Inspiring the Workplace to be Inclusive of Cultural Diversity
Yext’s ERG “EMBRACE” is for employees of color and inspires social and self-awareness at work.
This posting expresses the views and opinions of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yext and its affiliates, employees, officers, directors or representatives.
As one of the Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) at Yext, EMBRACE exists as the champion for employees of color. Its mission statement is “to build Yext as a lighthouse company for racial and ethnic diversity”, and to serve its members as a community of inclusive and open-minded people at the workplace.
When I first joined the Yext DC office, I was hesitant to join an ERG, especially with the hustle and bustle of everyday work. We are a significantly smaller office than our New York counterpart and many of the initiatives are launched in a grassroots way. Some ERG’s — like EMPOWER, which supports and celebrates women — already had a foundation and hosted frequent meetings, but EMBRACE didn’t officially have a presence or structure. I waited to see if EMBRACE would form a DC-based chapter, but grew restless when it appeared no one was going to make a move.
I thought:
“everyone cares about racial diversity, how could you not? Creating a group focused on something we all care about will be a piece of cake.”
So the first question I started with was:
What can EMBRACE do to improve racial diversity at Yext?
The biggest challenge I faced was that my coworkers work really, really hard. If you’re asking someone to take time away from their day, where they’re being 100% productive 100% of the time, it’s difficult to even get them to leave their desks. So the question became:
What can EMBRACE do (that’s low-effort) to improve racial diversity at Yext?
Through EMBRACE I have learned so much. Not only have I had the chance to meet and befriend the Embrace network in New York, but I have learned so much about the people I work with every day and what they value in a workplace environment. I have learned the difference between diversity and inclusion, and how important the latter is to retain the former. While diversity is important during recruiting, inclusion impacts retention, and keeps employees happy. I decided that this should be added to the question:
What can EMBRACE do (that’s low-effort) to improve racial diversity (and inclusion) at Yext?
The next challenge I faced is that tough conversations are hard to bring up when no one else sees a problem. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it, right? Instead of parading around the things that we were falling short on, I decided to invite dialogue to spread awareness in the form of statistics and fun facts that we could ponder in our own time.
What can EMBRACE do (that’s low-effort) to improve (social and self-awareness about) racial diversity (and inclusion) at Yext?
There’s so much that I still haven’t learned. At our first All-Hands someone explained to me why using spirit animals as an icebreaker was offensive to Native American heritage. Every time we discuss interview candidates we try to be mindful of our own unconscious biases about whether or not cultural background influences behavior and interactions during the interviews. It’s important that we recognize our own prejudice and privilege when we try to be inclusive of others.
What can EMBRACE do (that’s low-effort) to improve (social and self-awareness about) racial diversity (and inclusion) at Yext(, while breaking down our own inherent biases and being sensitive to others’ cultures that we might not necessarily understand)?
There are infinite additions we could make to improve this goal and cover all the bases, all of which live under EMBRACE’s mission statement: to build Yext as a lighthouse company for racial and ethnic diversity. So for now, let’s start at the beginning.
What can EMBRACE do at Yext?
That’s what I’m going to find out.
