This month, Launchways formally announced our partnership with Rippling, the software company unifying employee systems such as payroll, benefits, devices, and 3rd party apps. Launchways formed this partnership to give our clients unique access to Rippling’s industry-leading solutions and provide a centralized software layer to our already robust service offerings, improving the overall user experience for our clients.
As a leading provider of strategic HR and Employee Benefits solutions, Launchways is always looking for the newest solutions that will empower our clients’ sustainable growth. Launchways CEO, Jim Taylor, said, “The partnership with Rippling is a natural step for us, as their scalable, centralized, and customizable model dovetails perfectly with the Launchways philosophy of taking a boutique approach to developing HR and Benefits solutions.”
It’s important to note what makes Rippling unique among modern all-in-one HR platforms and what we hope to accomplish through our partnership. Let’s take a look at the details of how Rippling will empower our clients, including:
Rippling’s hybrid approach to HR and IT
Full-lifecycle employee management through Rippling
Rippling’s versatility and scalability
The mission of the Rippling + Launchways partnership
The Rippling Effect: A Unique Approach to HR Technology
Human Resources Meets Information Technology
Rippling is the first software platform to enable companies to handle their HR and IT in a single system. Management of payroll, benefits, physical devices, and software applications like Gsuite, Salesforce, and Slack is all just a click away in a centralized and streamlined interface. This creates one system of record across departments and functions, avoiding duplicated effort and inconsistent data storage.
Growing businesses often operate with a lean team and need to run as quickly and efficiently as possible. A centralized system like Rippling connects all employee data into a single system of record, enabling business leaders to automate time-consuming HR tasks. This centralization and automation allows teams to run faster and work more efficiently.
While there are other competitive systems with dedicated HR solutions and IT solutions, Rippling is the only software solution to manage both of these functions in a single platform. Rippling’s Payroll, Benefits Administration, and FSA/HSA/Commuter Debit Card tools operate seamlessly within the same platform as its Access Management and Computers & Security tools for IT. HR professionals can manage their people, their devices, and their accounts all within the same easy-to-use platform.
Employee Lifecycle Management
Rippling is dedicated to providing full-service solutions throughout the entirety of the employee lifecycle. From onboarding and offboarding to payroll, PTO, and benefits, Rippling streamlines every process through centralization and automation of data, resulting in the elimination of all of the unnecessary paperwork and manual entry that makes these processes so arduous.
The platform enables employers to onboard new employees in just 90 seconds, including adding them to payroll and benefits, ordering necessary hardware, creating user accounts in any of 500+ applications, installing the employee’s software and security, and assigning onboarding tasks. What’s more, companies can configure “smart rules” based on employee attributes. For example, if you hire a sales rep in California, their employee attributes (their computer, the apps they use, the payroll and benefits options their offered, etc.) will automatically be populated within the system. Rippling eliminates the need for paperwork and manual data entry during these processes, so your team can focus on the human and cultural side of onboarding.
Once employees are part of the team, Rippling’s platform provides time-off tracking, a team task manager, full-service payroll and benefits administration. Additionally, if Rippling doesn’t do it, their third-party integrations with hundreds of additional applications complement the entire employee experience.
And offboarding employees leaving the company is just as easy. Rippling will automatically remove the former employee from all systems, including benefits and payroll, administer the employee’s COBRA, and disable employee accounts and devices.
Versatility and Scalability
One of the pillars of the Launchways approach to benefits and HR is that our solutions are scalable, so they can accommodate our clients as they grow their businesses. We know that changing systems as a company grows can cause painful business disruption, inevitable system inefficiencies, and bureaucracy that stunts growth.
In partnering with Rippling, it was important to Launchways that their solution accommodate the growing businesses that we serve. Rippling’s platform works seamlessly whether your business has two employees or a thousand. Painless integrations allow users to evolve their business processes transform over time. For instance, Rippling works just as well with QuickBooks and Xero as it does with Intacct or NetSuite. So you won’t have to change your HR or IT software when you’ve outgrown your accounting solution. Additionally, unlike other all-in-one HR platforms that can take months or even a year to roll-out, Rippling can be deployed in a matter of days or weeks, and is fully-equipped to import your existing data.
