Expedia Group 2021 Inclusion & Diversity Key Priority - Build Skill Sets

Allyship is a lifelong journey of learning and growing and remains the catalyst for inclusive change at Expedia Group.

As we continue this journey of intential allyship as an organization, we expanded our Inclusion Learning suite developed in 2020 by introducing a variety of new learning and development opportunities and initiatives that engage employees at all levels to deepen their allyship knowledge, skills, and competencies.

These programs encourage employees to explore teachable moments in their daily work, allowing them to identify strengths and gaps in their individual allyship journey and implement new habits and behaviors to become champions of inclusion.

Inclusive Learning

We have fully integrated Ally Skills into the onboarding process to ensure all new employees complete the program and build foundational awareness of allyship into Expedia Group’s culture. In 2021, we committed to a Conscious Inclusion initiative, which launched as the “Decoding Bias” podcast and resulted in a 90% participation rate. We also launched the Disability Fundamentals for Managers training for people leaders (and optional otherwise), which achieved an 88% participation rate from eligible leaders.

These programs encourage employees to explore teachable moments in their daily work, allowing them to identify strengths and gaps in their individual allyship journey and implement new habits and behaviors to become champions of inclusion.

SPOTLIGHT : Decoding Bias Podcast Series

Recognizing that we all have biases is an important piece to allyship. We introduced a new podcast series, Decoding Bias, tying conversations with Gori Yahaya from Upskill Digital and Stacey A. Gordon from Rework Work to fellow employees, to discuss how bias shows up in the workplace and what we can do to mitigate it.

The podcast series launched with 3 episodes in 7 languages, including English, Dutch, French, French Canadian, German, Japanese, and Spanish, and was the first required I&D learning for all Expedia Group employees. The series drove high employee engagement in 2021, generating a collective 1.6 million hours of listening time.

We plan to expand Decoding Bias with new episodes covering various topics, including Inclusive Leadership, and find new ways to integrate the series through additional employee touchpoints, starting with the onboarding experience.

Inclusive Learning

SPOTLIGHT : Voices of Change Speaker Series

In 2020, we introduced the Voices of Change speaker series to bring in inspiring people with diverse identities and lived experiences to drive conversations that challenge how we think about I&D and equality. We also wanted to create a safe place for these challenging discussions, which are important to have within our diverse and multicultural communities. Building on that framework, in 2021, we invited new speakers—including Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, Haben Girma, and Helen Zia—to share their stories with our employees. We carefully selected each speaker to elevate their unique voices and adopt learnings from their presentations into the DNA of our organization. This speaker series is a program we are continuing in 2022.

“The Voices of Change speaker series has allowed us to have courageous conversations about the inequities that exist around us, learn what causes them and how they intersect—and most importantly understand how each of us can challenge the status quo.

I facilitated one such fire side chat with Laxmi Tripathi who opened our minds to the unique socio cultural and economic challenges experienced by the transgender community in South Asia, inspiring all of us at Expedia Group to reflect on actions we can take to make a real difference.”

- DARSHANA SHIRODKAR ADVISORY COUNCIL MEMBER SENIOR DIRECTOR, MARKET MANAGEMENT INDIA SUBCONTINENT & REST OF SEA

SPOTLIGHT : Global Accessibility Awareness Day Panel

Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) increases awareness and understanding about the importance of being inclusive in our business practices, and we’ve participated in GAAD for the past 7 years. In 2021, eIT (Expedia IT) hosted a panel on equal access to employment and how technology and company culture can create the intersection for impactful change and opportunities, with participants from the eIT team, Slack, and the University of Washington.

Inclusive Language Integration

The Expedia IT team is influencing the culture of inclusion within Expedia Group and the tech industry by increasing awareness and enacting feature changes in the third-party technologies we provide, support, and enable.

Expedia Group employees rely on third-party technology solutions, like Slack, as a means of connecting to teams, communities, systems, and workflows, but our everyday language and communication can often unintentionally exclude different backgrounds, genders, and disabilities.

In our commitment to show up as allies in our daily work, we launched an inclusive language Slackbot project that utilizes Expedia Group’s Inclusive Language Service API to monitor the Expedia Slack workspace for potentially harmful or non-inclusive terminology. The Bot directly messages a user to notify them that they used a non-inclusive term or expression, and provides alternate, recommended inclusive terms from an Inclusive Terminology List. We are also working with dedicated partners at Slack to promote change within their organization, in an effort to enable inclusive access to this key technology solution for all.

Promoting Mindfulness in Digital Communications

Mindfulness is a core component of our digital-first culture. In 2021, we provided a set of Slack emojis and status messages to help employees easily and passively communicate their personal and business status, across a variety of scenarios.

Using an emoji or status update in Slack empowers employees to effectively communicate their needs, energy level and ability to reply, and respecting those status updates is a key part of allyship. The addition of these features is a small step toward being more mindful about health, wellness and work-life balance.

View the full Expedia Group 2021 Inclusion & Diversity Report