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Rural electric cooperatives provide electric service to 42 million people acrossmore than 2,500 counties, including 92% of persistent poverty counties in the UnitedStates. However, available information on the gender, racial, and ethnic representationwithin electric cooperatives and their governing bodies suggests a significant lack ofdiversity. Although limited, research on the topic of cultural humility training as amethod of preparing cooperative employees to embrace a more diverse workforcesuggests that rural electric cooperatives could leverage cultural humility concepts toposition themselves to increase diversity sustainably. A cultural humility survey and afocus group interview were deployed to measure the baseline level of cultural humility ata rural electric generation and transmission cooperative in the mid-western United States.An action plan was developed that includes providing cultural humility training to thecontrol group and a follow-up survey to all participants to measure the efficacy of thetraining. The results of the baseline survey and focus group interview indicate anopenness to learning about cultural topics and a reticence toward increasing diversity as amatter of necessity. These results suggest a general lack of cultural humility coupled withan openness to learning and curiosity that positions the cooperative well for training incultural humility. The term “cultural humility” has become widely used in healthcare3settings and in training; however, this is a concept that can be difficult to understandfully, and there is even less guidance on the intricacies of teaching this concept. Therehave been a few published works focusing on the teaching of cultural humility. Howevermost of these publications focus on a theoretical rather than an empirical standpoint. Thecooperative utility industry, as well as many other industries outside of healthcare, canleverage this study to inform their own pursuit of cultural humility and efforts to increasediversity. |
