Photo By Senior Airman Melanie L. Nolen | California Air National Guard Master Sgt. Josh J. Baker, 195th Wing human resources...... read more read more
As the U.S. Air Force dives deeper into embracing diversity and eliminating barriers to inclusion, the Air National Guard already leads the way with its Human Resource Advisory Program. Each ANG Wing is allocated one Human Resource Advisor (HRA) as a position typically within the wing command staff.
As the 195th Wing's HRA, Master Sgt. Josh Baker is the person responsible for facilitating diversity and inclusion and implementing force development for members of the Wing.
Baker held HRA classes March 5-6, 2021, at Joint Forces Training Base - Los Alamitos for members of the 234th Intelligence Squadron and at Sepulveda Air National Guard Station for members of the 261st Cyberspace Operations Squadron, the 195th Operations Group and other 195th Wing members who are based in Southern California.
“I go around to different organizations within our Wing and talk about diversity and inclusion (D&I) with things like the class Mitigating Unconscious Bias,” said Baker. “It’s through those talks and our discussions we discover if there are any barriers to diversity and inclusion. I take that information back to the leadership at the Wing level. They can do a barrier analysis and determine if there is anything that they can do at their level to remove any of those barriers or to push it up higher to again, remove those barriers.”
Other courses Baker taught during the March unit training assembly weekend were Emotional Intelligence, Microaggressions and Progressive Discipline and he gave a force development briefing on Professional Organization.
“With courses like these, it teaches people to be more inclusive by focusing on the exclusive behaviors that they may or may not know that they have themselves,” said Baker. “Once they see these exclusive behaviors, they are hopefully able to push back against them and be more inclusive so we can hold onto that diversity with that inclusion.”
ANG Instruction 36-2110 states that the HRA’s curriculum and training resources are divided into two programs, one that teaches awareness and attitudes towards the D&I cultural competencies and the other which expands on the knowledge and skills competencies through coaching, gap analysis and emotional intelligence training.
“My ultimate goal is to make better people,” Baker said. “I think the curriculum that I teach opens up their aperture a little bit to see where they may be exclusive in some areas of their lives, whether it’s consciously or unconsciously. In turn they realize where they could be exclusive and push back against those exclusive behaviors to be more inclusive. Once they are better people, in turn that’s going to make better Airmen and that will make our Wing even better.”
| Date Taken: | 03.25.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 03.25.2021 16:25 |
| Story ID: | 392312 |
| Location: | VAN NUYS, CA, US |
| Web Views: | 383 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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