Katie Juran joined Intuitive in August 2021 to lead our inclusion and diversity (I&D) initiatives, following a long career in executive communications and I&D leadership at Adobe and elsewhere. She’ll be a regular contributor in this space to talk all things I&D.
2022 marked my first full calendar year leading Inclusion and Diversity (I&D) at Intuitive. Everything was new for me, and a lot of milestones were new for the company as well. Our mission is lofty: to build an inclusive, equitable, and diverse environment where every individual feels like they belong and flourish—in our company and the communities we serve. To work toward that ambition, we aim to take important, incremental steps forward.
In the spirit of celebrating the year, and those initial steps, I wanted to share my personal list of our I&D top five “firsts” from 2022.
1. First Hispanic/Latinx employee resource group
Our ¡HOLA! employee resource group (ERG) launched in February, becoming our seventh corporate ERG. Our ERGs play an essential role in providing community and support for employees from traditionally marginalized and underrepresented groups, including race/ethnicity, gender, LGBTQ+, veterans, and people with disabilities. Our executive sponsors for ¡HOLA! are Dr. Myriam Curet, originally from Puerto Rico, and Lesly Marban, originally from Mexico. We’re fortunate to have such inspiring Latina advocates and role models.
2. First recognition in the Disability Equality Index
As we work to build a more inclusive company at Intuitive, we have partnered with Disability:IN, an organization known for its best practices in empowering businesses to achieve disability inclusion and equity. This year, we participated in the Disability Equality Index for the first time. After an extensive audit of our current practices, policies, and employee experience, Disability:IN recognized Intuitive as a “Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion.” We earned a score of 90 out of 100, with strengths in areas such as culture & leadership, enterprise-wide access, employment practices, and community engagement. We look forward to continuing to learn and advance in our disability inclusion, exploring opportunities in areas like supplier diversity.
3. First ”License to Hire” training
Our Talent Acquisition team has always focused on the diversity of our candidates. But this year, we resourced new capabilities within that team focused on diverse candidate attraction. We’ve implemented training for all hiring managers – which we call “License to Hire”; begun evaluating the diversity of our candidate slates; and sponsored recruiting events such as the Black Virtual Career Fair, Women Back to Work Fair, Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers, and a Cameron-Brooks veteran recruiting event among others. We believe giving our hiring managers a wide variety of candidates to select from is essential and will fuel a diverse and talented set of new hires.
4. First year of publishing employee diversity data on Intuitive.com
There is much more to I&D than numbers. That being said, representation matters—and transparency on our employee demographic diversity is important. We’ve previously included employee data in our annual sustainability report, but this year we added a new I&D section on our corporate website, including a page outlining our fair practices strategy. It includes a more detailed view of our employee demographics, so our candidates and stakeholders can better understand our workforce makeup. We will continue to update data on our diversity annually.
5. First session of inclusive leadership training for our senior leaders
Since joining Intuitive, I have been very impressed with our senior leaders’ commitment to I&D, especially with our ERG executive sponsors and I&D Council, who dedicate extra time to our efforts. Given our senior leaders’ enormous influence on the dynamics of their organizations, we are investing in inclusive leadership training for all company vice presidents and above. We held the first session with our most senior leaders earlier this month, and their engagement was rewarding to see. We’re excited to roll out sessions more broadly next year.
Intuitive’s I&D journey was well underway before this year, and we have a lot of opportunity still ahead. Our “firsts” in 2022 made an impact, and I’m so grateful to our leaders, ERGs, and our own I&D team for the energy they have put into building a foundation for what’s next.
