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inclusive leader initiative earns coveted award for DEI

‘Inclusive Leader’ initiative earns Brandon Hall Group bronze award

Action-focused initiative has helped Synopsys leaders worldwide change their behaviors beyond recognizing potential biases.

Cynthia Sierra

Cynthia Sierra

Head of Talent and Leadership Development, Synopsys

"Inclusive Leader gives participants a hands-on approach to navigating what it looks like to be more inclusive in everyday tricky situations and has been very effective in helping employees take action to increase their inclusive practices."

Bennett Phillips

Bennett Phillips

Partner at Advantage Performance Group

"This is a difficult topic to address, and I commend the Synopsys team for bringing it in front of the biggest skeptics first. Those skeptics gave it rave reviews, leading to a smooth implementation throughout the rest of the company."

Decisions and diversity - Brent Snow

Brent Snow

Founder and Creative Director, Ten Thousand Feet

"It is so important to create engaging and powerful learning experiences that create positive pathways for leaders to follow as they seek to create more inclusive teams and organizations. We are particularly proud to have met the challenge of pivoting and creating an equally elegant and powerful virtual Inclusive Leader solution for Synopsys."

Jonathan Hodge

Jonathan Hodge

President & CEO at Advantage Performance Goup

"As a global community, we all recognize that diversity is a fact, yet inclusion is a choice. We are so proud to be part of this initiative alongside our partners at both Synopsys and Ten Thousand Feet providing leaders with the tools and know-how to become more inclusive."

SAN RAFAEL, CA - A collaboration between Synopsys, Advantage Performance Group, and Ten Thousand Feet has earned a coveted 2021 Brandon Hall Group Bronze Award for Excellence in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. The award recognizes an initiative that is succeeding in helping leaders and employees change their behaviors to be more inclusive.

A company of 14,500 people in more than 30 countries around the world, Synopsys has been focusing on diversity and inclusion as critical elements for innovation, employee engagement, and fostering a trust-based culture for many years. They deployed a game- and scenario-based learning experience called The Inclusive Leader as the primary method to change employee behaviors to be more inclusive, beyond recognizing potential biases, according to Cynthia Sierra, Head of Talent and Leadership Development at Synopsys.

"Inclusive Leader gives participants a hands-on approach to navigating what it looks like to be more inclusive in everyday tricky situations and has been very effective in helping employees take action to increase their inclusive practices," she said.

Core to the company’s belief in the value of inclusion and diversity is an alignment to the day-to-day behavior of its leaders. It is for this reason that the company has made a multi-year, company-wide commitment to engage leaders across the globe in this important program.

To implement the program, Advantage Partner Bennett Phillips along with Brent Snow, founder and creative director at Ten Thousand Feet, and the Synopsys L&D team had to first win over skeptics then make an unexpected pivot to virtual delivery mid-stride when the pandemic interrupted plans to expand a successful in-person pilot. The virtually facilitated format vastly expanded its reach globally.

"The Synopsys team and our own team worked together closely to make sure the transition was successful, and we are all beyond pleased with the outcome,” Phillips said. "It has been such an honor to work with Synopsys, my longest-time client of over 10 years now, on this important initiative."

"This is a difficult topic to address, and I commend the Synopsys team for bringing it in front of the biggest skeptics first. Those skeptics gave it rave reviews, leading to a smooth implementation throughout the rest of the company," he said.

The learning journey's focal point, The Inclusive Leader: Maximizing the Mix, is comprised of 3 interconnected game and scenario-based experiences designed by Ten Thousand Feet and TAC Global that create lively discussion, debate, awareness, and learning.

Synopsys had conducted a search for a learning program that would give leaders not only an understanding of what inclusive leadership looks like, but also a clear and pragmatic set of actions that could be put into practice immediately. The team sought to find a solution that would go beyond the academic theories around inclusion and diversity, and into an approach that was easy to understand, to embrace, and to act upon for every leader.

"It is so important to create engaging and powerful learning experiences that create positive pathways for leaders to follow as they seek to create more inclusive teams and organizations. We are particularly proud to have met the challenge of pivoting and creating an equally elegant and powerful virtual Inclusive Leader solution for Synopsys," said Snow, who has facilitated The Inclusive Leader both in-person and virtually around the world. "We are pleased and honored to have The Inclusive Leader program and our work with Synopsys recognized by Brandon Hall.”

