Why Diversity & Inclusion Matter in Business:
Q&A With Sky Wellness
We’re seeing a lot of Pride Month products and promotions right now. So much great work to increase awareness for LGBTQ+ issues and to give visibility to an underrepresented social group. To celebrate this month, we talk to one company that’s making sure representation happens year-round. All the way from the C-Suite on down, Sky Wellness – a brand of premium CBD wellness products – is committed to bringing diversity and inclusion to the board table and beyond. We chat with Brook Bacon, Vice President Marketing at Sky Wellness, about their efforts to ensure representation and look at how more companies can take on these same tasks.
Your company like many others right now has a statement on diversity and inclusion. What is yours focused on?
At Sky Wellness, our mission is to make our customers Feel Better™ – whether that’s one person and her pet or 100 million people and their animals. We are able to achieve this through a culture of diversity, equality and inclusivity.
Our commitment to these principles is evidenced through our supply chain – one of the most diverse in the industry. 50% of it is women, African American and LatinX owned and operated. We also have an executive team that is 75% led by LGBTQ and women leaders, and a broader team of associates with a 50/50 ratio of men to women that reflects the uniqueness of our customers and partners represented by nearly all backgrounds and origins, including people with disabilities.
How are you able to achieve such diversity with your team?
It’s so simple… we don’t discriminate. We welcome everyone based on merit and work ethic only. We approach our hiring process in the most open and unbiased ways possible, and ensure that the hiring committee for every position is as diverse as in the customers we serve – which is, in a word — everyone.
How has this level of diversity effected the company?
On a cultural level, it creates a safe atmosphere where every employee feels valued and fits in. It’s also just fun to share our different backgrounds and stories with each other. Our priority as a company is to make products that are safe, sound and that embrace our customers at whatever point in their wellness journey they’re at. It should be no surprise that from our CEO down and through the ranks, we have created a work environment that is exactly the same – safe, sound and inclusive.
How do you take this to the next step then?
We see ourselves as a voice of the people. So, just continuing to do what we do as we’ve always done it with inclusivity, equality and integrity at the forefront of our interactions with each other; our efforts as an organization and our connectivity with the customers we serve, should keep us there.