Dear Corner Office

I'm excited to continue this conversation, and to continue talking about data, how to utilize it to retain and develop underrepresented employees. And in the coming in the previous two years, organizations, especially after the murder of George Floyd, have come forward to say, hey, we want to, we want to have more black employees, right? But what does that look like? What does that look like for employers to do this work? So before we get started, before I get started, I should say, I want to ask you a question Which of the following theories on workplace issues faced by women? Have you heard of the broken wrong, glass step, bamboo, ceiling, glass ceiling, concrete ceiling, glass cliff, and you can you can select as many as possible, I really want us to understand there are nuances. And there are differences in all of these different topics that I've dropped in here, as as options, and how they play differently depending on the intersectionality of gender, and race, specifically, gender and race, specifically, somebody who used to be an executive in HR in automotive industry, she talked about the glass ceiling, she was like, we often talk about breaking the glass ceiling. But understand when you break the glass ceiling, people get injured and hurt, you're going to get cut, it's going to be bloody, to break the glass ceiling, I want you to think about that, remember, is that ladder going up to the glass ceiling, and you're trying to break it? And there are other women below you, right? And so when you break it, that glass is gonna fall and the closer you are to that crack in that hole of that opening in the glass, you're more likely to get hurt. And so I want you to think about psychologically not psychological what are the things are how are women, black people injured, when and and Hispanics injuries and natives injured when we're breaking the glass ceiling, because that's truly shows what what what can happen to you in a workplace is so physically threatened psychological, Lee, drained, mentally drained, there are a lot of things that go on when you break the glass ceiling. So some of us are going into workplaces. And we may be encountering the person that broke the glass ceiling in that facility. And you may like Oh, they're so rude or, or OR XY and Z, when in your engagements with them, but understand, they may be really carrying a cast emotionally inside from having broken the glass ceiling. And so there are so many things that happens to for the people that are closest to that glass ceiling that break it. The Broken rung is something that lean in organization has defined when it comes to the ladder going up to the glass ceiling. And that as you look at from black women to Latinas to Indigenous women, we don't have an equal measure of rungs, we're missing rungs steps to go up the ladder. And so that's what they call a broken rung. In the 90s, a organization called Women in Technology international did a study just in tech organizations about why they weren't seeing women get promoted. And it wasn't called the glass ceiling that was already a term that was already being used. It was called a glass step, how to use it it was it was elusive, they couldn't see it or find it to get the get get a promotion and organization. When we say the bamboo ceiling is often referring to people of Asian descent, and bamboo being something that you see in Asian countries or on the continent of Asia. And so they call that the bamboo ceiling. When we just talked about the glass ceiling, which is very popular the concrete ceiling I actually did a virtual summit a few years ago called the concrete ceiling when I refer to the concrete ceiling as additional barriers or how difficult it really is for black people to be promoted within the workplace. How how tough it is and as a civil engineer concrete when I speak a conference I'm even talking about rebar in it. So you're trying, you're trying to push you can't push through, you can't take anything really hard, you might have to jackhammer, like, how much more work and now is it isn't glasses falling on is huge chunks of rocks. So you're talking about bruises and concussions, and broken bones and so many other things that as black people may endure, and trying to progress throughout an organization. But today, I'm going to focus on the glass cliff. It is it I see a lot of you know it. And so I'm happy to see so many of you are familiar with it. I don't know if you've read about it recently, if it was a webinar I did a couple of months ago about it. But I'm happy to talk about it. And so let's get into the glass cliff. And really, why I want to I am talking about it is because over the last few couple years, organizations have said they want to increase the number of black employees they have, how they approach recruitment, maybe not retention, which is why we focus a lot on retention today. I've seen so many of you, and congratulations on your promotions and new jobs, you have worked tremendous, tremendously to get there. And I don't want you any whatsoever to take this as me diluting or degrading the work you've done. I want to talk about the glass cliff, because I want you to be a success in this role. And those that are to come. The glass cliff is specifically when organizations typically hire more women and underrepresented people into management roles during times of distress. So the great recession, the onset of a pandemic, poor performance, or not as high. What do I say generating revenue, high turnover, so the great resignation or the great reset? And so organizations then see an increase of hiring of women and underrepresented people. And you're like, and you're like, Why? Why does this happen? White men, like oh, no, I'm not taking that job, not in these conditions, you can forget this. And so they're looking for candidates, and I always tell people, it's not that they can't find us is that they don't bother to go look for us. And so white men won't take on these roles. So they turn to previously less qualified people, right? To take on these roles in some of the most trying times, economically, socially, or even just for their organization. And so what does that lead to, and what and what happens to companies. And so companies will interview qualified White candidates, but they refuse to take the role where women and underrepresented people will be like, well, this could be my only opportunity to be an executive. I want you to think about that, in reference to what I said about the glass cliff, about the glass door, I mean, glass door, the glass, glass step, the concrete ceiling, the bamboo ceiling, we know there are so many barriers, and those barriers are removed, or a lot of them are removed for this opportunity. And so we know, inherently this may be the only time or what are next to the last time that we will have this opportunity for this type of role. And so we take it according to research, 30 63% of people believe that women should take over a company a crisis. Why do we have to take over something in crisis? Why can't we take it over when it's easy to do? So that makes you think you're saying we're under qualified when it's not in crisis, but we're qualified when it is in crisis. And also, while female CEOs are 45% more likely than men to be dismissed and fired. So women doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure when you look at race, it probably gets higher because we haven't had that many we've only had like three black women CEOs are generally more likely in Fortune 500 We've only had three black women see you are more likely to get fired by 45%. But you want us to take over Okay, and so now you can see where the setup starts right? You want us in crisis but you Probably gonna fire us anyway. So why do companies really create the glass cliff? And I found it to be four main reasons, reasons. 

They want it to look like, Oh, we're progressive. We're for millennials and Gen Z years, we hear you. They want to scapegoat. They want to be able to blame somebody, probably somebody would have had the least amount of blowback from or be held accountable. Right? It's like, oh, well, that person she hurt her? Or are those people underrepresented people, they probably didn't have the skill set anyway. So they're looking for a scapegoat for as to why things don't go? Well. Again, they don't have that many options for high of white men. And so they're they turn to women, and black, indigenous and other people of color. And then lastly, good PR, we're gonna say, we have this person, as, as an executive is going to make us look like we got to run it through all of the channels internationally, so they can see how progressive we are. Yeah, let's, let's see. So why is understanding the glass cliff. So important? Number one, black women, Latinos, indigenous women, matter. inclusive cultures, organizations with inclusive cultures exists in very low numbers for underrepresented women. And there are high levels of performative hiring going on right now. And so just being aware of this is important. But more importantly, not more importantly, you matters the most important if so does your career. And so if you've spent decades, if you like, well, I've only been in industry 12 years, well, you also did 12 years of secondary education, you did at least four or five years of undergraduate education. So you're invested in this at this point, decades and years. So it's really important to understand that you are way more invested in your career this than the amount of time you spent at an employer or with a with a job. So the impact of the glass cliff to our organization is really huge. So and the impact of women is even bigger, so you will end up exiting the company, women, maybe that's you, leaving the field, being demoted, being fired, your self worth declines, depression, increased stress, that these are some of the impacts of the glass cliff, on individuals, people. And sometimes we tie ourselves work to a job title to a lifestyle. And we really shouldn't. But that is so American to do that. And I think we need to reframe that if we can't, on a societal basis at one time, but on an individual basis. And so really think about what the impact has on an individual basis. But it's also important to understand how to spot a glass cliff, you can do things as analyzing the job description, and the interview, interviewing process. And what I mean by that job description, they have everything in there, except for resources that they're going to provide. So the job description has all of these things they want you to do. They threw in everything, not just everything, including the kitchen sink, they threw everything in your house, the neighbor's house, across the street, and a neighbor house behind you, like they want you to do all of these things. And his role is like Holub does not want to roll these are 12. Like that's, that's so many red flags right there. During the interview process, you're asking them why the role is open? How did they handle any any performance issues with a person that was previously in the role? Why did the person what happened to the person that was previously in the role? How's the company current currently performing? The person that was previously in the role? what resources did they have access to? Right? You want to dig in, because you're now in an executive level role? And it's important to understand these things, and what are the outcomes and goals they're looking for you to achieve in that role? They may be hidden in hon. And that is when you know, you know what, even from the job description and you probably have gotten something a headhunter may have reached out to you about about the role. But then you're looking at employee turnover rate, and that's something you can also ask about during the interview. So If you miss the stars interview, she was talking about how Nordstrom had a turnover rate of 221%. You know, the first thing I would have said, if I was new to that organizations like, you got the wrong one on the right day, but I appreciate you let me know we can we can stop this interview. Because this is not for me, I, the amount of work and stress test you may have to come in to resolve and reduce that turnover, especially as a new employee may not be the best opportunity for me. Then on top of that company performance are your stocks down? So we recently been talking about all the tech stocks are down and like should you buy should you sell should you know, what should you do? Or should you sit on it? And so you want to look at overall company performance, also comparing that to where they were last year, three years ago, five years ago, and what are other competitors doing in the market. So if they're publicly traded, if they're not, you can also look at what's going on in the market, through certain industry organizations and so forth, in that particular region, or a part of the country or country, or even on that continent. So do some study on the company's performance and also ask some questions. They look for negative publicity about the organization. Have they been sued? How recently have seen what were they sued for? What was the outcomes? Can you get any information on, on who were the litigants and really try to dig into any lawsuits or any negative publicity that's going on and negative. Can be this. I have a friend she bought a Tesla. And I all I keep seeing every day on tick tock is a story about why Tesla's nobody should buy a Tesla. And I was like, Ooh, and so even a tick tock like how many tic TOCs? Are they like they're out there? How many issues is the company seeing with their products or services. And so you really want to study those as well and understand that. And so I could get into some specific examples. But I know we're running low on time. But some common and and if you're an employer side, and you're like, Oh, we're diversifying our management team, I need you to take these things at heart to making sure it's equitable. And that doesn't mean you you're giving that same exact resources to the employee data. So a woman or underrepresented person, they may need additional resources. And he's like, Well, we gave them the same thing as the previous person, they may need a different and more resources. And so it's really an important seek to understand that. So to us, it may be limited resources to you. But that's what we gave everybody else in the conversation we were having with Christina Smith, she said, where we're seeing success with underrepresented employees to progress in their career, they're getting a sponsor, they're getting a mentor, they're getting a coach. And I think community is also part of that. So you have a community of peers to go to who understand barriers you're going to encounter, as a mother as a caregiver, as as being married or being a part of the LGBTQ AI community that others can't relate to, because they're they're not they don't identify with the these aspects of your person. And I think community is another aspect and not necessarily the erg. But there are communities that really focus on intersectionality of gender, at least gender and race that can be done. KPIs and metrics for your goal are not realistic, and making sure they're realistic, and they're measurable, right. And you can look at the previous KPIs, but we didn't really have any for John then why are you giving something to Keisha? Why are you giving some to sue? Why are you giving some to Jamal or Tyrone, and it's really important to center that and ask those questions. If the these are equitable, and then lastly, compensation is less than their predecessor. If a well that, you know, they don't have that experience, but you want them to come in and do the same job. The compensation, especially in an in economic turmoil, the compensation probably need to be higher, because they are going to need additional help. And it may impact them mentally physically. In Other ways more, and so they may end up needing to talk to their therapist more,

they may need to go to the gym more. And so they may need different things that they're going to have to spend their money personal money on, and invest in on an individual basis. So keep that in mind to where as an employer as to what ways you're addressing the glass cliff and not having it be a glass plus, it is very, very easy to fail people. It takes effort, it takes resources, it takes planning to help people succeed, right, and you want to measure this. And so if you're an employer, the first thing you want to do is look at what you had from the predecessor to what you're offering to the new person coming into the role. And resources compensation, KPIs, goals, and KPIs being key performance indicators, Key Performance Indicator, if they're measurable, what support do they have as far as a staff and a team and keep it all of those things? There? And so you need to be able to and also be looking at your people analytics to understand your hiring rate, your turnover rate? Are you sending them how, how is their performance being reviewed? Is their performance being reviewed equitably? In their performance? Are there things that are actionable? And what I mean by actionable, you know, go talk to Tom haven't run the numbers, and have him help you understand the financial statements, the balance sheet, I see that you're struggling with that. So you need to understand 123 on a balance sheet for the finances for your division, others other none actual things. You really suck at your financial statements get better at it? Which financial statements therefore, in what way? Do I suck at it, those aren't actionable things. And so you want to make sure you're providing actionable changes for the employee to take, because that is another huge barrier we're seeing when it comes to employers. When it comes to employers, understanding your your gaps that you already have with existing employees, and really analyzing your people analytics, on a regular basis is really important. So if you haven't looked at your attrition rate, if you haven't looked at your employee engagement surveys, and dissected them by gender, and race, it's really important to do that. So you understand who's leaving the organization on their own, who's going out on performance improvement plans. going back and looking at how managers may have reviewed individuals, it's really important to understand how your processes, procedures and practices are executed in the organization. And if they're executed on an equitable basis. And oftentimes, we aren't doing that we may be doing gender. And so we're looking at men and women, both for white women, to black women, to Latinos, to Indigenous women to multiracial, or even ambiguous people, looking women are all treated differently. And then mothers adding mothers and their caregivers, it takes a whole other turn, and really digging in deep into that data to understand what's going on in your organization. If this is something your organization hasn't done yet, needs assistance with doing positive hire is here to help you with that. So if this is something you're looking to get help with you just or maybe you just want to have a discussion more about what that can look like. Definitely, definitely schedule a time with me so we can discuss how positive hire can support you. But before we wrap up here, some I want organizations to really understand the impact of the glass cliff. Overall. It's it reduces employee engagement among underrepresented employees, because when we see what somebody who looks like us is going through in your organization, we're less engaged there when things go public, it is bad PR for your organization, it becomes more difficult for you to attract recruit diverse or underrepresented talent period. Google has a really big push to diversify the talent. Prior to the pandemic. A lot of Gen Xers would not apply for jobs at Google. The PR was bad Millennials, Gen Z ers are okay. But there are a lot of Gen Xers that would not that we wouldn't even talk about I had I have had several conversations about not wanting to work at Google. Then there are Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims and lawsuits, they increase. And then you're you're spending more money on your diversity recruitment efforts. So overall, you're because you have this glass cliff. For underrepresented employees, it costs you more money because you did not treat your employees equitably. And so what are things organizations can do? Perform employee engagement surveys, use people analytics with a DI lens, provide training to your C suite and middle managers who identify as white, they're not underrepresented. And your C suite is committed to equitable changes around learning and development and performance reviews. But more importantly, organizations need to identify why and commit resources to address a resolve their diversity, equity inclusion issues, their culture issues within an organization, and you have to be committed. One last thing I would like to add is leadership that identifies that white need to go on a journey themselves to really understand what racism is, oftentimes, they hire a chief diversity officer, they'll handle it. Because you don't understand your own biases, and what racism and sexism looks like. In real life, it is imperative that you do that work on one of our previous previous speakers and guests. And partners for positive hire is Lan hurdle. And she has a program called On the matter of work race, where she only works with white people to better understand racism. And so it's really important to understand it on an individual level. So you better understand it, how your policies, practices and procedures within your organization play out. But how does it play out also in your individual lives. And then I want to say, these are the three biggest barriers to progress when it comes to the glass cliff. Often people prefer male leaders, and qualities typically associated with men. And so it's very, very difficult for underrepresented people, especially women to progress into management, the lack of diversity and boards and other leadership roles in the organization, where they bring in different perspectives and understand the power of diversifying their management teams are not there. And then lastly, the organization has proof certain types of people fail in leadership roles, it is easy to fail people, it takes intense effort and resources to help someone succeed. If you have children, if you've ever had to train a puppy to go to the bathroom, it takes effort. And it takes work and being committed. And so organizations really need commit this. So I am going to stop there it is this is the glass cliff, it is very much a real thing. Unfortunately, we're going to see so many women encounter this in the next year or two. But I want to make sure organizations understand what it is, how to deal with it, and to be very intentional about changing it in their organization because it can absolutely be changed and utilizing data for it is another big step. Yes, if you have any questions, I will take questions. Also, we're going to drop in the survey about
my session. And then we will send out a survey for the entire virtual summit to get your feedback on everything like the time of day, the day of the week, so we can really understand how best to serve you I see some familiar faces or names in the audience. So I'm glad you can join us today or for any of the sessions because we do this not for us. We do these these things for you. We do them for your organization's we do them for your children and your grandchildren to really change what the workplace looks like today for the future. But we have to start in this moment in this time, in order for the future, workplace to look different. So the future of work starts now. It doesn't start and so all of those people that are talking about their future work. And prior to 2020 we this is the future. It was accelerated. And so we are here now and we are here We're making that happen so everybody if you haven't connected with me on LinkedIn you can connect with me at Michele C Heyward

Unlike diversity, inclusion initiatives lack sufficient metrics to support funding, renewal, and expansion. The use of science-based storytelling at the workplace provides new tools for measuring and improving the trust and empathy among coworkers, key to inclusion.

