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Women Changing the World hono(u)rs Adler University Adjunct Faculty Andrea Carter with two prestigious awards

Andrea Carter, adjunct faculty in the Department of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at Adler University, has been hono(u)red with two significant awards from Women Changing the World. These accolades were presented by Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, and Tererai Trent, Ph.D., at a distinguished ceremony held in Windsor, UK. 

Carter received first place in the Micro Business of the Year category and second place in the Innovation Award category. Her first-place award recognizes her as an exceptional woman in micro business for her consulting company, Belonging First. Her consulting business, a result of her work as a student in the Online Campus’ Master of Arts in Industrial and Organizational Psychology (I/O Psychology) program, focuses on helping businesses set benchmarks in how to approach, measure, and implement crucial organizational practices, with a foundational focus on belonging.

Carter’s Innovation Award recognition highlights women with a creative, scalable, interesting, and innovative concept to change the world. These awards recognize her groundbreaking research and contributions to fostering a sense of belonging in the workplace. 

Women Changing the World, a renowned organization that celebrates the achievements of women making substantial impacts globally, hosted the ceremony. The event highlighted the exceptional work of women who are leaders in their fields, focusing on those driving change and promoting inclusivity and innovation. 

Along with her master’s degree in I/O Psychology, Carter earned a minor in Social Justice and a specialty in Strategic Human Resource Management from Adler University. Her recognition in these categories underscores her dedication to advancing workplace belonging and her influence in the field. Carter’s research and practical initiatives have significantly contributed to understanding and improving how individuals experience inclusion and community in their professional environments.

“I am deeply honored to receive these awards from such a prestigious organization,” Carter said. “The recognition from Women Changing the World, particularly by figures as esteemed as the Duchess of York and Dr. Tererai Trent, is incredibly validating. It underscores the importance of creating inclusive workplaces and supports my commitment to continue this vital work.”

For more information about the awards and the ceremony, please visit the Women Changing the World announcement.

Learning and training is a key ingredient to maximizing ROI in an IT project. It enables employees to effectively utilize the new technology or system being implemented. Here’s an example of how a robust learning and training strategy improved ROI:

Our client invested in a new workforce management system to improve the accuracy of payroll and employee satisfaction. They recognized that without proper training and understanding of the system, their employees might struggle to use it to its full potential.

To maximize ROI, the company developed a comprehensive learning and training strategy that included the following elements:

1. Training Needs Assessment: They assessed the skill levels and knowledge gaps of their employees related to the IT system. This helped them identify the specific areas that required training and customization.
2. Customized Training Program: Based on the assessment results, they designed a training program tailored to their employees’ needs. It included a combination of classroom training, online tutorials, hands-on exercises, and access to training materials and resources.
3. User Adoption Workshops: They organized interactive workshops to promote user adoption and engagement. These workshops encouraged employees to explore the system’s features, ask questions, and share best practices. This fostered a culture of continuous learning and collaboration.
4. Ongoing Support: The company provided ongoing support and assistance through dedicated help desks, user forums, and regular communication channels. This ensured that employees had access to resources and experts who could address their questions or concerns even after the initial training.

The result of this learning and training strategy was a significant improvement in ROI. Here’s how it happened:

1. Increased User Adoption: By investing in comprehensive training, employees gained the knowledge and confidence to use the CRM system effectively. This led to higher user adoption rates, ensuring that the new system was fully utilized throughout the organization.
2. Improved Productivity: With proper training, employees could leverage the system’s capabilities to streamline their time tracking and approval processes, automate tasks, and improve the accuracy of payroll for its employees. This resulted in increased productivity, reduced manual effort, and improved efficiency in managing customer relationships.
3. Enhanced Data Accuracy: Training helped employees understand the importance of accurate data entry and management within the system. As a result, data quality and integrity improved, leading to better decision-making and improved customer insights.
4. Enhanced Employee Experience: With a better understanding of the system, employees were able to improve the process of scheduling, tracking and paying employees. This led to improved employee satisfaction, increased loyalty, and potentially higher retention of employees due to their ongoing satisfaction.