In total, Rippling has over 500 third-party integrations, including Slack, Microsoft Office, Dropbox, and Salesforce. This highly collaborative approach meshes perfectly with Launchways’ fervent belief that no two clients’ needs are exactly alike. Every business is unique, and its processes, pain points, and solutions are too. Rippling’s module approach allows our clients to choose the solutions that work best for their business and budget, while Rippling’s robust network of integrations allow businesses to create the software suite that works best for their team.
The Mission of the Launchways + Rippling Partnership
This powerful partnership combines the hands-on, tailored service of Launchways’ benefits brokerage with best-in-class HR technology that eliminates the need for tedious administrative work.
It’s a true partnership, meaning that Rippling provides a dedicated service and support team for our clients. At Launchways, we pride ourselves on our dedication to personalized service and boutique benefits approach, no matter what size the client is. This partnership allows us to deliver the same level of service for our clients’ HR and IT software needs. Rippling Head of Channel Sales, Matt Donaldson, added “Partnering with benefits brokers, like Launchways, has enabled us to present a unique option in the market. There isn’t another solution that can pair best-in-breed technology with the knowledge of an industry expert. It truly is a game changer for our customers.”
At its core, our strategic partnership with Rippling affords our clients access to cutting-edge HR technology, while still allowing them to rely on our team of top-notch benefits consultants for a hands-on approach to employee benefits. An additional perk of the partnership is that Launchways clients will be able to purchase the software at a significant discount. Launchways CEO, Jim Taylor, said “All too often, business leaders are forced to choose between the costly, comprehensive solution that works best for their needs and the less expensive, less robust solution that works best for their budget. Launchways’ goal with this partnership is to make sure that our clients get the best of both worlds by taking advantage of our heavily negotiated rates and dedicated service team.”
Key Takeaways
Launchways’ partnership with Rippling represents an exciting opportunity for our clients. Rippling’s innovative approach to HR and IT won it the PC Magazine Editor’s Choice Award and made it the top-ranking Payroll Software solution and HR Software solution on Capterra, G2 Crowd and GetApp. By working closely with the Rippling team, we can offer our clients significant discounts on Rippling software and personalized support from a dedicated service team. When considering whether to make Rippling part of your Launchways solution, keep in mind:
Rippling is the only software provider that lets you manage your HR and IT functions within the same platform to eliminate wasteful processes and create a single system of record
Onboard and offboard employees in just 90 seconds with Rippling’s streamlined processes
Rippling’s versatility and scalability match Launchways’ approach to benefits and HR
This partnership provides our clients with unique advantages compared to general consumers
Diversity and inclusion are the keys to creating a truly
modern team that’s built to maximize each individual’s skills, shore up
individual weaknesses, and build a powerful unit that can thrive, brainstorm,
problem-solve, and celebrate achievements together. With that said, getting
diversity and inclusion right is such an important responsibility that many HR
and business leaders continue to hire for cultural fit, leaving a coordinated,
purposeful D&I initiative for another day.
In order for businesses to succeed and innovate into the 2020s, that kind of thinking needs to stop. Each and every employer should be doing something at scale to encourage diversity and foster inclusion. The businesses that do not will soon stand to miss out on some of the world’s best talent and leave themselves exposed to costly lawsuits.In order to demystify the complexity of D&I and connect business and HR leaders with actionable strategies, Launchways recently held a free one-hour webinar, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Workplace Diversity & Inclusion but Were Afraid to Ask.”
The webinar featured an all-star panel of four of the
Midwest’s leading experts on diversity and inclusion, each of whom provided
crucial considerations and actionable strategies for businesses of any size or
growth stage looking to improve their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
Rebekah Wolford of Paylocity began the conversation
by articulating the importance of diversity and inclusion as prized values
baked into the core of what your organization does and represents. She
explained how D&I initiatives all about building the “We” that’s going to
maximize company potential and customer experience.
