Practices

Catalyst’s series of Practices describes innovative organizational efforts that provide promising examples for our Supporter organizations. While every organization’s culture is unique, our Practices help supporters and the business community learn how organizations, including those with Catalyst Award-winning initiatives, have tackled a variety of diversity, inclusion, and business challenges.

Catalyst defines our Practices as strategies that support diversity and inclusion efforts, including both programs specific to a group or region, and broad, company-wide strategies that further the advancement of women and other diverse groups.

More than 180 Practices from organizations around the world are currently available to Catalyst supporters.

Practices Spotlight: Creating an Inclusive Hybrid Workplace
Work from home, remote work, flexible work arrangements: prior to March 2020, many employees around the world had little or no exposure to these concepts. While some organizations had built technological infrastructure and remote-work norms as part of their culture, others had not. The Covid-19 pandemic generated a need for companies to shift radically to implement remote work for office workers and a system of social distancing, testing, and other in-depth health and safety procedures for essential on-site workers. Seven organizations — Colliers, Dentons, EY, General Motors, GitLab, Hilti, and Pitney Bowes — shared their unique perspectives on constructing this new reality of work. These examples can serve as models for strategies, policies, and practices for your own workplace.

Unique Process

Each year, Catalyst sets strategic priorities based on our research, our supporters’ areas of interest, and new developments in the workplace and global markets. Catalyst experts use these priorities to determine what kinds of Practices will be most valuable to our supporters, and identify promising examples of these through our staff, network, and research. We then gather materials about these initiatives, which we evaluate based on our robust knowledge of programs and using our Catalyst Award models and criteria to help determine merit.

As a next step, the team contacts select organizations to learn about their Practices. If we determine that it is appropriate to write a formal Practice, we write it in accordance with Catalyst’s editorial guidelines and in close collaboration with the organization. We never release proprietary information without prior approval.

Making the Most of our Practices

As you review a practice, consider the following questions:

• What are the key elements of the practice that make it effective?
• What kinds of data does the organization track?
• How does the organization assess the impact of the practice?
• Are there specific elements of the program that would not work in my organization’s culture? How might they be adjusted to fit my organization’s needs?
• Are there elements of the practice that are specific to the region in which it is implemented? How might those be tailored to the different regional and/or cultural contexts in which my organization operates?
• What is the role of the organization’s senior leadership?
• Can my organization make a strong business case for this type of program, policy, or activity? What was this organization’s business case?

Contact Us

What unique diversity and inclusion, talent management, or overall business program or effort is your organization currently working on? Let us know! We may want to highlight your great work in one of our research reports, tools, or other products. Email the Practices Team at [email protected].