Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, People
If you read my post last week, you’ll know that we just completed our third quarterly panel discussion on DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion). This time, we focused on how to close the gender equity gap in the workplace with a discussion titled, HERstory: A Conversation With Executive Women About Gender Equality. Here’s a recap of who participated and some of the key takeaways.
Monica Davy, our moderator, serves as the Chief Culture, Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Vizient, where she is responsible for guiding the organization’s overarching strategy, program implementation and ongoing support for culture and D&I initiatives. Panelist Nupur Bhushan joined us from New Zealand where she serves as the General Manager for the ResMed business in Australia and New Zealand. Alessandra Lezama is the founder and CEO of TOOTRiS, Child Care On-Demand, a technology platform that is reinventing how parents find, enroll, and pay for quality child care. MyMy Lu recently joined Thermo Fisher Scientific, a world leader in serving science with a global team of 80,000 colleagues. MyMy serves as the company’s Director of Diversity & Inclusion. Antonia Luna serves as the Senior Vice President of Branch Network and Support Services at California Coast Credit Union, where she is responsible for strategic direction, growth, member experience, delivery channels and operational excellence.
Here are a few highlights from this thought-provoking and candid discussion.
1.As you think about your career and how far you’ve come, is there a moment that you can point to that changed the trajectory of your career or propelled you to where you are today?
MyMy: One of my memorable achievements is being able to conceptualize and launch a broadband adoption program to help individuals from low-income families gain access to the internet. The program became an industry standard for closing the digital divide.
At that time, I was asked to partner with my boss to take a meeting with an external partner on how we could collaborate to create this program. My boss had a calendar conflict and opted to attend the other meeting, though I told her I thought this one would be important not to miss. I was extremely frustrated that my boss didn’t see the urgency of this meeting and I was quite junior in my role. But I decided to take the meeting alone and ended up with an opportunity to build the program from the ground up. That program gave me visibility at my company, in my industry and community, and propelled me to leadership opportunities. We even got a shoutout from President Obama!
Lesson learned: never pass up an opportunity to stretch, do your homework and be ready when opportunity strikes, what seems like extra work may end up being your ticket to do much more. And when opportunity strikes, work your butt off to make sure you can show your potential and impact.
Antonia Luna: I started in Credit Union’s when I was a 19-year old single mom. At that point I had no idea what I wanted for a career. I was just trying to support myself. But I remember instinctively knowing that I was not going to stay a back office posting teller my entire life. I was motivated to learn more and asked the bosses to teach me everything about the credit union. They allowed me to work in every department. After learning all I could at that Credit Union, I made the best decision of my career and left my comfort zone and went to work for a Bank as a manager with a ‘can do’ attitude and no management experience. That decision changed the trajectory of my career. I learned from that experience to not be afraid to ask for a job, even if I had no experience. Because I had confidence in my ability to lead people and was able to learn quickly I believed I can do anything. And I still believe that today. I guess you can say I was “leaning in” before Lean In was a thing!
2. The modern workplace has really changed, and the COVID pandemic amplified the need for workplace flexibility. What are some workplace flexibility policies or practices that companies should take action on to support women and accelerate progress in closing the gender gap in the workforce?
Alessandra Lezama: Just months before the pandemic hit, women had crossed a major threshold as they had become the majority of jobholders in the U.S. Since then, millions of women have suffered a big reversal, with nearly 3 million American women leaving the workforce, mainly due to child care demands. When women leave the workforce, they lose much more than just their annual salary; the cost of this decision follows them for life. After taking into account the potential wage growth and lost retirement savings over time, a woman who leaves the workforce loses up to four times their annual salary per year.
Much of the discussion surrounding workplace flexibility especially during the pandemic has been around working remotely when job duties allow, non-standard start and end times, and extended FMLA. While these are all policies that help, they are not the key to supporting women in the workforce. Women need access to affordable quality child care to have the peace of mind required to focus on their careers. Whether working from home or in the office or on the go! Employers need to recognize that child care is not just a family issue, it’s a business issue. We need a digital convergence that connects all stakeholders (like healthcare) – including public subsidy and employer sponsored programs – conveniently available in real time so we can provide a solution that’s good for everyone, not just for the segment of the market that can afford it.
