Case Study

Parker

Advancing a Culture of Inclusion, Starting at the Top

men in lab having a discussion

Parker Hannifin (“Parker”) wanted to scale its existing leadership-level Diversity & Inclusion and cross-cultural competence course to approximately 2,000 leaders across the globe. By digging deep into Parker’s culture and leveraging our own global subject matter experts, we created a modified leadership program and adapted it to all four of its global regions. Eighteen months later, our facilitators delivered the course to leaders hailing from over 40 national cultures across 19 countries.

Services Performed

Inclusion Training

The Challenge

The world’s leading diversified manufacturer of motion and control technologies, Cleveland-based Parker Hannifin had just completed training its most senior-level global executives on Diversity & Inclusion and cross-cultural competence when it decided to cascade the program to the next level of leaders. In order for the program to meet the unique needs and cultures of approximately 2,000 leaders across North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and EMEA, content and/or design improvements would be necessary prior to rollout.

Our Approach

Before revitalizing the course, we collected the data necessary to internalize Parker’s culture and embed its priorities around leveraging diversity and inclusion:

  • Over the course of two days, we conducted thoughtful conversation on site with key stakeholders, including Parker’s Executive Sponsor for Diversity & Inclusion, to build deep knowledge about the company’s business and its D&I strategy, goals, and objectives.
  • Through semi-monthly touch-base team calls, we continued the conversation with Parker.
  • Through interviews with previous course participants, we gleaned impressions and investigated the D&I priorities in his/her country and region.

Once we completed collecting this data, we redesigned roughly 30% of Parker’s existing course and added more Parker-centric application activities, plus a business leader context-setting piece. By applying our global subject matter expertise plus the insights gathered from stakeholder interviews, we successfully adapted the program to reach leaders in all four regions.

After launching a pilot program for culturally diverse leaders in central locations in each region, we incorporated post-pilot feedback where appropriate before cascading the program to the rest of the organization. Although courses were conducted in English, we made sure to assign LCW facilitators with local language abilities to be leveraged as necessary.

"LCW helped us refine, improve, and culturally adapt our leader-level global D&I course. The work they are doing to help us regionalize the course helps us truly connect our D&I message of inclusion and innovation across the world. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback from both managers and employees about the program and its highly-skilled, global facilitators. We value LCW’s expertise and appreciate the collaborative nature of our work."
— Corporate Learning & Organization Effectiveness Leader

The Impact

Ultimately, leaders from over 40 national cultures across 19 countries participated in the course and began their journey toward recognizing and developing their personal level of cross-cultural competence. Each walked away with practical tools and frameworks to help explore cultural differences and similarities within their own roles and teams. By brainstorming ways they could drive cross-cultural competence throughout the business, they took the first step toward creating a more inclusive environment for Parker teams globally.