Rebekah also provided a valuable real-world case study for
D&I success by walking through how she and her team planned, initiated, and
built an impactful diversity and inclusion program at Paylocity. She discussed…
How to use surveys and HCM data to build an
understanding of the current state of D&I at your organization
Which data points should be most important to
your D&I planning and assessment
How to create a comfortable space in which
employees and leadership can challenge each other
How to be sure you’re practicing inclusive
behaviors and creating a strong culture
How to use employee resource groups (ERGs) as an
on-going part of a D&I strategy
How to create and provide meaningful D&I
training for your team
Rada Yovovich of The Darkest Horseshared
some of her wisdom as an expert diversity and inclusion consultant, expanding
on the vital importance of strong company culture and discussing how businesses
can work towards getting there from any starting point.
Rada stressed that the workplace is an unintentional “bias
factory,” which presents an unwelcoming or additionally challenging situation
for diverse talent. She specifically discussed how organizations can work to
identify and eliminate bias in their job postings, hiring interactions, and
performance management evaluations. She also explained…
How to build buy-in for your D&I program by
making it authentic to, designed for, and reflective of your organization’s
existing culture
How to use employee engagement to drive forward
the culture and team you aspire to
How to recognize, address, and eliminate the
unconscious bias that works against diversity and inclusion
How to provide non-judgmental employee
assessments by staying grounded in functional competencies
How to create a documentation trail that protects
your business in compliance scenarios
Dr. Renee McLaughlin of Cignadrew upon her years of
experience as an LGBTQ+ inclusion and healthcare professional to emphasize the
importance of proactive planning in corporate D&I. Whether it’s an
early-stage organization devising a plan for maintaining their strong culture
if a merger or buyout occurs or choosing which healthcare offerings will
ideally support your team, the best answer is to have a clear, powerful plan in
place.
Renee also provided tremendous insight into the necessity of
transition resources for professionals in any workplace. That means having a
policy-backed transition plan, proactively working to ensure the safety of
trans professionals, and providing healthcare offerings that provide trans team
members with the best opportunity to be their authentic selves at work. She
specifically discussed…
Why
diversity and inclusion are especially relevant for early-stage businesses
How
to work toward combining cultures in a positive, authentic way during a
business merger scenario
How
early stage companies can plan proactively to reduce these challenges
How
to proactively address the needs of LGBTQ+ employees, particularly transgender
team members, through company policies and insurance offerings
Which
specific terms need to be included in your policies
How
to plan to address resistant beliefs in LGBTQ+ inclusion scenarios
The
importance of understanding all local laws related to LGBTQ+ rights, particularly
for multi-site corporations
Alex Koglin of Launchways
applied his expertise as a leading employee benefits consultant and LGBTQ+
rights activist in the Chicago area to provide specific insight into how you
can build alignment between your benefits offerings and your commitment to
diversity and inclusion.
Alex provided specific employee benefits recommendations
that organizations can use to build the necessary support for diversity,
inclusion, and transition that Renee, Rebekah, and Rada discussed. He
explained…
How to create a strong, supportive D&I framework regardless of your personal feelings through employee benefits and healthcare offerings
The importance of benefits offerings that account for domestic partners and same-sex spouses
How to ensure your transgender employees’ healthcare needs are met
The importance of providing robust mental health coverage as well as physical healthcare
How to provide on-going health and wellness education to maximize team-wide well-being
The open enrollment period between November 1 and December
15 can be one of the most challenging times of year for HR professionals.
Getting enrollment right in a timely manner is crucial to supporting your
workforce and maximizing the two-way value of employee benefits.
With that said, open enrollment is tricky because it is such
a complex challenge. There’s no one thing an HR leader or department can do to
make the enrollment season go smoothly – it requires proactive planning and
strategizing for a variety of factors and concerns.
