This year’s Diversity Week took place from 9-13 November – 100% virtually.

Diversity Week 2020

Even if most of us are not currently at our usual workplaces, our ambitions for a diverse and inclusive working environment do not stop. We appreciate and encourage diversity for the enrichment it brings and see it as essential for our success. To tackle the coronavirus crisis together, we believe that diversity is more important than ever. 

At BSH, we have held annual Diversity Days throughout the entire company since 2018. This initiative has two main goals. First, we wish to increase awareness of how important diversity and inclusion are at BSH. Second, we want to show how the company is leveraging diversity and how it stands to benefit. 

This year, Diversity Days were scheduled to take place in June. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, however, the programme had to be cancelled and could not take place as planned, except for one session about gender roles in the context of corona. 

Why not try something new? 

This year’s Diversity Week in November was a 100% virtual event, with the motto “Driving change through diversity!” Skype sessions were held in various time zones so that employees throughout the world could participate.

“For me, the big upside of our Diversity Week as an online-only event was that colleagues from all over the world could take part in the sessions and enrich the discussions with their own points of view. This brought a whole new sense of togetherness for everyone involved.” says Marion Fischer, responsible for the Diversity Week.

This year’s topics

Diversity Week traditionally aims to strengthen international networks, give participants an opportunity to learn from each other, and take a closer look at diversity and many other topics.

To archive this, a series of sessions with different speakers has been hosted online. To name just a few:

• “Job Sharing at BSH: Shared Leadership” Read the background story here.
• “Sabbatical as a Senior Manager” More about this interesting story here. 
• “My 6 Months of Parental Leave” Read the whole story here. 
• “Unconscious Bias @ work – how can we tackle it?” 
• “BSH Belong – An Australian Cultural Change Initiative”
• “Introduction of the Female Network “WOMENforBSH” 
• „Transgender – The way from the head to the heart – and back“

We enjoyed many engaging discussions that gave all of us new perspectives.  

Cooperation with Bosch

And there was even more news: This year we collaborated with our colleagues at Bosch. This way, we could offer sessions from Bosch colleagues in addition to our BSH sessions.

Our aim: Working together across companies to strengthen diversity.