Your personal brand matters. Here are some tip for building a positive personal brand aligned with your goals and positions you for success.

This eBook from River will describe questions you should ask yourself about starting a mentoring program, factors you will need to consider, and examples of how this can work in the real world.

If you’re more of a Warren Buffett than a Donald Trump, and more of a Greta Garbo than a Madonna, you’ve come to the right place. It’s time for you to get recognized and compensated for your gifts. Rather than buying into the common misconceptions about introverts, you’ll apply your quiet strengths to raise your visibility in a way that feels right for you. Read more

Your personal brand starts with your personal value statement. This tool provides a template, example, and worksheet for crafting your personal brand value statement.

The Skills and Strengths Inventory is a resource to help you identify the skills and strengths that make you a valuable asset. Use this tool as a way to build self-confidence, self-reliance, and guide you along your career path.

Don’t leave your career in the hands of your manager – take control. Self-advocacy is a key success factor but needs to be done right to be effective. Here are some dos and don’ts of self-advocacy.

The member engagement survey is a tool for ERG leaders to assess the needs of its member base in order to provide highly targeted and effective development opportunities, engage ERG members and enhance communication and outreach.

Creating your diversity and inclusion strategy requires considerable time and thought and resources. Here you’ll find some tips for getting started and setting yourself up for success early on in the process.

There are many factors and components that contribute to a successful Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.  Those success factors will be different for every organization and there is certainly no silver bullet. That being said, there are three things we believe all DEI strategies must have in order to be effective and successful.

A shift from creating safe spaces to creating brave spaces may be a more productive approach for addressing challenges and opportunities associated with diversity, inclusion and equity. Here are some steps you can take to create brave spaces.

The Making it Count for Sales: The What, Why, and How of Diversity & Inclusion is a 75-90 minute training that can be leveraged by D&I practitioners as part of their training offerings. The training is designed to help sales teams recognize and understand how they can best support the diversity and inclusion strategy.

Here are some tips to help you engage your ERG Members.

We focus so much on diversity and inclusion, combatting disparity and inequity, changing policies and procedures, that we totally missed the point. Maybe we need to make it more acceptable to talk about our feelings. To express our fears and our beliefs no matter how contrary or hateful they may appear to others. Even while I write this I shudder at the thought – honestly some of those feelings are better left unsaid. But really, are they?

Let’s start our diversity and inclusion strategy with the end in mind. Here are some questions to get you started.

The End in Mind Exercise is a quick 20-minute ideation activity to help participants create a plan or solution by starting with the end in mind and working backwards.

The Project Planning Template is a tool to help you manage your project from design to execution.

Organizations have been sharing best practices for decades. While all organizations approach Diversity and Inclusion differently, there are a few key tools and approaches that are consistently linked to success.

Your ERG branding and communications strategy is not much different than any other branding strategy and therefore you can easily apply the marketing mix or 4 Ps of a marketing strategy. Below you will find a template, example and worksheet.

The Inclusion Learning Loop™ ERG Strategic Planning Blueprint is an action planning exercise to support ERG leaders in the strategic planning process. The blueprint and worksheet pose key questions and ideas that must be explored throughout the creation of the annual business/strategic plan.

Organizations support ERGs for many reasons including a commitment to maintaining a diverse and inclusive workplace, fostering a culture in which different perspectives, ideas and styles are valued and encouraged, and creating an environment where all employees feel valued and believe there is an equal opportunity to contribute and succeed. Well-integrated ERGs can have a major impact in an organization, which spans four key areas: People, Productivity, Profitability and Community. This document highlights some best-practice examples of how ERGs are supporting the company in these key areas.

This assessment form provides a set of criteria to evaluate current and potential membership organizations.

As a passion-driven group of leaders, DEI practitioners continue to push boundaries, strive for change and positively impact our work environments despite all challenges. To be truly successful in their work D&I leaders must stretch budgets, leverage every possible resource available to them and seek champions in all places.

Training Tools:

This is a quick and easy reference tool to help you design and offer D&I events throughout the year without breaking your budget. Many of the ideas here have little or no cost associated with them.

Template for creating an event budget

The Quality of Care Self-Assessment is a quick way to determine your level of competency in dealing with a diverse set of patients, areas of strengths and opportunities for improvement. This tool is not intended to provide a comprehensive assessment of your skills and competencies but a quick reference and high-level overview.

The Cultural Competence Action Plan is a tool designed to help healthcare providers identify competency strengths and opportunities for development. The tool identifies key competencies associated with the delivery of culturally competent care and provides a thought process for building competency in each area.

Is there a business case for diversity and inclusion in healthcare? When we take into account the world in which we live and the communities in which we serve the case for diversity seems somewhat obvious. Moving from conceptualization to actualization is where it becomes a bit more complicated. As a first step it is important to understand some of the links between diversity and the ability to deliver quality culturally competent care.

Updated: The Inclusion Learning Loop™ Heritage Month Celebration Ideas is a companion piece to the Multicultural Calendar. It provides ERG leaders and members with ideas for recognizing and celebrating the various heritage months.

Core to the success of any ERG is its ability to effectively design and run events that are well aligned with business objectives and the development needs of its members. The Event Planning Process is a step-by- step set of guidelines for designing a well-constructed event.