In this scenario, the investment in learning and training played a critical role in maximizing ROI for the IT project. It empowered employees to fully utilize the IT system, resulting in improved productivity, payroll accuracy, and employee experience. By focusing on continuous learning and training, the company was able to reap the benefits of their IT investment and achieve a higher return.

Author Anders Gronstedt

The traditional model of diversity and inclusion training is broken. Recently, the Harvard Business Review explained that the $8 billion D&I training industry is at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive, making participants even more biased.

Meanwhile, a new generation of virtual reality (VR) is hailed as “the ultimate empathy machine.” For instance, you can strap on a reality-bending headset and get a small taste of the bias others endure by walking a mile in someone else’s virtual body. Look at yourself in a virtual mirror as a person of a different gender, age, or ethnicity. After four minutes, you’ll begin to experience the “body transfer illusion”: This superpower maps brains to virtual bodies and can be used to convey how a minority customer, employee, or colleague experiences the world, with the intention to spur people to think and act more inclusively.

Study upon study has validated the “Proteus effect” in which an individual’s behavior in a virtual world is changed by the appearance of their avatar:

• Putting someone in the skin of a black avatar reduces implicit racial bias.
• Being virtual Einstein makes people both smarter and less age-biased.
• Embodying a cow or a tree impacts connection with nature and behavior, leading people to eat less meat and recycle more paper.
• Exploring different perspectives improves empathy towards: people who are colorblind, people experiencing homelessness, oneself (such as reducing depression)

My firm, the Gronstedt Group, partnered with Providence Health to innovate unconscious bias training. The third largest not-for-profit healthcare system in the US teaches responses to microaggressions in the workplace with 3D hologram scenarios. The metaverse of real-time, spatial, 3D, immersive, and embodied simulations is upon us and promises to transform inclusion and unconscious bias training.

The bigger diversity opportunity might lie in recruitment. Anyone who has watched the coaches on the television show The Voice, with their red chairs faced away from the singers, has witnessed a blind audition in practice. Overcoming gender-biased hiring by auditioning musicians behind a screen has transformed the face of orchestras. Studies suggest blind auditions increase the likelihood of female musicians being selected by 30 percent. Women now make up half of the New York Philharmonic when 50 years ago they represented only six percent of most orchestras.

Evaluating a drywalling task on a construction site is harder to do blind, or at least it was. Now multiplayer VR provides a shared performance space for participants and instructors to interact seamlessly with hands-on skills without revealing the identity behind their avatars. Less than five percent of painters, drywallers, and glazers are women. The International Finishing Trades Institute (iFTI), the training arm of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), is determined to bring that to (at least) 25 percent.

A VR recruitment simulation will help them reach that goal. High school students can step into a virtual construction site developed by my firm. Using both hands, they practice pouring water and mixing joint compounds for drywall finishing. Grabbing a virtual “tape bazooka,” they fill it with the compound, load it with a tape roll, and drag it across a drywall seam, taping it from floor to ceiling. The simulation suspends disbelief, giving young women, who perhaps couldn’t imagine themselves on a construction site, the opportunity to experience a career in the finishing trades during expositions and recruitment drives. This is one of VR’s superpowers, and it’s key to winning diverse talent during the Great Resignation.

NASCAR is leveraging gaming to attract more minority drivers. Rajah Caruth recently took the step from driving a virtual racecar in his bedroom to becoming only the eighth black driver in NASCAR history. He came through the eNASCAR IGNITE esports competition, which was created to recruit young talent by providing a low barrier of entry to the sport. iRacing allows players to race on renowned racetracks from all over the world on a computer with a steering wheel and pedal accessories.

If you don’t think this applies outside of professional sports, think again. Walmart is broadening its talent pool with the first “esports of retail management.” More than 500,000 people have played department manager in the Sims-style Spark City mobile game developed by my firm. Feedback from female users has been overwhelmingly positive. One woman raved, “I’m not a gamer. I hate games, but this is awesome.” Another woman said, “I can play this game all day long.” Walmart has taken the bold step of making the game public on the Apple App Store and Google Play, broadening its reach.

