Build Team Capacity

Ready to create a sustainable model for your equity-driven initiatives? This session helps emerging equity-focused teams build a strong foundation by understanding each member's unique needs, values, and expertise. Together, you’ll define the mission, focus areas, and guiding principles to establish group norms. The session explores frameworks for assigning roles, prioritizing tasks, and encouraging self-management, highlighting decentralized structures to integrate equity into the organization's core. Through discussions, case studies, and team charter design, you’ll gain actionable insights to foster a culture of inclusion. 

Team members from non-dominant groups benefit from intentional spaces that amplify their voices and support their professional growth. This session will guide you in designing Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) to maximize their impact as drivers of belonging, retention, advancement, and organizational change. You’ll explore strategies for making ERGs more equitable, such as incorporating diverse perspectives and recognizing the contributions of ERG leaders. You’ll discover opportunities for ERGs to positively influence workplace culture and contribute to organizational success, from recruitment to innovation. By the end of this session, you’ll gain tools to boost ERG participation, enhance mentorship, and create more intersectional programming.

Transform your strategic goals into actionable outcomes with this session, designed to empower teams in creating effective action plans. This session will help you identify critical objectives, prioritize tasks, and assign responsibilities, ensuring alignment with their organizational mission. By exploring tools for project management and real-world case studies, attendees will learn to develop sustainable, adaptable roadmaps. This session will equip you and your team to achieve your goals efficiently, fostering a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

As the future of work evolves and globalization accelerates, establishing and expanding diversity-related initiatives is more crucial than ever. This session helps you learn how to articulate the value of inclusive practices to meet the demands of a rapidly changing, interconnected world. You’ll explore cutting-edge research showing how inclusion drives adaptability, profitability, and innovation. The session covers effective strategies for gaining leadership buy-in, creating data-driven and evidence-based initiatives, and embedding inclusion across organizational operations. You’ll develop a roadmap for integrating equity into their organization’s core values and strategic direction, ensuring they remain competitive and resilient in the global marketplace.

As awareness of sexual and gender diversity grows, many organizations are asking how to best support their LGBTQ+ team members. This session will help you understand LGBTQ+ needs and experiences, offering strategies to enhance support through policies, benefits, and workplace culture. You’ll review key concepts and terminology related to gender and sexuality and learn inclusive behaviors. Explore best practices for data collection, restroom policies, dress codes, gender transitions, workplace leave, and events. You’ll gain tools to improve LGBTQ+ recruitment and create inclusive, intersectional programs.

Leading with cultural curiosity can inspire global success. This session equips leaders with tools and strategies to foster innovation and drive change through cultural insights and curiosity. You'll learn to navigate cultural nuances, support diverse team members, and adapt strategies for various markets, building partnerships that transcend geographical boundaries. By exploring intersectional data, cross-cultural research, and inclusive policies, you'll gain a deep understanding of inclusive leadership. Leave with actionable tactics to enhance organizational culture, promote cultural humility, and create a lasting global impact.

Every year, millions of skilled professionals immigrate to North America, bringing diverse cultures, languages, skills, and workplace needs. This session provides you with actionable insights for building inclusive teams and workplaces for newcomers. You’ll explore key demographic trends in immigration and learn how to accommodate and empower new team members. Discover strategies to fairly assess newcomer credentials, develop equity-focused programs, and gain tools for effective multicultural collaboration, addressing common challenges and equity concerns for newcomer professionals.

Caregiving plays a significant role in many people's lives but is often overlooked in the workplace. This session will help broaden your understanding of who caregivers are, covering various forms of caregiving, from children and aging parents to community support. You’ll examine common biases about caregiving and the nuclear family, along with the challenges caregivers face at work. Learn leading practices to promote caregiver inclusion, such as inclusive communication about families, supporting caregiving colleagues, and designing effective workplace policies and programs.

Wellness language and programs are meant to encourage balance and vitality among team members, but sometimes reinforce a one-dimensional and alienating approach. This session will help you cultivate a more holistic and inclusive understanding of wellness, workplace self-care, and the needs of team members of different sizes and builds. You’ll explore the concept of wellness and the subtle “isms” embedded in how wellness culture can operate in the workplace. You’ll examine practical strategies to “decolonize” wellness initiatives and challenge sizeism. By the end of this session you’ll gain tools to scale wellness practices that tangibly address key workplace stressors and embody body liberation principles.

Workplace benefits and perks are crucial factors in attracting and retaining talent. This session helps you understand which benefits and perks appeal to individuals from diverse backgrounds and lived experiences, and how to implement them effectively. You'll explore a variety of traditional, emerging, and innovative benefits, gaining insights into their impact on non-dominant groups. Learn how to design inclusive perks, market your organization’s unique offerings, and strategize meaningful additions and improvements to your benefits program.

