Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

It’s important to us that our justice, equity, and inclusion journey is rooted in action, not just words.

We’re also painfully aware how easy it is for organizations to become performative in their DEI efforts. We’re not always going to get it right. But if you’re here, it means you want to know more about what we’re doing in real life to build a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable company. Here’s our answer:

Justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion are moral and ethical imperatives for The Persimmon Group.

Diversity at The Persimmon Group refers to all the characteristics that make individuals different from each other. It includes characteristics or factors such as religion, race, ethnic origin, language, gender, sexual orientation, disability, neurodiversity, age, veteran status, or any other potential factor of difference.

A workplace populated with a wide range of experiences and perspectives promotes innovation and business success. Diversity management makes us more creative, productive, responsive, and competitive.

For these reasons, The Persimmon Group is committed to employment diversity with respect to all aspects of employment. All decisions regarding recruitment, hiring, promotion, compensation, employee development decisions such as training, and all other terms and conditions of employment, will be made without regard to race, religious beliefs, color, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, physical and mental disability, age, ancestry, or place of origin.

The Persimmon Group will make every reasonable effort to ensure that our staff is representative of many forms of difference—both visible and invisible—including women, men, non-binary people, people of color, veterans, people with disabilities, older workers, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and neuro-diverse people.

To do this, The Persimmon Group will continuously explore, learn, and implement new strategies to attract and retain employees from underrepresented groups, and endeavor to eliminate systemic barriers to advancement.

Finally, we recognize the value that a diverse supplier base brings to our company and customers. Although our size limits our opportunities to engage with a wide range of suppliers, we aim to progressively expand our outreach. When evaluating new suppliers, we seek relationships with minority-owned, women-owned, veteran-owned and other diverse businesses. We welcome introductions to potential new diverse suppliers that can meet our business needs. 

What We Do Every Year:

Evaluate and Address Pay Equity. Our leadership team meets twice per year to review pay equity. This means compensating employees the same when they perform the same or similar job duties, while accounting for other factors (such as experience, job performance and tenure).

Review and Adjust Our Recruiting Process. Each year, we evaluate our current recruiting process against good practice and emerging innovations in the DEI space. Our goal is to become and remain representative of the diversity of clients we support.

Gather feedback from employees. Frequently throughout the year, we ask our employees for feedback about what we can stop doing, start doing, or keep doing to build a more just and inclusive team. We do this in both in-person forums, and anonymous ones.

Donate money and time. Throughout the year, we donate money and time to organizations doing justice work in our community. We find opportunities to volunteer both individually, and as a team.

Facilitate learning. Multiple times per year, we intentionally schedule events to deepen our team’s understanding. While this includes formal training, this has also involved facilitated team discussions about challenging topics, guest speakers, team challenges, book discussions, and volunteer opportunities.

What We’ve Done in the Last Twelve Months:

Updated Bereavement Policy. Our policy now better supports women and families by explictly stating that miscarriages are covered, as well as the deaths of close friends.

New Resume Submission Options. On the advice of our Veterans panel, we have introduced new methods for candidates to share their experience with us. The ability to submit video, presentations, or written paragraphs can help candidates with non-traditional backgrounds put their best foot forward!

Accessibility Initiative. Our team has updated our recruiting, onboarding, and business practices to better accomodate people with disabilities or chronic conditions. This includes readiness to provide equipment, software, flexibility, or other accomodations. 

Veteran Readiness Initiative. Our team is currently reviewing our veteran employer readiness as well as military leave policies for employees and families of active duty military members.

Reading Partners Book Drive. Following the lead of a Black Employee Resource Group at one of our clients, we donated books featuring racially and culturally diverse characters to Reading Partners, a national non-profit providing individualized reading support to students so they can read at grade level by Grade 4.

Equity and Inclusion Awards

2023 YWCA Pinnacle Award. The Persimmon Group was recognized as the 2023 Corporate Champion for empowering women and eliminating racism in our community.

2022 Mosaic Top Inclusive Workplace. The Tulsa Chamber of Commerce recognized The Persimmon Group as a Top Inclusive Workplace in 2022.

2022 Honorable Mention / Veterans Employer Network. Persimmon is a member of the Community Service Council’s Veteran Employer Network, and received an Honorable Mention for its veteran readiness practices.