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We appreciate the candid feedback and are sorry to hear that your perception of your co-workers was not a positive one for you. Without having more detail on the specifics of your experience or knowing which office you were working in, it is difficult to weigh in appropriately, however, we would like to respond that this is fortunately not the experience for most employees of Premier. For some additional perspective, In April 2018, we polled the entire company in our 15Five Employee Feedback tool on the question, “How would you rate the statement on a scale of 1-5, ‘I feel like I belong at Premier and can be my authentic self at work?’” (1 being “Do not agree at all” and 5 being “Strongly agree.”). Of the 46 employees that responded , the average rating was a 4.8.
Company leadership and managers care deeply about this particular topic and continue to prioritize efforts to create a strong sense of inclusion in all of our locations and within all teams. For example, in May 2018, we received feedback from a few managers that they wanted to improve the sense of inclusivity for all members of their team. In response to this, the People Operations team facilitated a brainstorming session and created an Inclusivity and Connection Activities Guide for our managers to use. This guide also included ideas that were generated via a poll in our last all-company Diversity and Inclusion taskforce meeting in March 2018. All Premier employees are empowered and encouraged to add activity ideas and connection questions to pose during meetings, to generate meaningful human connection with their teammates. The intent behind all of this is to create a space for team members to share about themselves and break biases that we might be unconsciously or consciously carrying.
As for diversity hiring efforts, one of the specific goals of our Diversity and Inclusion Program is to “work towards greater diversity in our internal employee population by increasing our underrepresented employee population. Specifically, we aim for 50%-60% of new hires to represent demographics that we are trying to adjust, to create a greater diversity of age, race, ethnicity and gender.“ So far, for 2018 YTD, we’ve hired 16 people, and of those, 9 represent the underrepresented demographics that we are trying to increase, (56%). For us, diversity also includes immigration status, socioeconomic status, multilingual ability, educational background, religion, parental status, sexual orientation, as well as a number of other acquired traits or unique life experiences that make us all special and help us connect at a deep level with our candidates and clients. Many of our employees also represent these factors that are not even tracked and can’t be seen by simply looking at the person.
We are inspired by “Two-Dimensional” diversity (diversity of inherent traits and acquired experience) and aim to hire and retain individuals who continually add to our culture and enhance the perspectives, ideas, innovation and performance of our and our clients’ organizations. Prioritizing and maintaining a diverse, talented employee population that represents the diverse demographic makeup of the candidates and clients we serve helps us live out our #1 mission to change lives. Of course, like many organizations, we are not perfect when it comes to these topics, but we welcome feedback that helps us grow and we are committed to being intentional about our Diversity and Inclusion efforts.
