Championing Inclusion in America’s Workforce
Upwardly Global has been working with employers across the country to identify ways to champion inclusion in our workforce.
In 2020, with support from Accenture, the WES Mariam Assefa Fund, and O.C. Tanner, Upwardly Global brought together corporate leaders and internationally trained professionals to envision corporate-facing products from internships/returnships, to an inclusion playbook, to an index that will change the DEI commitment calculus from a “nice to do” mandate to a “must do” action plan (see the Executive Summary from this initial work).
We conducted a set of Design Thinking Sessions with several employers, including a number of Fortune 500 companies, to begin ideation around identifying roadblocks in hiring foreign-born talent. We have developed cutting-edge, data-driven products to support talent acquisition teams in identifying the unique attributes of our talent pool and how to successfully understand the specific support immigrant professionals require to seamlessly transition into loyal employees. Check out the insights guide here.
Upwardly Global’s Employer Working Group
To build on this work, we launched an Employer Working Group made up of over 60 corporations — including NBCUniversal, Walmart, Wells Fargo, Deloitte, Microsoft, Amazon, and more — to take this initial work forward and think about priority areas and prospective solutions in a deeper way. This is an invite-only working group to engage with peers, convene bimonthly, share best practices and challenges, and co-create solutions to better incorporate immigrant and refugee talent in our workforce. Join our cohort of corporate members engaged in peer learning and ideation around best practices in the field. Contact us to learn more.
Employer-Led Solutions to Workforce Inclusion: Returnships
Upwardly Global co-designs and implements mid-career returnship, internship, mentorship, and skilling programs to on-ramp internationally trained immigrants into corporate America. We built this type of model to address the multiple barriers for job seekers (such as access to U.S.-style work-based learning opportunities, cross-cultural communication, networking, mentorship, reskilling and upskilling, etc.) as well as for the employer (a low-risk approach to diversifying pipelines, customizing training for hiring needs, and providing employees with mentorship opportunities, etc.).
The model is optimized for assessing an employer’s talent needs, while bringing together equity and inclusion objectives as well as employee engagement, and offers alternative career pathways for immigrants with international credentials and experience.
Read our report, “The Returnship Model: A Blueprint for Healthcare Institutions Hiring Immigrant and Refugee Talent,” to learn more.
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