Every team member carries biases that can subtly influence people-related processes. This session will help you identify and challenge biases in areas like recruitment, hiring, promotion, and professional development. You’ll explore how bias impacts the workplace and affects non-dominant groups, take a personal bias inventory, and develop strategies to manage biases effectively. You’ll gain practical tools to promote fairness and equity in people operations through thoughtful process design, targeted initiatives, data-driven interventions, and best practices.

Application and interview evaluators often unintentionally disqualify or alienate great candidates due to bias. This session equips you with strategies to reduce bias and enhance inclusion in hiring processes. You'll explore common biases like the halo effect, affinity bias, and stereotypes, and learn how they appear in recruitment. Discover methods for creating inclusive interview environments, including making interviews more accessible, and understand the “culture add” approach to recruitment. Gain practical tools to proactively counteract bias and implement inclusive hiring practices.

Traditional recruitment methods often lead to missed opportunities and lack diverse candidate pools. This session will guide you in creating more thoughtful recruitment strategies to boost diversity. You'll explore effective ways to build pipeline partnerships, improve outreach methods, and refine job posting strategies. You’ll learn how to collaborate with internal teams and external partners, like universities and professional groups, and use targeted tools, such as Boolean search criteria, to minimize bias and attract diverse talent.

Recruitment professionals aiming to diversify their teams often face short-term success, with underrepresented talent leaving prematurely. This session equips you to create an inclusive onboarding process and foster a workplace culture that enhances engagement and psychological safety for everyone. You’ll explore strategies to ensure new team members feel valued and prepared for success. Learn how to be inclusive leaders and culture builders who address negative behaviors and collaborate across differences. This session will conclude with timely scenarios to support you to apply these skills effectively.

Respecting workplace discrimination practices is essential for all organizations effectively to protect their people.This session equips HR professionals with the tools to identify, understand, and address key workplace discrimination issues. You’ll explore a foundational exploration of anti-discrimination principles and an overview of the Canadian legal framework regarding workplace discrimination. The session includes case studies on prevalent issues like antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, and transphobia, enhancing participants’ ability to apply their knowledge in Canadian workplaces. You'll gain proactive strategies to manage discrimination and develop effective policies, promoting compliance and fostering an inclusive work environment.

Teams thrive, and organizations excel in environments where people feel secure sharing their thoughts, ideas, and experiences without fearing adverse consequences. This session helps you examine the behaviours that promote or hinder psychological safety, explore the impact of workplace culture phenomena such as perfectionism and cancel culture, and discuss strategies to foster a culture of accountability and learning. You’ll learn practical ways to communicate with empathy, handle conflicts, give and receive feedback constructively, and encourage risk-taking within teams.

An organization’s equity-driven efforts are only as strong as its managers' support. In this session, you’ll explore practical strategies to infuse equity-related principles into daily business operations and advance organizational goals. Gain tools to conduct inclusive one-on-ones, collaborate effectively across cultures, address diversity-related skepticism, and challenge team biases. Additionally, you’ll develop a business case for equity, empowering them to implement sustainable equity-driven practices that drive change and enhance team performance.

In today’s hybrid work settings, accessibility and inclusion are critical for team success. This session will help you develop strategies for running effective and inclusive meetings, building cohesive teams across hybrid dynamics, and fostering a sense of belonging through both online and in-person interactions. You’ll explore practical approaches to common challenges and gain skills to immediately improve their work interactions, along with long-term strategies for maintaining an inclusive workplace culture.

In today’s fast-evolving landscape, the needs of teams and customers require agile, engaged, and innovative leadership. This session explores the impact of inclusive leadership and offers a framework to help leaders move beyond an outdated one-size-fits-all mindset. Learn to dismantle biases, foster fair decision-making, expand your global perspective, and enhance cross-cultural teamwork. Gain tools to communicate with empathy and promote psychological safety. By the end, you’ll be equipped to craft a personalized business case to apply these insights across roles, teams, and departments, ensuring real-world impact.

In this session, you’ll explore the critical role Boards of Directors play in promoting equity within organizations. The session will provide you with practical insights on how boards can drive equity initiatives, shape organizational culture, and implement inclusive governance practices. Through presentations, discussions, and case studies, you’ll learn to advocate for equity, understand the business case for diversity, and use their leadership to create more inclusive and successful workplaces.

Retrofitting equity into organizations after their formative years presents unique challenges that can be avoided. This session will help you embed equity-driven efforts into the DNA of your business from the beginning. You’ll explore equity-related concepts and their impact on the success and sustainability of their ventures. The session covers cost-effective and practical equity-focused processes, policies, structures, and groups tailored for start-ups and scale-ups. Gain tools to incorporate inclusive approaches into governance, recruitment, culture building, procurement, product/service design, and more during the early growth stages.

