Winner: Southwest Airlines - Join the Conversation: Southwest Airlines’ First Diversity Summit
With the end goal of improving the workplace for its diverse group of employees, Southwest Airlines created the first North Texas Diversity Summit, which would bring North Texas companies with considerable diversity experience together to share their expertise. Southwest invited HR and diversity and inclusion pros from hundreds of companies across the region, and organizations like JCPenney, AT&T, American Airlines, DART and Texas Instruments responded. In all, reps from about 100 companies participated in the Oct. 7, 2010, event held at Southwest’s headquarters, sharing strategies and tactics on topics that included affinity groups, recruitment, mentorship programs and talent development. Feedback was positive, with 90% of participants requesting to repeat the event this year. —SVC
Honorable Mentions:
Kaiser Permanente – Supplier Diversity Communications at Kaiser Permanente: With a supplier diversity program driven by training, events and sharing best practices, Kaiser Permanente's development and launch of a new supplier portal allows businesses to register online, provide basic company information and supply validation of diverse ownership.
Peel District School Board – Micro-Web Sites in 40 Languages: One of Canada’s largest school systems created custom communications outlets for non-English speaking families, featuring micro-sites in 40 languages. Promoting the new destinations via newspaper ads and school flyers, the sites drew close to 4,500 visitors in the first six months of the launch.