MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION AWARD WINNER
What does the award mean to you and the organization? This award validates the great team assembled here at Cardinal IG. It’s a reflection of how 300+ individuals born on five separate continents, in 34 different countries, practicing several different religions, raised under different cultural norms, speaking many first languages can rally together around a shared value-set and work as one cohesive team to accomplish a common mission.
In your own words, briefly share your organization’s history, how you’ve grown throughout the years and what you offer the community today. We built the plant in 1998 to supply Marvin Windows with glass and grew rapidly, expanding the plant in 2001, 2003, 2005, and most recently 2021. We didn’t have a masterplan to build such a diverse team; since we hire using a non-biased approach and base hiring decisions on the bestqualified applicants, before we knew it, we had built quite a diverse team. Our thought process was: Does this person have the will to do the job? Can we train this person the necessary skill? Will this individual be a good teammate? Will they show up for work every day? If we could answer these questions to the affirmative, they’d get the job.
What makes your organization so important for the community? Our story is important. Organizations who might be anxious about potential challenges that might come with building a diverse team can look to 18 THE BRIDGE
October 2021
Cardinal IG as a successful case study. While we might sound and look different from each other, we all share similar needs and desires. It doesn’t matter where you’re from or where you are, we all desire a workplace where we have an opportunity to learn and grow our skills, feel connected to & valued by those around us, and understand how our work impacts the greater mission.
What values are most important to the organization? What do you believe in? Our Plant Values are Family, Safety, Teamwork, Excellence, & Respect. Six years ago, we conducted an exercise to refresh our plant values. All of our teammates were asked, through an anonymous, computerized survey, what their personal values are, what values they believe make Cardinal IG special, and what values they desire in their optimal workplace. These five values—Family, Safety, Teamwork, Excellence, & Respect—overwhelmingly rose to the top. We all agreed that this was a pretty good value-set and committed to holding each other accountable