Moving forward, we’ll explore:
Introduce five of the biggest challenges,
concerns, and areas of opportunity for HR professionals before and during open
enrollment
Provide actually strategies HR leaders can use
to navigate or plan for these challenges
Open Enrollment Challenge #1: Logistics
Part of having a successful open enrollment period is having
a very clear vision ahead of time for what that enrollment is going to look
like and how you will ensure success. Without a logistical vision for how
you’re going to pull off enrollment, you’re leaving your ability to have a
successful open enrollment up to chance.
As a department, your first concern is understanding whether
you’ll be leading an active or a passive enrollment. If you’ve recently
rehauled your benefit offerings or you have internal data suggesting that many
employees are on suboptimal plans, then an active enrollment can make a big
difference for your benefits program On the other hand, passive enrollments
work best in organizations with many long-term employees who are generally
happy with their coverage.
If you’re going to leverage technology to streamline your
enrollment procedure (and in 2019, you definitely should) that means your
logistical planning needs to involve your IT team, as they’ll be the people
determining the actual look and feel of the system that your employees will use
to enroll in their benefits. HR and IT must work together to ensure the user
experience is easy, clear, stress-free, and built right into the systems that
employees use for their day-to-day work to maximize accessibility and invite
engagement.
Open Enrollment Challenge #2: Communication
Communication is the probably the single biggest key to a
great open enrollment season, but it may also be the single biggest challenge.
As an HR professional, it’s your responsibility to ensure
that nobody can forget about open enrollment season. At the same time, however,
benefit election time is also when HR departments can actually harm buy-in and
hurt long-term employee engagement by providing the wrong kind of communication
or using the wrong tone with employees.
For example, weekly email reminders to make benefit
elections are useful for employees who have not completed the process, but they
can seem annoying or impersonal to professionals who were sure to make their
elections early in the cycle. Creating a communication strategy that maximizes
that valuable communication while eliminating repetitive or unnecessary messaging
is key to short-term success during enrollment and long-term success
maintaining a great relationship with your talent.
One of the best ways to be successful is by spreading your
message across multiple platforms. If your organization uses an ERP that all
employees work through, partner with IT to get reminders in highly visible
spaces that your team members can’t help but see. If your company has a
preferred messaging system or bespoke communication app, you can use those
channels to send enrollment reminders as well.
Open Enrollment Challenge #3: Education
Education is your greatest weapon to ensure employees choose
their ideal benefits package, maximizing two-way value for talent and the
organization alike. With that said, out of all these challenges, education can
be the toughest one to truly embrace and hold yourself accountable to because
it takes a lot of work.
In order to provide employees with the information they need
to select the plans that are best for their families, you need to think like a
teacher, providing multiple access points to the information and presenting
things in a variety of ways to make sure that everybody understands the
material, regardless of their personal learning style. That means just passing
along the literature from your provider isn’t nearly enough.
Employees require a blend of independent learning
opportunities (like brochures and manuals), large group learning opportunities
(like formal training sessions), and small group (or even one-on-one) support
from benefits-savvy HR team members to maximize their educational level and
resultant engagement potential. Making time for those initiatives requires
buy-in from senior leadership, but education is truly the difference between
setting up your team for enrollment success and leaving them dangling in the
wind.
Open Enrollment Challenge #4: Engagement
Engagement is the special sauce that makes every single
aspect of operations at your organization run smoothly. When it comes to open
enrollment, engagement means a workforce that cares about maximizing the value
of their benefits and getting those elections made in a timely manner.
Health and wellness are crucial points of employee
engagement for any business, but when they are active pillars of the employee
culture, it significantly streamlines the yearly dance of open enrollment. When
talent is engaged in terms of health and wellness, they work toward building
their own understanding of how they’re using their benefits, what they need,
and how they could be making smarter selections. That translates directly into
making the right choices in November.
If that culture doesn’t already exist in your organization,
the lead-up to enrollment season is a great time to brainstorm some incentives
that invite engagement and build a positive, empowered attitude toward
enrollment throughout the organization. The more you can create a positive buzz
for health and wellness, the more active a role your employees will take in
enrollment.
