How to create meaningful allyship at your organization - Quartz at WorkQuartz at Work: “Allyship is a word we hear a lot of these days. In fact, at Hootsuite we found that the term has been mentioned almost 1 million times across social media channels in the last year.
That’s commensurate with the recent traumas we have felt and witnessed, particularly in vulnerable communities that need more allies. Along with the pandemic came the police killings that reignited the Black Lives Matter movement, a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, calls for accountability from a history of colonization, marginalization, and violence against Indigenous peoples, and much more.
Allyship cannot stop now. By definition, acting in allyship is an active, ongoing practice. It involves the incredibly difficult work of unlearning and re-evaluating, in which a person of privilege works in solidarity and partnership with a marginalized group of people to help take down the systems that challenge that group’s basic rights, equal access, and ability to thrive in our society. For many of us trying to make sense of the past year and a half, the way we think about the role of employers and colleagues has changed forever.
It’s been a time of learning but also an important time of unlearning the past. When I hear of companies going back to “normal” in any way shape or form, I worry for their employees and for society. The learnings from the past year cannot and should not be taken for granted or ignored. Whether your company is starting from scratch or diving deeper into an allyship journey already embarked upon, here are nine ways you can think about catalyzing meaningful change within your organization…”