Antonia Luna: I agree with Alessandra. Working moms typically had the “second shift” or “double shift”, taking care of the family after a full day of work. When schools closed, women found themselves having to work a “double-double”. Many of the moms had to choose between showing up at front-line jobs or caring for and educating their children. But it’s not just the children, some women care for aging parents too. Policies such as flexible work schedules and hybrid remote options are important to consider, depending on the job of course. Also, shifting the mindset from time spent in the office to assessing workers’ performance on their delivery and achievements. Providing unconscious bias training can also help create the awareness needed at all levels to close the gender gap.
3. In 2019, more than 180 CEOs signed an open letter opposing state efforts to restrict reproductive rights in America. As of this May, more than 500 such restrictions have been introduced in the U.S. so far in 2021. What role should female leaders play in helping their C-suite navigate the grey areas of this highly divisive issue?
Alessandra Lezama: Personal values are the real pivot of the controversy surrounding reproductive rights in America. While we all have a right to our credence, the prevailing truth is that reproductive rights affect a woman’s body, and this is not subject to be controlled by the government or a foreign party. Women’s leadership is key in magnifying our voice and garnering support from men on women’s right to decide over their own bodies indistinctively from personal beliefs or values.
Nupur Bhushan: This question is a tough one for me primarily because I am not based in the U.S. From afar, this seems more of a political issue than a gender equality issue. That said, many gender challenges are sensitive and need to be navigated with open dialogue with the C-suite. A combination of employee engagement data, open conversations that enable personal experiences and story-telling, feedback from ERGs, external best practices, education, awareness and actual demographic data with trends on hiring, promotions, and turnover can be very powerful tools in getting the C-suite engaged. We’ve navigated pronouns, common bathrooms, and parental leave policies successfully in many cases. Of course, we haven’t always succeeded either, but the key is not to give up!
4. The racial justice movement brought to the forefront some of the systemic barriers that have also plagued the workplace. The concept of a concrete ceiling points to the factors preventing women of color from advancing at work. In your experience and/or opinion, how can companies be more mindful of the hurdles that women of color face, differently from their colleagues?
Antonia Luna: The concept of a concrete ceiling is such an important visual. With a glass ceiling you can see the possibility, but can’t get to it. You can’t see through concrete, so you don’t even get to see the possibility. In my opinion, we need to have an honest and open dialogue about gender, race and ethnicity, biases and micro-aggressions. We need to be intentional about becoming allies for women of color, advocating for them behind closed doors ensuring they are valued for their efforts, and speaking up when we hear micro-aggressions in the workplace.
MyMu Lu: This question underscores the importance of intersectionality. Though a woman of color, what I experience also can’t be generalized to all women of color. But I can share that as an Asian immigrant woman from a traditional Chinese family, these dimensions of my identity do impact my experience at work. (I was taught that women don’t need to be that successful, younger siblings shouldn’t speak up, and subordinates never question authority. Yet the workplace demands that I be confident but not controlling, work harder to prove that I do have the potential, stay on my toes to make sure I don’t give anyone an excuse to believe my success was derived from anything other than my achievements. All of this takes a mental toll and can lead to burnout.)
There are a couple of realities we need to acknowledge. First, the American workplace is often characterized by white and masculine standards of professionalism and qualifications. From superficial things like attire or hairstyle—I once had a colleague who was told she needed to wear more blazers and cut her hair short in order to look more professional and like a leader. Then there are arbitrary things like how leaders must act and work. You’ve likely heard that certain people (men) have executive presence and probably gravitated towards them too. But what are we weighing when say that? Are we truly considering their contributions or making an assessment based on societal stereotypes that have been planted in our heads? Do we let the collaborative nature of women unfairly peg them as lacking control or command? Women of color, in particular, must work twice as hard to fit the mold and disprove myths about their qualifications. I think companies can be more mindful of who they glorify and what they personify as leadership qualities so that women and women of color do not have to exert extra energy to fit the mold. If collaboration and giving everyone a voice is a positive trait, reinforce that at every level. Challenging the traditional “look and feel” of a leader will help us be more objective about performance and potential.
