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“Your biases, intentional or ingrained, can inhibit the way you interact with people and hinder workplace culture,” said Ricaye Harris, Milliken’s Director, Diversity and Inclusion.

Unconscious bias training launched in 2018 remains relevant even today. From our experience with that training, we identified the need to teach our people about allyship—how to have each other’s backs as we work together as a team. Awareness, nurtured by unconscious bias training, is the first step to becoming an ally.

“You can’t be an ally until you understand your biases, what those biases mean, and how they show up at work,” said Ottilia Scanlon, Milliken’s Director, Learning and Development. “We have to recognize how bias impacts our ability to be successful individually and collectively as a team and company. Once we had this baseline, we can have a conversation about allyship and how we can take action to correct and overcome these biases.”

For Ricaye, these conversations are essential to building key allies who will help fuel the work of inclusion. “Everything we are attempting to do is about building allies, training people to work that muscle, and showing our teams opportunities to have each other’s backs. There is this feeling of ‘I just want to be better—a better employee, colleague, teammate.’ Conversations help us build empathy, which is what you need in order to create buy-in.” 

Allan Randall, Plastic Additives Senior Account Manager for Milliken’s Chemical Business, knows his allyship starts within his home. “I may not be able to change the world, but I can demonstrate love and compassion to my sons so that they never look at another person as less than, and so that they know it is their responsibility to stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves.”

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