Motiva Norco Refining and Entergy Operations Waterford 3 co-hosted "Diversity: Valuing Differences," a diversity forum for the River Region in September.
Employees from Monsanto, Shell Chemical, the Port of Louisiana, Occidental Chemical and St. Charles Parish joined employees from Motiva and Waterford 3 for a full day of discussion and learning about diversity.
Motiva employees provided leadership for general and breakout sessions including an overview of diversity processes, establishing a diversity council, diversity as a strategic business initiative and expanding employees’ understanding of "diversity."
Richard Green led one of the breakout sessions called Establishing a Diversity Council. "A diversity council is composed of people charged with moving the diversity process forward in an organization," Green said. "They are not the ones to implement the program, instead they guide and push the process and get others involved. The success of the council depends on all employees, not the council alone. Ten to 12 people can’t affect that kind of change alone. They can, however, be an effective catalyst for the change."
Kristi Larpenter led the second breakout session, The Business Case for Diversity. In this session, Larpenter addressed the question of why a company would want to get involved with a diversity process at all. "The world is changing. The best and brightest people entering the market today are very different from the Baby Boomers," Larpenter opined. "Diversity isn’t simply about color or gender. It’s about understanding that each of us is different in really significant ways, respecting those differences and realizing we have common goals and aspirations for our business."
Using this understanding of diversity as a premise, Larpenter spent the session helping attendees see that from a business perspective diversity awareness is crucial to:
- recruiting and retaining the best and brightest workforce,
- ensuring that employees feel valued (valued employees are productive employees)
- ensuring that employees value each other as contributors to the success of the enterprise as a whole
The last breakout session was Diversity Awareness Education facilitated by RJ August. In this session, attendees learned:
- what diversity is and what it is not,
- what employees can do as individuals to make the process a success
- that diversity awareness education is not equivalent to affirmative action.
Motiva’s diversity education program is a case study in employee ownership of the solution. Rather than hire a consultant from outside who had no real understanding of the people and culture of Motiva Norco Refining, the company provided three operators, (Kristi Larpenter, Theron Williams, and RJ August) and a pipe fitter, (Paul Shirer) extensive training in diversity facilitation.
The fully voluntary diversity awareness workshop was offered to all 700 employees, and 525 participated, a 75 percent participation rate. This high rate of participation was likely achieved in large part due to the fact that employees knew they would be learning about this sensitive issue from fellow employees who were intricately familiar with the history, culture and current environment at Motiva Norco Refining.
"We felt that a dialogue around diversity could bring out deep felt sensitivities and emotions," Green explained. "People are just more comfortable with their own coworkers in honestly grappling with these issues. Diversity is not just about race and gender. In this training, we were looking at the fact that we are all different in so many ways. Really, only about five percent of what makes us unique individuals is about race and gender. Our hobbies, religion, training, background and personal history among so many other issues make up the bulk of who we are. What is most important is that we engage each other in dialogue, learning from each other about each other, getting below the surface to understand our differences and see how much we really have in common."
Theron Williams engaged the participants in meaningful dialogue around two videos shown over the course of the day’s activities. The videos were designed to highlight the principles that were covered during the breakout sessions.
Green noted that the diversity process is an ongoing journey and not an overnight revelation. Council members will continuously work at the process and employees will celebrate successes along the way.
One successful way the council has been able to involve employees is through targeted Diversity Action Teams (DATs). A council member works with each DAT, composed of employees specifically concerned with common diversity issues. For example, a support staff DAT examined issues clerical/administrative staff were experiencing including feelings of not being valued by other parts of the organization. The DAT established that there were strong feelings that clerical staff had no opportunity for advancement into leadership roles or other areas of the organization. Together, the DAT is finalizing recommendations for clerical staff interested in advancement, including training and opportunities available.
Both diversity activities at Motiva Norco Refining and the second annual river region diversity forum have been successful.
"In general, we have found that participants were eager to learn and thirsty for the information we shared," Green noted. "During the river region forum, we interfaced with individuals from other organizations who wanted to network and get help in forming diversity movements in their own organizations. Here at Motiva, we’ve been at this for a while and we still have some road to travel, but we are very grateful to share the benefit of our experience with our fellow industries along the river."
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