The metaverse revolution promises to broaden recruitment of nontraditional hires, making selection color- and gender-blind and making corporate culture more inclusive. But this is only possible if business leaders rise to the challenge and innovate their way to a more equitable future.

Author: Ability Options

Diversity in the workplace means the acceptance and inclusion of employees of all backgrounds. A diverse workplace is an important asset, since it acknowledges the individual strengths of each employee and the potential they bring. Valuing the differences of others is what ultimately brings us all together and can be the secret to a successful, thriving workplace and a fair work culture.

What is workplace diversity?

Workplace diversity means respecting and valuing the skills and differences that each staff member brings into the workspace. A diverse workplace is an inclusive environment that provides equal rights and opportunities for all workers, regardless of gender, colour, age, ethnicity, physical ability, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and so on.

In many countries around the world, it is law for workplaces to provide equal opportunity to their employees, as well as to create a workplace free from discrimination and harassment. Employers are responsible for putting measures into place to overcome employment disadvantage and discrimination in the workplace. This includes valuing workplace diversity and ensuring that a workplace is free from racial and sexual harassment, discrimination, and bullying.

Types of workplace diversity

It’s important to recognise the types of diversity and to provide ways to ensure that you as a workplace, employer, or employee are contributing toward a more diverse and inclusive workplace. Employing staff with barriers to employment and treating them fairly is one of the ways employers can attract a more diverse workplace and diversify the skill sets within a workplace.

There are now funding and incentive schemes in place to encourage businesses to support people with a disability, Indigenous, mature-aged people, and those who have been in long-term unemployment. Here are some tips to help create a more diverse workplace:

• Discuss diversity with your employees and outline the benefits of a diverse workplace.
• Identify and address any bias when it comes to the recruitment process. Have hiring managers be aware of the qualities and benefits applicants of varying backgrounds can bring to the company and ensure they are allowing for a fair hiring process. Let applicants know that you are an equal-rights employer.
• Value the individual skills that employees bring and make sure to utilize these strengths to help broaden your market and grow your company.
• Allow for flexible work options including flexible hours and less than full time hours
• Provide the opportunity for parental leave for both women and men.
• Create and implement your own Workplace Diversity Plan and certification for employees to become familiar with practising diversity and inclusiveness within the workplace.

Benefits of workplace diversity

Having a diverse and multicultural workplace brings several advantages. Since today’s world is increasingly more globalised and interconnected, workplaces should take advantage of the diverse range of skills individuals from different backgrounds and languages can bring. The top five benefits of workplace diversity include:

• Increased productivity: A diverse workplace allows for more ideas and processes. This diversity of talent means a broader range of skills among employees, as well as a diversity of experiences and perspectives which increases the potential for increased productivity
  Increased creativity: As various cultures and backgrounds work together, the opportunity for increased creativity exists. This is because there are more people with differing perspectives and solutions to problems, allowing for a greater chance of a workable solution to a workplace problem.
• Improved cultural awareness: A diverse range of cultures within the workplace allows companies to deal with the different nuances within a global marketplace. If a company does business with China, for example, having an employee who can speak Mandarin is an asset and can lead to improved workplace relations.
• A positive reputation: Companies that have a diverse workplace are often perceived as better employers. Potential employees want an employer who accepts and is tolerant of all backgrounds and who treats their employees fairly.
• Increase in marketing opportunities: If potential employees or customers see that a company represents a diverse workplace, it makes them feel like they can relate to the company more. Using advertising that depicts mature-aged, differently-abled, or ethnically diverse people encourages applicants to apply, promotes a positive reputation, increases marketplace awareness, and generates a more diverse client-base
  Achieving workplace diversity means you are bringing out the very best of your employees and allowing them to reach their full potential. By doing so, your workplace benefits as it encourages a more varied and innovative talent pool.

Diversify your workplace

If you’re looking to introduce a more diverse approach to your workplace, get in touch with us for training, resources, or start your search for the perfect staff member here.

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