Meet Audrey Rabick!
Transcript
Hello, my name is Audrey Rabick, and I'm a member of Lockheed Martin Leadership Institute's Cohort 10.
On the mission of learning more about how I can reimagine collaboration and navigate the evolving workplace, I had the pleasure of reading humanity at work by Anjali Bindra Patel. In this book, Patel uses a combination of corporate research and personal anecdotes to provide clarity on the issues of diversity, inclusion, and wellness at work. It provides a revolutionary perspective on maintaining an inclusive lens as companies adapt to the future of the workplace.
Her main focus revolved around the concept of the distributed workplace. A distributed workplace is one that goes beyond the situation of going remote in a crisis, and fully takes advantage of the technological advancements involved, so as to open up the workplace to more opportunities. A remote work environment allows companies to hire from anywhere and allows employees to work from anywhere. It also provides a prime opportunity for employers to check their hiring processes for bias. Patel describes the positive effects that this could have on employee diversity and inclusion. Many people have close ties with their location, which can have connections to their culture and identity. By opening up to distributed workplaces, many will be able to obtain exciting new positions without having to sacrifice the local community that they identify with. It offers more choice to employees struggling to balance career aspirations with cultural roots. I feel that this is summed up very well in Patel's words, that remote work allows us to embrace people where they are for who they are. However, like many things distributed work will be a balancing act.
The second half of the book addresses inclusion and wellness. Employees should feel able to bring this culture and these identities based on where they live into the workplace with them, especially virtually, it's pointless to open up job possibilities to the best and the brightest. If they don't feel comfortable being their true selves at work. The benefits of fostering diversity are lost if people don't feel welcome sharing their backgrounds and opinions, and the cost of hiding parts of themselves will drive many away, increasing turnover rates and decreasing productivity. Studies have shown that one of the most important criteria in a job for human capital retention is genuine connections with others, so companies to need to develop strategies in order to provide this for their employees in a distributed workplace setting for it to work. It distributed workplace has the potential to get a wider range of people into the door. But corporate systems and strategies have to be put in place so that they can then flourish.
Patel concludes with a series of checks and recommendations for employees and employers to discern whether they are effectively being inclusive in a distributed setting. This includes points such as advocates, and policies being put in place to ensure recruiting and hiring of underrepresented groups. It also includes making sure programs go beyond mentoring, and encompass connecting and advocating for others. These ideas are mostly geared towards the wider company network, but I found a lot of them to be adaptable to my everyday life. Going forward, I'll be sure to check in with myself and the people around me to ensure that we are encouraging people to express new ideas, celebrating our differences, and calling out bias when we see it. All these are tangible takeaways from Patel's book that can and must be utilized when building a distributed workplace.
Bio
I am from Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I graduated from Comstock High School and the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center. No matter how far away I travel in the future, Kalamazoo will always be my home. It holds the memories of all of the amazing teachers, mentors, and family members who encouraged and inspired me. These people helped shape my goals, passions, and leadership style, and I’m excited to continue growing and learning from the people around me.
One particularly significant contribution from Kalamazoo was the proximity to biomedical and pharmaceutical corporations, which helped to ignite my interest in chemical engineering and helped me understand my career path. Engineering has always been a very people-oriented field for me: helping people, solving problems, and working on a team to accomplish something bigger than yourself. I can’t wait to create my own impact in the industry, and hopefully inspire students the way engineers have always inspired me.
In addition to the Lockheed Martin Leadership Cohort, I am also deeply involved in the university Honors College, serving on the student advisory board and in a variety of program lead capacities. I’ve greatly enjoyed my role as a peer mentor to freshman, getting the chance to help them build connections and introduce them to college life. I also hold a position as student laboratory aide in Hughes Laboratory on campus, working in the stock room and prepping student labs.