Second, the lack of representation makes it difficult for women of color to feel like they belong. Not seeing people like them (and this applies to any group), can deter women from even entering the field—many male-dominated industries can attest to how difficult it can be to recruit women and retain them. Lack of diversity and representation also reinforces unfair stereotypes of who is qualified to do certain roles. If we’re accustomed to female executive assistants, are we likely to think a male could not do that job as well—is that fair for males or females? I know many of us have heard, “I don’t really see her in that role…” Are those assessments objectives or an unconscious bias? Are we creating barriers to entry if we compare a candidate to a pool that doesn’t include their identity in the first place? Does the lack of women of color in leadership make them less qualified? I believe companies can be more intentional about hiring and promoting deserving women so that women, and women of color, can see a pathway to success. Have objective measures of success and don’t put the burden on women to prove their potential simply because we haven’t seen them in that role.
These are realities and challenges that any group may face. But a woman of color is fighting gender bias and racial bias—a double whammy. A lack of belonging can lead to a lack of psychological safety and self-doubt. The extra effort women of color must exert causes more mental stress, takes a bigger toll and distracts from what we can gain if women of color can bring their whole selves to work. Being intentional about supporting women of color simply levels the playing field and acknowledges that this group faces additional barriers differently from their peers.
5. Allyship, mentorship, and sponsorship are critical for supporting gender equity. What success have you personally or your company experienced in these areas?
Nupur Bhushan: Personally, when I moved to Australia, I really struggled with no network or women of color that I could seek for support in my initial years. Since then, I have been determined to help and support women of color, specifically from Indian sub-continent, if I can. Over the past 4-5 years, I’ve taken on at least 1 if not 2 mentees every year. I believe I have helped influence some career and personal decisions through these experiences but more importantly I learned a lot more about myself and from each of the amazing women I’ve had the privilege to speak with.
ResMed delved in trying out mentoring and coaching in multiple ways such as encouraging each C-suite member to take on 2 mentees as a part of their OKRs; tribally pairing mentors/mentees in a particular function with a diverse set of mentors from alternate areas of specializing has been an amazing opportunity for two-way learning.
Alessandra Lezama: In my experience, men have played an important role in providing me with a platform to have a voice and more importantly to have their ear. While it’s true, and much is said about how important it is for women to help other women in the workforce, in order to achieve true gender equality, we need men on board! Recognizing that men and women in the workplace can both be extremely successful while having completely different perspectives, work styles, etc. must be exemplified by men promoting and sponsoring more women purposefully.
Thanks to our amazing moderator, esteemed panelists, passionate sponsors, engaged participants, and powerhouse team, for showing up, for sharing, and for continuing to build community around getting equity right. We are honored to present quality programs like this to continue taking you from what is to what is possible.
Question: How would you rate your organization on closing the gender gap in the workplace?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, People
What role should female leaders play in helping their C-suite navigate the issue of state efforts to restrict reproductive rights in America?
What are some workplace policies or practices that companies should enact to support women and accelerate progress in closing the gender gap in the workforce?
These are just two of the questions tackled by participants in our recent panel discussion, HERstory: A Conversation With Executive Women About Gender Equality. As I listened to the responses from the panelists, I was struck how women executives are uniquely suited to navigate the nuances of the 21st century workplace.
Collectively, these women bring over 110 years of experience, hold degrees from Howard University School of Law, UCLA, Goa Institute of Management (Sattari, India), Ma Christina Del Escorial (Madrid, Spain), and California State University, and impact nearly 92,000 employees across the globe. More importantly, the panelists have firsthand experience of what it’s like to not be a part of the dominate group in the workplace. They’ve juggled child rearing as working moms and broken the deep cultural expectations about the role of women at work and at home.
