Announcing Aptean’s DEI Council, Cultural Recognition Committee and 2022 Culture Calendar

At Aptean, we embrace diversity as a vital organizational strength and regard the acceptance and celebration of our differences as one of our most important responsibilities as a company. That’s why, in January 2021, we formed our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Council with a mission to foster belonging by promoting diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Originally, 10 individuals from across our organization came together to form the Council. They set to work right away on several ambitious goals, and by the end of the calendar year, had established several components of their strategy and benchmarks to measure progress:

• Created and approved the company-wide tagline “Learn from our differences. Celebrate diversity. Grow and succeed together.”

• Established the following workforce diversity goals: 1) raise the percentage of African-American employees in the U.S. by 1% year-over-year; 2) raise the percentage of ethnically diverse employees across the organization by 2.5% year-over-year, with a stretch goal of 4% increase year-over-year; 3) increase the percentage of female employees by 50% at our India offices

• Invited feedback through a Global Inclusion Survey for employees to identify needs

• Participated in Atlanta University Center Consortium (AAUC) Job Fair, leading to a viable candidate for sales and marketing

• Launched internal marketing via our Aptean Newsletter and external marketing via LinkedIn

• Curated a 12-month voluntary Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Series for employee education, focusing on a wide range of related topics and garnering the interest of 90 enrollees and 19 graduates

Additionally, the Council recognized that even more could be done to showcase different cultures and identities, so they formed the Cultural Recognition Committee (CRC) in May 2021 as a complementary group to pursue this aim.

The CRC and Our New Culture Calendar

The CRC collectively identified an opportunity to recognize the many ways in which we differ and encourage employees to feel confident in expressing their identities throughout the year. That’s why they developed our 2022 Culture Calendar, which we’re excited to make public with this blog post.

We chose to focus on a particular day of observance each month (with one additional observance in December) to generate awareness about a larger associated issue:

• January: World Religion Day, January 16

• February: World Disease Awareness Day (inspired by World Cancer Day, February 4)

• March: International Women’s Day, March 8

• April: Earth Day, April 22

• May: World Day for Cultural Diversity, May 21

• June: LGBTQ+ Pride Month

• July: International Friendship Day, July 30

• August: World Senior Citizen Day, August 21

• September: World Suicide Prevention Day, September 10

• October: World Mental Health Day, October 10

• November: Aptean Veterans Observance (inspired by Veterans Day in the U.S., Armistice Day in the UK and Remembrance Day in Australia, November 11)

• December: International Day of Persons with Disabilities, December 3, and Human Rights Day, December 10

Members of the Committee have volunteered to take the lead on various months to organize educational activities, guest speakers and charitable work or donations. In January, we observed World Religion Day with social media posts and company-wide educational communications, including a dedicated online course covering religion, spirituality and beliefs.

February’s Observance: World Disease Awareness Day

Now, we’ll take a moment to call attention to this past February’s observance, World Disease Awareness Day. Inspired by the February 4 observance of World Cancer Day, we chose to show our support for all of our employees affected by chronic illnesses and diseases with a full month dedicated to showcasing their strength and value to our organization and the world at large.

According to the World Cancer Research Fund, there were more than 18 million diagnosed cases of cancer worldwide in 2020, with breast, lung and colorectal being the most common types. Other chronic illnesses, like HIV (approximately 38 million cases worldwide), diabetes (approximately 537 million adult cases worldwide), asthma (approximately 262 million cases worldwide) and many more have profound impacts on the lives of both the patients and their loved ones.

Aptean stands with our employees and their family members who struggle with diseases of all types and took the entire month of February to shine the spotlight on how inspiring and courageous these individuals truly are.

This Month: International Women’s Day

To close, we’d like to share what we’re planning for this month’s observance of International Women’s Day. This year’s theme is “break the bias,” and our focus is creating a vision for a future that is equal and free of stereotypes and discrimination.

Aptean team members will be getting involved on social media with selfies featuring an arms-crossed pose and the hashtags #IWD2022 and #BreakTheBias. We’ll also be thrilled to host our guest speaker, Claudine Reid, MBE, an award-winning business psychologist and social entrepreneur, for our internal Town Hall event for the month.

Until then, our Cultural Recognition Committee—now standing at 12 members strong—would like to share our sense of gratitude for the opportunity to serve and spread these important messages, and we look forward to continuing our mission throughout 2022 and beyond.

For more information about Aptean’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, feel free to contact us. For internal team members interested in joining the Committee, please reach out to our leadership to get started.