Cisco Chooses Emtrain as Its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative Partner

It may be the zeitgeist, or it may be the fallout from years of COVID-19 isolation, but many of us need to brush up on our social skills and appropriate behavior in the workplace. In an article published last year in Salon, Nicole Karlis noted that the American Psychological Association defines social deprivation as "limited access to society's resources," and a "lack of adequate opportunity for social experience.”  Sound familiar? It’s the story of most of our pandemic social lives.

Whatever the cause, some companies are taking it upon themselves to help employees refine their social behavior skills, particularly when it comes to promoting social justice. Networking giant Cisco recently announced that it retained e-learning solutions provider Emtrain to serve as Cisco’s exclusive diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training partner for a global initiative that will provide anti-discrimination and inclusive culture training and analytics to the company's partners and suppliers. The partnership builds on Cisco's commitment to roll out anti-discrimination and inclusive culture training throughout its own workforce and make it available to the Cisco ecosystem.

"We've seen time and time again how companies can influence behavior and society beyond just their own workplace,” said Fran Katsoudas, Cisco EVP and Chief Policy and Purpose Officer. “At Cisco, we have made a commitment to promoting and advancing social justice within and outside the company, and we know we can lean into our ecosystem of partners and suppliers to join us on this journey. We're choosing Emtrain to help us because they have been instrumental in helping us measure and improve our internal pro-social skills, which leads to increased diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we're confident they can do the same for our broader ecosystem."

The training resulting from the partnership is called "Building Skills for a Conscious Culture.” It was made available to Cisco partners at Cisco's 2022 Partner Summit in November and is currently being piloted with select suppliers.

In the announcement, Cisco noted that Emtrain was chosen for the DEI e-learning initiative because it has shown proven results in engaging people with relevant, timely content while simultaneously capturing employee perception data and delivering benchmarked DEI scorecards and analyses. Earlier this year, Cisco achieved 92 percent completion for its workforce inclusive culture training.