These are executives who have sharpened their leadership skills in the face of microaggression, gaslighting, unconscious bias, and sexism, making them exceptionally well suited to lead the diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) challenges at the highest levels of business. The research clearly shows not only that the business case for DEIB remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time.
It was an honor to provide a platform for these exceptional women to share and a joy to watch them shine. If you didn’t get a chance to see the panel discussion, we’ve included a link to watch the replay here. I encourage you to watch it and share it with your team. Workplaces that work for women, work for everyone.
Question: What are some specific ways your organization is closing the gender gap and supporting women in the workplace?
Watch the replay of HERstory: A Conversation With Executive Women About Gender Equality:
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
Following the murder of George Floyd last May, a tragedy that touched off months of protests and civil unrest, a credit union CEO near Minneapolis found himself in a place similar to thousands of corporate leaders. He knew he wanted to reach out to employees in a personal, companywide email letting everyone know he took this seriously and that the credit union was looking at its own diversity practices to determine what additional measures could be taken.
But as he sat down to write, he recalls, “there was a level of anxiety for me about the right words to pick. Am I going to offend someone? Am I pushing my own agenda? How is this going to land on people? How are they going to absorb it?”
In the end, he found the words, sent the email, and prepared himself for the fallout. Within hours, he picked up a voicemail message from a White, male manager who expressed anger that the CEO would weigh in on the subject. “We don’t need to be lectured to about race at work. We’re here to do a job and not walk on eggshells because we might hurt someone’s feelings. People are getting overly sensitive, and we need leaders who stay strong and focused.”
The CEO wondered if he’d gone too far. Maybe the manager was right. Maybe opening up on the subject of diversity was a slippery slope that would bring up more problems than he was prepared to lead his team through.
Later that afternoon, a Black, female employee showed up at the CEO’s office and asked to speak with him. Immediately, she told him how grateful she was to read his email. Through tears and tissues, she expressed how much she needed to know that the CEO understood that what was happening outside of the credit union impacted her ability to focus on work. Employees needed space to process what was happening in the community, not to bury their feelings and ignore the pain.
The CEO told me later that he was pleased that he’d stepped out of his comfort zone and used his platform to speak out on the subject. Since sending his companywide email, he’s invited employees to work on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, incorporated unconscious bias curricula into their management training, and invited speakers to inspire and motivate the credit union to do more to meet the needs of its diverse employees and members.
Creating a diverse and inclusive workforce can be challenging, time-consuming—and, let’s face it—deeply uncomfortable for many CEOs. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. CEOs I’ve spoken to about their journey since penning their own employee emails on the subject acknowledged the difficulty, particularly given how politicized the conversation around inclusion has become.
But they also affirmed that CEOs, statistically majority White and male, can’t wait to start talking about race and gender until they feel comfortable—because they likely won’t. It’s not easy to step out of your comfort zone. But, leaders who excel are those who create space for conversations that enable their organizational cultures to evolve and become more resilient in the process.
Question: Where do you need to step out of your comfort zone to help your culture evolve and excel?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
As of late April 2021, there were over 9 million open jobs in the U.S., a record high. Employers across the country are scrambling for ways to fill their open requisitions, just as research shows that a stunning 52% of workers plan to change jobs in 2021. While it might sound contradictory, the U.S. is experiencing higher unemployment numbers and a labor shortage with half of the current workforce on the hunt for another job.
When businesses don’t have enough employees, they’re forced to turn away jobs or shorten the hours they are open. While the pandemic had a big impact on the labor market, the workforce gap isn’t a new problem. In October of 2019, the U.S. had more open jobs than unemployed individuals. Keeping our economy growing requires that we fill these jobs. We need to remove conventional barriers that prevent people from entering the workforce and staying employed. Drawing on the latest trends in workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion, here are two areas employers can focus on to help close the workforce gap.