In today’s world, marketing and media leaders must know how to engage with people of all genders, including transgender, non-binary, genderfluid, and nonconforming individuals, with respect and accuracy. This session will guide you in developing content that challenges stereotypes and positively influences social perceptions of gender diversity. You'll build a shared language around gender experiences and, through case studies, explore the benefits of innovative and authentic storytelling. Gain practical tools to create inclusive campaigns and manage potential backlash, leaving you well-prepared to contribute to media and marketing initiatives that celebrate gender diversity.

Equity lives in all organizational departments and practices, especially creative ones. This session helps you learn how to transform your marketing and communications strategy with diversity, inclusion, and accessibility. You’ll explore the impact of representation and the significance of authentic storytelling for an organization’s brand and marketing initiatives. You’ll align on practical strategies to create more accessible content and cultivate social media engagement by meaningfully recognizing times of significance and contributing to timely conversations. Gain tools to scale inclusive language and emoji use across different marketing mediums, address potential backlash to marketing campaigns, and integrate equity into their work year-round.

Presentations are a staple of workplace communication, yet many professionals overlook how to make them more inclusive and accessible. This session empowers you to elevate the inclusivity of their presentations from both a design and delivery perspective. You’ll explore best practices for creating accessible content, using inclusive language, and setting a welcoming tone. Learn how to enhance engagement with your audience through respectful interactions, including land acknowledgments and pronoun usage, and adopt presentation styles that encourage participation and accessibility for everyone.

Entertainment projects are highly collaborative and bring together diverse groups of creatives for short periods. This session will equip you with leading practices to affirm and support cast and crew members while effectively communicating across differences. You’ll explore how bias can manifest on and off the set and gain tools to co-create inclusive environments. Key topics include respectful name and pronoun use, inclusive language, techniques for calling in and bridge-building, and strategies to foster accessibility and inclusion on set.

Product inclusion drives innovation, boosts brand reputation, and expands market share, yet many teams struggle with where to begin. This session equips you with the skills to apply an inclusive lens to the products, services, and experiences they create. Through real-world case studies, you’ll identify hidden biases in products and understand the root causes of design flaws. The session provides practical strategies across the entire product lifecycle, from user research to testing, to ensure inclusivity. You’ll also gain tools to evaluate product and service offerings for gaps, advocate for inclusive design to leadership, and effectively iterate their products for broader appeal.

As new technologies rapidly integrate into workplaces and daily life, many overlook the inequities and unintended consequences they can bring. This session empowers you to critically examine the risks and impacts of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, big data, and predictive algorithms. Through timely case studies, you’ll explore the ‘shadow side’ of technology and understand how these innovations can perpetuate bias and marginalization. The session offers strategies for identifying and challenging biases in tech development and deployment, from deliberate approaches to machine learning to implementing thoughtful human safeguards. You’ll leave with practical tools to prevent tech-related discrimination and become advocates for inclusive and ethical technology practices.

Online harassment, cyberbullying, and doxing are increasingly common, affecting people both at work and in their personal lives. This session provides you with the knowledge and tools to navigate these digital threats, focusing on online safety, harassment prevention, and security best practices. Explore how to create inclusive digital spaces, understand the ethical considerations of new technologies, and build strong digital allyship. By the end of the session, you’ll be equipped to promote a safe and supportive online environment, both inside and outside of work.

In today’s diverse and global workplaces, conflict is not only inevitable but also an opportunity for growth. However, conflicts rarely come with easy solutions. This session equips you with the skills to navigate workplace tensions, misunderstandings, and disagreements with empathy and intention. Explore strategies for de-escalating conflict, setting and respecting boundaries, and acting as an ally in difficult situations. This session provides tools for engaging in nonviolent communication, including “calling in” and offering inclusive feedback. You’ll apply these strategies to real-world scenarios relevant to your industry, ensuring practical takeaways that are directly applicable to your specific role.

Frontline teams are often the first point of contact for customers and play a crucial role in shaping their perceptions of your organization and its commitment to inclusivity. This session equips you to enhance customer interactions through inclusive communication and equity-driven practices. You’ll review practical language recommendations to affirm customers of diverse identities, experiences, and linguistic backgrounds. The session covers strategies for using names and pronouns respectfully and handling multicultural interactions effectively. You’ll gain tools to create inclusive customer service environments and manage challenging situations constructively, ensuring no customer feels alienated.

Sales teams constantly seek to maximize performance, and incorporating equity-driven efforts is key to unlocking new potential. This session empowers you to transform your sales strategies to effectively engage with diverse markets and build inclusive client relationships. You’ll explore how diverse teams contribute to sales success and learn to overcome common challenges like bro culture. The session covers practical strategies for driving growth through empathetic sales techniques, identifying new market opportunities, and creating inclusive customer experiences. You’ll gain tools to design inclusive sales materials, optimize CRM systems for inclusivity, and communicate effectively across different buyer demographics.