of a mentor-mentee relationship, which CWT Learning & Organizational Development helps the Council facilitate, participants have the opportunity to get to know members of the organization with whom they don’t typically work in their daily roles, and to discuss diversity-related topics of mutual interest and impact, such as the confluence of multiple generations in the workplace. 

 

This subteam in 2011 will also pilot two Employee Resource Groups for North American employees to focus attention on Generations in the Workplace and Hispanic/Latino issues. The goal of these groups is to provide a forum for increased awareness and dialogue in each of these areas, to enable personal and professional development of participants, and importantly, to help CWT identify ways in which it can better address the unique needs of each of these groups, for employees, clients, partners, and others. 

 

Supplier diversity initiatives are increasingly important to CWT’s clients, based on the level of interest expressed in the RFP process. CWT North America has long employed three guiding principles to integrate diverse supplier sourcing into our business practices: identify potential women and/or minority-owned suppliers; include at least one such supplier in every bid process when available and applicable; invest time to work with these suppliers throughout the bid process. 

 

Even so, CWT recognizes the importance of establishing a more formal supplier diversity program as a critical component for assisting our clients with the fulfillment of their diversity goals, and as an important way we can impact the success of diversity outside our own walls. To accomplish this, the Council is partnering with CWT’s procurement department to drive progress on this front going forward. 

 

Finally, given many of CWT’s clients have a well-established focus on diversity and inclusion, the Future Development & Enterprise Initiatives subteam is also focused on gathering insight and feedback from contacts at those leading organizations to help the Council improve its own efforts. 

 

Employee Learning & Marketing
This Council subteam develops and executes a number of initiatives focused on making diversity and inclusion more a part of the fabric of CWT’s culture through increased awareness and employee education. The group’s key initiative the past several years has been the brown bag diversity discussion program, which was created to bring employees together for constructive, robust small-group discussion on topics that highlight the less overt ways diversity surfaces in their daily lives. Topics include Use of Technology, Family Makeup, Work-Life Balance, and more. Based on extremely positive feedback from the more than 100 employees who participated in the sessions in 2010, the program in 2011 is being hosted by more than twice as many CWT Business Travel Service Centers throughout North America as in 2010.  An online component for each session also remains offered to ensure all employees have an opportunity to take part. 

 

The Employee Learning & Marketing subteam is also working with CWT Learning & Employee Development to incorporate diversity and inclusion content into CWT’s training and education modules. The priority in 2011 is to include this content in orientation materials provided to new employees as part of CWT’s new hire induction process. Future goals include the incorporation of diversity content into executive development materials, and ongoing diversity and inclusion education for all CWT employees. This is a critical area of opportunity to advance CWT’s diversity efforts, as many leading organizations already have this type of employee training in place. 

 

Finally, this subteam spearheads the Council’s annual holiday initiative to showcase the diversity represented by the wide variety of celebrations and traditions employees observe at the end of each year. In 2010 a global map was created to highlight the holiday traditions of more than 100 participating CWT North America employees and the origin of those customs. The map highlighted the fact that, while each North American employee is based in one of two countries, their roots extend literally across the globe, and those varied backgrounds contribute to who they are personally and professionally. In 2011 this idea was extended to a cookbook featuring the holiday recipes and memories of nearly 100 employees, made available electronically in a print-friendly format for employees’ use with the hope that colleagues would be inspired to try new recipes and learn about other cultures in the process.

 

Community service
Through the annual diversity survey, CWT North America employees consistently tell the Council they want to learn more about diversity through community service activities, getting out into parts of the community they may not typically visit in their daily lives, and meeting individuals with whom they would not otherwise have a chance to interact. Based on that feedback, in 2011 the Council created this third subteam to focus on enabling these types of opportunities for employees by establishing an infrastructure to facilitate community service activities, recruiting Ambassadors outside the Council to help identify and execute local efforts, and further integrating community service efforts as team-building opportunities at internal CWT meetings. 

 

The Community Service subteam plans to facilitate 20 “CWT Day of Caring” events throughout North America in 2011, whereby CWT locations designate a day focused on giving back to the community. Local Ambassadors liaise with the Council to select an appropriate cause and organization and help promote it locally. The Council provides support in the form of customizable communication materials and other suggestions. 

 

Longer term, this subteam plans to expand its reach by facilitating additional involvement between CWT employees and their communities, including the donation of time and talent to local charities and community projects, as well as by increasing the number of Ambassadors with whom it works, and facilitating even more local events throughout the United States and Canada. 

Efforts are everywhere
Beyond the work the Council organizes, often in collaboration with other CWT departments, additional progress has been and continues to be made on diversity and inclusion. For example, CWT’s Military & Government division has partnered with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs’ Vocational, Rehabilitation, and Employment Program to interview and place disabled veterans in appropriate jobs with CWT North America. CWT remains in continual contact with this organization regarding future employment opportunities. Meanwhile, countless community service activities are organized by local CWT employees and teams year-round, many of which have a diversity or inclusion component. Finally, one of CWT’s parent companies, Carlson, has taken a stand of its own and has been recognized with a perfect, 100% score for the past six consecutive years on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index. 

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