Open Enrollment Challenge #5: Picking the Right Benefits
Partner
Of course, the over-arching challenge that hangs above the
other four is the challenge of offering your employees the very best, most
valuable benefits you possibly can.
Many employee benefits providers try to build a standardized
definition of a “great benefits package,” but for your open enrollment to be
successful in the long term for your department, your organization, and your
talent, you should never settle for a one-size-fits-all approach. If you’re a
small or medium-sized business, this can require working with a white glove
service to help you connect with exactly the coverage you need to support your
team.
Partnering with the wrong benefits broker can and will cost
the organization in the long-term, whether it’s over-spend on unused benefits
or employee dissatisfaction with limited offerings. Finding a benefits partner
who understands your organization, your team, and your goals is crucial to
maximizing employee experience and business value through enrollment.
Key Takeaways
Open enrollment is a complex challenge, but when you
understand each individual aspect of the challenge and can formulate a
proactive strategy that addresses each concern, you maximize your chances to
deliver wins for your employees and organization as a whole. Remember…
You must plan ahead in the lead up to
open enrollment and create a roadmap for success
You must communicate positively with your
team in a way that guarantees awareness and provides them with the information
they need to enroll
You must educate your team in a way that
ensures they are able to make the best benefit enrollment selections for their
families
You must engage your team in a positive
manner that builds their enthusiasm for wellness in general
You must find the best possible benefits
partner for your size and goals
When businesses truly embrace diversity and inclusion, they create a powerful, complementary team that’s unbeatable together . Unfortunately, though, there’s no magic wand you can wave to get there.
To leverage the incredible team-building and innovative
potential of diversity and inclusion, businesses need to articulate strong
values, make them a real part of daily work culture, and create policies and
procedures that hold themselves and their employees accountable. It takes
honest commitment, thoughtful planning, strong follow-through, and built-in
checks and balances along the way.
With that said, no business should be dissuaded from working
towards building diverse and inclusive HR policies just because the work is
complex. In fact, organizations who don’t tackle the challenge and opportunity
of diversity head-on only set themselves up to stagnate.
In this post we’ll explore:
What strong workplace diversity and inclusion
“look like” as we near 2020
How truly valuing diversity and inclusion builds
success for businesses
The many costs associated with undervaluing and not
practicing workplace diversity and inclusion
How HR professionals trying to increase their
knowledge of current best practices for diversity and inclusion can connect
with the best resources
The State of Workplace Diversity & Inclusion
The world of workplace diversity has transformed immensely
over the past decade. A diverse, progressive, and inclusive workplace culture
can no longer be treated like an optional, industry-specific perk. Instead, a
commitment to diversity and inclusion has become a necessity for businesses at
any size. In fact, diversity and inclusion policies are increasingly
requirements when it comes to disclosures for business partnerships, grant
applications, and proposals.
In today’s modern work climate, organizations that don’t understand and leverage the value of workplace diversity will fail to outperform their competitors.
Let’s take a minute to break down both the words “diversity”
and “inclusion” and think about what they really mean in today’s marketplace.
Workplace diversity
means hiring, promoting, and valuing professionals from a variety of different
backgrounds, experiences, and approaches. It means employing people who think
differently, look differently, and experience the world differently from each
other. It means thinking beyond age, race, religion, disability, or sexual
identity. It means trying to build a team that is truly complementary and
reflects the world and marketplace as a whole.
Diversity, however, is nothing without inclusion. In fact, it is inclusion that has become the hot-button
issue and the trendier topic over the last two years. Inclusion is the
company’s devotion to and strategies for ensuring their diverse workforce
functions as a true team, and all people’s skills, values, and perspectives are
valued in a fair way.
As we approach 2020, diversity is firmly cemented as one of
the most important values for all corporations and businesses, while inclusion
is continuing to emerge and take its rightful place as a key focus of HR. Let’s
take a minute to think about what benefits forward-thinking HR departments can
create for their organizations when they get both diversity and inclusion
right.
