Activating allyship at Clorox
By Shanique Bonelli-Moore, Chief Diversity and Social Impact Officer
Professor and psychologist Thema Bryant said: “Allyship is not an identity — it is a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, consistency and accountability with marginalized individuals or groups of people.” To me, this statement reflects our vision for allyship at Clorox. It’s about the things we do and the actions we take to consistently advocate for a culture of inclusion, equity and sense of belonging.
Allyship is the newest part of our inclusion, diversity, equity and allyship efforts (what we refer to as IDEA), which fuels our IGNITE strategy. It helps create a more inclusive workplace where teammates can do their best work and we can better meet the diverse needs of the consumers we serve globally. It’s a call for everyone to play an active role by putting others first.
As we roll out this work, we identified four areas where teammates can put allyship into practice:
- Be Curious: Have the desire to understand the experiences of others to help find points of connection and discover how to be most valuable as an ally.
- Seek to Understand: Learn the history and issues that affect other people to expand perspectives and enable us to see things through a different lens.
- Show Empathy: Reach beyond your own lived experiences to gain understanding of the experiences of others without judgment.
- Act Courageously: Lend your voice to amplify or support others
As a company we’re committed to practicing allyship every day as individuals, teams and a company. We’ll be talking about the practice in our meetings and events, recognizing teammates who exemplify allyship and holding ourselves accountable to one another. We’ll be hosting Cups of Understanding sessions to dive deep into the topic through candid discussions and working with our business units and functions to bring allyship to life on our teams. After all, it’s not only the right thing to do, but it will also help our brands better serve our consumers and help our teammates thrive.