Childcare support for working parents. When the Covid-19 pandemic removed the safety net of schooling and employee-paid childcare for working families, the damage was cataclysmic. Without a stable form of childcare as part of the business infrastructure, the world stopped working for the vast majority of employed parents. One-third of the U.S. workforce, or an estimated 50 million workers, had a child under 14 in their household in April 2020. In a follow-up survey, 26% of women who became unemployed during the pandemic said it was due to a lack of childcare. Without affordable and accessible childcare, working mothers are forced to make an unfair choice, and the economy cannot fully recover.
The sooner employers treat childcare with the same seriousness as healthcare and other aspects of their business infrastructure, the faster employees can get back to full force. Childcare subsidies, flexible work schedules, remote work, and on-site or local childcare spaces are options that will not only help re-build the workforce, but provide a “sticky” benefit that fosters retention. It’s time to think creatively about ways to build the childcare infrastructure needed to support working parents.
Give second chance workers a second chance. The stigma against hiring ex-offenders is lifting. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that 1 in 3 Americans has a criminal background. Moreover, greater than 600,000 former inmates are returning to society every year. Ex-offenders face incredible hurdles to gaining employment, the foundation of re-building a way to contribute to society after serving their sentence. According to SHRM’s Executive Director, Wendi Safstrom, the crimes that follow ex-offenders can remain with them for the rest of their lives, regardless of what they were convicted for. “People should not be penalized for mistakes made when they were decades younger,” says Safstrom.
Second-chance hiring improves efforts to create a more equitable and inclusive workforce. But we have made finding gainful employment after prison entirely too hard as attested to by Teresa Hodge in her TEDx Talk after serving a 70-month federal prison sentence for a white-collar, non-violent, first-time offense. Take the first step to giving second chance workers a second chance by visiting www.GettingTalentBacktoWork.org and pledge to consider all qualified candidates during your interview process. Review the toolkit to learn about best practices in second chance hiring, and consider finding a local nonprofit to partner with in your second chance hiring journey.
Convincing your organization to make significant changes to its recruiting and retention strategy might be the hardest part of improving your efforts to address your labor shortage. The initiatives above are not simple to implement. But, closing the workforce gap requires widening conventional practices and walking the talk on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Question: How can you use diversity, equity and inclusion to close the workforce gap?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
Two weeks ago, I met a girlfriend for a glass of wine at a beautiful restaurant in San Diego during Happy Hour. After spending more than twelve months in a state of suspended animation—limiting my social interactions to fewer than a dozen people—I felt free.
Since March of 2020, my husband and I have limited our gatherings to a small cohort of family and friends. We ran our companies from our home offices and dedicated ourselves to making sure that our teams and clients were as safe, sound, and sane as possible through a year+ of uncertainty.
Two weeks after getting my second Covid-19 vaccination, I was ready to log out of Zoom and return to non-essential activities. Back at the restaurant, my girlfriend and I caught up on our personal and professional lives, shared pictures saved on our phones, and talked about resuming travel plans. We limited ourselves to one glass of wine each, gave each other a hug, and said our goodbyes. Just two white women in designer clothes climbing back into our beautiful cars rushed to us by uniformed valet drivers.
I chose a scenic route for the 30-minute drive home and pulled up a podcast to enjoy during the trip. It was an interview with Harvard Professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annette Gordon-Reed about her new book, On Juneteenth. I learned not only had Annette, four years my senior, grown up in Texas like me, but that her family had lived in Conroe, the same town that I did. Annette had even attended Anderson Elementary School, the same school where I was a student.
Much of what Annette shared brought back fond memories of my own childhood. Yet, much of what she shared was shocking. Montgomery County, of which Conroe is the county seat, was known for its cruel treatment of Black people. This was news to me. A 25-year old Black man had been burned at the stake in front of the Montgomery County courthouse in 1922. I had never heard about this before. Annette and her mother entered Sadler Clinic—the same one where my mother took me for checkups— from a separate door where they sat in a small waiting room for Blacks. Was I too absorbed in the Highlights for Children magazines to notice? When I went to the Crighton Theatre to watch The Aristocats, Annette may have been there too. If so, I learned that she would have been in the balcony with the other Black patrons.