How Diversity & Inclusion Help Businesses Win
As an HR professional, it’s your job to build a team that
sets your business up for success. From that perspective, diversity and
inclusion aren’t even really values or ideals anymore – they’re simply matters
of best practice.
When your organization embraces a variety of professionals,
perspectives, and people, you create a team that can accomplish more than any
homogeneous group. With that said, maximizing their impact means pairing that
diversity with inclusion – that is to say, diverse staffing practices must be
supported by policies, leadership, and day-to-day workflows that keep everybody
feeling empowered and engaged.
Businesses that call pull those two components off can reap significant
business results that less diverse or inclusive workplaces simply can’t access.
Talent Attraction and Retention
One of the most seismic shifts of the twenty-first century
has been the deemphasis on base salary, especially in the face of a thriving
workplace culture. Simply put, great talent wants to work in a great
environment – one that feels warm but professional, welcoming and collegial.
People also want to work in a place where their perspective
is appreciated and valued. That’s where the organization that values diversity
can connect with outstanding talent. If you can establish an identity and a
reputation as a business that truly creates opportunity for people based on the
strengths of their talents and thinks beyond twentieth-century concepts of what
corporate leadership and a productive office look like, you’ll be operating a
workplace where the very best talent of every background will want to work.
Increased Authentic Engagement
When your boss is the person who signs your check, you’ll
work to meet their expectations. When your boss is a person who shares your
values, applies fairness in every possible situation, and builds a team of
diverse voices that makes you (and everybody) feel heard, you’ll work to exceed
everybody’s expectations.
By fostering a diverse team, promoting diverse leadership,
and creating a workplace where everybody has the level of comfort, support, and
safety they need to get their work done, you can build something truly special:
an environment without glass ceilings or toxic secret inner circles. You will
have a workplace where all employees feel like they’re working positively
toward shared goals. This sets talent up to be their best selves and function
as a whole that’s much greater and more powerful than the sum of its parts.
Building a Variety of Perspectives
Too often, organizations lock themselves into a vision, a
culture, and a way of thinking early on in their lifecycle and craft hiring and
promotion programs in a way that reinforces that orthodoxy. This can be a
recipe for business stagnation.
Forward-thinking businesses aren’t afraid of a diversity of
perspectives or approaches destabilizing what they’ve previously built. On the
contrary, these businesses realize that a team with a wide variety of
backgrounds creates a much greater pool of ideas for innovation,
problem-solving, messaging, and more.
When each department, committee, and project team is diverse
and everybody knows their perspective and work is valued, businesses create the
strongest possible framework for innovative thinking, innovative work, and
innovative approaches to quality assurance.
Fostering a Reputation as a True Modern Business
If you can establish a great, diverse, inclusive workplace
culture where everybody feels supported and bought-in, you can turn your
organization into a destination landing spot for great talent and great buzz
alike. Your HR and marketing departments can leverage your thriving, positive
culture as an anchor point for campaigns that help your business grow and
spread the word about the great work you’re doing.
How Businesses Lose When They Don’t Prioritize Diversity
& Inclusion
Organizations that lack a strong commitment to diversity
don’t just miss out on all the benefits discussed previously, they also create
several very real and very dangerous business problems for themselves. Whether
it’s through explicit exclusion or simply a lack of care at the leadership and
HR levels, businesses that disregard building a thoughtful approach to
diversity put themselves in a tenuous business and legal position.
Businesses that preach diversity on paper but do little to
make inclusion a daily workplace value at every level leave themselves
vulnerable to many of the same problems. In fact, in some ways, a half-hearted
approach to diversity and inclusion can set you up to lose bigger, as the
organization comes away looking either disconnected from its values or like a
fraud.
Increased Turnover
When employees don’t feel fully safe, valued, appreciated,
plugged-in, or supported, they head for the door. Of all the changes to the
workplace over the last twenty years, this is the one that’s caught senior
leaders and HR professionals off-guard the most.
