5 Things / loot your own store
This week another Black man was shot by police, this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin, 50 miles from the headquarters of Penzey's Spices. CEO Bill Penzey has publicly supported Black Lives Matter and this week heard from a customer, "you would be singing a different tune if it was your store being looted [by the protestors]."
Bill Penzey responded, "Human life means everything; stuff, not so much." Then he announced plans to "loot" his own store in Kenosha.
Penzey's is giving that store's equivalent of spices and gift boxes to food pantries and organizations working on social justice.
This matters because Bill Penzey walked the talk. He used his voice and influence to speak out against injustice. Pretty cool. An action a lot of us can learn from.
Here are some other things that inspired me this week:
Hired.com virtually eliminated the gender wage gap in a study of 120k candidates. How? They changed the part of the form used to ask desired pay. It used to be an empty field and is now pre-loaded with the median salary for a candidate's desired role. This matters when we change the system to be inclusive, we reduce natural human bias.
Constellation Brands, McCain, and other companies are participating in the Great American Takeout this weekend. These companies are paying for their employees to order food or beverages from Black-owned restaurants and bars. This matters because supporting Black-owned businesses is a critical piece of reducing the racial wealth gap.
Hundreds of companies including Coca-Cola and Best Buy are giving their employees paid time off to vote. This matters because many employees (especially customer-facing employees) are often forced to choose between work and voting.
Google now offers affordable 6 month educational certificate programs for roles in project management and data analysis. That's nice, but the real win here is that, when hiring employees, Google is treating these certificates as the equivalent of a 4 year college degree. This matters because a college education is not attainable for many folks and Google is reducing barriers to well-paying jobs.
Does your company require candidates to have 4 year degrees?