Defining the People & Culture strategy to help employees thrive
The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a repertory theater with about 300 employees, continues to deepen its commitment to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA). The People & Culture (P&C) team invited Zahler Design to guide them in creating a framework to align their efforts and bring IDEA to life in daily work across the organization.
Co-creating the framework.
The engagement took place over three group work sessions plus 1:1 conversations with each team member.
Zahler Design guided the team toward clarity and agreement on their objectives for three key audiences: Employees and Board members, the Organization as a whole, and the surrounding community.
Session 1
Impact & Models
Center IDEA in training and resources created
Show how the business and community will be impacted by P&C strategy
Research & Interviews
Organize & Synthesize
Organize training topics into categories and progression
Identify gaps and urgent needs
Session 2
People & Their Journeys
Empathize with who is being trained, their journey, and what they need to do
Draft impact and performance measures
Session 3
Prioritize & Roadmap
Prioritize the most important training and P&C work efforts
Map into a roadmap and project plan for the year
Results to share.
By the end of our work together, the P&C team was able to present their new framework and annual roadmap to the Board of Directors and then begin the actual work.
The team now has a set of documents promoting a shared understanding around their collective work, despite individual areas of focus. These include:
Objectives and IDEA impact goals for the organization and community
Metrics to measure IDEA impacts across six facets of the organization
Company and employee profiles to guide training and resource creation
P&C team stakeholder maps displaying areas of focus and priority
P&C efforts and crunch times to support the artistic season
