January 24th is recognized as International Day of Education. At Lunaria, we love to learn and share our learnings with as many folks as possible. With this sentiment, we are thrilled to launch Lunaria Learns.
Author: Cassie Myers
We thought of no better day to launch our educational series than with a focus on the 2020 Women’s March in Waterloo. I co-chaired the 2019 March. The 2020 March took place on Saturday January 18th and inspired the idea for our first Lunaria Learns episode.
Lunaria Learns is a series of short blogs and/or videos in which we explore various topics surrounding diversity and inclusion (DEI) with individuals that possess lived experience. Lunaria Learns is meant to create space and dialogue around topics that do not get engaged often enough. We hope Lunaria Learns encourages people, communities and organizations to maintain learning and growth.
Laura Mae Lindo, Kitchener Centre MP, and renowned anti racism advocate spoke at the 2020 Women’s March. She asserted that “anti black racism, anti indigenous racism and anti islamic racism, are all very different.”
As a DEI advocate, I thought about how we often group BIPOC experiences together minimizing their unique experiences in the workplace.
Today, I wanted to talk about ‘Quit and Stay’ – a phenomena you might recognize but not realize that it impacts my community: black women disproportionately more than any other population.
Speaking to my own experience with Quit & Stay in previous work environments, the concept can manifest through a decline in volunteering for special projects, missing team socials, no longer sharing or engaging with articles in team chats, and a general lack of enthusiasm.
Black women experience Quit and Stay 75% more than white men, and 20% than white women.
Quit and stay is often thought of as a cost to the company but I challenge you to look at Quit and Stay as an opportunity to drive retention and improve inclusivity.
How to transform Quit and Stay into Engaged and Stay:
- Identify what quit and stay looks like for your company.
- Engage with those that are disengaging and ask about what they may need to thrive.
- Identify and address any systemic barriers to engagement which could look like exclusive meeting practices, inaccessible socials etc.
- Make a public commitment to moving beyond Quit and Stay.