Our Konsei Culture of Diversity and Inclusion

From my first day at Hitachi Solutions, I heard about “Konsei.” “Who is this Konsei?” I thought. Turns out, Konsei is not a “who,” but a “what.” And it’s awesome!

Konsei — which means “mixed community” or “mixed voice” in Japanese — is our unique way to create a sense of closeness and trust, despite us being a large global company with a lot of remote workers. Our team members hail from all across North America and overseas. We wanted to leverage the power of human connection to make our company stronger. This is how Konsei was born.

The Konsei community was established in 2017 to foster an environment that was personal, collaborative, and inclusive. This employee resource group’s focus is to host monthly remote meetups, coordinate local in-person events, and deliver communications to keep the global team connected.

Over the years, Konsei has evolved into something bigger than originally intended. While Hitachi Solutions seamlessly transitioned everyone to work-from-home (supported by our use of Microsoft technologies of course!) during the pandemic, finding ways to support our people initiatives required more innovative thinking.

Because of Konsei’s growing momentum within the company, it became our cultural hub and the way for us to celebrate diversity and inclusion (DEI) and implement DEI initiatives — which are a top priority for the company.

For example, there’s now a Konsei Women community that is focused on providing mentorship and leadership programming and support for the women in our company. The group holds quarterly meetings for women — and men — to talk about professional development, representation, and recruitment.

After attending the last Konsei Women call, I was blown away by how committed the company is to supporting female professionals. I even volunteered to be an official mentor for this year’s program. I’m excited to share my real-world experience and lessons learned with a member of our Managed Services team whose career journey continues to evolve.

Then, there’s our newest Konsei community — Konsei Pride. This group aims to increase awareness of LGBTQ+ issues, create a more equitable environment, and build a more diverse workforce at Hitachi Solutions.

Konsei Pride is already having a tangible impact on workplace practices. For example, I’m always second-guessing myself when it comes to pronoun use in communications. During the latest Konsei Pride call, the team provided some insightful direction to help keep our communications on point.

I learned that whether in an internal, client, Microsoft, or really ANY meeting, if you are in doubt, use “they/their/them” pronouns. This ensures you are inclusive and not being unintentionally insensitive. I found this to be an extremely helpful best practice and plan to put it to use in all my communications going forward!

Konsei — which again means “mixed community” or “mixed voice” — truly embraces the important initiatives we have in motion for our Hitachi Solutions team.

If you would like to find out more about diversity and inclusion at Hitachi Solutions, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. You can also check out About Us on our website and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.