Hello everyone,
We had a great discussion this past week related to employee belonging and support. Thank you to our great moderators, Je, Tarida, Lilly, Jennifer, and Kris. Here is a summary of what we discussed:
- We started by discussing barriers to employee retention which included compensation, sense of belonging, hybrid or remote work options
- We also discussed different ways to help build community with colleagues and how we can create ways to recognize employees as individuals and help them flourish-sometimes activities like Myers-Briggs or other similar approaches tend to put people in categories that don't allow for a more nuanced exploration of these distinctions and make people feel like it's up to them to address anything that might be perceived as different from their colleagues
- We also talked about how to build trust as a new leader in the organization-giving folks time to adjust to a new approach and also being consistent in that approach
- In addition, we touched on the idea that whatever approaches are taken to help build community they need to be varied as not everyone wants to be included in the same way or has the same definition of belonging, so being able to offer different approaches will help
- We discussed ways to help employees through professional development and creating in-house programs as well as hosting events like the Washington Library Association's Neurodivergence & Libraries Summit
We hope to see you in April when we are going to have a conversation around budgets and library funding. Thank you!
Erik and Cinthya (co-chairs)
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Cinthya Ippoliti
Auraria Library Director
University of Colorado Denver; Metropolitan State University of Denver; Community College of Denver
she/her/hers
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