Turnover due to gaps in diversity and inclusion isn’t just
the result of stereotypical harassment or bullying, though. Today’s top talent
is sensitive to their environment and can generally gauge whether or not they
are a fit for a job and its culture within six months. If talent feels there is
a glass ceiling or lack of potential for success and personal happiness due to
your organization’s lack of devotion to diversity and inclusion, they’ll just
hand in their notice and move on.
No HR professional needs to be told how damaging the spend
associated with turnover is. Gaps in productivity, hiring expenses, and
training time all hurt the bottom line and significantly impact the team’s
ability to fire on all cylinders. Even if you’re great at identifying and
hiring diverse talent, you’re just setting your organization up for a brain
drain if there isn’t a framework in place to ensure those professionals are valued
and supported.
Lower Employee Morale & Reduced Engagement
Discrimination and exclusion are ugly things, and when
people see them in the workplace – even devoted professionals – they simply
can’t work like their best selves. To put it simply, toxic cultures bum people
out, and nobody is motivated to do their best work when their workplace feels
toxic.
With that said, the way gaps in inclusion affect morale can
be subtler but no less devastating. When employees are physically present but
feel like they aren’t valued, heard, and included in the same ways as their
peers, their engagement level, buy-in, and quality of work begin to drop at a
steady pace.
One of the biggest mistakes HR leaders make is
underestimating how many people are sensitive to issues of diversity and
inclusion. When discrimination occurs or inclusion is clearly not a priority,
the blow to morale and buy-in extends far beyond the direct victim of the
situation. That means that organizations that do wrong by their minority or
LGBTQ+ employees are actually damaging the productivity, motivation, and
engagement of a much higher percentage of the workforce, who stand as allies to
those groups.
Groupthink
Diversity is a synonym of “variety,” and the less diversity
an organization has, the less variety there will be in terms of innovative
thinking and profit-driving work. If you get a room full of 10 people from
similar backgrounds and ask them to solve a problem, they’ll probably come up
with one or two well-defined ideas. In a room of 10 people from diverse
backgrounds, however, you can have a much richer discussion about possible
solutions because there are more ways of looking at the problem and a wider
range of past experiences and familiar approaches available.
Organizations that don’t prioritize diversity and inclusion
at every level within the organization set up themselves up to fall victim to
groupthink. This can be especially limiting at the executive or leadership
level, where a true team of complementary minds is necessary to steer the work.
Reputation & Perception as an Innovator
In this day and age, reputation is everything, for
individuals and businesses alike. Tone-deaf marketing campaigns sink brands
overnight, and reports of regressive, toxic, or non-inclusive culture on sites
like Glassdoor can quickly limit an organization’s potential to land great
talent.
When people encounter a discriminatory or non-inclusive
environment in today’s culture, they’re not going to suffer in silence or keep
it to themselves. They will use the tools available to make sure that the world
knows exactly what gaps exist in their current or former employee’s commitment
to inclusion.
Legal Issues
Of course, litigation is always the elephant in the room,
especially when HR issues are concerned. When it comes to inclusion and
diversity, a lack of HR commitment can quickly spiral into a costly legal
situation.
On one hand, all organizations in the U.S. with at least 15
employees are beholden to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC).
EEOC investigations and adjudications can last for months, or even years,
creating a long, damaging process that can devastate an organization’s ability
to turn a profit in both the short- and long-term. Depending on the state in
which your business is located, there may be additional anti-discrimination and
inclusion laws you need to consider.
On the other, there’s the specter of civil litigation. Civil
cases can be resolved much more quickly than EEOC investigations, but they can
be just as damaging in terms of finance, reputation, and ongoing employee
morale. No matter where your organization is located, there are several
attorneys in your area who make their bread and butter on discrimination
claims, and they know how to use your own policies (or lack thereof) against
you to win the biggest possible award for their clients.
