The year 2020 will be remembered as one of the most disruptive in a long time. While adjusting to a global pandemic required the best of every business, perhaps the more unsettling crisis of 2020 was coming face to face with the truth that our country had moved so little in its evolution toward a more just society over the past half century.
Demonstrations around the country following the tragic death of George Floyd brought centuries of suppressed anger and frustration to the surface for African Americans — and for non–African Americans, the realization that we are yet a long way from the ideal of our nation’s founders.
Against this backdrop, Matson has been introspectively assessing its workplace environment, hiring, and promoting practices, and evaluating whether our business has been “part of the solution.”
One of our conclusions is that we can and must do more. This has prompted us to take more proactive steps for the good of our business. After all, we believe that an organization relying on homogeneous views and perspectives is depriving itself of innovation, improvement, and competitiveness in countless ways.
One of our first steps this year was to introduce training for all management employees designed to foster greater understanding of bias and how it works in the subconscious, shaping our own views of the world and the people with whom we interact.
We have also supplemented our community giving program with cash grants targeting nonprofit organizations that are focused on combating racism, and we have undertaken a new scholarship program devoted to encouraging more African American students to pursue careers in shipping and logistics.
It’s a start.