We will look at key physiologic findings, tech-based measurement tools, and strategic use of storytelling.

In this session, Melissa Ambers and I discuss over and under communications impact in the workplace. With recent layoffs, communication is one of the most talked-about topics. We share how to simplify communication while providing actionable steps you can take to improve communication in your organization.

Co-host, Melissa Ambers, is an extraordinarily covert guru as a project manager with over twenty years of experience. She and her team offer tools and expert advice to produce top-quality work.

This is the dear corner office podcast or workplace leaders learn why Black Latinx and indigenous women, Lee, and how to get them back. I'm your host Michele Heyward do to me, you probably haven't heard her heard of this, heard me describe this before. But when it comes to racism and diversity, equity inclusion inside an organization, it often gets pushed off as an HR issue. But what happens in organizations is really, it's cascaded throughout the organization, nobody's really siloed. And I go back to an instance in time a few years ago, I think, is around 2018 2017, where our story broke about the racism black employees were encountering in a General Motors plant in Ohio, to the point where in an employee had hung up a noose in in the facility, and black employees ended up quitting from working in that facility and start telling how they weren't being treated. And so people that Odessa EEOC suit that is that is racism. But imagine if you are a customer who bought a GMC vehicle from that particular facility, and you're continuously taking that vehicle, to the dealership, what we often forget is what people go through in their workday in an organization impacts the customer impacts the service they receive, impacts the product they receive. So now if you the product is defective, because people were dealing with racism, or they were involved in a racist act, they weren't doing their job to the best of their ability. And then it ended the day as a, as a purchaser, as a customer, as an end user, you ended up with a vehicle that had problems. And so that impacts your time and your money that you have to spend at a dealer to get it rectified, but had the organization, right rectified it within that facility, would you still then be at the dealer dealing with those issues. And so oftentimes, we relegate the issues within the workplace to HR, but it's really far it cascades throughout the organization. So today I want to talk about a new standard that came out last year, it was issued from an organization some of you may know called ISO, our ISO to international organization of standardization. And they creep ated ISO 30415 Because of I say 3415 people's here 3415. But it's 30415. I'm familiar with ISO as an engineer, because you often see it in manufacturing facilities, you see it in it, and other areas, but not really in human resources, and especially not for diversity and inclusion. And what they really focus on was really trying to help organization have go through and have their entire facilities, not just HR, right, really reviewed, analyze and study. And to come through and decide what training their organ, their employees need to go through, document everything. And you're in a repeated cycle of improvement because you're going through process improvement. And so one of the speakers earlier talked about, or a couple of them really talked about change management, and how it is very difficult. And people say, Oh, we tried that. Well, how long did you try? Who tried it? What were your metrics? Did you What did you change, right? And so this particular ISO standard, helps organizations really scope out diversity and inclusion by focusing on important issues. But issues but also issues that are often eliminated and ignored, like I said, when it comes to vehicle outputs, or products in the in product that organizations provide to customers. And so it's really a framework that can be customized for your particular organization. And so, when we look at ISO being around in nearly what 200 km countries, not companies, countries, and you know, from 14,000 to 9001, and so forth. It really helps standardize what an organization should be doing to bring in diversity and inclusion because we have turnover within our chief diversity officers. We have turnovers in management had turnover in employees. But what happens to that experience. So trying to capsulate it into a document with has history in it has your processes and it is really what I saw as trying to do. And some of that, Oh, of course it would come out in 2001. Actually, I still worked on this particular standard for 10 years. It actually started out at Sherm Society of Human Resource managers, and Sherm for whatever reason decided they didn't want to focus on it and it and they were able to team that worked on it, were able to get it into ISO. And they worked literally for 10 years, really only about two core people kept it moving for 10 years for it to finally launch in May of 2021. And so it wasn't because of the murder of George Floyd. But there were actual HR human resources professionals that literally spent a good portion of 10 years to make this happen. And so I'm gonna dig into a bit more of this DNI framework. Because it goes beyond HR, it looks at governance within your organization, it looks at supply chain and product delivery. So it has four key parts, human resources, governance, supply chain, and product delivery. And oftentimes, we're like, why do we Why did these areas matter? When you're thinking about governance, one of the things that I found the most troubling and the most difficult when it comes to bring in diversity, equity inclusion in an organization is C suite isn't bought into it. They haven't worked on themselves. And they don't understand what the isms are, and what a gender ideal workplace looks like, right? They're like, oh, we'll hire a chief diversity officer and give them some money. And I end up a small team, and they can go figure it out. But when you look at ISO, and they're looking at governance, they want individual responsibilities for diversity and inclusion and organization. They also want organizational leadership to be focused on it, it can't just be mid management, because that won't stick. And they also understand from that perspective, individual responsibility cascaded throughout the organization, because it has to not only be from the top down, but from the bottom up, or midway through. And so it really looks at everything. But also the other key part is accountability. And it really focuses on bringing in accountability and organization. And that's why I really love this framework, because that's a key part that has been missing is the accountability when it comes to getting dei done in an organization who's accountable other than the CTO, the chief diversity officer when it doesn't work. And I think it's really important to understand that it also in the governance part, we're looking at your practices, policies and procedures. Are they equitable? Are they only written in follow up for certain people and other people, I have unwritten rules that they don't have that they go by? And, and how do you document and how did you change that in that organization. So the governance part to me is really different than what we've seen in other frameworks. Supply chain is, is you know, and it focuses on supplier diversity, for the most part, I still think that's really important because you are focused on small businesses, like somebody mentioned, 75% of Americans work for small and midsize businesses, or they work for themselves, and understanding how to bring in diverse suppliers, how to engage with them, how to pay them for that net, 60. Net 90 may not be the best thing for them, it's really important to understand. So supply chain is there. And it is important for supplier diversity, but it's not as smooth as some of the other things. Then the other part that was really, really interesting about it, they went through human resources, but it looked at that entire employee lifecycle, and forgot into the fact that we look at promoting women. And we look at who's on the board. So women at executive level and women on boards, right? But what happens when we're looking at data around succession planning, and data around promotion? And so what what does that really look like? And oftentimes, there's not a lot set or looked at, or they don't look at the data at a intersectional lens, right? They're like, Oh, we recruited all of these diverse talent, which is a whole other discussion that go on I've had About that Freezy
what does it look like throughout your organization? And who's getting promoted? And who's not getting promoted? Who is getting pushed out of the organization? Right? How are they getting pushed out? It is notoriously it is notorious, or well known that black people often are put on pips performance improvement plans, to push them out to organizations. And so one thing we're focused on here at positive hire is utilizing intersectionality. Right? Not just looking at gender, but looking at race, looking at parenting, or caregiving, looking at education, social economic status, and access to executive to sponsors to mentors, to see how that is impacting people's careers, and an income and pay and access as well, because it truly makes a difference. And so I like how ISO sets it up. To go into organizations asked for this information, you're going to get more more most of the information from HR, but you can still go to supply diversity, right? You still want to have sit downs with ERG leaders, and other employees in the organization. But even outside of that, you're looking and asking people, What are their individual responsibilities to the organization, what you may find is, some people, I have no accountability, I just come here and do my job. And it's really understanding more of, of course, the culture within the organization. And I think it's a great opportunity to do that. Under supply diverse supply chain, along with supplier diversity, we talk about procurement, and organizational stakeholders. And oftentimes we think about external stakeholders, stakeholders, right? But what about organizational stakeholders? How do they fit in? And how are they impacted with diversity and inclusion? We're like, well, I'm, I've talked about employees, are you talking about vendors? And yes, we are. But we don't often really understand how diversity equity inclusion impacts them, whether it's negative and or positive, and what does it look like for those people in organizations that are stakeholders. And so I really encourage you to really take a deeper view as to what it can be, because I so is really pulling in on different parts of companies that we haven't looked at before. And then next, we're looking at product delivery. And we will return talking to Christina, and we were talking to Lori, and they were both talking about learning and development and inclusive instruction design. We have to also think about that in product development and product delivery. Because if we, and I get and I push back on this often, and I do it with my own development team, and that you're developing something with you in mind, I need you to develop things with various users in mind. What does that look like? How can we make a product or service easiest and most beneficial to these types of people, people who are disabled people who don't have access to high speed internet like me, when I'm at home in rural South Carolina, how are they able to deliver a product. And so as we said, in the pandemic, and students were sent home to work virtually the assumption that Oh, they'll just jump on the internet. Rural areas do not have high speed internet. And so now you're sending three kids home on a on computers and tablets. And you're pulling in all of this, the slower internet, it's not high speed, I'm just say a slower trying to do their schoolwork. And so you're going to get a lower result because you didn't develop software, with people with slower internet in mind, based on assumption they had high speed. And so you really, with with this ISO 30415 standard is having companies really dissect and understand what is that like for people overall that they serve? And not just and really how dei or DNI as it's called diversity inclusion for ISO specifically, what does that look like? And I don't think we've gotten that. So I'm gonna pause here to see if anybody else is Has anybody else read or heard of the ISO 30415 standard? And I would love to know your thoughts because I think it's an interesting approach to go through and Started doing assessments with inside of your organization, positive hire I went through to get certified. And because I really like, these core parts of it, looking at your product delivery, and how di plays a part in that, also how it you're looking at your governance, and you're looking at responsibilities and accountability. Because when you do that assessment, you're documenting who is responsible. So if it's Sarah, in, in production management, if it's Chad in finance, whoever it is, they're literally listed as being responsible for this part of the DNI plan. And that generally isn't what happens, we'll see more of the diversity, diversity and inclusion team, or the chief diversity officer being held responsible when things don't go right, or when they do. And I think this puts a different spin on it. Now. Is it easy to do you don't like anything, the best part of I think, of this particular standard, is the Plan, Do Check Act. So you're consistently in this process of movement is not as though a consultant comes in and does it. And so Okay, here, this is what we recommend. But you're consistently going through the process to improve how many of you have ever gone to work ever hired a trainer, and you worked out one time and you're done, you're fit, it doesn't work like that is consistently changing your diet, doing different exercises, you may be on medication, so you have to figure out which exercises are are better for you. You may be over 40 or perimenopause or, or in menopause. And you may find different exercises that work for you and your 30s don't work for you now, right? So it's really important that with the ISO or with whichever process you're using, you have a plan, Do Check Act, because you want to consistently go through change management. But it takes time and it takes effort. And it takes you being consistent. And that is really what I like the best about this particular process is it is not a one and done type of process. If this is something you're interested in, definitely, definitely let me know, we can definitely set up a call with you. We want to know where your organization is, in, in, in really doing dei throughout the organization. Are you looking at your data analytics? How are you looking at your data analytics, we get a lot of people that are still focused on gender, and not understanding the different levels of intersectionality. Even age, right now we saw a lot of boomers leave and older Gen Xers retire at the beginning of the pandemic and even now, saying, You know what, I don't want to I'm not going to stay for this. I'm gonna go ahead and leave I went through 2008 recession, I'm done. I'm stressed out enough, it really start dissecting it understanding what are the experiences of the people in your organization? Because that's truly truly important. But more importantly, how can you help those people be successful? How can you help them feel as though they belong in the organization? And how do you do it in a way by giving them the tools and access to training and access to people so that they feel as though they belong? And that they can be a success in that organization? No matter where there's not not a promotion? Maybe they just want the company to pay for I don't know pet insurance has gotten really popular. Maybe they're looking for paid maternity leave. And you really haven't pushed that before I thought about what is what does it look like in your organization, or even priced it out and find that it's actually beneficial to offer it in your organization. A friend of mine here in South Carolina, he was working at a college and we're just telling Gen Xers he was working with a lot of millennials and they were decide, you know, got married and decide to have their first children they found out they weren't getting paid maternity leave, they quit. This is pre pandemic. So trying to find instructors now but these young women soon to be mothers quit when they found out the organization. This particular college did not offer paid maternity leave. They was like That's ridiculous. Well, my friend and his spouse found out they didn't offer anything at all for paternity leave, they ended up adopting and, and the husband ended up utilizing all of his PTO the wife is was working for a fortune 10 company If they didn't offer paid maternity leave, or any
paternity support at all, and it was so surprising, even heard, the wife's manager was so surprised. And so these are the things that I saw can help organizations go through and assess, because as their employees are going through experiences, whether you're sharing an exit interviews or not managers are sharing why their employees have left, and the things that really matter, because they lost good employees that brought so much to the organization that may be difficult to replace. All right. So this everybody, if you have thoughts and questions, go ahead, my calendar link is in there. Love to have a conversation with you about where your organization is, whatever sector inclusion, what work you do with people analytics on an intersectionality lens, to really help you retain that talent and grow the talent that you currently have in your organization and finding gaps of maybe where you need to recruit talent. Now. What I want to say in the chat if we could drop in the survey for my talk, I know I'm wrapping up a little bit earlier than I told my team but I want to get you out of here in time. But I want to say thank you for joining us joining us for day one. Don't forget to rate review and subscribe to the podcast. It helps me grow. Visit positive hire.co That's positive hire dot c o

This is the dear corner office podcast or workplace leaders learn why Black Latinx and indigenous women, Lee, and how to get them back. I'm your host, Michele Heyward you are because we have Florrie coming up. And as you're doing the poll, I want to start introducing you to Florrie as well. And so Florrie is the founder of a fantastic nonprofit. And one of the things I love about the work she's doing not only because it's in June is around gender equity, but it's around employers getting them ready for that work. And so Florrie is the founder and CEO of gender ideal is a nonprofit that uses data to shift the norms of workplace gender equity, and inclusion standards. Gender ideal equips businesses with improvement roadmaps and performance insights to advance their gender equity practices. Florrie was a senior international economist at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation in DC. She holds an MA in international relations from John Hopkins, Sai s, and a Bachelors of Arts from Colgate University. She currently lives in Brooklyn, with her husband and two children. I want to say Brooklyn in a different way. So I'm going to get him in the poll. I'm going to share the results Wyatt while we get Laurie to Florida to join us, so I get 40. And Laurie, hi. Hi. So everybody, before Florida starts, you can see the numbers, right? skill base hiring, that's where you're you're focused with skill base hire for it's like, somebody's look good. Some things I might have some questions about, she can tell what she needs to help some some of your organization's right now. responses. I do this, so the speakers understand who's in the audience where you currently are. And sometimes we may meet and or from some of the questions and sometimes maybe the speaker may dig in deeper from some of the responses. So we do this to get so you get the most out of these conversations. So Florida, thank you so much for being here. How are you doing?

Hi, good morning, or good afternoon. Now, I'm doing great. And I'm so excited to be having this conversation with you. I've been listening to all the speakers this morning. And there's so much rich, good content and conversation coming out of this. So yeah, I'm thrilled to be here.

Yes. So let's take a step back before we get into gender ideal. What were you doing in your career? What nonprofit equity work were you doing out in the world? Because you've done some stuff. So I will let you tell us how you got started.

Yep, yep. Yeah. So I started my career actually working in international development. And I was so lucky to do this. Because I was I was young, and I got to travel the world and go to far flung interesting places. But I wasn't there as a tourist I was there meeting with businesses and looking at the development and the economic impacts of those projects. And one of the things I was always struck by that I always kind of carried with me. You know, I would ask a whole bunch of questions about the impact of of these different companies and projects. And but invariably, I'd get to a question, I'd say, Well, do you offer paid maternity leave? And it didn't matter where I was in the world? If I was in a rack, if I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo? The answer was always, of course, we offer paid maternity leave, we offer six months paid or a year paid. And, of course, because we support families, like it was kind of almost crazy that I would even ask the question was how it was received? And I would always think, well, if I would say back to them, you know, in the United States, we don't have any such thing as paid family, or even paid maternity leave as a standard benefit. 

And they've kind of looked at me like, well, that's crazy. So anyways, I and I bring up that anecdote because I always stuck with me. And I always thought, gosh, yeah, we are really far behind on some of these very basic issues around, you know, equity and supporting women and families in the workplace. And so I did that for a bunch of years. And then I spent about a decade at the organization behind the B Corp movement. It's a nonprofit called B Lab. And there we were working with, again, businesses thinking about their impact their sustainability. And one of the things that I learned while I was at the lab was what we called Impact management where we were encouraging all companies not just So you know, be corpse, but regular businesses to use our tools to learn about where they have positive impact, and then to think about where there was opportunity to get better. And what was really fascinating in that role is it like 1000s of companies used our tools as a diagnostic. And then they would say, we'd say, Great. So now you have your you've got your, your baseline, how are you going to become more impact oriented? And what they really wanted from us was, will tell me how I'm doing relative to other companies like mine, and tell me based on where I am, what are those things I should be doing to improve? And I really carried that with me when I left the lab and when I launched gender ideal. So anyways, that's a little bit of anecdote or background on how I got to where I am today.

