5 Great Ways to Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month at Work

Here at CMA, we are big advocates of employees being able to bring their whole selves to work, which includes not only acknowledging but also celebrating their respective backgrounds (check out our webinar on how to foster a psychologically safe environment). In continuing with the tradition, we wanted to take a moment to join many other organizations in celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by recognizing the contributions of the Hispanic and Latino workforce.

For this particular post, we wanted to highlight five great ways to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month at your respective workplace.

1. Engage your leaders. Consider engaging your organization’s leadership. If you have Hispanic and Latino leaders, consider requesting that they discuss their respective journeys and career achievements. Otherwise, simply requesting that senior leadership speak on the significance of honoring the contributions of the Hispanic community can be quite powerful.

2. Share a DE&I update. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) should be top of mind for all organizations. This is not only due to its many benefits, but also because it just makes sense. Nonetheless, Hispanic Heritage Month is a great time to offer a DE&I update. Consider talking about where your organization has started, major milestone achievements, and where you plan to go in the future.

3. Read together. One of the most powerful ways of understanding new perspectives is to read a piece of Hispanic nonfiction or fiction. There is an abundance of Hispanic and Latino authors. Consider forming a book club for the month, selecting a piece to read, and engaging in dialogue with your fellow colleagues to gain new insights.

4. Recognize efforts. We believe that employee recognition is crucial to building inclusive and high-performing workplaces. We highlighted recently the best practices for employee recognition. Consider implementing some of those best practices to leave your workforce feeling recognized and valued.

5. Eat together. As with many cultures, food plays an integral role within the Hispanic and Latino communities. As a fun idea, consider ideas for integrating food. One such idea is to offer a cooking lesson wherein some of your Hispanic and Latino employees could teach how to prepare tasty dishes. If this is logistically challenging, another alternative is to host a Hispanic and Latin-themed potluck. Beyond deepening one’s cultural understanding, another benefit would be the opportunity to chat informally and establish stronger ties with your colleagues.