They value people from different backgrounds and have put a lot of effort to create a better working environment for employees since they started business more than 30 years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In Silicon Valley, I could visit the headquarter of Cisco and meet Ms. Tomoko Kurosawa, Mr. Chris Figone, and Mr. Andy Smith. <\/span><\/p>\n Also Ms. Chinmoyee Deshpande joined the meeting over WebEx, a online teleconference tool by Cisco. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Cisco considered that their business will not be as successful as it is today if they had \u201cdiversity\u201d without \u201cinclusion\u201c. <\/span><\/p>\n To Cisco, \u201cdiversity\u201d is the foundation of working environment. <\/span><\/p>\n What is more important is that \u201cinclusion\u201d has to come together with diversity. <\/span><\/p>\n In workplace, it\u2019s not hard to put people from different background at one place. <\/span><\/p>\n The difficult part is how to integrate everyone in the system to accomplish different tasks together. <\/span><\/p>\n It is even more difficult to create a culture which lets all members to respect each other, listen to each other, and value other\u2019s opinions. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cInclusion\u201d is the most essential key to create values from the different perspectives to the company. <\/span><\/p>\n Based on that belief, Cisco had emphasized \u201cinclusion\u201d more, and they called \u201cInclusion<\/span> and Diversity\u201d, not \u201cDiversity and Inclusion\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n Moreover since 2014 summer, they has changed the emphasis to \u201cInclusion and Collaboration\u201d<\/strong> from \u201cInclusion and Diversity\u201d, because they believe they can make a strong corporate and business result by collaborating with included employees who have different values. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n During my research, I have found that major American companies have employee resource groups. <\/span><\/p>\n Those groups are run by employees on a volunteer work basis. <\/span><\/p>\n It is not included in those employees\u2019 job descriptions. <\/span><\/p>\n Cisco has several those groups too. <\/span><\/p>\n They name it \u201cEmployee Resource Organizations (ERO)\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n Cisco has over 15 unique ERO\u2019s (Asian, African American, Veteran, LGBT, Indian, etc) to celebrate it\u2019s Diversity. <\/span><\/p>\n One of the organizations is \u201cConnected Disabilities Awareness Network (CDAN)\u201d which has board members including employees with disabilities.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n CDAN organizes events and activities to raise awareness for people with disabilities. <\/span><\/p>\n They has a budget from Cisco to conducts those projects so that CDAN can leverage the established process to grow membership and get funding to host social and outreach events. <\/span><\/p>\n CDAN tries to have 1 large event yearly and sometimes will co-host with other Cisco EROs. <\/span><\/p>\n Right now, CDAN\u2019s focus are <\/span><\/p>\n 1. Talent<\/span><\/p>\n 2. Accessibility<\/span><\/p>\n 3. Awareness<\/span><\/p>\n 4. Best Practice\/Benchmarks<\/span><\/p>\n – develops training programs that help people understand other employees with disabilities.<\/span> \u00a0<\/p>\n Japanese people might think \u201cIt\u2019s nonsense to do volunteer work during working hour!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Cisco, on the other hand, thinks that employees can build their job skills by working with ERO. <\/span><\/p>\n Those participants in ERO get to arrange events, manage budget, and communicate with others, who are working in different fields. <\/span><\/p>\n Those skills can be utilized to their regular jobs or when they move to different positions in the future. <\/span><\/p>\n Cisco calls it \u201cstretch assignment\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n Since ERO has been very active and created outcomes to Cisco\u2019s own business, the managers are supportive for employees to work for ERO. <\/span><\/p>\n I realized that skills and experiences are not always coming from our regular jobs. <\/span><\/p>\n By working in different environments and working with different team members from the regular jobs, we could expand our capacity and values of everything. <\/span><\/p>\n Also this would help employees to build their loyalty to the company as well, I believe.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n To be continued\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Major US companies often have volunteer work based groups for employees. Cisco is one of them. I visited Cisco headquarter in Silicon Valley and asked what kind of effect they receive through “volunteer work”. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,137,135],"tags":[121,95,122],"class_list":["post-8527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advocate","category-employment","category-research","tag-diversity","tag-employment-of-people-with-disabilities","tag-inclusion"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8529,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8527\/revisions\/8529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"cisco\"](\"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/cisco-300x300.jpg\")
![\"DSC00848-min\"](\"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/DSC00848-min-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
<\/span>For instance, CDAN<\/span>
<\/span>– works closely with human resource department and actively introduce Cisco\u2019s good working environment to wide range of people disabilities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span>– contributes to product development to make Cisco\u2019s products more accessible for users with disabilities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n![\"photo-1427088625471-da8a7193afd3\"](\"https:\/\/moonrider7.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/photo-1427088625471-da8a7193afd3-300x169.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n