Well, I love that you started there, because my next question is, Okay, where did gender ideal come from? Because you're already doing this great work? Where did the concept and idea come from? And where are you today? What gender ideal? Yeah.

So when I left the lab, I was totally burned out. And you know, during the my time there, I got married, I had two young kids, a partner that also, you know, works really hard. And, and so when I left, I spent a lot of time thinking like, Why? Why did this feel so hard? Right? Because, in theory, right, I have all of the supports and structures, I am a proven, privileged white lady. And so like, what is going on that is not making this work. And I spent a lot of time reflecting on that, and having conversations and found myself kind of like increasingly researching this topic of gender in the workplace. And what I kind of distilled it down to is that there are like these three, more than three, but I distilled it into three things that are problematic in helping to advance gender equity in the workplace. 

And so those things are number one, when we talk about gender at work, we tend to like lean on these two metrics, women in senior leadership, women on corporate boards as like the the metrics that tell the whole story. And those are not two metrics to tell a whole story, they tell a little bit of a story for a certain subgroup of people who happen to reach, you know, the upper echelons of business, either by being in a C suite or being on a corporate board. So I, but and yeah, they're the most frequently referenced data points. And so I felt like, gosh, you can't really make progress if you don't even have the data and information to have a nuanced, more comprehensive conversation about the topic. So that was number one. Number two, the data that we have is also just data from large public companies. So these are, you know, big, you know, fortune 500 companies that are disclosing who's on their corporate board, who's in their C suite, maybe they're telling a little bit about a maternity leave policy or something like that. But like, it kind of ends there. And it's just that segment of the business community that even is sharing that data. And the reality is, you know, three fourths of the workforce does not work for large corporate companies, they work for small, medium sized businesses, they work for themselves, they work for nonprofits, they work for government. So again, we just don't even have the data to really know what it is that's happening, and then and how to how to how to how to advance it. And then the last thing, and this I had, I really kind of reflected on from my time at the lab was, that's what I feel like we have a great clear vision for what an ideal workplace should look like from a gender perspective. And when I talked to companies about work that they were doing on gender equity and inclusion, I kind of kept hearing the same thing over and over again, which is, yeah, we know, we need to do better on this topic. So you don't, you don't have to sell up people on this idea. But what they would say is, we hired a consultant, and we did an anti bias training, or we did this, we did that it felt really good at the time. But we don't know where this work is going. 

We don't know how we continue to advance and we don't know what success is ultimately going to look like. And so it was kind of those three factors that kind of drove me to say, Okay, well, what if we created that framework for what an ideal organization looks like? How they are scaffolding the organization from a structural perspective, from the policies and the processes and the benefits, you know, but really take a big picture lens. And then again, kind of leaning on my experience below. I thought, okay, so why don't we create that framework, and then encourage companies plug your data and provide that organizational level information. And once you've provided it to us, we'll share it back with you, but back to you with performance insights. So like with benchmarks against other companies that are the same size, they're in the same geography that are in the same industry to really cut To inspire that, like, you know, business is ultimately about competition, right and competitive advantage. So if you are underperforming, if you're lagging, wow, well, that's the information, listen to insights, you need to know that you have to catch up. And then also, those in everyone want to be best in class, that's how you're going to recruit talent. That's how you're gonna retain talent, which I know is the focus that we're talking about today. And so use that data to make sure you're the company in your industry that everyone wants to come and work for, and that they're going to stick around for a long time. So feeding into kind of that dimension is is kind of like core to how we engage and work with companies.

I love it. I love how you said, What is the ideal workplace like gender? I? Oh, no, it makes sense. It was so simple. It was right there.
Well, and it came from conversations with other women, women who don't have kids, women who are starting their careers are at the end of their careers. And they would all say, what if jet? You know what if workplaces did this, it it comes from this place of imagination and envisioning what we all want. And so then the question is, well, how do we get there?

Now, during this, you were talking about organizations looking at their data, and only looking at the top? Let's talk more about data? Because well, I'm an engineer, right? Tell us how using organizational level data, can it can advance gender equity in the workplace? Yeah,
yeah. So there are a couple examples I want to share. The the first two are kind of like macro level examples, right. And and there's, I make that distinction, because we do kind of like engaged with businesses through two lenses, right? One is like, based on where your company is, these are the specific things that your company should focus on improving in the next 12 months. But then the other thing is, we do aggregate the data, and we try to kind of pull out those trends to say broadly, here are ways that businesses in general can improve and can can outperform. So the first one I want to, and I'm looking down, because I'm kind of looking at this data in front of me, this was from a pilot that we ran in 2021, where we had about 30, companies take our assessment. And then we aggregated that data. 

And we looked at the trends. And I think it's really relevant to this conversation today. What we found is that 58% of the companies in our sample had already taken steps to eliminate or reduce gender bias through the recruitment process. So these were companies that were doing things like writing job descriptions, and then having either a software tool or a third party, evaluate the language being used to ensure that it wasn't, you know, you're not talking about a rockstar programmer, because data shows that is language that appeals to men, but you're using kind of unbiased language and your job descriptions. These are companies that are being explicit in advance about, you know, bringing in diverse slate of candidates, and then tracking that kind of information through the recruitment process, which I think was one of the questions in your earlier survey. And so again, we found a majority of businesses, and I should say these are, you know, these tended to be small, medium sized businesses that participated, but that they have already kind of begun to take that action as it relates to who they're hiring, who they're bringing into the organization. That's great news. That tells us, okay, this is becoming a norm, right. It's, it's a majority, it's common, it's pretty well defined. But where we found tremendous opportunity for improvement was around. Okay, great. Once you've made those hires, once you brought that diverse community of employees into your organization, what are you doing to make sure that you are reviewing them in an unbiased way, which, again, data shows, performance reviews and promotions, are where bias really surfaces, particularly around gender, but also around, you know, around race. And what we found from our sample poll was only 16% of organizations had had really done anything to start the process of determining how to run an unbiased performance review process, right. And so there, there are things that companies can can do. 

There's data that shows Okay, train managers on how to evaluate and recognize their own bias, right. I think, you know, let's assume positive intent. So bias doesn't necessarily have to come from explicit ill intention. Bias is kind of there in the subconscious. But if we can help people to understand oh my gosh, that's my bias showing up. Oh, that's my you know, that's my bias. As to want to advance people who went to the same college as me, I need to question that I need to check that, you know, but to train people on on that is one way that you can integrate or eliminate, I should say, bias into your performance review process. The second is doing 360 reviews, and having kind of a set a set list of questions that have been designed in a way to eliminate bias and having a group of both peers. And and and supervisors use that 360 review to evaluate people's another great way to have an unbiased performance review process. But again, you know, these are things that we know, and that are relatively simple, they do require some investment, but like, these are things we know that companies can do to keep that talent let's they've got them in the door. 

And very few companies are doing that. And so that is and actually the second dimension of that, as well was then we asked Do you track the data that shows? So let me back up for a second. The Lehman McKinsey survey which comes out every year, and they survey you know, 1000s of companies across corporate America, on their agenda practices, lean in identify identified back in 2019, that they call it the broken rung phenomenon, right, which is, hey, look, we've got women graduating at higher rates from college than men are. And at hot with higher rates from advanced graduate programs, higher rates than men, they're coming into the workforce at the same level with the same training. And at that very first promotion level, right, one year, two years out, where you start to promote people into management or supervisory roles. Women are drastically under promoted relative to men. So hey, it's actually relatively simple for an organization that, well, we don't want to be doing that. Why is this happening? What's the first thing you do to figure out if it's happening, you track the data, you track promotion rates, and you break it down by gender, and you should also be breaking it down by race. Um, fewer than that 16% of companies was doing that. So that's, again, a really basic example of ways that companies can put little systems in place to even identify where are these issues happening? Are they persisting internally to then understand, how do we fix that problem? So I use that, again, as an example of great, let's celebrate the fact that companies are being really thoughtful about their recruitment process. But now, we really need to elevate the fact that you've got to be doing a lot more about around retention and promotion, to to address these, you know, generational and systemic issues. Um, you know, another another example, I guess, I would, I would cite, again, more at the macro level, but it's just like progress on maternity leave. 

So I mentioned that anecdote at the beginning of, you know, being in countries that we like to call least developed countries that are socially far more progressive actually, than ours. You know, and I'll reflect I have a 10 year old and when I, when he was born, I got a 12 week paid maternity leave. Turns out two of those weeks actually, were my annual vacation. I didn't quite know that at the time. But nonetheless, I celebrated, because very few other people in my cohort, even got 12 weeks of paid maternity leave. Well, you know, what the great news is, this issue has actually gotten a lot of attention. And the data now shows that as a country, we've made a lot of progress in the last 10 years. So I think now it's 30 to 40% of American workers do have access to paid leave. But but there's a big but because the majority of hourly, part time, lower income jobs do not provide these kinds of core benefits. And so even though it's great that we've made progress, a lot of that progress has has kind of lived in like corporate America, white collar professional jobs. And so we need to keep pushing the business community. And there is a very compelling business case around talent, retention and recruitment. And the data is there, that these are norms that need to shift for all of America's workers. But then the very last thing that I would say is on that micro level, going back to that individual company that's like plugged their data in and, and is now thinking, Well, what do I do with this data on these insights, we generate custom sets of recommended actions for each company based on where they are. So it's not just a one size fits all solution. It's very much based on where you are today, here are four things that your company should do in the next 12 months. And then once the company has implemented those four things, we say, okay, great, come on back. And now we're gonna, you know, little, you know, bread crumbs. Now do these next four things within the next 12 months, but you can rest assured that you are making progress towards long term goal.

I love that I love how you bought in unbiased performance reviews, I was reading a report from Textio. And they were saying how the reviews for black women, especially black employees, was non actionable. And I was talking to women in the community. I said, Well, what did your manager say in there your review? And he was like, Was it anything you could take? You could take action on it was like no, I said, you need to go schedule upfront with your manager, and ask very specific questions as to what you need to be doing specifically to get a promotion. If he or she, they don't provide that, you need to find switch roles. So you get a better more supportive manager unforce, because this manager is, is not the one that's going to help you get a promotion, or you don't have to leave the organization. And so sometimes we have to have those conversations. And note, first, we have to know to have the conversations, what to say in the conversations to gauge whether or not who we're working for is in support of us, because we like Well, everybody gets performance, you know, Todd might have been told to go take this training class, perform at this level on a project to get a promotion, you're like, Well, you know, just keep working hard. You're doing a good job. That's not actionable.

No, and it's not, I mean, your advice is the right advice for that individual. But for us to ultimately, as a society make collective progress, we've got to change at the system's level, right? Because people need to everyone needs to know how to understand their own bias, and then how to eliminate it and to recognize and accept that we are imperfect. But in pursuit of being better. These are things that we all need to collectively change. Because otherwise it becomes like really whimsical and subjective. It's just Oh, I'm asking Joe, my boss, No, you shouldn't have to ask Joe. Joe should have gotten the training. And Joe and everyone else at Joe's level should already be very cognizant, familiar and able to talk about it, right.

I think the work is going to end up being done in several directions, I wish we could wait for it to be done through the orcs. And right now, the pay gap, especially black women has widened in 12 months. And so you have we have to do some additional work, at least to keep the negative the reverse widening of the pay gap for black women. So unfortunately, yeah, I absolutely agree organizations need to do the work. But unfortunately, they're not going to do it fast enough. Otherwise, we'll be working two full years to get the same pay as a white man earns in one. So yeah. So before I have another question, before we wrap up this, this always goes by way quicker. Can you share some examples of what this looks like in practice? We what this you know, like gender equity in the workplace really can really look like can you give an example of that?

Yeah. So I mean, again, it's not one size fits all the specifics for an individual company would would look really different. But it could be anything from you know, a company doing a pay equity assessment, right? I mean, you talked about the pay gap? Well, guess what, only about 40% of companies in the United States have conducted a pay gap, a pay equity assessment. And this is an area where just in the last couple of years, there's been a lot of advancement and progress in the tools that you can use and the data that's available so that even if you're a small company, there's a lot of good data that that would help you compare and know. Yes, we're paying up to an industry norm. And we've we don't have those inconsistencies internally. So you know, that could be one example of one and then you know, another and I think this is an area where there's still a lot of opportunity for kind of additional research and validation from researchers and academics. But, you know, one area that's really important is creating that inclusive culture. And so something that that we've been doing a lot of work actually with a great kind of partner organization called habitus Incorporated, but is in how to run inclusive meetings. So, you know, you get everyone in a room where you get them all online, how do you make sure that everyone's voice is heard, that it's not just dominant voices, that everyone feels like they can contribute equally. And again, there are some really interesting software developments on that front. But then there also are just some great kind of trainings that you can do with a group so that everyone is synched up and aligned on like, okay, cool. This is how we're gonna do meetings, so that we are creating a sense of inclusion for all of our calls. Colleagues, those are just kind of two specific examples of the kinds of recommendations that would come out of our assessment. But I would say like, like, really importantly, we kind of see our tool as like the diagnostic as like the first step, as companies are digging into this work. And then, really importantly, some of the folks that Christina and others who you've had on this call, like, once it's been acknowledged, oh, we need to pull apart our recruitment process, or, you know, we need to really invest in our mentorship and sponsorship programs, then you bring those experts in, and they're gonna help do the implementation and really make sure that it's done right. It's all of the right details. But you're, you're kind of prioritizing the right set of logical next steps and low hanging fruit based on your company's performance.
Thank you, thank you so much for that this has been really great. And before we get out of here, how can people connect with you?
Yeah, um, so our website is gender dash ideal.org. You can go there, you can email me directly, I'm sorry, at gender ideal, sorry, gender dash ideal.org. And I also just want to put a quick last plug in, we also have a new website we've just launched called Protect reproductive health, that org, which has a set of resources for businesses, to take the right steps to protect the reproductive health rights for all of their employees, especially their low low income employees. And so I'd encourage folks to check that out as well. But happy to stay in touch.
I appreciate it. And I'll drop in the link for the reproductive health rights. I'm pretty sure I have it from when we did LinkedIn, a couple a month or two ago, I forget with my throat. out, I'll be sure to share that in the chat for those of you that are interested. Florrie, thank you so much for coming in and sharing your expertise, the results that you've gotten through your organization, gender ideal, and I hope you have a great day.

Thank you. Thanks, Michelle. Take care everyone. Bye.

Bye. So everybody, be sure you go into the chat and click on the link to give your feedback on flurries talk doing phenomenal work at Tinder ideal. What does it look like to have a gender? The ideal gender equity workplace equitable workplace, what does that look like? I think sometimes we do so much work in this space. What does it really look like? I don't know, maybe I should. Talking to kids really brings about what it can look like we always go back for those of you that were around or watch the reruns of the Cosby Show. Many of us have that concept of what a diverse workplace will look like what the ideal workplace will look like, but it's still missing some people right? Who was maybe feel was divergent, right? Because he had he was dyslexic, or he had dyslexia. I don't ever try to tell somebody that they are they are the condition. But what does that really look like? So I'm really interested in dreaming about and really focusing what does that look like? And writing that down and talking to other people? Like how do they find how do they describe a gender ideal workplace? Don't forget to rate review and subscribe to the podcast. It helps me grow. Visit positive hire.co That's positive hire dot c o

Nonprofits white leadership must move from torchbearer of white supremacy to its pallbearer. The current nonprofit structure is a white savior. Yet they don't support the BIPOC communities they are supposed to serve.

Too often the people doing the actual work are BIPOC but the white leadership hold the power.

What steps should be taken to dismantle white supremacy in nonprofits?

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Dear corner office. I'm Michele Heyward. And I'm so happy to have you join us today we have a guest that is absolutely phenomenal. She has a different experience level coming through diversity, equity inclusion, and I'm so excited to introduce Luaskya Nonon to you Luaskya, Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much, Michele for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.

So, one thing I love about your experience is that you come from the legal side as an in house attorney for organizations when it comes to diversity, equity inclusion. And can we talk a bit about before we get into that, like, where did you grow up? So we kind of understand why how did you get over to legal?

This, it's, I appreciate the opportunity. Michelle, my upbringing is, is interesting in that I'm a first-generation American, I'm a black Latina. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, my parents is first language is Spanish. And so I grew up in a Spanish speaking household. And I have, having grown up in New York have had experiences with many different cultures and many different types of people. And growing up, I just knew that I wanted to do something in support of the people that I lived with and worked with. And so I decided to become an attorney initially, because not at all related to the but initially because I wanted to advocate for abused neglected children. And then, in the course of just lived living my life and working and school, I decided that being an in house attorney would afforded me opportunities to work as a volunteer in this space, live a life that I could be comfortable with and pay those law school loans, because those are quite expensive. And so I've been in house at an IT company for over 15 years practicing and I then was able to find my way into Dei.

Wow, I love that mission to help to help others. On the legal side. We often see people do in education, nonprofits, but I absolutely admire that mission to start helping on the legal side. And yes, student loans are massive. Understand, absolutely understand. So you're on the legal side of an organization in house, was there anything particular that had you move over to the diversity equity inclusion part.