The program has provided an excellent, fun approach to walking employees through expanding their view of being inclusive while exposing them to everyday scenarios that provide direct examples of more inclusive behaviors.

Through participating in the program, Synopsys leaders have gained a stronger sense of what it means to live the value of inclusive leadership every day. Importantly, leaders also gain awareness around the idea that inclusion is a strategic advantage and a competitive differentiator for the business (not just a compliance exercise).

Advantage President & CEO Jonathan Hodge said he was especially pleased with the project's success: "As a global community, we all recognize that diversity is a fact, yet inclusion is a choice. We are so proud to be part of this initiative alongside our partners at both Synopsys and Ten Thousand Feet providing leaders with the tools and know-how to become more inclusive."

Going 'above and beyond' during COVID-19 disruption

“Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards in 2021 provide much-needed and well-deserved recognition to organizations that went above and beyond to support their stakeholders during the unprecedented disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Brandon Hall Group COO and leader of the HCM )Human Capital Management) Excellence Awards Program Rachel Cooke. “The awards provide validation of best practices in all areas of HCM at a time when they have never been more important to employers, employees and customers.”

Entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall Group analysts and executives based upon these criteria: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, innovation and overall measurable benefits.

Excellence Award winners are scheduled to be honored at Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Excellence Conference, Feb. 1-3, 2022, at the Hilton West Palm Beach, Florida. Select winners also will serve as presenters in breakout sessions, sharing their leading practices during the conference.

“We added several awards categories this year to specifically address critical needs, including how organizations addressed the new dynamics of work and embedded the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion in their HCM practices,” Brandon Hall Group CEO Mike Cooke said. “Winning organizations in all categories demonstrated a people-centric approach while driving superior business results under challenging and unprecedented conditions. Demonstrating HCM’s impact on the business is what sets our awards apart.”

About Synopsys

At Synopsys, diversity is in everything we do. We’re a company of 14,500 people in more than 30 countries around the world. There is a richness to our global reach, as we benefit from the beauty and legacy of many cultures. With that benefit comes obligation—to invest in our people, to empower their voices, and to promote equality and opportunity for all.

Synopsys technology is at the heart of innovations that are changing the way people work and play. Self-driving cars. Machines that learn. Lightning-fast communication across billions of devices in the datasphere. These breakthroughs are ushering in the era of Smart Everything―where devices are getting smarter and connected, and security is an important consideration.

Powering this new era of digital innovation are high-performance silicon chips and exponentially growing amounts of software content. Synopsys is at the forefront of Smart Everything with the world’s most advanced technologies for chip design, verification, IP integration, and software security and quality testing. We help our customers innovate from silicon to software so they can bring Smart Everything to life.

About Advantage Performance Group

Advantage Performance Group helps organizations develop great people by providing professional services related to corporate learning & development, including leadership development, sales training, business simulations, talent assessments, coaching services, and mobile learning solutions. Clients include mid-size to large organizations, mostly companies with 5,000 or more employees across all industries. Contact us to learn more about bringing The Inclusive Leader to your organization.

About Ten Thousand Feet

Ten Thousand Feet creates high impact simulations and organizational learning tools that achieve powerful results through uniquely innovative learning design to help people rise out of the immediacy of the day-to-day to a broader and more strategic viewpoint. We take people to a higher level from where they can see the interplay of forces acting on their organization, where they can explore external trends and internal capabilities, and where potential future consequences offer immediate present-day learning​.

About Brandon Hall Group

Brandon Hall Group operates the largest and longest running awards program in Human Capital Management. As an independent HCM research and analyst firm they conduct studies in Learning and Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Talent Acquisition and HR/Workforce Management. These benchmark studies help organizations by providing strategic insights for executives andpractitioners responsible for growth and business results.

Coupling the research studies with the best practice from the awards, Brandon Hall Group has helped more than 10,000 clients globally and more than 28 years of delivering world-class research and advisory. At the core of our offerings is a membership program that combines research, benchmarking and unlimited access to data and analysts. Membership enables executives and practitioners to make the right decisions about people, processes, and systems, coalesced with analyst advisory services which aim to put the research into action in a way that is practical and efficient.

Brandon Hall Group has also launched professional certifications for business and human capital management professionals to upskill themselves and gain credentials for career advancement.

Julie Wolpers
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