Our commitment to equal employment opportunity (EEO), anti-harassment, and inclusivity
Walker & Dunlop is committed to maintaining a workplace where all applicants have an equal opportunity to join our team, where all employees actively shape our culture, and where each individual’s full self is uniquely valued and supported to achieve professional goals. For these reasons, our EEO expectations apply to employees and non-employees, whether interns, vendors, board members, clients, independent contractors, volunteers, or guests. Both employees and non-employees who will have regular contact with employees endorse these policies annually.
All applicants and employees are considered for hire, benefits, promotions, and any other employment term without regard to race, color, religion, gender (including identity, expression, pregnancy, and sexual orientation), ancestry or national origin, age, disability, marital status, genetic information, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. All employment decisions are based on business priorities and our family-like culture. This means that we do not make adverse choices based on religious memberships, expressions of ethnic identity (such as hair or head covering), gender expression, or any other indicator of the personal identities this policy protects and values.
We maintain an EEO Plan and a dedicated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) team. The DE&I team drives awareness, supports training, and teams with leaders to embed DE&I principles into all of our work. The Company also actively supports managers and employees in working toward annual goals, advertises its diverse recruiting relationships, and maintains Employee Resource Groups to support affinity groups within the Company.
Each of us is a guardian of our family-like culture and crucial to living our equal employment commitment into reality. We expect all employees to continuously develop their own awareness of equity and unconscious bias in our workplace. Employees with concerns regarding potential violations of this policy are encouraged to speak up. The Company provides several, non-exclusive ways to share thoughts and concerns safely, including through Company leaders, surveys, and an anonymous hotline. Concerns are promptly, thoughtfully, and thoroughly investigated. Each scenario is addressed through a confidential process, individually and appropriately for the facts. We want to hear concerns, support those expressing them, and strengthen our culture through transparency and commitment to the goals of this policy.
Our commitment to non-discrimination, anti-harassment, and accommodations
In order to be a DE&I leader in the commercial real estate finance industry, our focus first is internal. We are committed to providing a professional, respectful, and dignified work environment. Discrimination, including harassment, based on any characteristic protected by our EEO policy is not accepted or tolerated. We want our employees to feel safe at all times.
“Harassment” under our policy is any conduct that demeans or is hostile towards someone because of a protected characteristic. Sometimes, such conduct may create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment; sometimes, such conduct interferes with work performance or otherwise negatively affects the work environment. Harassment that violates this policy may include use of slurs, jokes, negative stereotyping, threatening acts, or display of materials averse to a protected characteristic, including in e-mail or other electronic forms. This and similar conduct are prohibited.
“Sexual harassment,” specifically, may include unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other conduct of a sexual nature. It may involve people of the same or different genders. It may include sexual jokes, gestures, and innuendo; commentary about a person’s body or sexual performance; unwelcome touching; and display of sexually suggestive objects or pictures. Sometimes this conduct is subtle; sometimes it develops into a pattern over time; sometimes it is not immediately recognizable as inappropriate. In all cases, this behavior is unacceptable in our culture and prohibited.
We are committed to helping our employees and stakeholders understand appropriate workplace conduct. All of us should be polite, develop meaningful interpersonal relationships at work, and engage in conduct that is unambiguously respectful at all times. Compliments, warmth, and emotional connection foster our culture by encouraging candor, communication, and kindness. Conduct can be funny, personal, and as unique as the family-like relationships we build in the workplace. Conduct also should be thoughtful and show awareness that all people are informed by different life experiences. These experiences create different standards for interpreting behavior. We want to build an environment where trust and courtesy lead us to better understand each other’s unique perspectives.
We provide regular training opportunities to help our employees analyze, exhibit, and require behavior consistent with this policy in the workplace. Further, to support our employees with disabilities and assure support of religious observations, we also make reasonable accommodations in these contexts.
We strictly prohibit retaliation against those who raise concerns about potential violations of our anti-discrimination standards.
Anti-bullying
We expect courteous, respectful treatment in the workplace at all times, especially when addressing frustrations and stressors. Humiliation, intimidation, or denigration of performance intended to harm another are prohibited. No one may ridicule another’s standard of work or reprimand in an inappropriately harsh, condescending, or public way; micro-manage to harm, including through arbitrary and unrealistic deadlines; excessively e-mail or text, to undermine performance; or ignore or encourage others to ignore manager instruction for the purpose of damaging the manager’s reputation or performance. Mocking dress, communication style, or other personal characteristics are prohibited. No one may withhold data, resources, or opportunities to damage someone else. Incidents that may violate this policy must be reported to a manager, member of Senior Management, or Human Resources.
Open door policy, all-company communications, and dispute resolutions procedures
Our unique culture of transparency is a direct result of our open-door policy. We see this as an ongoing journey to be a great place to work for all. Employees are encouraged to share their feedback and insights with Senior Management, and in turn, our leadership is open with employees regarding the victories, challenges, and disappointments W&D faces.
Company-wide communication is a purposeful commitment for us. Our Executive Team empowers employees with knowledge of our corporate vision and an understanding of how their roles fit in with building our institution. To drive this understanding:
- Our executives meet regularly and provide real-time updates to employees during weekly and monthly meetings.
- Our leaders hold listening sessions with employees and seek 360 feedback from others.
- Managers hold meetings with their direct reports.
- Executives and higher-level managers visit our offices regularly to meet with employees and clients.
- We conduct employee opinion surveys to gather additional feedback.
- We communicate our culture and key business updates through our intranet, W&D Connect.We hold quarterly All-Company meetings, and one annual multi-day meeting, to assure that all employees have a line of sight to our five-year plans and corporate goals.
At all times, we encourage employees to express concerns and ask questions about policies, procedures, or other issues to a manager, any compliance officer, our Legal team, or Human Resources.
DE&I Annual Report
Check out our DE&I Annual Report for more insight on our employee resource groups, internal programs, partnerships, initiatives, and more!
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Regularly recognized as a Best Place to Work® by publications like Fortune Magazine, Walker & Dunlop is where top professionals build long-term careers.
DE&I
We believe that diversity, equity and inclusion is a moral imperative and a critical success factor for our innovation and growth.