Um, there were quite a few things I actually started my my entry into the DEI space before it was the when I was supporting organizations with their affirmative action plans and becoming EEO compliant with with the requirements as a federal contractor. And in that space, I became familiar with the requirements of ensuring Pay Equity, and Diversity representation and diversity hiring and and making sure that the companies that I worked for had programs and policies in place that supported those those missions. And that then move it steered me into get having more of a strategic role, right. The EEO compliance work is strictly about compliance and doing what's required, the minimum required to be all transparent with you be doing the minimum that's required to be compliant. But I wanted to do something that was more strategic, something that was more forward looking at something that was more impactful to the organization as a whole, as well as the employees within that company. And then I worked my way into Dei, right. And the objective for me is to work with companies that believe in the strategic mission of creating inclusive spaces and equitable opportunities for all of their employees. Many companies say that they want to do that, but they don't. their values and their actual initiatives may not align with what they say. And so I try to work and encourage those, those companies that I work with as a as a consultant, but also my employer to put policies and programs in place that align with those values.

And love it. Yes, the metrics of EEO, affirmative action rather, definitely was an entry point for a lot of a lot of people into what we now call dei diversity, equity inclusion, and maybe maybe you have the J for justice or the B for belonging, depending on where you are, and your perspective. it. So I love that loved how you transition over and how much the space has changed in those 15 years that you've been a part of it. So
it has Michelle and I have to say that um, as an attorney starting my my my practice in what's now the AI, I'm very aware that as an attorney, there are certain risks that are presented when you advance DTI initiatives that attorneys often share with their clients their in house clients because the risk of reverse discrimination is a valid one. But it's it's a valid one that's consistent with all the other risks that businesses take when they are running a business, right. And so I think it's important as an attorney, not only to raise that, the risk of reverse discrimination as a risk to your client team, but also to weigh that risk out like you would any other risk in a corporate setting, to help them see that the value in advancing equity and inclusive workspaces, in many cases outweigh the risk. And like any good attorney, you do what you can to advise your client on ways in which to mitigate that risk, right? There are things that you can do to ensure that or rather, maybe not ensure, but to mitigate those risks, to help your client still move forward and advancing equity and inclusion in their workspace. And keeping in mind that there are those possibilities that someone may raise a claim against you. But the benefit, the overall benefit to the organization is by far so worthy of taking that risk.

And you talked about ways that employers can mitigate risks, what are some of their options in risk mitigate.

And so every case is different. But if I were speaking at a very general high level, I always caution clients on making sure that when they set their goals right there, like hiring goals, for an example, to stay away from definitive hiring goal, like numbers, right quotas, right? You don't want those numbers to be seen as a quota, it is better for it to be seen as an aspirational goal. And that comes in the way in which you communicate that to your managers, and how you communicate that to the employees at large. You don't ever want it to be known across your company, that you have a quota to hire five black people and seven women and X number of months or years rather, because then that puts you at risk for higher scrutiny. And if by chance you don't achieve that quota, what's the consequence, right, and so when there's a risk for failing to meet that it raises the bar even more, that they're this may be a problematic number of attainment that makes a third party that may be the person that did not get the job or did not was not hired by your company have a basis upon which to assert a claim against you, right, because if you have this as a well known quota in your company, and you fail to hire the white man that may have otherwise been qualified for the position, but he could argue that he did not get the position because you have this quota. And your managers know that it's a quota. And if they don't meet this quota, then there's gonna be consequences to them. And so they overlooked him. And so you do not want to create a basis for someone to raise a claim against you in that realm. And so what you would want to do after consulting with your attorneys, is to focus on a goal and I realized that this is a nuanced way of looking at things right. But there are ways in which you can identify have aspirational goals for achieving diversity hiring or diversity representation in your organization. What I like to focus on as one way that I think that really addresses this point is to not necessarily focused on the hiring number, but to focus on the candidate pool, to the extent that we're able as as advisors or companies to encourage our, our employers or or clients to ensure that they're expanding the candidate pool to have a diverse representation and have a quote, I'm sorry, I have a goal for that number, right? I want 50% of my my candidate pool to be of diverse dimension, diverse, different diversity dimensions. That's that's a great way to address the ultimate goal of having more representation in your hiring. If you have qualified candidates of diverse dimensions in your candidate pool, you will find a diverse qualified person, right? It just, it's just the numbers, right? So that's one way to do it, making sure that you have a diverse candidate pool. Also, make sure that you're these are the individuals that will be doing the interviews your diversity or panel of interviewers is diverse, right? Bias is in every decision that we make So to the extent that you can have people of different minds and different lived experiences being the decision-makers, then they will bring their whole selves to the process. And it will not be a cookie-cutter type, interview process, and you will be able to achieve your diversity representation goals with a diverse panel. Again, there's training that needs to go along with this as well. So this is just a very high level recommendations, but these are things that companies can consider. I also like to advise clients to have scorecards during the interview process if if your diversity if your diverse interview panel has scorecards within which they are basing the interview. And those scorecards align with the requirements for the jobs that require skills, and I'm not talking the the subjective things, I'm talking about the specific requirements to be successful in a job, and that individual is rated on and the candidate is rated on the that scorecard, you then have tools that you can look to to support your decision, if ever, there's a claim that's asserted against you for vers discrimination. So these are some of the tools that I recommend my clients and my current employer to utilize when they are trying to advance their goals for diversity representation and diversity hiring.

Thank you for that. I have a couple of questions you brought up this scorecard, do you recommend they look for a template or do they create one in-house with some guidance from their legal team,
I absolutely believe that it should be unique to the company. I mean, a template can be a great starting point. But each job should have a specific job description, right. And the job description should be the basis upon which you use to create the scorecard. Now, there may be things in a job description, that there may be additional requirements that are that are that one can identify that supports a candidate that would excel in the role. But I actually, as I'm talking this out, I think that if it's a requirement that would enable someone to be successful in a role, it shouldn't be in a state of job description so that people can say whether or not they have those skills. So I would choose your job description as the basis upon which to base that scorecard. And everyone on the panel should be well versed in what those skills are, as it applies to the role so that they can appropriately measure the candidate that that they're interviewing.
Absolutely, that means actually having hiring managers create a new job description appropriately, as opposed to copy and paste.

Oh, great. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

The other question I have for you, was about creating a diverse panel, interview panel. Have you gotten any pushback for having to take the additional time to create a panel, especially when it's just starting out in an organization?

Michelle, as you well know, in this space, empty? i There's always pushback. I mean, I there's no function that I have, that I have held, there's no role that I have held that has more pushback than in the United States, not even in my legal position. I know we got a lot of pushback and legal but anything you want to do in the AI in an environment where it's never been done before you're gonna get pushed back. And so that's just the norm for this for this practice.

How have you dealt with pushback? What are some things that people that are new to this, or they're trying to get executed in organizations? What are some things that may have worked that may work for them that you've seen work, work in other places?

So for me, at a very high level, when you think about what I think about the pushback that Dr. Practitioners face, how I approach the pushback is just asking the person that I'm talking to the CEO, the executive, or the other leader in the company wanting to understand what their goal and objective is like. So you say you want to have diversity representation within your organization, I am offering you ways in which we can achieve that goal. But you're pushing back on me so how what what else would you advise we do to achieve your goal, right? Because there may be other ways to achieve the goal that I'm not aware of. I mean, I am not the be-all and end-all expert in all things Dei. I do know what I do know when I know it well. But sure there are things that I may not know. So I turn it back to my my leaders who are not certified diversity practitioners, right. And I asked them, so how would you achieve this goal? If you don't want to Do it this way. And then and then ask after a pause. Well, let's talk about why you don't want to do it this way. What is it about this approach that causes you concern? Well, so that we can maybe address their root cause, and and maybe allay any fears or concerns that they have regarding the proposal that I have put forth. But sometimes that you, sometimes you're going to get so much pushback that you just have to let it go and move on to other things. Because this, there's so many, there's so many goals that you want to achieve as a DDI practitioner. And you can't get hung up on every one singular instance in which you're getting pushed back, because you will always get pushed back for many of the things that you offer. And as a leader in this space, your role is to, unfortunately, in some ways, educate people, because they're not willing to educate themselves, or at least give them the opportunity to understand why things are the way they are, and why they need to change and try to get out of the status quo. But then also, you also have to preserve your own mental health and well being right, because like I said, there's there's emotional labor that goes along with this work. And when you constantly got that pushback from your leaders that say they want to do this work, but they're not really supporting the advancement of equity and inclusion in their workplaces, you have to take a step back and just give you do some self-care, because there's no way that you're going to be able to sustain in this space if you don't do that.

Absolutely, thank you for that. It is about progress. And how do you make that progress? Definitely, buying can be difficult on so many different levels. So thank you for that. Now, I have some questions. I'd love to call them rapid-fire questions for you, specifically around diversity, equity inclusion. So I'm excited about this. I know somebody gets get nervous, but it's always in good fun. And people like I don't know about. So are we ready? All right, let's do it. All right. What is your DNI team's biggest challenge?

In this time of the great resignation, diversity, hiring is a huge issue. Right? And everyone is dealing with that. In addition, and I know this is intended to be a rapid-fire, so my answer should be short. But when I think about big challenges, I think about diversity hiring, but also think about, just like we talked about the sincerity of your leaders like if you're having to constantly bang your head against the wall, because you're getting pushback from your leaders, it's important to know whether your corporate or CEO or your C suite executives are sincerely committed to your efforts to advance diversity inclusion in the workspace, or whether it's just performative. Because knowing that helped you also to just know how to approach the situation, know when you need to step back, right, and then know whether you're where you need to be. Because at the end of the day, many di practitioners don't want to be at a place where people aren't don't believe in the mission of equity and inclusion. And so it's helpful to know that so I think that's a big challenge, like really knowing the hearts and the desires of your executive leaders is a challenge that I think is is facing many of the practitioners.

Absolutely. And I don't think anybody does, rapid response in that, that's why it's always interesting to call it rapid-fire questions. And as you said, knowing if an organization's leadership is performative, but not it really does help you save time and frustration.

It does, and it helps you keep your perspective, I mean, many of us need to have a job and we have bills to pay. And so knowing where you are and what their objective is, helps you to, to come to work in the way in which you can that helps you have a healthy existence, and helps you to do the job that you need to do because sometimes it's just about learning what you need to learn at that place to then take it to the next place that's going to appreciate you and value in what you have to bring.

Absolutely. Next question. What's your all-time diversity and inclusion book on workplace culture?

You know, that's such a good question. I just finished up with Jennifer Browns on how to be an inclusive leader and I really enjoy that book.

Great. Go ahead,
and that would be my answer for that

one. Okay. Now ya know which book to pick up. A recent book. What is a recent book on dei you Love,
you know, I and because I'm an attorney and words mean something you use the word love. And I don't I haven't loved any book. But I will tell you that I have been reading a lot about unconscious bias and the one that I have been really pleased with and have learned quite a bit from was Pamela Fuller and Mark Murphy's the Leaders Guide to unconscious bias. So that has been a great book to learn from.

And I want to point out some of these two books you both have the word leader in and I think that's really, really important when we're talking about diversity, equity inclusion, okay. What DNI or HR podcast delivers the most value to you? 

I have been enjoying Janice gas on his desk 30 Diversity podcast, and I've really liked it.
Alright, who is the DNI influencer, that you're most influenced by?

I've got to go back to Janice got some I think that I relate to her quite a bit. She's a first-generation American. Her parents I believe are from Cameroon. And she just she talks like me like, like, she's very knowledgeable on ei has a Ph.D. She's a professor of Forbes writer. I mean, she's top-notch. So I crash a little bit on Janice. It's pretty cool.

I love it. Where do you hear from the influence? So the most like LinkedIn books, podcasts? Where do you find that DNI influencer, the most?

Janice does she writes for Forbes. So she, she's got quite a few Forbes articles that she's been writing for a number of years. So I've gone back on to just look her up on a couple of her articles. And of course, I'm connected with her on LinkedIn as well as IG, and she does have a podcast called 30. Diversity.

I love it. What's the most overrated diversity inclusion training trend?

Now, that's such an interesting question. When I think of overrated, I think it's everyone's not everyone. Is Is many leaders' default training? Well, let's go and do this. And that overrated training that I'm referring to is unconscious bias. I think that there, there is value in unconscious bias training when it's done well. And it's typically done well, when there are some sort of materials or tools that a participant can take back with them, that helps them to apply their learnings to their everyday job. If you don't have a way as a finance person to identify your unconscious bias in your processing of financial documents, then that training has not been useful at all, it just doesn't move the needle enough. And so I do believe that there's value in it. But I think people, some place too much value on unconscious bias when there's so many other trainings that I think will be more impactful to anyone really wanting to change the status quo in their workplace.
Absolutely. I tell people often, that there's time for education, and then there's time for transformation. Absolutely. You need to know where you are. Okay. Next question. What's the most underrated diversity inclusion training tactic?

I think of cultural competence training or some may consider it a cultural sensitivity. And when I say those two words, I think that there's some overlap, right? From a cultural competence perspective, I think that it is invaluable for people to know where they are on the spectrum of valuing, understanding who they are, what their lived experiences are, how they bring that to their everyday work, as well as how does someone else's lived experiences differ from theirs and how they bring back to work so that they can appreciate that the differences that we bring to the workspace are stemmed from our lived experiences, we are our lived experiences that I don't think that leaders take the time to really think and appreciate that. And so if you have cultural competence training, from a perspective of who we are, who you are, understand who you are, understand your whole self understanding others and being willing to be open and aware and appreciate others, then you can then you can take the time to step back and really think about how your actions impact others. Right. And that's, that's the overlap of cultural sensitivity in some regards, but because cultural sensitivity when I think of that term, I think you need to be able to be sensitive to other people's culture, but it's bigger than the culture, right? It's the whole person, right? And not just who they are, where they came from, but their lived experiences as well. So those types of trainings that help people fully understand who they are why their lived experiences are how they come to work, how they bring that to work everyday and then being open to how to give how to interpret other people's lived experiences by giving them the opportunity to share that right and being vulnerable enough to share that lived experience and appreciate and value and take in that other person's lived experience and, and be able to look at the world from another person's lived experiences based upon your your interaction with them, right, many leaders tend to just operate in a bubble where they interface with just those that look like them. And so when you have opportunities to interact with other people that don't look like you're there don't have the shared lived experience, and be vulnerable enough to share your own experience, you will not only find that there are different lived experiences help bring innovation and value to the workspace, but also that there are some things that are likely similar and lived experiences.

And I do agree it is often underrated. Okay, two more questions, I promise. If you could ask one question to 100 of your peers a corporate or C suite leadership? What question would you ask them?
What percentage of your black and Latino employees enjoy their jobs and feel they have equal access to opportunities for advancement in your company? Oh, I think that's many, many companies that are doing anything in STI space. They have surveys, or someone has audited their employee population and conducted a survey. But I want to know the actual percentage of black and Latino, I don't want to know just about your entire employee population. I want to know about your people of color, I want to know about your black and Latino people, like are they happy? Are you asking them? Are they happy? Do they feel that they have advancement opportunities within your company, because that's what is going to move the needle and benefit those people. And that's what if you're really buying into the idea that equity and inclusion is something that is critical for your company to succeed in the world today, then you will want to take focus on what how to advance your lack of Latino employees in your current workspace. And if they're not given those opportunities, then you're not creating an equitable opportunity environment for them. And so that means that there's there's something for you to do to change that.

Absolutely. I love this question. It goes into discussions I have, often when we do recruiting, which is we have great benefits our employees love them. I said all of them, he's fair like them. And I'll ask her what percentage don't like it and they look crazy. And as simply if you're a creep ating equity in your workspace, you need to know who are those employees that aren't taking advantage of certain benefits and why? And why? Because I help insurances, great. But if they don't have access in their neighborhood, and they're having to take three buses and two trains, or it's an hour commute, they're sitting over just for a child, it has a cold. And it's really important.

Oh, if it's great, but it's great for just a few because only a few can actually afford the copay because their salary is just so low. You know, that doesn't equate that doesn't even make sense.

It doesn't I work for organization many years ago, what you pay for your health insurance was based on what your salary was, where the janitor, you did not pay the same thing as the CEO. It was scaled. And I have yet to find anybody that is doing. I'm sure there are other places. So this is literally more than 15 years ago. But the fact they were that far ahead and the scale benefits so that it was based off a salary and not just like everybody pays it because that's not equity in the workplace.

I love that. I love that.

So, okay, so last question. What kind of data would you like to have access to as a diversity and inclusion leader?

