What he needed was a mentor. What he got, he recalls, was a co-worker who didn’t take him seriously – loudly asking whether he knew which tools to use and giving him grief if he felt he was taking too long to write a report.
“I would spend more time within my thoughts, frozen, instead of being focused on the task,” said Schneider, a senior principal engineer at Pratt & Whitney, an RTX business. “In some cases, I’d have to stop, pause and start over. It was challenging for me to gain acceptance and acknowledgement that I could bring something to the table.”
He has never forgotten how it felt. Now, as the global chair of RTX NXGEN, the company’s employee resource group for people of multiple generations, Schneider is making sure his co-workers have the support he looked for early in his career.
Professional support at every level
RTX Next Generation Professionals, also called RTX NXGEN, is the company’s multi-generational employee resource group. As part of the company’s commitment to strengthening inclusion and creating equitable opportunities for employees, the group’s major objectives include:
Supporting career development and talent retention through mentorship opportunities at all experience levels.
Partnering with the company to create a new toolkit about age diversity in the workplace.
Hosting on-site networking and learning events to promote professional development and build connections.
Listening and delivering
A new toolkit focused on age diversity in the workplace is one of several initiatives RTX NXGEN is focused on this year. The resource is designed to support employee retention and the career development of its membership, which rose 33 percent in 2023 and includes employees of all experience levels and ages.
With pages full of discussion prompts and guides, activity outlines and worksheets, the toolkit is part of the group’s mission to help employees know their worth at any age or experience level.
“I think we do have a company culture where people are understanding, and leaders give employees chances to succeed, to fail, and to be challenged,” said Schneider. “The effort is to make sure we are doing our best to be aware of age and experience bias and to be more intentional about not letting it sway our decisions.”
- Corporate
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