DSS Focuses on Inclusion and Innovation during Onboarding Sessions

August 15, 2018

 

When the “I” Becomes Equally Important in Diversity and Inclusion  

The “I” of Diversity & Inclusion has been the emphasis in Asia Pacific in the form of specialized trainings and meetings.

DuPont Sustainable Solutions (DSS) has applied the mantra of #IM IN with the "I" again being prominent in its onboarding sessions held recently for new hires. The training emphasized Unconscious Bias and included lessons on understanding Inclusion and Innovation in the workplace. The new employees who participated in the training appreciated the sessions and many said they expected to use Diversity & Inclusion as a value proposition with customers.   

Commenting on the training, Davide Vassallo, global managing director of DuPont Sustainable Solutions said: "The openness and speed to include new capabilities and resources in the DSS team is key to beating the competition and we look to our new hires to help us do that. Diversity & Inclusion training brings additional value and further enables our employees to create innovative solutions that benefit our customers."

Special Diversity & Inclusion training also occurred in India recently, when DuPont India hosted a roundtable with Vandana Juneja, APAC director of Catalyst. The roundtable, which had the theme of Inclusive leadership, included participants from leading organizations like Mahindra and Mahindra, BASF, TCS, and PWC. Sudhir Shenoy, chief executive officer of Dow India opened the roundtable discussions by speaking about the importance of connecting D&I with sustainability. He told the participants that the business case for diversity was well understood and that now our challenge was to drive Inclusion.   

DuPont Electronics & Imaging (E&I) has articulated 2018 goals for Diversity & Inclusion under the leadership of Colleen Pritchett, global business director of DuPont Advanced Printing. As part of those overarching goals, E&I leaders in Japan recently participated in Unconscious Bias training to raise awareness and make action plans to drive inclusion as part of culture building. In the coming months, there will be a further cascade of these sessions to additional employees in Japan.  

Work-Life Integration, another important "I", was the exciting theme of the DuPont Women's Network meeting at Shanghai which was attended by well over 70 participants and led by a panel of external and internal participants. Yi Zhang, president of DuPont China gave an introductory speech describing Work Life Integration as an approach that creates more synergies between all areas that define "life": work, home, family, community, personal well-being and health. Other speakers at the meeting shared personal stories – some touching and some fun – and the skills and tips learned from the session were thought to be very useful to participants. 

In noting the importance of the training, Joji Sekhon Gill, DuPont HR director of AP & EMEA and managing director of DuPont Singapore said: "We are continuing to progress the journey of D&I with making the "I" equally important to the "D" in the Diversity & Inclusion equation, as this leads to better business performance and increased Innovation."