I really like seeing the actual numbers and percentages are good. And I've done some research and at online for certain companies just to try to see what their diversity data is. And I love when they show the percentages but you then don't even know the percentage of what right because you don't know what their entire population is. So you can't get to the number right so I like seeing actual numbers. So for me any data that any data is good, right? I like data, but any data that does not center whiteness by lumping everyone else in the bipoc or POC category. I'm here for it. I because as a black Latina I want to know how was a black how was it? How was the Latina how was it? How are they how Who are the people of color that are not just lumped in together? How are they doing? I don't, I don't like seeing data represented as all all people like all of you. And then bipoc, which means that that all is really inclusive of white, right? It's not, they're not willing to do the work to go and ask the questions or pull the data because there's there's value in the data. And when a company is not willing to show well, unfortunately, we only have one black male executives in the company. But if you look at the bipoc number, it's like 23%. Yeah, cuz you've got other people of other ethnicities. And they're not It's not bad. But I want to know, because I care about the advancement of the black individual, I care about the advancement of the Latina individual. Right? Not I, it's important for me to know that number. Because if you say you're a company that wants to advance equity, equity does not just apply to the 23% equity applies to that black person who's the only individual in the company on the leadership team, like, how do we ensure that there's more of him? Or more of her and she's in here or not the only ones representing their entire ethnicity, but that's what I'm about.

Absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. Break it out, put it that intersectionality gender, race, sexual orientation, differently abled, like, we want to know where where you are in your organization, when it comes to marginalized people? I absolutely agree. Absolutely agree. This has been fantastic. Oh, my God, I can't believe we're out of time.

Oh, my goodness, this is always fun. Thank you so much. Michelle,
can you let our audience know where they can connect with you?

Sure. So my name again is Louis unknown. And I can be found on LinkedIn as little as going on an L U A. S. K Y A. N. O. N. O. N I'm sure that Michelle will put that information in the show notes. And my website is equity principle.com, where I have my consulting company listed with all the services that we offer, so feel free to connect with me there.

Thank you so much for joining me today. This has been absolutely fantastic. I love having a lawyer's perspective teach. I feel like I can do this.

I can do this. Definitely you can do it. All right.

Thank you, everybody. Until next time, have a great week and keep pushing to bring change in equity in the workplace. Bye, everybody. Yes,

bye.

Welcome, welcome, everybody. It is so great to have you here for another discussion asked, we talk about the intersectionality of Women's Identities. I have again, if you just following us, or you probably you may not know, KC Atha. If you've been following me for a couple years since 2020, you may remember we used to do these regularly on Thursdays was she's back as a guest. Not my partner in crime as much anymore, but we're happy to have you. Hey, KC, how are you doing?
I'm good. I'm so happy to be back in the seat with you. Yes.

Okay. So today we're talking about a really important topic. Oftentimes, when well, first, let before I jump in, because I'm really excited to talk about this topic. I'll have you let the people know a few things about you the DEI work you're in and how did you even get into this space?

Ah, great question. So the D and I work that I do is very much focused on public sector organizations, although I do work with some private organizations. But what I do is work with like minded leaders to bring equity and liberation into the workplace. And we look at that at both the systemic part as well as the individual and intrapersonal parts of it. And internally and externally focused. So looking at culture holistically, and helping folks sort of walk the path together with me to get towards their goals. And how did I come to this work is I this is my second organization and the first organization I had great intentions as a co founder. And there was just some outcomes and things that I saw happening in that first organization. That was not my intention, but did happen. And I thought, You know what, there's some other folks out there like me who have good intentions and aren't getting the results and outcomes that they desire. So that's what I focus on now.

I love it, I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that. So we I do a training on this topic. So of course, this is one of the important topics that I think is often overlooked. And the reason we're talking about is intersectionality of Women's Identities. Oftentimes, women are clumped together. But yet, when you look at different aspects of intersectionality, experiences change, barriers change. And it's really important that to look at it through a different lens. And so we're gonna get into it. So I'm gonna let you kick it off, because you love this topic as well. And so where do you want to start in talking about the intersectionality, of Women's Identities?

Well, I'll just back us up a little bit for folks to know a little bit about us and our history and our perspective and lens on these months. So Women's History Month Black History Month, I have in the past, I will admit, I have felt resistance towards these months, the focus of them for one month, very specifically, because I felt that it was a bit performative. And it really didn't result in any changes. So, Michelle, when you reached out to me and said, Hey, I want to do a series talking about like, how do we actually live into these months that we focused on women or black history? And how do we actually internalize that information and make change and push for, for action. And so that's what got me excited. So that's why I'm excited to be here to even have this conversation. But so I will kick it off by just laying that foundation. And very specifically, I think that when we talk about these broad categories of women, or black folks, I think the intersection intersectionality conversation is just a natural place that my brain goes because especially as a woman who identifies as Latina X, I know that other folks are also Latina, X and identify as black and so or Afro Latino, and oftentimes they feel excluded. And so I think sometimes we need to think about what are some of the other intersections of womanhood of blackness, and that can only serve to help support our actions and how we show up in the world. So, with that in mind, I wanted to talk about three levels. And the first level would be at the individual level, what I would sort of bring to the table in the lens of intersectionality there and then intrapersonal and then at the organizational level. So without further ado, let's jump into that first level of individual level. So I always like to start with the self Know thyself start at home first when we make change. And so the way I help my clients and folks that I work with is to help identify and map our identities An hour privileged in any given situation, it's going to change depending on the situation. So you'll have to sort of build the muscles of understanding a few concepts, which I'm about to dive into. The first concept is dominant and marginalized identity. So what does that mean? So when I say dominant identity, that changes depending on the situation, location, etc. So when and how you identify if you're in the dominant category is do you have privilege? Are you do you have access to power in some way, shape, or form? Are you sort of the norm or the standard, and then when we think about marginalized identities, this group has less privilege, less power, and are not identified as the norm or standard, but rather other. So those are sort of the two categories. And as we just said, intersectionality is not either or we are combination of identities. And so that combination is the third thing that we kind of have to understand, which are what are those categories? The categories such as race, such as sex, such as gender, class, education, language, citizenship, in the workplace, or your full time employee? Are you a contract worker? What is your religion? What is your ability? What? Where in the hierarchy? Are you? What's your tenure? Are you located at HQ? Are you off site? Are you in the field, so there's a lot of different categories where we are going to be the dominant or marginalized identity. And another thing I have to bring up is just because you are dominant identity doesn't mean you're always going to be the majority. So you could be high up in the hierarchy and be dominant identity, but you're the only one in a group that's that high in the hierarchy. So it's not about minority, that's different. Sometimes the minority could be the majority of people, and yet, they're still the marginalized group. So that's another thing that I like to bring up. So that is sort of the first, knowing thyself because before we take action, we got to know who we are, and how we show up in any given situation, that's going to be different. And sometimes we're going to be in the dominant role or position, or sometimes we'll be in the more marginalized position, depending.
Thank you for breaking that I think we often also look at even when you're marginalized, and you're the majority in that space, is also the power, who's who's wielding the power. And it's really, really important to understand that too. When you go through and you look at your identity, where you fall is what is where, where does the power lie? And, and how much. And so it's also important to identify that as you go through that process. So let's, let's go to your next point. I'm excited. 

Yeah, well, I'm the one thing that came up I was just thinking about was also in addition, another category I would bring up that I've been talking about more recently with some clients, because we're practicing how to have difficult conversations and lead diversity, equity inclusion conversations. Another thing that comes up is conflict style. And so I would very specifically say black women have to Historically and traditionally even now have to regulate their emotions so that they're not perceived by the stereotype of the angry black woman. And so that's another thing that came up actually, in my newsfeed. Today, I was reading this and it, it's not fair because we all are human. And we all experience all the range of emotions, but because of that intersection of identity and stereotyping, there is a real and sometimes perceived threat for black women to express that natural emotion of frustration, anger, whatever those unpleasant feelings that we all feel, but because of a certain identity, you're perceived differently are not allowed to feel that way. So that I wanted to give one concrete example as well that was a little fuzzier, but is definitely very, very real. So once we met the identity, I'm going to push us along which that was a kind of a good transition into interpersonal level. So interpersonal level once you've mapped your identity, so for example, I am Latina x, but I am definitely lighter skinned. So we have to understand when we are in proximity to that power of proximity to whiteness, not just skin color, but also how we show up with conflict and our language are accents are not accents, etc. So there's these levels of proximity to power as well. So we may not be the ultimate top pinnacle of the dominant identity, but we may have an increased proximity to it. For example, colorism in this situation that I'm talking about, so once we've mapped herself, we are better positioned to know when and if we have privilege to lend and to offer others and or to ask for support if I'm in the marginalized position. And, and someone I know and trust and like is in a more privileged position. And depending on the situation, I may ask them to lend me their privilege, which I used to do actually with a former roommate of mine, who was a white man. And he, I would often say, Hey, could you lend me your privilege, I'd like to strategically deploy you to do this thing for me. And while I don't think it's fair that I should have to do that, and I don't think it's right that I should have to do that, I also have to decide when and if I'm going to value getting the outcome I want over sort of standing in the moral ethical principles. And so that is that kind of difficult middle ground, sometimes whenever I talk about this with some clients, because folks are aware, that's like, that's not a fair thing to have to do, which is correct. But when we're talking about ally, ship, and interpersonal level of how we can show up, that is, that's what I'm sort of proposing here. So, and whenever I talk about lending our privilege, some people call li chips, some people call co conspirators, or basically asking our, our selves and or someone else to do some sort of discomfort, either at that base level, like, make some change shape, you know, stir the pot a little bit. Also, we may be asking some folks to do a little more like, a strike, right. So sometimes people are willing to put their, their livelihood on the line and strike, or sometimes people are willing to put their life on the line. And that is the ultimate coconspirator type move. And I'm not asking or telling people to do that. But I'm just saying and trying to put it in perspective that the minimum thing that we can do is probably lend our privilege and, and allow some discomfort either within ourselves, or allow ourselves to make other people uncomfortable at the dinner table at the conference room table, at the lunch table, in the meeting, whatever that may be. So that is one thing. So once you're mapped, you're better positioned to lend your privilege or ask for privilege. And then the other thing that I like to talk about at this interpersonal level, is to really practice deep listening, to understand the situation to understand the problem to understand the context before taking action. And so what I talk about is social empathy. So it's one thing to empathize. But it's another thing to empathize and deeply understand the context of and the situation to better connect and support to make change for that person or in this in this sort of situation generally. So those are the two big points that I like to make when I talk about interpersonal level of, of approaching ally ship or making change in this area.

Fake Thank you, KC. For that, I just want to point out very quickly, I dropped something article that I ran across, called Black people are sharing the rules they follow that most white people don't even know about. And this is so important. And I brought this article up, because as you take your power and your privilege, it is important to understand how marginalized people how black people, specifically black women, more specifically for this conversation, navigate and how they prepare to navigate in these white in these white spaces. And so now you understand how they're now because assumption is, Oh, will you do what we do? Know. And so it taking examples like this, now you have some idea of things that you can utilize your power and privilege for to help black women. And it's not always a monolith, right, as as KC said, you know, skin color plays a huge part, then comes hair texture, as well. And then body type plays another function, and then also vernacular. And so they're all of these different things that are in play that come in certain biases. And so it is really important to understand yourself and how you're engaging. And like, I didn't know you were black, you don't see black, like what exactly does that mean? So it's really important, I get some friends that that identify as black. And people often assume they are something other than black. And so it's really important to understand these things as well. So I share that. And now and I read the title of the article output it in. And it's a very long title. It's on Buzzfeed, but it's definitely worthwhile reading to get an idea of how black people move around in spaces that are not typically black.

Yeah, and that brings up another concept that I want to share real quick is The concept of consent. So oftentimes when we find out about injustice or unfairness that happens with other identities that are not our own, um, we potentially could be so upset and want to make change, because it's unfair. And yet, we may not understand that that person doesn't want us to speak up, because we can actually be causing more harm. So I would ask, and I would propose that we get consent from the other person before taking action on their behalf, or against something that we think is unfair, but we don't know how it could negatively impact them. So I would definitely recommend. The other thing is one example that I like to give a concrete example of how to be an ally. Oftentimes, in meetings, I like to share the tool of amplification. And so what happens oftentimes, is that ideas are proposed ideas or thoughts come up in a meeting. And oftentimes, that idea is not given credit to the person who originally said it. So in order to help and be an ally, you could say, Hey, that's a great idea that you added on to that Michelle proposed, right. So it'd be bringing it back, for example, if someone was sort of taking credit for Michelle's idea, or Michelle's original thought has now been built on by other people in the meeting, but now know what everyone's thinking now, John's great idea. But really, Michelle started that whole idea. So I love the concept of amplification. And so when when we are in a space, it is helpful that we could sort of help support the visibility and bringing back the the just credit of many folks perspectives and insights.
Thank you for that. And that is seemingly easy to do. But for whatever reason, it becomes the biggest struggle. And I want to point out something else that that often happens is when you're in meetings, this is especially for white men. Do you realize black people and black women are in those rooms in those spaces? And really think about that, why they're not in there? And how to get them into those spaces into those conversations. And to actually take action on those. And so when we're talking about Amplifying Voices, right, like you're talking about this person, right, you're giving them credit. But why are also aren't they in that space? Right. And so I think it is also giving credit where it's due, but understanding how barriers may have even pushed not only given a credit, but not even having them part of the discussion, and how much how often they're talked over, or not even invited to the discussion, even if they aren't in a room. And so just take on different levels, even though you're giving them credit. Okay, now, how do I get them to the meeting? How do I make sure that they're, they're included in a conversation, making sure they're not cut off somebody else's and steal their idea in the conversation? There are multiple levels to this. And I know we're just getting started. And some of you may like, oh, I give them credit. Okay, great. Now, here's the next step. Right. And so it is a continued process. When you decide to do this work. It's not one and done. So I'll turn it back on.
I've got another idea that came up from that. What's the next step? So I've actually heard some folks saying, just because I have a great idea, my plate is full. And sometimes folks will be like, well, it's your idea. You run with it, you do it. And so I don't think that that's a great practice, because then it's like, well, then I shouldn't bring up great ideas unless I have time and space to do it myself. And I think that kind of squashes things. And I think it's better to say that is a great idea. And where could we find resources and pool resources that are needed for that idea? Versus just say, well, that's your idea. You do it then. So that's another sort of challenge to kind of shift into, okay, great idea, and how can we collectively figure out how to make this happen?

Absolutely. We see it in organization. Building a great to women are really great with building relationships. And being able to delegate and build a great team is also important. And sometimes that skill set isn't there. And so while you may see men pull together people because they see who's doing their work, or doing work in this in this space, how do you then help them build a team and move from doing the work to having great ideas and helping the work get executed? Right? And so those are different skill sets. And so you have to come in and step in for that as well. So I love I love this conversation, obviously. So, but I'll turn it back over to you for the third. All right.
Okay, final part. So after we talked about the individual level map send yourself an interpersonal level of lending that privilege and or asking for someone else's privilege to be lent to you. I would also talk love to talk about the organizational level. And this is more for the folks who are making decisions around what is being done at your organization in that black history month are Women's History Month. And why am I talking to you? Because the first thing that I would recommend for these months is to really anchor in your why, what is it that we're doing this month? And why? So are we highlighting women in black history to celebrate? It's just celebration, and we're gonna eat some foods and talk about culture? Are we also going to build some awareness? And that's it. So celebrate and awareness? Fine, cool, like, but let's be clear about it. Why? Because I think there's a risk that's been happening that some organizations have been experiencing where that why is not clear. And so they're being accused of being performative. Because there's not a shared understanding of what is the purpose of us highlighting this as a month of women or black history? So being very clear about the why, and communicating that why so that folks don't have different expectations, you still may be called in and say, Well, yeah, you've been building awareness and celebrating for years, we want to move into the next level, which may be self setting goals and objectives. But before I move on to goals and objectives, I will say, if you are at that celebration, and just awareness level, that's fine. What I would challenge you and invite you to do as well is to include your organization and your sector, whenever you're looking at Black history. And when you're looking at women's history, or raising awareness, what and how does that history show up and intersect with your sector and your organization. And oftentimes, it's not a history we're very proud of, and you got to own the histories before we can move forward. So that's the first challenge and sort of invitation for organizations that are spending time and energy, sort of highlighting these different months. The second thing is I invite folks, once you've moved past maybe celebration and awareness purposes and goals, I would say goals and objectives of trying to increase black diet, like diversify your staff at the higher levels, not just at the lower levels, that's something that happens a lot. And folks oftentimes say we're really diverse. But then when I look at their org chart, they're very diverse at the most junior levels. And so I think that I would challenge orbs to maybe look at how diverse Are we at the top, and then go down and maybe set some goals in that order, instead of the other order. Starting at the bottom, I would say start at the top instead to diversify at top at the top, and then work your way down to diversify down at the bottom. And if you don't think that you have access to people or a pipeline, that maybe that's one of your goals or objectives, how do I build up a pipeline so that I can know that when we have openings at these top levels? I know that I have a pipeline because I've built relationships, we now have a scholarship, we now have internships and fellows that have, you know, have had access and worked with us, whatever it may be. But why are you doing it? And if it's because you want to diversify them, then let's let's talk about that in the context of the Month celebration, and awareness. But also, what are the vision?

