Organizations today are mandated to address discrimination within their leadership and organizational structure. There is a need to address imbalances in structure and behaviors within the workforce to attain equity, diversity, and inclusivity. The EDI program addresses issues of marginalization eminent in different organization departments. Hub Group is built on a culture that values every employee irrespective of identity. The EDI Leadership training program will nurture employees’ leadership skills, knowledge, and experience to attain the company’s desired organizational culture.
Background on the organization
Hub Group is one of the leading medium-sized organizations headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois. The organization is primarily a supply chain management company offering clients various logistic and truckload solutions (Murphy & Tucker, 2022). The company was founded in 1971 by Philip and Joyce Yeager and has grown to a $4B award-winning and publicly traded company with offices in the United States, Canada, and Mexico (Murphy & Tucker, 2022). Today, Hub Group has 4700 employees from diverse cultural backgrounds, necessitating instituting a leadership structure that balances the workforce’s inclusivity needs. As an organization with a diverse workforce identity, Hub Group allows the human resource specialist to develop an inclusive organizational atmosphere, especially through management structures.
Research Overview
Organizational leaders have made public commitments to adhering to equity, diversity, and inclusivity (EDI) standards and practices. When designing the EDI leadership initiative, there is a need to establish best leadership practices and EDI interventions generated through research—several evidence-based organizational solutions to enhance equity, diversity, and inclusivity have proven efficient by other organizations. The first approach many organizations adopt is training, which involves a set of instructional programs structured to facilitate desired intergroup interactions, suppress prejudice and discrimination, and enhance skills, knowledge, and experience to promote an inclusive work environment (Lambert, 2023). Another initiative is empowering the organizational management or committee. The management is crucial in consolidating the diverse identities portrayed in different organizational departments (Lambert, 2023). The final approach is engaging a consultant in place of the management to facilitate workforce adherence to EDI standards and practices (Lambert, 2023). When a consultant is involved, all internal members of the organization, including leaders and subordinate employees, are treated as subjects to the EDI initiative.
The EDI Leadership Initiative Outline
For Hub Group, the EDI Leadership training camp will bring representatives from different organizational departments. The training camp may only accommodate some 4700 employees, and departmental representatives will disseminate the knowledge, skills, and experiences acquired from training. The EDI Leadership training program involves a series of professional development projects designed to equip employees to prioritize equity, diversity, and inclusion standards in their leadership practices. The program targets the management and employees who will engage in educational activities. The training initiative will be in person to allow the participating employees to engage with the facilitators directly. The EDI Leadership training camp will be conducted quarterly to impact leadership practices, beliefs, and attitudes to align with emerging EDI standards.
The EDI Leadership training camp will result in a change in practice for all department employees. There is the likelihood that some of them will develop resistance, and the training camp provides a platform to identify and resolve any challenge. Also, involving employees results in them identifying with the initiative, reducing resistance. The human resource services will conduct the EDI Leadership training camp, which is internal to the organization. Human resource management has the resources and personnel to improve employees’ leadership abilities. Life at Hub Group is built on a culture that values every employee and builds on working relationships cultivated within the organization. The EDI program will aim to nurture working employee relationships by establishing and maintaining a friendly and inclusive environment safe for everyone.
Conclusion
Hub Group promotes a diverse and inclusive organizational culture by encouraging working relationships between employees. The EDI training program is a sustained initiative designed to achieve a diverse and inclusive culture at the organization. Other similar interventions include leadership empowerment and using a consultant instead of a leader to achieve the EDI goals. However, employees should be involved directly to reduce workforce resistance to the program. Thus, each department’s employees will educate the remaining ones on the initiative’s goals, outcomes, and expectations.
References
Lambert, T, L. (2023). Leading EDI Department level change. The Organizational Improvement Plan at Western University, 328, 1–102, https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/oip/328
Murphy, A., & Tucker, H. (2022, Dec 16). America’s best mid-sized companies. Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/lists/best-mid-cap-companies/?sh=69ffe42759e1
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