How TELUS Digital Is Scaling Their Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives
Venture Out is excited to welcome TELUS Digital as a Silver sponsor to this year’s Conference! In this guest blog, TELUS Digital shares their perspective on committing to inclusion in the workplace, and provides a sneak preview of the workshop they’ll be hosting at Venture Out 2019.
Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is increasingly becoming a top priority for many tech companies. From a small team of 40 in 2012 to a flourishing group of 377 today, TELUS Digital continues to grow exponentially. Scaling a team is exciting, but how does a growing and evolving team balance consistent corporate values with empowering new employees to join the team with their whole selves and add to the culture, as opposed to fitting into an existing culture?
Throughout our evolution, culture remains a constant priority for Chief Digital Officer Shawn Mandel.
We are continuously learning and researching new ideas, but we start by putting our money where our mouth is; we recognize that we need to increase our resources and investment into inclusive initiatives that will keep employees engaged and deliver on our company’s commitments to our talent.
Inclusion at TELUS Digital
As we enter 2019, we are committed to increasing our investment in D&I programs to improve our internal and external practices. One theme we have focused on is creating more space for dialogue between employees. Internally within Digital, we have developed spirited and open communication through our #inclusivity and #diversity-inclusion Slack channels, our Diversity guild (a safe space created to discuss diversity and inclusion issues and possible solutions), and collaboration with our Team Member Resource Groups .
With over 1,300 members, SPECTRUM is TELUS’ resource group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer (LGBTQ+) and allied team members. Through advocacy, education, networking, sponsorships and volunteering, members work to ensure TELUS drives positive impacts as a global LGBTQ+ champion and empowers team members to bring their whole selves to work.
Connecting with Community
This March, we are proud to be supporting the Venture Out Conference which brings together LGBTQA+ professionals and students who are interested in pursuing careers in tech and entrepreneurship or growing the careers they have. We hope that through showing our support, engaging with attendees, participating in the conversation, and learning more about practicing allyship, we can more effectively support the community, amplify the voices of our LGBTQA+ employees, and assist in developing the leaders of tomorrow.
We are so excited to be presenting a workshop at Venture Out titled “Inclusive Content: One nudge at a time”, featuring four of our employees committed to fostering a safe digital environment, inside and outside of TELUS. We have implemented an automatic feedback tool into our Content Management System (CMS) that gently reminds and warns users of language that is problematic or non-inclusive. It was a challenging project that involved many contributors, but something that we feel is crucial to prioritizing safety in our content.
TELUS Venture Out Workshop
Inclusive content — one nudge at a time.
At TELUS, diversity is something we try to weave into all of our practices.
When it comes to creating content, we take what we say and how we say it seriously. But how do we ensure our content writers are mindful of inclusive language day-to-day? And how do we use our technical capabilities to scale and automate this as much as possible?
In this workshop, we will look at a tool built into our Content Management System (Contentful). Built using our Digital Platform (a shared toolkit we use to deliver experiences internally and to our customers and open source software), the tool provides feedback, reminding content writers of language that is problematic or non-inclusive. During the demo, we will review its technical implementation and how this enables us to scale the application across our team.
See you at Venture Out! We are excited to meet you, so please come by our booth in the Recruitment Fair on March 15th.
If you’re interested in exploring opportunities within TELUS Digital, check out our website! We are hiring for Full Stack Developers, Visual/Interaction Designers, Automation Testers, Product Owners, Digital Analytics & Insights Consultants, Implementation Consultants and more.
Get your tickets today for the 2019 Venture Out Conference on March 14 & 15 at MaRS!