What are the goals of this organization in relation to women in relation to black folks?

And I would just say, when you're making those goals and objectives thinks think about not only the areas of leadership, but also what is our structure look like? What does communications look like? What are the programs look like and policies and practices? How about the vendors that we spend money with? Are they black owned? Are they women owned? Are they black women owned? And is could that be a goal? You know, could we make sure that when we start approving and searching for vendors that that's something that we're interested in, in assessing as as part of alignment with your organization's values and goals? The staffing which we already talked about also partnerships, who are we partnering with? What organizations are we partnering with? what schools are we partnering with? I don't know your sector, but whoever your partners are, how much representation and leadership do you have with women and black folks, and specifically that intersection of black women, right? How could we sort of assess where we are and then work and set goals to increase that? And then finally, so we talked about celebration and awareness level then we talked about goals and objectives level? I think that folks who have already done some of these goals and objectives setting, I think these months are a great time to also highlight and make space for accountability. And what do I mean by that? I mean, sharing out and reporting out progress on those goals and objectives. And what are the iterations that have been made in those? In that work? After we set these goals and objectives? How is it going, what iterations and new learnings have we learned because we're not going to get it perfect, we've been socially conditioned to operate in a way that is status quo and gives us outcomes that are not in alignment with our equity and liberation values. So when we start on our journey, it is going to be imperfect. And I invite us to be in that more lean agile mentality where we build something, we test it out, and we measure it and we iterate according to that, and keep doing that until we continue to get better. And then I invite us to celebrate our successes, not just the big successes, but the small ones, to all of them. All progress is progress, I'd love to see the big progress. And I love to also give us incentives to keep going because this work is ongoing, it doesn't have some final end, because even when we meet our goals and objectives, we still have to uphold them in a society that is not built for this to be sort of the status quo and the norm. So we're always sort of holding back the sort of outside world that isn't conducive to equity and liberation. So that those are sort of the levels of organizational lenses that I would apply to these months of women's history and black history.

Thank you for that. I love that. And again, it is a process. And oftentimes we hear people say, Hey, I'm afraid to fail, I'm going to get it wrong. The assumption is you have it right. In the current state. We don't and so the feedback of I don't want to get it wrong, like you aren't even in a place where you're getting it right now. So so this is a place to learn. And then like you say, take action and lay out that plan. I, I will say this much is you can learn a lot from your employees and asking them questions. The problem that some of these organizations have is number one, you have not you do not have a relationship with your employees, especially those that are marginalized, that they feel as though they can trust you to share experiences, and what's really, really going on. And so sometimes you can bring in a third party, but other times, you're going to have to rely on some basic metrics and data to get the ball rolling. And you're going to have to show that you care by taking action before you have sometimes some immediate data real time data in your in your organization and workplace. And that scares some people like, well, we don't have the money for that. You don't have the money not to in this in this current situation in this current market. In this current time of social justice. I can tell you Gen Z's they are looking mine. And even generations, they're looking and they're watching. And if you're a big brand, medium sized brand, they're going to know and they're going to go back because unfortunately, everything Fortunately, everything I guess is on the web. And so it's really important for you to lay out that plan, you have metrics, and to invest the resources in it, because it's not a short term investment. It is a long term investment for your organization. It is a long term investment. Some of you are in your 40s. And you're like oh it will take us 12 years. I said so you'll be in your 50s it's not the end of the world, it won't stop. And it's really important. You have a starting point, you have a plan. You realize, like a kid, like if you have kids, you're gonna mess up something right? The first one is really hard. That's that first step, that second kid got better use, like, I just let let the kid second kid cry. I was on a call with somebody, they had the first kid, they were driving home after picking them up from daycare. And then the second kid was kind of like, we can't hold you, Honey, we're driving, we're in car and you got to stay in your car seat. And she cried for 20 minutes. So like I don't so so you have to understand you're going to go through some growing pains and it but you can't get to those points of ah, we've gotten to this milestone without you literally putting in the work. And it's really important to have that. So finding that getting that commitment, even if it's a small core group and organization with sufficient budget. And support is really, really key. But you have to show on some level some immediate changes in organization, some intermediate changes in the organization. And what are the long term goals in the organization. Oftentimes pre the murder of George Floyd organizations would not share any of this information or data and that has tremendously hurt you. In the current state more of your sharing that data information. But I can tell your black employees are there at two years, and they haven't seen anything and you haven't shared enough to them, you haven't done enough, because they've been living in this lived experience for 3040 50 years. And so now you're seeing more turnover, and you can't understand why we've made the commitment, but they aren't seeing the action and you aren't sharing enough information. And and so they, they've heard you, they've given you a chance, but they don't see the equity that you said you're pursuing, and that they require in order to stay in those organizations. So we have a comment, a question, how do you navigate data capture for reporting? My logic is that employees self disclose during our share this self disclose during onboarding, then we should be able to analyze and understand leadership transition rate. However, we are told that this is somehow not possible, because it's violating laws violating right, please understand how some companies can publish benchmarks and some can't. Some companies won't publish benchmarks because they don't want to period. There are very few instances when they cannot publish that benchmark. There are some things like that are ADHD, HIPAA compliant, things that I should say that companies can't.

It's illegal for them to have that information or share that information outside of that employees needs. What I found, though, sure, is that companies would rather say for compensate for competitive sakes, we won't share that data. And it's really to the point where in, they're just hiding their lack of diversity, their lack of inclusion and belonging, and willing to take the hit publicly, by disclosing that information. Let me tell you, let me tell them a secret that they don't know that we know we talk about you already. We don't apply. We don't do interviews with you. Because we've already gone and talk to the last black person let go that didn't get hired, that was only asked for their their data, so you can show that you are compliant. We talk about this all the time, we talk about you all the time on social media, in our social social circles, the only people you're hiding this data from is other white people in the organization who think you're actually doing the work. every black person out organization, every Hispanic person, that organization, every Latino, every Asian person or organization, or know what's going on. You're the only ones who think you're actually hiding something. And so what we're doing here at positive higher, is we actually have benchmarks for organizations. Because for fake for meta, it's called meta now. And Google, there's like, oh, well, Facebook had or meta has 1.2% black women, and we have 1.3. So we're good. No, you're not. You're comparing poor practices to poor practices. When you look at a true capacity, which could be 4%, guess what, then you're like, Oh, we shouldn't show this data, because now it's competitive. Now, we just show it to prove that you are underperforming it, you need to change things in your organization. So sometimes Shurl organizations won't do it. And so you have to find a way or find somebody that's offering you built a bitch market benchmarks for your industry. And then there's pushback on that. And so be when you do get the benchmark, let me tell you, some way organizations will hide this information as well. Is there a roll up bipoc Your Roll everybody of color that is not white, it to bipoc but then when you break down by PA, they're black is less than 1%, or Hispanic is less than 1%. And that 80% or 8% is show or Asian and they're gonna end a will try to also roll in people that are international, not necessarily US citizens, right. Then the other game they will play is in a job types and titles and they will definitely mix those up. So what are considered professional roles and what are considered blue collar roles or white cup, they will mix those up. So the numbers look a certain way. And so it is very, very important that you ask questions. They they may look at you like Why are you pushing this because, you know, the reality is they're hiding that data and they don't Want to see as they truly are, which is not diverse, not inclusive, not equitable, definitely not creating a place of belonging by hiding those numbers and they don't want to take action, this is what I say to this for some of those places, please continue to be that way and this is why you will lose in the end, number one, number two, you did not bother myself, you did not bother KC, you did not bother Shirl in, in doing performative work. Not even like doing a call with you not doing a presentation on how we can help you solve your problem not coming in even doing a contract because you're going to try to lowball us. It is really going to piss us off. And even if we do accept the contract, not even doing the work, do not waste our times. So continue to be that way. Let us go help the people that actually want to do this work that are actually doing the work. And those employees that you decided we're not for your play, your place of employment will go there. And they will grow great careers help impact positively impact those organizations while yours will stay at the status quo. Things change, you will become an a&p and not a Trader Joe's. That's all I have. Okay, KC, I'm gonna get off my soapbox now. But you know how I do?

I have a couple of thoughts on that. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Sometimes it could feel difficult, or you're unsure if you can or should collect some identity data, some alternatives to that if you don't want to do it, or have been told you can't I think you could continue to do climate assessments and hire an outside person to do a climate assessment to see the perceived experience of your staff. And that's done through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and document review, just just kind of see what's happening in the organization. And then also, I would look at, you know, your hiring rates and promotion pathways, how clear are they? How are they how well are they understood? What is the climate around that oftentimes folks will say, I don't even know how to get promoted, I don't know when and how to get that raise. I don't know what my colleagues make. So you know, what, what are the salary bands are their salary bands, and a lot of times staff are just piecing those together, because an organization started implementing salary bands. And so now they just look at the new job postings, but they don't know what they make, or what their colleagues made before the salary bands were made. So I think sometimes, you know, just clarifying that and looking at that internally, and then correcting it, if people are outside of those salary bands, bring them up into it. And I would probably give them more or a bonus, or what, you know, some something because they missed out on that salary for however long that that seller abandoned exists, and they were already underpaid. So I think the just correct thing to do would not only to raise their salary, but also back pay them for what they weren't paid in some way, shape or form. Also, in addition to that, I think I would double click double, I would underline and bold, what Michelle said. And I would absolutely continue to say benchmark against yourself, not against the failed status quo of other people in your sector. That is not helpful. And the final thing that I will say just this has been coming up, and I've been talking to more of my clients around this is compensation benchmark marking is wonderful to stay competitive in your sector. I also don't want that to be convoluted with a living wage. So oftentimes, I will recommend to organizations to make sure that not only are you competitive and doing compensation benchmarking to be to be competitive and get, you know, the best possible stuff. Also look at raising the floor of that living wage. And that's a different process that's looking at a living wage calculator for the location in which people live and also the value that they're bringing to the organization and making a calculation of like at a minimum. This is what it takes to live in Washington, DC, New York City, Los Angeles, wherever, as an individual and I always like to recommend not only as one single individual but with one dependent. And that to me is a living wage for one person. So that's it. Those are the thoughts that came up for me. Thanks.

Thank you for that. I had so many things about the living wage and number one, if I would love to know if you're in the chat if you're watching this even if it's on the replay if you're on the podcast. Message me tweet me DM me if your current employer is given you or your employer or your co workers, just the workplace, an increase in your pay because of inflation, I'm looking for something, right? Because it's real. And companies like, oh, we aren't prepared, some of these larger companies are making really great profits right now. Now, I'm not talking about generating revenue, but profits, and alcohol, like, we can't possibly give everybody a 7% increase in match inflation. And I'm looking at your money, like, really maybe I'm doing your math wrong, but I'm just looking like, Okay, so see, see how that goes. Because some people are going to quit, to make more money just to cover inflation. So you have to figure out what you're going to end up paying. Either way, you can pay the people that are there that know your systems, processes and culture, or you're going to bring in new people to learn your system processes and culture. And you're going to pay them more than inflation. So you really, really think about that as well. So KC, I will let you do a wrap up. And then we will get out of here.

All right from the top, inviting you all to map yourself and your identity and your privileges. Depending on your dominant identity or marginalized identity. In any given situation, it always changes. So practice building those muscles of sort of understanding where you are. And then the categories of race, gender, class, education, language, contract worker, not religion, ability, hierarchy, tenure, all of those goodies, then the second one was intrapersonal level. Once you've mapped your identity, and can do that fluidly in different situations, then you're more, you're better positioned to be able to lend your privilege and or ask for someone to lend you their privilege to get what it is that you want, and need and deserve. And I would also remind folks to do deep listening to understand before taking action, because a lot of times when we're in the dominant identity, we think we understand the problem before we listen. So listen, before we take action, ask for consent, before taking action on behalf of someone else, because we've may unintentionally cause them harm or put them in a place of discomfort or fear for because of retaliation and other concerns that may be there. And then finally, at the organizational level really root down in your why why are we celebrating Women's History or Black History Month is it to celebrate and to raise awareness about culture. If that is then the challenge for you is to also look at the history of women and black folks in your organization specifically, and in your sector, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it makes you feel ashamed. That is some sort of rooting down in the y we want to make change, which is the next level of setting goals and objectives in those months that pertain to women that pertain to black folks in your organization. And articulating what is that vision? What are our goals? And how are we tying that into how we show up in the areas of leadership structure communications, policies, programs, vendors, staffing, partnerships, all of that pipeline work. And then finally, accountability, use those months to report out on the progress you're making on those goals and objectives also on the iterations that you're making, because we know we're not perfect, because we know that we're trailblazing and trying to do things in a different way. So iterations are going to be necessary and celebrate your successes big and small. Because we do need to know that we are making progress and that it's worth it. So when we see signs of success, it helps us reinvigorate our desire to go through sometimes some of these painful sort of changes in evolution. It's not always fun. It doesn't always feel good to do this work because we're we're going against status quo and that status quo is difficult sometimes to push up against. So let's do this work collectively. And let's celebrate the successes along the way.

Thank you, KC so much for that. Everybody. Be sure you connect with KC here. That's the letter K, the letter C. Atha, on LinkedIn. It is so fantabulous to have you back. We're gonna have to do this again real soon. So until then everybody, this is the equity pursuit. I will be on here about every two weeks sharing different actions, why management can take in organizations to bring equity to marginalized employees and really bring change. Don't talk about it, be about it. And we will see you in a couple of weeks. Bye, everybody.

Thank you so much for joining us today. I am Michele Heyward, founder of positive hire where we connect black indigenous and Latin X women who are experienced scientists, engineers and technology professionals to management roles. Today, I'm absolutely excited to kick off this great series of conversations we were having called the equity pursuit. And today to kick it off, we're talking about, really the barriers to progress and the things that white leaders in the workplace should be doing to bring equity. And this all came about because we've been seeing more and more companies celebrating and marketing Black History Month, a Women's History Month, even Equal Pay Day, which is interesting if you if you're on Twitter. And you know what you bought, I'm talking about when it came to, to women's Equal Pay Day. And so today, I'm really excited to dig into why there are so many barriers to progress and how can White management and leaders really push past those barriers. So joining us today we have Jesse Santana and Jess McFarland so just so you know, you're gonna say Jessie, and Jess, because we might have a panel have a Jess but one escena Jess with two answers, and it's gonna be really interesting. So today, just take it we got a Jesse and a Jess, and we're happy to have both of you. So Jesse, if you can introduce yourself first and then we'll go to Jess.

Thank you so much, Michelle. I'm so excited to be here and part of this conversation. So my name is Jesse CYN. Santana disease, I'm Diana. My pronouns are she, her and ADA. I am an organizational culture strategist. I focus on developing inclusive and culture driven leaders to build legacy and create impact by focusing on CO creating spaces of intentional inclusivity and fierce belonging. So I'm so just glad to be here and in this space with both of you, all of you.

And hi, everyone, I'm Jess McFarlane, I use she her pronouns, I'm really glad to be here. Thanks, Michelle, for inviting me. I call myself a racial equity consultant. So I help organizations and individuals live out their values of equity and how they're showing up day to day with a race centered, race conscious approach.

Thank you both for being here. So first question I have for both of you. Should organizations and companies be celebrating things like Black History Month, Women's History Month, women's Equal Pay Day? Or not? Like what what what are your takes on that, and I'll start with Jesse.

So, in my opinion, absolutely. 100% commemorative days should be sub celebrated. However, they should be followed with action. Because if you're celebrating a commemorative day, if you're making this public announcement that you're you have equity standards that you're about inclusion, it needs to be followed by action. And it needs to be followed, not just in reflected in your behavior, change your learnings, but also reflected in your systems, and reflected in your policies and accessibility, and is everyone have equal access and opportunity to all that you offer, including your clients and those other other stakeholders outside of the internal ones as well.
And I would just add in thinking about who is most impacted in our workplaces, and by these commemorative days, so I agree, Jesse, that these sorts of commemorations can be really powerful, really to, you know, create an environment of belonging but you know, celebrating LGBTQ pride, right and affirming LGBTQ identities in the workplace or celebrating Black History Month. But I'm also thinking about if there's that gap between declarations and action. Because I have a background in psychology. So I'm always thinking about sort of what's the what's the psychological impact, and there's a term or a concept known as the stress of racial disappointment, and that is where it's sort of this gap between making a statement and lack of action can actually be more stressful and more harmful for folks in marginalized groups than if you didn't make the declaration at all right, cognitively and emotionally. It's easier for us to deal with someone who says, you know, Black History Month is not important to me, right? It's actually more difficult to deal with someone who says, Yes, Black History Month, and we're not doing anything to make sure that, you know, we're following through with equity and belonging for our black employees. So it's really important, as Jesse said, to follow that up with action, and so that you don't create more stress and more harm internally.

