Rockwell Automation Addresses Long-Held Biases in Technical Language

This month, Rockwell Automation unveiled its Adopting Inclusive Terminology initiative, an effort to create a unified guidance to identify, replace, and avoid offensive and racially biased language in Rockwell’s products and content.  

“The fact is, this is not a completely new concept to Rockwell and our language has been changing over the years,” says Jürgen Weinhofer, vice president of Common Architecture and Technology at Rockwell. “Our current initiative builds on our past efforts and is one of many activities we are undertaking to build a more diverse and inclusive company.”

The initiative launched last summer, bringing together a cross-functional group from product management, product development, operations, standards, marketing, and technical communications to review non-inclusive terminology that exists in the company’s customer-facing content, products, standards, and communications. Through this journey, Rockwell acknowledged the company’s history and lessons from the past, and is using that experience to shape a more inclusive company. Read more about the initiative here.