The interview with Professor Gordon-Reed jarred me. I had spent much of the past several months learning about racial equity and injustice in America. After George Floyd’s murder, I published an Open Letter commitment to educate myself about the disproportionate socio-economic harm imposed on Black communities and other communities of color, to use my platform to push progress forward on inclusion and diversity, and to partner with organizations to move from protest to policy to redress racial injustice.
I made good on that commitment by reading books, watching films, writing posts and hosting wildly successful webinars on the subject. I’ve completed the pre-requisites, but all of that knowledge can fade away as soon as the world reopens. I can meet a girlfriend for a drink and be lulled back into a world that has been carefully designed to cater to my convenience —the path of willful ignorance. Or, I can sign up for the next level to close the divide. I’m committed to the latter. This week, I’m leveling up to partner with practitioners to take action, and design and deliver content to build workplaces that are inclusive for all.
Question: What are you doing to remain committed to your DEI goals as the world reopens?
Driven by the premise that excellence is the result of aligning people, purpose and performance, Center for Executive Excellence facilitates training in leading self, leading teams and leading organizations. To learn more, subscribe to receive CEE News!
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion
So many superlatives come to mind to describe last week’s event, DEI In Action: A Panel Discussion with Practitioners and Leaders. With nearly 3,000 registrants, it was the largest quarterly DEI panel discussion we’ve hosted. The registrants ranged from some of the most recognizable organizations in the world (like FedEx, NASA, The Nature Conservancy and Nissan) to nonprofits dedicated to positively impacting their communities (like After-School All-Stars, Campus Election Engagement Project, and Leader Dogs for the Blind). Over 125 questions were posted in the Q&A, and the chat log was 45 pages long!
The panelists were a Who’s Who of tenured practitioners in the DEI space. Arthur Benjamin, our moderator, currently serves as the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for the digital marketing firm, Tinuiti. As well as leading Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging for Sunrun, Markus Archord is a course facilitator for the eCornell University Diversity & Inclusion Certificate Program and served a combined 21 years in the U.S Navy / Navy Reserve. In her role as the Chief Culture, Diversity and Inclusion Officer at Vizient, Monica Davy is responsible for guiding the organization’s overarching strategy, program implementation and ongoing support for culture and D&I initiatives. Not only is Sarah Hassaine graduating this month with her eMBA from the Wharton School, UPenn, but she also serves as the Global Director of Diversity at ResMed where she focuses on building a global strategy, expanding their ERGs and working closely with their leaders across all verticals. Armond Kinsey is the Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer at Atlantic Health System, where he’s charged with leading a transformational agenda to infuse diversity and inclusion throughout the organization with 17,000+ team members across 400+ sites of care. Dr. Samira Salem serves as the Vice President, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion for CUNA, the Credit Union National Association, a Madison, WI-based trade association for both state- and federally chartered credit unions that provides lobbying, regulatory advocacy, professional development, and professional services management for their over 120 million combined members.
Here are a few key excerpts from this thought-provoking and powerful discussion.
Where does diversity, equity, and inclusion belong in the organizational structure today? Should DEI be the relegated to the HR Department?
Markus Archord: Every organization will approach this work differently, but my preference is to be within the HR organization. Because my priority at Sunrun is looking at people, processes, and systems within the organization to make sure that our own house is in order before we focus on areas like supplier diversity, marketing, and public policy.
Dr. Samira Salem: Regardless of where DEI is in the org chart, access is key.
Monica Davy: Agreed! Sometimes we get hung up on boxes, but leadership and commitment are critical. Access without leadership and commitment will get you nowhere.
How important do you think it is to have leadership buy-in to make DEI a success within an organization?