I absolutely agree. I can remember early on in 2008, after the murder of George Floyd having a roundtable and some attendees saying how their employers didn't say anything. And it said as they should, because we know who we work for. And they knew as want to be allied, so they felt not good, but they knew exactly where that employer stood. And so it was really, really important. And it was others whose employers came out, made a statement, they didn't even like the statement, they didn't address really what was happening. And so the message fell flat just from the beginning, because some organizations felt pressured to make a statement, when, like you said, it was better not to say anything. And so let's let's go into that, what should organizations be doing? Like they've done these celebrations? Jesse? What should they be doing? After celebrating? And because you brought up something very important, like you're in the education phase, but you've been in education phase as well, for two years? So what should organizations be doing?
Yeah, I think that it's really important to not sit in the overwhelm in the information overload. Because a lot of people, you know, the book clubs are great. They, you know, a lot of authors are getting lots of buzz around their books, and it's amazing supporting those authors. But the reality is that if you're not taking a systemic approach, if you're not taking a one step at a time, what is our strategic plan look like, for implementing these things into our workplaces? Thinking about psychological safety? Thinking about? What what marginalized identities we already have within our employee networks, and how to support and facilitate their well being? And also, how do we include other others into the conversation? That's also really important. So I think that a lot of times people are just sitting in that overwhelm and afraid to take one step forward. Because they're, they're, they're, they're afraid of the misstep, right? They don't want to come across as being tone deaf, or they don't want to come across as not doing the right thing. But if we do nothing, then what is that? How is that different than the 40 plus years that diversity and inclusion has been a topic of discussion for organizational development, it's been around for a long time. But it's only now recently that people are actually paying real attention to it. And it's a lot of societal pressure. Because we live in different different times, however, that that pressure, and the release of that pressure by taking some form of action doesn't necessarily reflect that transformative change that organizations need to have. A lot of organizations were really focused on that diversity pipeline. But I always like to say that you can invite people over if your house is dirty, and a lot of organizations houses are filthy. So first, we need to like look at what we have in place, and improve upon that process. And then we can start focusing on recruitment and retention practices that actually will be effective for marginalized identities.

Thank you so much, Jesse. Jess, what are your thoughts about this?

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with everything that Jesse just said. And I think what's coming up for me, as I'm thinking about how you framed this series, in this conversation, Michelle, which is really looking at the role of white leadership and white management. And so for me, I would say, an important place to start is to examine one's role. People often examine their role as a leader right in the organization. But I would say that you have to examine your role as a white leader, what does it mean for you to be a white person in leadership? And if you're doing that work and reflection, then that will move you along the path? And if you feel like I don't know what it means that I'm a white leader, I don't know why that question is relevant. I would encourage you to get support around that and to really work with someone who can help you to bring a lens of what it means to be a white leader to the organization because we know that the racial dynamics are there and they matter, right? We can't be colorblind. That's what You know, one of the big revelations, I think that's come out for folks in the past two years is that we can't pretend anymore that racial dynamics aren't operating in our day to day work, right. So I think that's an important place to start is examining one's role as a white leader. And then to work through, Jesse touched on this, but I spent a lot of time talking about the anxieties, specifically, the racial anxiety that can come up for white leaders in being worried about doing things wrong, right and taking the wrong action. And there's a lot of fear about that. And an important piece of that is really working through and naming that, you know, it's okay to have that worry about, I'm worried about doing the wrong thing. But the problem is that we allow that to get in the way of taking any action at all right. And so I can say more on that. But I'll just stop there. Yeah, back to you, Michelle.
Thank you both for that. And I love how you brought up, these are the actual things that are stopping you or slowing you down. But but really, you have to, like write it down. Like so many things, it's the things that are in your head, that keep you from really progressing. And once you write them down, and you address them, they can show up very differently. And oftentimes, they're just literally it's the story you're telling yourself in your head. And so that's really where the power is. I want to go to the next question was, which is What does white management or leadership have? What impact do they really have when it comes to the stress of racial disappointment? In Oregon, in organizations? Because that was something you you brought up? Justin, I really want to hone in on that for a while. Can you define that and really talk about it a bit more, so we can get a better understanding?

Yeah, so just to be clear, it's essentially the the psychological and emotional impact that can come from being disappointed, you know, folks not following through on on what they're declaring, right? So talking the talk, but not walking the walk. And so that can result in employees, bipoc employees, in particular, feeling really disappointed, like, you know, I thought that you were committed to these actions, essentially, I thought I could trust you. And now your actions are not aligning with your words. And so that results in mistrust. And, you know, can really undermine one's sense of belonging, but also one sense of, sort of, you could you could use the term, I just use this psychological safety within the workplace.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that, it's also important to reflect on the fact that a lot of organizations have not necessarily built that trust and rapport with their employees. You know, oftentimes, when people leave an organization, and they're asked, Why are you leaving, they generally share? Well, I'm doing it for this, you know, this better experience that I am hoping I will get in this next organization. But beyond that, generally, people unless they had an atrocious experience, don't necessarily share all of the details. And it's probably because of that report. It's, you know, absenteeism is related to the fact that employees are not necessarily engaged at work. And so when you have people that don't show up, are you asking questions around, you know, what you're doing doing in order to make sure that people are feeling empowered and engaged at work? Or are you just attributing it to other factors? And so a lot of times, we're not even asking the right questions, to get to the right answers. And sometimes I feel leaders, because they're afraid to just like, dig deep, and be honest and authentic in this way. Because they have that that barrier and that that that point where they need to, you know, assume leadership and what does leadership look like and whatever tropes are running around in people's heads, about what a leader looks like. It often prevents people from having that that trust in the organization because their leader if there's, you know, greater hierarchy, that leader seems so far away, and the person that you may be reporting to, doesn't necessarily follow the same narrative that the leader may present. However, it hasn't been filtered through all departments, all people leaders. And so it's really important not just about creating a culture that is aware of these things, but a culture that's actively working towards eliminating some of those barriers, and one that is focused on creating that sense of belonging at all levels and not relegating it to an HR, you know, person or department, but everyone is responsible for culture. And that's, you know, an important aspect of the organization.

Thank you so much for that jazz, I want to go back to something you brought up, which was your employees are telling you. They're not telling you why they're leaving, and tying it into what just said, which was stress and racial disappointment and that impact an organization's like, Well, how do we know what they want? And we talk about of employee surveys, the purpose they serve, the power white management and leadership leaders have when they have those surveys, and they have those responses, and also the responsibility that they have to actually do something with that information that data, especially as relates to marginalized employees?
If you want to go first, yes, sure,

I can start. I mean, I would just say, I think employee surveys are a really powerful tool. I've been helping organizations implement surveys for about seven years and have found that it's really, really important because often, you know, I'd work with clients with organizations, and they would try to give me a sense of the organization. And the reality is that if you are in a position of power within the organization, it's likely that people aren't really telling you their true experience, especially if you hold dominant identities. And they are part of a marginalized group. And so it's, I think it's really powerful to have, you know, especially when conducted by a third party, but if it is done internally, that can be done as well, just to space for people to truly voice, their experience, anonymously within the organization. But what's really important is, I've seen companies employ or use employee surveys, but then they don't disaggregate the data. And so you're actually obscuring some of the most important information, which is really looking at how individuals of people, people have different identity groups are experiencing the workplace. So it's nice to say, you know, that most of our employees, you know, feel really respected by their supervisor. But then if you disaggregate it, and you see, well, the white employees really feel respected, and the black employees feel less respected. That's a really important findings. So I'm a big advocate of surveys as an opportunity for employees to actually, you know, have a voice. But then to your point, Michelle, you can't just leave it there. So it's not just about gathering information and taking that, especially his leadership, holding on to it and saying, Okay, now we have information there that's used to inform strategy, as Jesse was talking about earlier, building out a strategic plan based on those findings. So yeah, we'll leave it there.

Yeah, I agree. I think that employee surveys are a great tool, I would also include focus groups, and leadership interviews. But all of this needs to be intentional, and we need to do something with it. Because a lot of times, we do all of that work within an organization and find all of these trends and hotspots of information. But it's a little bit like being a doctor and telling someone that you're that these are the things that you should do in order to make things better. But the organization is just there to tick a box because they were audited, or they needed to prove that they were doing something without actually doing anything with it. And that's the unfortunate reality at this moment. For some organizations where they're just doing the heavy lifting of putting all of these systems in place, but not really following through on all of the information that they're doing, because maybe it's too hard. They don't really know where to start. And so it's important to work with individuals or organizations that have that ability to help people walk through what are the exact tools that we should be looking at what are the what are the things that we should be honing in on in the surveys, and making sure that we are being transparent with our internal stakeholders, and making sure that they understand that we're working through this organizational change is not something that happens overnight, but we need to make sure that we're informing those in those invested parties, that we are doing something and we are taking action towards this off One times people like do a lot of this stuff in, you know, in one division or another, and then everybody else, you know if they're working in silos has no idea what's going on. And they're they feel that racial tension, or they feel that tension from the fact that it's just anxiety from ambiguity.

Thank you both for that. But that was definitely definitely insightful. And I can say what comes to mind is because I talk to the employees, right, because that's the community I build a black, indigenous a Latinx women, and it was like we, you know, I gave my feedback, yet they've done none of these things. I've talked to other co workers, who are similar in demographics as them, and they haven't seen any change, either. And they keep coming back with you surveys now. And you know, what, they have an open end. And I said, Well, why do you keep doing these if you aren't going to make any changes, right? Because the employees are seeing this. And so when you're like, well, we don't understand why they're leaving. If you're, you're continuing asking them what they need help with, and, and where their issues in the workplace. And you're not addressing them mine, when Jesse says some things take time, but they're also things that you can do in the interim, to let them know we're working on the longer term things and literally share that plan. Sometimes, so many organizations don't want to share what their diversity equity inclusion plan is for organization, they definitely don't share the numbers. But I can tell you, as a black employee, I can name I remember being the St. Louis office, for a large international engineering, construction and architecture firm, I could name all five black people. And those guys, and that included me and I wasn't even part of that office, we just ended up being renting space. And I was the only black person on my team. And so to really understand, you may be thinking legally, you're hiding the numbers, but you're black and other marginalized employees know what's going on, and they're talking. And so you really aren't changing anything by not disclosing what you're not changing anything, period, which is the point. But you're not hiding anything, because we already talked about it, we already know about it. And so the only person you're trying to save is really yourself. And at the end of the day, you probably aren't doing a great job of that, unfortunately, either. So I want to get into something else. We have a few minutes left, which is really on the accountability side, which is which is often lacking, and it's not there or it's it's pushed in places that generally have limited or no power and limited resources to get this work done. How do we bring about different types of accountability? We see NASDAQ is trying to hold accountability to companies that are listed on NASDAQ, we see certain laws in certain states and counties and cities like California passed a crown act well, you cannot legally say you can't hire me because my hair my afro is not or natural hair is not professional. What can we do around accountability? To get organizations to make these changes? What are your thoughts on that? And I'll start Jesse, like you're ready to go?

Well, I was gonna say to two things to your question. I think that there's still a lot of burden of education and emotional tax expected from marginalized identities to educate everyone else on their identity, instead of other interested parties taking that burden of education onto themselves, in making sure that they're going to, you know, research by and for the groups in question rather than, you know, asking an employee who's openly gay about pride month, or asking a racialized employee about Black Lives Matter. So I think that it's important to, for accountability, make sure that you are, you know, reaching out to organizations or individuals who have thought leadership in these spaces, because there's lots of them now. And that's, you know, a great thing to see. And also do this from a place of humility. We are people at the end of the day, and we are all going to make mistakes. I constantly find myself unlearning as much as I am learning. And I have this lived experience. But this is not necessarily what I was talking about five years ago before I started to do this work, because I didn't feel safe enough in my corporate spaces to be able to do so. And so it's important to understand my journey as much as it is understanding where you find yourself to be. I think that it's to just as point earlier, you know, 80% of people who call themselves allies think that they are an ally. But what does that actually mean? And do you actually know how to be an ally and act an ally ship with someone or group of individuals, but then understanding that when you call yourself an ally, you're still centering yourself, like no one should be calling themselves allies. That is a moniker that's reserved for the community that you act an ally ship with, first and foremost. And a lot of people forget that, because we're all about, you know, especially in North America, we love the eye, and ambition and ownership of, you know, challenges or what we call go getters. But there's a lot of humility in this work. And I think that if we brought more humility to leadership, as opposed to the ego, that this would actually work better and more sustainably and could have far reaching effects. Because the business case has been the business case for a very long time, really, to get past that. And in order for people to understand the reasons why this work matters.

Thank you so much for that, Jess. What are your thoughts?

Yeah, so there's, you know, a lot of talk about accountability. And I think for folks, including for me, when I was first hearing about it can feel really esoteric, and sort of what does that mean. And I'm really inspired by I participated in a workshop led by the People's Institute for survival and beyond. And they talked about writing a personal accountability statement, or within an organization, writing an accountability statement for your team or for the organization as a whole depends on your, you know, your size and scope, but really thinking about who sort of who's impacted by your behavior? And who do you need to be accountable to right, what is the community that you're serving, or that you're supporting you're giving voice to? And if your behavior goes sideways, or you don't follow through on your actions, who is actually most impacted by that? And to set up a mechanism where, how are you ensuring that you're receiving feedback, or you're being held to what you're saying? So I'll just say, for me, personally, you know, I'm an independent consultant, right, I work for myself. And so there could be, of course, in my work, I'm trying to be accountable to specifically bipoc employees, right when I'm working with institutions or organizations on equity and belonging, but I'm also thinking about I'm in close partnership, I use it usually collaborate with another independent consultant. And we try to have cross racial pairing. So usually, my co facilitators are black women. And thinking about that my work and how I show up is I also want to be accountable to my black female colleague, right. So how am I engaging in, you know, in collaborations with our clients? How am I showing up for my colleague, and really, with a mindfulness around that across racial dynamics? So I've been inspired by engaging in that work with the People's Institute to really write a personal accountability statement, right? What does it mean for me to be accountable? And how will I make sure that I'm being accountable, so it needs to be really action oriented, and clear and specific with the community that I'm, you know, supporting, lifting up with them in mind, not with me and sort of, I want to make sure that I achieve X, Y, Z, right. It's really about keeping the impacted folks at the center.
Thank you for that. And just you bring up a point I want to go into which is oftentimes, especially white men don't see a place for them. It diversity, equity, and inclusion work. And so I want to know, what role does being a white leader in an organization take when you're focused and looking at Dei? And I'll start with chess, and then I'll come to you Jesse.

Yeah, I would just say, as a white leader, you have a lot of power. And so I think there is there can be strength in that. And I absolutely, personally think that there's a lot of room for white men in this work. I would love to see more white men being outspoken about racial inequities about patriarchy, right. Because you have less to lose, right? There's less for you're gonna get less criticism, and then folks who have marginalized identities and so you can take you can push the envelope more. So if you are a white man, you know, on a board or on a leadership team, with other men with other white men. It would be fantastic if you were bringing them in, you know, and really helping them to see the importance of This work.

Thank you. And for that, Jesse, what are your thoughts?

So I completely agree with Jess, I think that it is really important to have people who have that, that perspective to be a part of the conversation as well. And it's also understanding that when you are a white leader, you have a greater sphere of influence than somebody who may not have that position. And also, because of the societies that we live in, you have also a greater sphere of influence. So it's also really important to, to lend that sometimes, you know, working in ally ship means giving the stage to somebody else, or offering somebody else the microphone, so to speak. And so it's important to understand that you have that ability and power to to share and bring other perspectives into the conversation into the room. And it's especially important, when, to justice point, when you sort of have less to lose, when you are the one person who's talking about these things, and you are that identity, it's seen less as. And understanding that that that was my lived experience, I didn't want to be the Latina talking about these things. And so it's important to to know that you have that power and use it in a way that uplifts us. All right.

Thank you both for joining me today. I love those answers. I absolutely agree. I love the personal statement part, as well as what you said just about the internal accountability. So everybody, if you're out there, and you're like, the barriers to progress, like why are we not seeing action, start with yourself, then look in your organization, and make those commitments. But more importantly, if your order can tie in accountability, some of you are already seeing that accountability being tied in from organizations like NASDAQ or government, again, as well as your board and stakeholders, and they're publishing it in your 10k report. But at the bare minimum, and it's not even, it's not the bare minimum. But on an individual level, which is the most powerful, what are your account before and like just said, as a white man, the EI does include you and your voice and your power has to be part of this dynamic in order to make progress and make change. And I'll say this, oftentimes, I find when I'm talking to white cisgendered men, they see dei as taking things away from them. And I want I want them to reflect on that. Imagine if you're fearing having something taken away from you. Imagine what it was like to be taken away from your homeland, from your country, come across the ocean, not knowing where you're going to never ever being returned. Imagine having the child you bear, the spouse that you jumped the broom with and culturally is what we do in black communities to jump through and we get married, literally separated from you for a price. Imagine living that fear every single day. And so the fear that you have is losing something intangible, but the fear that we have and have for generations and losing those around us, their lives and the ability to literally have them as a part of our lives. And so there's always the fear but the reality is, there's so much greater, greater when we all work together to really bring about what is now America and to break apart the systemic, um, policies and procedures and practices that we have in organism in organizations in government that really have to change and, and Jimsy is not waiting for so just to give you some dollars, just an n and i because like we say we've been making a case for it right. And the case still hasn't worked. Globally, companies are paid paying about $10 billion a year for global DNI lawsuits. $600 billion in annual corporate turnover costs, you can justify $600 billion in turnover costs, but you can't justify you know, making this personal level change and accountability and are you looking at $300 million none litigation monetary benefits in the US? As absolutely imagine if that was actually paid to people salary and close the pay gap. So everyone they could sell much for joining us just, um, any any closing thoughts you want to share?