Key Takeaways
As an HR professional, it’s your job to build the best
possible team and create an environment in which that team can thrive and
succeed. Part of building that great team is truly understanding the importance
of diversity to high-quality work; another part is commitment to supporting the
team you’ve built with policies, procedures, and structure that help them feel
plugged-in and valued.
Some key takeaways from this post include:
Diversity and inclusion are no longer optional workplace values
Businesses that create a welcoming, diverse, inclusive environment provide themselves with the best opportunities for innovation and the widest array of skills and perspectives
Organizations that don’t embrace diversity and inclusion stand to lose the war for talent and set themselves up for legal and financial trouble
How to Learn More
Whether you’re an emerging HR leader trying to build a better understanding of diversity and inclusion or an experienced veteran looking to bring yourself up to speed on how D&I best practices are evolving, be sure to reserve a seat at Launchways’ upcoming Diversity & Inclusion Summit for HR and Finance Leaders.
The free education session will take place after hours on Wednesday, October 16th at TechNexus in Chicago and will feature an expert panel with the Midwest’s leading HR professionals and diversity and inclusion experts, including…
· Rebekah Wolford of Paylocity, a culture- and success-oriented HR leader with experience leading data-driven D&I initiatives
· Alex Koglin of Launchways, a leading Chicago-area employee benefits consultant with a passion for LGBTQ+ rights
· Chanté Thurmond of The Darkest Horse, an executive talent consultant who specializes in radical inclusion and expert team building
· Manny Flores of SomerCor, a small business lender with a track record of empowering diverse entrepreneurs
Panel discussions will be packed with takeaways related to diversity and inclusion, including…
· How to foster a diverse and inclusive company culture
· How to build diverse and inclusive HR policies and practices
· How to ensure compliance with federal and state diversity and inclusion regulations
· How to create diverse and inclusive benefits packages.
In addition to these key insights, open Q&A and networking time will allow attendees to guide and personalize the summit experience to maximize their takeaways. If you’re a finance or HR leader in the Chicago area, be sure to save your seat at the Diversity & Inclusion Summit for HR and Finance Leaders!
This post is brought to you by our valued partner Paylocity.
CHICAGO, Oct. 1, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Launchways, a leading provider of human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance solutions, today announced that it is partnering with Rippling to provide its clients with an integrated HR, payroll, and benefits platform.
Founded by Zenefits veteran Parker Conrad, Rippling offers a better alternative for growing businesses as one of the first all-in-one, modernized system for handling the entire employee experience from hiring to offboarding. Rippling’s competitive edge lies in a modern and streamlined interface, its relative affordability, and its scalability. The platform is as easy to use as it is comprehensive and serves a business of ten people just as well as after they grow into a team of a thousand. This unique approach has helped Rippling secure $60M in funding and resulted in widespread acclaim from experts and customers alike, including ranking first among Payroll Software and HR Software on Capterra.
Launchways believes that people fuel business success and help entrepreneurs achieve sustainable growth by empowering their people through intentional benefits and HR strategy. After implementing Rippling for a client, Launchways was impressed both by the support from the Rippling team and the business results for the client. Moving forward, Launchways has decided to create a formal partnership with Rippling to bring Rippling’s technology as a strategic solution to future clients.
The partnership will give Launchways’ clients significant discounts on the software as well as a dedicated service and support team. As James Taylor, Launchways CEO, says: “Rippling is doing something unique in the software industry. We look forward to implementing their solution to streamline our clients’ HR, benefits, and payroll operations. Having a scalable solution helps our clients take a more intentional approach to their benefits and HR.”
About Launchways
Launchways provides business leaders with the resources and guidance they need to build scalable people processes to support long-term growth. Founded in 2009, Launchways has helped thousands of businesses better approach the people side of their business through strategic solutions for human resources, employee benefits, and business insurance. For more information, please visit www.launchways.com.
About Rippling
Rippling is the first way for businesses to manage their HR & IT — from payroll and benefits, to employee computers and apps — all in one, modern system. It’s the only platform that truly unifies every employee system, and automates all of the administrative work. For more information, please visit https://www.rippling.com.