Monica Davy: You can’t get anywhere without it. Most of the time, we start by working on leadership commitment from the top, but the work often gets harder when you hit the mid-management level, or the frozen middle, as we call it. That’s where the rubber meets the road, because the middle managers are responsible for the day-to-day implementation.
Dr. Samira Salem: Hallelujah! We certainly want to support DEI to be a strategic goal, but we also need to understand and be responsive to the goals of middle managers so that we can help them use DEI to meet them where they’re at and not approach DEI as a top-down mandate.
Monica Davy: I would like to add that not only do you want the C-Suite to have buy-in through something like a commitment statement, but I say we take it a step further and have C-Suite leaders own and be held accountable for certain aspects of your diversity program.
What are two areas that you are focused on in your 2021 Diversity & Inclusion Strategy, and what actions are you taking to move the needle in your organization or industry?
Armond Kinsey: What Monica just shared is a great segue into one of my top priorities, accountability. This year at Atlantic Health System, we tied DEI performance goals to compensation and bonus. The two goals we’re focusing on for 2021 is increasing diversity among our administrative leadership and also for our physician leadership. One of my pet peeves is to hear that there isn’t enough diverse talent to fill these roles. I say, “Give me few minutes. I can help you find it.” You have to be intentional about how and where you look. For example, we’re starting to partner with HBCUs which is a source that has been historically untapped. In addition to looking at who we’re bringing in the door, we’re also looking at development opportunities to promote more equitable internal mobility. Another area we’re focusing on is our communication modalities. One of the things that COVID exposed for us is our inability to communicate in broad languages. Our website is being translated into multiple languages, and we’re certifying interpreters within our organization to improve accessibility.
Sarah Hassaine: I’m focusing on awareness first. What do diversity and inclusion mean across all verticals? Whether its policies, benefits, effective management skills, community outreach, etc. Once we focus on what leading inclusively looks like across the business, then we focus on how we are sourcing our talent. I share Armond’s pet peeve about hiring diverse talent. Implementing these goals requires us to partner with internal groups like ERGs and mosaic groups to build pride and leverage their network to support recruiting. Your best asset is your talent!
As a practitioner, how important is creating psychological safety and trust in your DEI work?
Dr. Samira Salem: We know that diverse teams outperform homogenous teams every day of the week (see The Blinding Effects of Bias in the Workplace). The caveat is that these teams need psychological safety and trust to allow these folks to take risks, be innovative, to bring their authentic selves to work, and not feel that they’re going to be punished for going out on a limb or making a mistake. Part of the work of DEI is transforming a culture where a dominant group is prioritized. Even if you’re not a member of the dominant group, it’s critical that everyone experiences psychological safety and trust.
Armond Kinsey: The term psychological safety is big, and we can’t assume that we’ll get there overnight. A lot of companies rushed out messaging on DEI last year following the murder of George Floyd. This year, their employees are holding them accountable to those words. To make good on those statements requires a certain amount of vulnerability. If you survey your employees, for example, they need to see their fingerprint in your resulting DEI strategy. If someone can see their input in how you built out your strategy, they’re more inclined to trust that this is going to be in their best interests which will help build trust and psychological safety.
Monica Davy: After the murder of George Floyd, a lot of organizations rushed to have listening sessions to create a safe space for people to come and process what they were feeling and going through. I don’t know that many organization are still doing that. I think it’s critical for organizations to have those listening sessions all the time. In my previous position with the National Credit Union Association, we were having conversations like these every month for about four years prior to George Floyd’s murder. So, when he was murdered, we addressed it as a natural part of our process. People knew that they could come, they could share the raw emotion of what they were feeling, they could be transparent, and they could also screw up and make mistakes in the language they were using and learn. My hope is that people make these sessions an ongoing part of their practices. We already know that there will continue to be issues that people will need to process in safe spaces.
