TXI’s commitment to DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging) is a core business strategy that drives our operations and decisions at every level. It’s also something that makes us better at the work we do for clients and a better place to work.
So why isn’t every company putting DEIB at the core of their operations? Because it’s hard and requires dedicated, intentional, ongoing commitment.
In this blog post, we highlight some of what that commitment looks like as it relates to building an inclusive culture. Read on to get a sense of how we’re engaging with this work and how it’s changing our company.
Moving beyond transparency to fostering curiosity
We’ve always been a transparent organization. Every month, we publish our financials for the entire company. We’ve held regular AMAs with leaders and encouraged one-on-ones between executives and employees throughout the organization.
As we’ve pushed ourselves to become more inclusive, we’ve moved beyond transparency to curiosity. For the last two years, for example, we’ve asked everyone in the company to complete a culture survey.
This year, we’re pushing our curiosity even further: we’ve reserved an entire day to discuss the results as a company and identify next steps to address issues and opportunity areas.
This kind of proactive curiosity is crucial for any company interested in fostering an inclusive culture: we don’t wait for a problem to erupt to think about change. We regularly ask our people what's working and what's not so that we can identify areas of improvement.
It’s easy in any organization to assume that if nobody complained, everybody was happy. But in reality, that’s rarely the case. By being curious about our culture and by committing to challenging ourselves and each other to be better, we find out how people actually feel, and, crucially, we give ourselves the opportunity to improve so that people stay.
Engaging in active listening
We’ve written in the past about how active listening drives our product innovation work. It’s also an essential tool in fostering an inclusive culture.