Yeah, you just inspired me and Michelle, which is that I totally hear you on white leadership often worrying about having to give up power. But I would just say that it's helpful to come from that reinforces the mindset that there's not enough, there's not room for everybody. And I would say, it's really helpful to have the perspective that there's enough resources, there's enough for everybody. So you don't have to lose for other people to gain right, we can all be leaders, we can all get what we need. So getting rid of that sort of scarcity mindset, I think is really important. Because it really gets in the way when we're gripping, and we're saying, you know, I'm going to lose something, then that, to me, that's not really living out the life, the the world that we want, right? We don't want people to be in a place of fear and, and worried about losing power, who want to, for everyone to be empowered. So that's a closing thought for me. Thanks.
You're welcome. Jesse. Closing thoughts?

Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth. Your city is definitely not where we want to start. And even just reflecting on why we feel that fear, and why we have these these thoughts in our head, especially when it comes to, you know, unconscious bias of the whole thing. But they're all of these things running around in our heads and wherever we are sleepy, tired, hungry, that's where we used to make decisions that are our baselines. And if we don't do something to acknowledge and mitigate those biases, that's how they show up in the world. And that's how they become a part of our institutions and our systems. And we need to do extensive work in order to reflect the society that we have now in the US, as opposed to the society that was, you know, 400, I don't know how many years ago, it's, it's no longer about an a business case. It's about Are you still going to be relevant? And if that's not a bigger driver than fear of losing out, then you know, to Michelle's point, Gen Z is not waiting for anybody.

Exactly. So where can people find you Jesse? How can they connect with you?

So I am on LinkedIn, I am you can always check out the way we the way hyphen, we work.com or my personal Jessie santana.com. But usually LinkedIn is the way to go. I am trying to really push that as my place to be so yeah, definitely.

And how about you just?

Yeah, I would say the same LinkedIn is a greatt place to find me Jess McFarlane, you can email me Jess MacFarlane. [email protected]. But LinkedIn is the best place to find me.

See, we have some LinkedIn lovers. I'm number three. So you can definitely find me on LinkedIn as well. But you probably got to spell my name incorrectly. So I'm just gonna but it is Michelle with one l and h e y w ARD so definitely, definitely check us out. Both of you. Thank you so much for joining me today for kicking this off. Jess is coming back for a couple more times. I'm gonna see if I can snatch Jesse back as well. But we will be doing this series for the remainder of 2022 I can't believe it's 2020 I just graduated college the other year. I can tell you um, so everybody, have a great week and we will talk to you soon.

Thanks, Michelle.

Michele: 

What Clarissa Silva and I are going to be talking about is a different perspective. We often hear and and I shared with her this article, and I have to step back and drop in a link, which was talking about how tech companies have been trying to fix people, but not itself. It talked about how the last 50 years tech companies have created training programs, but diversity has not moved in that industry. And we're going to talk about on the data side why so welcome up, everybody. Miss Clarissa Silva.

Clarissa:
Thank you. Hi, Michelle. Thank you so much. It's truly an honor to be here.

Michele: 

Again, honored and stuff I get. So can you tell everybody watching and listening about yourself like behavioral scientists? Like what are you talking about and equitable workplace like what's really going on?

Clarissa:
So right, I was trained in behavioral science at the University of Michigan 20 years ago. And at that time, I specialized in infectious disease and mental health. So I am double board certified in, in mental health and in behavioral science. So behavioral science is really a comprehensive strategic research approach to create individual group or systemic change the the comprehensive part of behavioral science in the strategic part of a behavioral sciences that we look at problems from the full lifecycle, plus impact and outcome. So I practice in HIV AIDS for 20 years prior to becoming an entrepreneur. And I started my entrepreneurial venture with my research consulting firm, because I saw the absence of really that comprehensive, full lifecycle outcome and impact studies being conducted in products that we're using every day. So I wouldn't I engage with companies at every every stage of the full lifecycle of research. But really, the the behavioral science approach that that makes our strategy so different is that we focus on outcome and impact first, and then work backwards to make sure that you create sustainable change, or you have included within your design, things that would help ameliorate the consumer or ameliorate the experience.

Michele:
I love I love how you said outcome and impact first, and in the entire lifecycle. And so, right now, more than probably the last 50 years or so we're seeing more tactics being displayed on really mostly on diversity recruitment, as opposed to employers looking at the employee lifecycle. And let's dig into that for a minute. So they're looking at the recruitment side, only what should employers really be considering? If they're looking if they're, they're trying to figure out how to create an equitable workplace?

Clarissa:
So let's begin with with the first problem, right, the first problem is, definitions of diversity have a lot of variants, right? So if that diversity definition has variants, then the measurement and the type of programs and strategies that you're using, we'll only cover aspects that fall within that definition. So when when behavioral science walks into a company and starts looking at some of those definitions, and we see flaws, because they're not as comprehensive, because if it's not a comprehensive definition of diversity, then you're truncating the outcome, right? And you're truncating which you're looking at, and you're developing indicators around, almost very superficial level indicator and metrics, right? So the development of what you're trying to create, can seem like you solved for diversity if you just hire right. So I now I must have You know, I am now a much more optimal organization because I have, Ooh, let's brag. I got, I hired two black engineers, I hired a Latina scientist. So those three people do not represent a comprehensive approach to diversity, it is just that just hiring is the outcome for for many, and how they define how they resolve the problem of diversity and companies. So our work goes, extends a little bit further than that, because now you have to consider what does wellness look like? What does what kinds of benefits should be offered? What kinds of way could we wrap around being supportive within even that individual's full lifecycle? Right, like we have done projects that looked at caregiving, and what kinds of optimal benefits match for different lifestyles. So. So that's the first problem point, right? So your measurement is going to be off, when you're that level of variance exists, when you're considering even your definition of diversity, because technically, companies will just stop at the one outcome of, hey, I have hired this, I have done this. So now you're just going to be treated just like every other employee perform, right? And ignore the aspects of what diversity really needs. So so those are, that's, that's the quick and dirty of how I would encase the biggest problem when companies are trying to approach the diversity problem in general.

Michele:
Thank you so much, Clarissa. Okay, so what what I want to talk to talk about next is we're seeing a lot of organizations with these entry level training programs to diversify the talent pipeline, can we talk about what they're measuring? And what what is really for the employee lifecycle they should be measuring.

Clarissa:
So even even that has variants, right. So there are, so ideally, the training programs are designed to try to remove the the level of disparity that exists, right. But for for a long time now, right? We have had an influx of these programs that are designed to be training or mentorship style, to help promote or recruit or retain talents that you wouldn't normally have access to. So the problem really is within that, again, variance, right? It's, it's not just that you have retained created a program that recruited and your training so that you can help reduce that disparity. But you also have to consider, alright, it's not enough to just enroll people in programs, right, you have to focus on the outcomes of how I mean, let's consider what you go through, you have graduated from the training program, and now you're placed in it within the organization. Okay. Now, how many of those trained employees are going to be promoted? How frequently? You know, what are the what were what would be the optimal conditions to get them promoted? And what timeframe would it require for those promotions to happen? And the second side of it is okay, you're still you're still aiming for equity and parity. So now, most companies just stop at the point of, okay, I've trained enrolled, graduated, right? That's, and that's a full, and that's a full intervention in and of itself. Right. But it's, but see things fall short when it ends at that graduation point, right, because employee satisfaction is going to be the main driver of wanting to stay within the company, right? Because it's, you have one you're going through these internal training programs. And and I'm talking about internal programs that the promote growth for the employee, we'll also talk about programs that are designed that are specifically to targeted for Black and Latinos. Right. But we'll we'll go into let's finish off the employee section. Right. So, so what what you're most interested in as a company is that retention, right? That retention has to be this, it has to be consistent across, right? And have additional considerations when you have black or Latino employees or indigenous employees, non white, let's just say non white employees, we, we should be right, we should also be considering what types of wraparound supportive services that we could provide to ensure that that employee will absolutely be retained, right, but promoted and be able to, to evolve into leadership positions, so that the the style of management decision making can create cultural shifts. So really, when you're when you're looking at the most optimal conditions, it you know, is to create these systemic and group level changes so that the culture can try can can transform into a much more inclusive environment.

Michele:
Thank you, thank you for breaking that down. Number one, the two types, we look at the internal and external programs and what what are they really doing and so forth. So for employers that have decided to do these programs, what their level of success is measured by how many people complete the programs. When we look at it, we're looking weaving people who are black people who are lead next people who are indigenous other people call, we're looking at a different metric, oftentimes. So what should organizations literally be trying to figure out as to what is their onset or goals? Because we look at pictures and magazines encounter brown and black faces. So our experiences are different. So what should employees really be considering?

Clarissa:
So the first thing is like, we have to start from the baseline of there is zero understanding of what Black and Latino populations in need, or non white populations, marginalized populations, however, you know, we want to to look at groups of people that have different needs, right? And that they also have a different style of approach, different style of strategy. Right? So when we just consider, you know, I mean, even when you look at one aspect, like by lingual, and look at that impact across cognition, right, that, technically, when you're multi, you're bilingual, you're also multi cognitive and by cognitive, right? So when we, when we start thinking about what needs to exist as the optimal conditions, we have to start from a basic baseline, right? You have to begin a research study, like you would do any research study, you have to conduct focus groups, gendered and inclusive, right. And discover what types of support right, because companies need to understand the experience first. Right. And, you know, luckily, we're having conversations now, that is looking at Trauma driven mental health, the racism as a effects on mental health as a core, right. And we're looking at how we can better wraparound supports for for all employees, right, like, you know, so I'll give you a case example. Right? We looked at caregiving, right? So, so caregiving, we, we offer two types of interventions, right, one voucher, and one in in house. At the at the company where you're bringing your child and there's a in house caregiving. Most of the black and Latino moms wanted the voucher, right, like they needed to have That separation and and know that they didn't have to worry, right? Because that that aspect of worrying also impacts their performance throughout the day. Right? So, so, so we have to start there, right? We have to start by really deep diving and exploratory and analysis and exploratory kind of research to figure out what are the best and, and like, what are the best things we can offer our employees that will keep them and that they will want to stay and be promoted. So that you could, you could get that last piece of, of the behavioral science pie of that outcome and impact you're aiming for for divisional cultural, you know, level change, more than more than just okay, the employee needs these sets of support systems around them, we have to also consider these aspects of, of their mental health and their well being. So and on the other side, too, is that the whites employees also have to be trained, and also have to understand what comes from those focus groups, and understand how to minimize some of that trauma driven mental health that that consistently happens in the workplace.

Michele:
You ended it on the highest note trauma driven interactions in the workplace. And and some people don't realize how traumatic the workplace is for us. And just just an aside, having conversations about who wants to return to the workplace after working from home. And the employers like, Wait, I don't understand why more people don't want to come back. I highly. I asked you to look at who doesn't want to come back? Because that may be a telling story. And again, it's something you said, and I want to highlight this comment, a couple comments, actually. First, she's been hanging out with us all day, Dr. Bhatt, Karissa, silvar, appreciate how you framed us to find what diversity is first. And so as you go through your organization, and you're looking at people who don't want to come back, and you're like, they must come back look and see who doesn't want to come back. Right. And you, you then may find out that where you thought you had an equitable workplace, these other people, for whatever reason aren't may not be fine and equitable, you have a lot of questions to go ask. And a lot of things get answered. But by simply saying, Oh, it's not enough of them. It's only 6% or 12%, or 40%. The majority rules, I highly encourage you not to take that stance, but instead to look and see who really isn't coming back. So let me continue, I'll finish I pause in the middle of the statement, what diversity is the current state of our organization and what it is what it really is compare it to what we want, it helps us figure out how to address the two diversity problem we are experiencing. And oftentimes we don't look at that we assume is gender and race. And they are differently abled, or often use disabled. We look at LGBTQ community, and all of these other layers of intersectionality that we don't focus on, we don't discuss, because it's always these two, can we ever get past it? I don't know. Hopefully, in our lifetime, we will. Hopefully, we will have a lot of a lot of movement and traction on this. So I did want to share that. Clarissa any thoughts?

Clarissa: 

Thank you, Dr. Pearson. Absolutely. Right. Yes. Because one, just one human being is intersectional. Mac, you know, meta level, right? Like so. So when we when we just think about the complexities on on, on just one human being level. Now COVID The other blend of this diversity is risk tolerance, right? There's even like, at if we could, Dr. Pearson, we can continue to add so many elements to to just what we really have to figure out to resolve issues that create dissatisfaction, discontent, or just up there, they're just leaving. They're just leaving because you You are in such a sub optimal place.

Michele:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Just one more comment, I'm feeling very motivated by all the messages that are being shared here today. Thank you, you're very welcome. Glad you could join us. If there are things that you're like, I missed that I was taking notes, I was reading Dr. Pearson's messages, comments, you can always go over to the website and be sure to register there. Now we're in the last few minutes these go by way quicker than we thought I can tell you that much. What what I do want you to talk about a bit is for organizations that have these programs. And they they're really trying to figure out why they still have a diversity problem. What should what do they really need to be doing right now? Like, we've been running this program for five years or seven years? And we don't know what's going on? Exactly. What What would you say to them?

Clarissa:
So let's go back to measurement. Right. So if we could really adjust our thinking to be more impact driven and cultural and systemic change driven, rather than CSR line, or a percentage for this or percentage for that, you know, we were addressing the problem, right, like implementing incremental levels of change. Right. So and that is all driven by impact and outcome of, of how you're structuring your program. It's not enough to hire. Right? You have to have promotion, because you have to have executive level change. Right? And remember, the biggest benefit is, is that multi cognitive, like, you know, from from, from a business perspective, and bottom line is, okay, the cost of retaining that type of talent, and this and the strategy, right, like, the strategy that we develop is the far more comprehensive and far more inclusive, right, because we have dealt with absence so much, that we know what it would be if we have full. Right? So So companies have to begin approaching things, you know, from a behavioral science driven outcome and impact measurement, right? It's not enough to hire, it's not enough to, you know, add elements that you think are ameliorating circumstances within that individual's life, it has to translate into incremental changes across structure to to even enhance, like, even be able to impact cultural change. So, so outcome and impact has to shift in companies.

Michele:
Absolutely, absolutely. Agree. I'm out. I love this. I want to share one other comments, something we talked about a few minutes. I love this, I did a big return of Office survey for a company in June, when we splice by race and ethnicity for caregiver status, there's a there are huge differences. The caregiving responsibilities of Latin X, Black and Asian men and women are 1.7 to two times those of white men. And so we like come back, then it's still a pandemic going on. What do you mean, come back? If if we were fortunate enough, remember, also for the black and Latin X communities, many of us were not fortunate to have remote jobs. Remember, all of a sudden we became essential workers, but not so much essential anymore? So I do want to thank you for sharing that. Yes. Thank you.

Clarissa:
Yeah, we also observed a similar pattern, because the responsibility was a loaded one, right, because there's intergenerational relatives, like and sandwich, right, like you have your parents and your children. So the, the just to contextualize a little bit well, because we did a similar similar exploratory study, right. And we found that risk tolerance varied tremendously, you know, depending on the age of the child, and if there was an aging parents in the home, right. So it's like, double triple risk. Right. So So yes, risk tolerance is also something that is guiding a lot of a lot of the COVID transition work now and how Hopefully, you know, we'll see even even those types of models and those types of offerings to to, to, to be more responsive to what employee needs really are.

Michele:
Absolutely, absolutely. So Clarissa how this has been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today. How can people connect with you? So absolutely,

Clarissa: 

LinkedIn. And if you want to read more about some of the research that I've been conducting, you know, since COVID, and some of the decision making work I have, it's Clarissa silva.com. But LinkedIn, please don't hesitate to reach out if I can help in any way.

Michele:
I love it. So I'm gonna do this real quick. For the, for those of you who didn't catch it, but you can also catch her at Clarissa silva.com If if my internet wants wants to work with me. So let's, let's show this. Yes. Wow. Also go to Clarissa silva.com To learn more, but this like, this is why you have a behavioral scientists can't enjoy it is behavior based on on what is going on in the workplace. So Clarissa, thank you so much for joining us. People. Be sure to connect with her on LinkedIn. Go to her website. Check it out. She has something for you so you can bring up create an equitable workplace. Thanks, Clarissa.

Clarissa: 

Thank you, Michelle.