Women’s World Café for Staff
In March, the Department of Internal Medicine hosted a world café event for women faculty within the department. Input from the event led to multiple task forces to focus on mentoring, equity, diversity, and career development. Additionally, administrative initiative groups were formed to work on process improvement issues.
Due to its success, department leadership recognized it was important to carry over our vision for a unified culture by giving our staff a voice and a safe space to do so.
As a result, the department held a Women’s World Café for Staff on December 14. Approximately 50 employees from across the department took time out of their busy work days to come and share their insights and perspectives on topics that matter to everyone.
Dr. David Bjorkman had the pleasure of welcoming everyone to the world café. He thanked
A world café is a method for hosting group dialogue in a structured way to gain knowledge and understanding through a facilitated discussion. Staff had the opportunity to rotate through three different discussions. While facilitators led table talks by offering up a few questions to get things started, the conversations were driven by participants.
Topics at this world café event included professional development, HR issues, culture and bias, work-life balance, and faculty/staff dynamics.
Thank you to all of the staff who were able to attend the event. We received great input and are excited to continue our progress of building a culture of unity across the department. Stay tuned for some of our findings and opportunities.
