2023-05-10

2:30PM

HDH Presentation - Amber Bareno

• Intro from Amber as to why she cares about EDI and how she got involved with it

  • She is part of HR and oversees a lot of areas within HDH

  • Focuses on wellness and EDI

• JEDI = Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion

  • A lot of talking but not a lot of action and that is how the program was born

  • Were the diverse staff being asked about what they want and what they need?

  • Taking the initiative to create the program while also being mindful and making sure that is not performative and action items are being met

    • Meaningful for the staff to make the department better

  • Started as a smaller group - mostly admin but it did not represent the actual staff that is part of HDH

    • Figure out what they wanted to achieve

      • Establishing a Vision and mission statement: want everyone in the department to feel like they belong

      • Defaulting that if you are part of the department, you are part of EDI - regardless if you are attending the meeting

        • Everyone is welcome

      • Making sure that Managers & Supervisors know that supporting their staff is part of their role

        • Are you supporting your staff in participation?

        • Are you letting them know that their voice is heard?

    • The idea was to form a group of JEDI Advocates throughout HDH and they wanted people that had a set of beliefs that are excited about promoting inclusion and diversity

      • All varying levels of knowledge

      • Increase multicultural awareness

      • Not being afraid to make mistakes - giving each other grace and being vulnerable about stumbling sometimes

      • What do members of the community need to feel embraced?

  • Their first year was not that successful but they established goals for the next year and brainstormed ideas on how to get information from people

    • Set simple goals

      • Actual actions items that are realistic to bring people in

    • Suggestion boxes

      • How do you manage that?

    • Developed some task forces

      • Have monthly workshops

      • Have multiple EDI Topics presentations

    • Monthly EDI check-ins during Manager/Supervisor meeting

    • Add EDI topics to the newsletter

      • Community building - Crafts Center

• JEDI Task Forces

  • Casa de Verdad

    • Someone comes in from HDH and shares some of their personal struggles/stories

  • Craft Center

  • EDI Trivia in HDH Newsletter

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2:55PM

Discussion

• Potential questions for Amber:

  • How to get demographic information from each individual department OR How to gather that data

  • How they determine which tasks to implement in their Jedi Program

    • Taskforces

      • Assign a taskforce to the original JEDI Member

        • Do you have the time/bandwidth

        • Gave them the space to think of an event or an activity and then opened it up to the bigger JEDI group

        • Let them know that there are no expectations

  • Collaborations with other groups on campus

  • Suggestion boxes

    • Newly implemented locked boxes - Amber will share information

      • Shred the information, have a secure drive where the information can be kept

      • Employee relations would step in if there was any sensitive information

        • Compile the data like similar to a survey

    • Has the JEDI Program has been effective?

      • It helps to have HR presentation and that they have a larger group

    • How did you get more participation?

      • Reaching out to different units

    • What feedback about non-admin joining the group?

      • It’s hard for them to make the meetings because they are in the types of jobs where they don’t have the luxury to schedule their days.

        • Work with their supervisors

      • They give feedback on what makes them feel included versus what makes them feel excluded

        • Created a list of best practices

    • What are your strategies for measuring success and meeting those goals?

      • Staff @ Work but a lot staff don’t trust that the survey is anonymous

        • She looks to measure if staff is feeling valued by the department

        • People feeling that there are promotional opportunities

      • Informal types of assessment with this group

        • Staff turnover rates

        • Performance

  • What do the check-ins with managers/supervisor look like?

    • Have a preplanned topic

      • Gender recognition act

      • Staff Mental Health

  • Do you have any Open Forum type activities?

    • Not currently, but she wants to implement it

  • Supervisors/Managers opting out of non-mandatory EDI events, have you had any opposition of everyone in HDH being part of the EDI

    • Some leadership have not shown and avoided attending

      • Difficult for Amber when there is a power dynamic structure

      • Good relationship with EVC to have the support behind EDI

  • We should focus on a goal like, “feeling valued” one year and focus on the data for that specific goal in that year and measure success in this small chunk.

    • We can do “promotional opportunities” next year