Sarah Hassaine: I’ve been holding listening sessions like after the Atlantic shooting, before the Chauvin verdict came out, after the verdict came out, and I plan to hold one as a memorial of the year after George Floyd’s murder. I keep seeing increased participation where people come for support, to share, or just listen. There’s a spectrum of how people are feeling. The challenge that we see now is that there is repeat trauma for a lot of communities because we keep seeing repeat events and images. We can’t cover the pain we’re all carrying at work. I love the Deloitte data on covering. So, not only are we covering, but we’re also carrying this pain at work. At the end of the day, psychological safety is not getting enough attention, and it needs to be incorporated in our training starting from onboarding and repeated.
What areas of DEI do you believe we are not giving enough attention to, and how do you think CEOs and DEI leaders should respond to these gaps?
Monica Davy: We give too much attention sometimes to representational diversity. We start off trying to get diversity into our organizations. But, if you’re not focusing on making sure you have an inclusive culture, that diversity is going to walk right out of the door. Your attrition rate is going to stay high and you’re going to create a revolving door of talent. I like to say that if you don’t intentionally include, you unintentionally exclude. But, our brains are wired to make quick, exclusive, decisions to save us time and energy. So, you have to slow yourself down and be intentional about inclusion. My title at Vizient is Chief Culture, Diversity & Inclusion Officer. I love the fact that they had the foresight to put those things together. I could do a lot of work on D&I, but if we’re not working on our culture – which starts with your leadership living and modeling your values – you’re not going to make any progress. I say make sure that inclusion is one of the values included in your culture, starting from the top.
Sarah Hassaine: Pay more attention to the competitive advantage of your DEI strategy. This starts with widening the definition of diversity to include areas such as neurodiversity, veterans, and the disabled communities. There is an enormous pool of untapped talent that currently is not included in the workforce, but could significantly contribute to your competitive advantage.
What are the dangers around a performative approach to DEI?
Monica Davy: I’m assuming you mean those “check-the-box” exercises to make it look like we’re committed. I think that the best laid programs or strategies can fall into that category as well. You can’t boil the ocean. You have to be patient and understand that you have to have a holistic approach. And that approach, I believe, begins with asking people to start with their “why”. DEI professionals do it themselves, and you need to do it with your leadership team. If you don’t start there, it’s all going to be performative.
Sarah Hassaine: I so agree with what Monica said. I always invite people who are in my trainings to take a week to observe themselves. Think about what inclusion means to you and be aware of your own biases. When we do this, we’re making DEI not about the organization, but now, it’s personal. I do worry that it is not sustainable. It will be interesting to see how companies fare 10 to 15 years from now in this area. There’s currently a 71% increase in D&I professionals who are helping to strategize, but it’s also predicted that 50% of us will fail.
Armond Kinsey: We often marry diversity and inclusion together. While they’re complementary, they’re two different arms of the work. Getting the diverse talent is one job, but, to Monica’s point, keeping them is a job in itself. There’s a statistic that finds that within the first 30 to 60 days of talent walking in your door, they’re deciding if they’re going to stay. It costs 1.5 times a person’s salary to replace them. So, outside of whether they love their job, consider how well you are connecting them to your internal community. I would also caution people to stop trying to find people who “fit” the organization. Look for people who align with your organization. No one wants to fit into a box. So, instead of hiring for culture fit, think of hiring for culture add.
Dr. Samira Salem: For this work to be sustainable, it has to be transformational rather than transactional. If we simply put forward the business case, that can lead to a more transactional approach. That’s where having patience, picking yourself back up when you’ve made mistakes, having both the leadership commitment and tie-in to your individual “why” will give you the north star to do the deep work that needs to happen. This work is not linear. It’s built based on all of the areas brought up by this amazing group of practitioners. But, if we want to see the humanity and reap and true value, we have to be committed to doing the work.
Thanks to our esteemed panelists, our passionate attendees, and powerhouse team, for showing up, for sharing, and for continuing to build community around getting DEI right. We are honored to present quality programs like this to continue taking you from what is to what is possible.
Question: Is your organization getting traction with its DEI strategy?
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