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Commitment to diversity is important to creating a safe and fair workplace for all, yet organizations continue to struggle with integrating these practices into operations.
In this month’s Talent Table, we discuss how to support these initiatives through technology, and the importance of approaching hiring from a place that champions equality.
Watch this on-webinar to hear about:
This discussion on diversity in the workplace highlighted the need for actionable, measurable steps to create a truly diverse workforce. Key points included the disconnect between diversity goals and practices, the importance of aligning diversity strategies with business objectives, and the role of AI in enhancing diversity efforts. The conversation emphasized the need for organizations to focus on what’s right for the business, measure performance, and ensure psychological safety. Strategies like exit interviews and ERGs were discussed, with a focus on balancing high-tech and high-touch approaches. The session concluded with the importance of respectful conversations and tolerating differences.
Rebecca Warren 0:02
Hey everyone. Welcome to this month’s edition of our Talent Table. I’m Rebecca Warren. I will be your host. Let’s get started here with a couple of housekeeping things, and then we’ll jump right into our topic today. So if you look towards the bottom of your screen, you’re going to see some widgets that you can use during the event. There’s also further related reading in the resources section, please ask us questions during the Q&A we’ve got a lot to go through, so if we don’t get to your question during the webinar, we may include it in our follow up questions. Last of all, you can register for next month’s talent table, we’ll have more information coming out about that soon. So no further ado. I am excited to talk to some of my favorite people on the planet. So we are going to talk about diversity today with Michael and Kirsten. Our introduction. Let’s talk a little bit about what we’re going to talk about, and then we’ll have our speakers introduce themselves. So create. We’re going to be talking about creating a truly diverse workforce. And what does that mean? What kind of things should we be thinking about, what’s happening in the industry today? And we’re going to talk about zombies. So I’m going to first shoot it over to Michael to introduce himself, and then we’ll go to Kirsten. I’m going to have them talk a little bit about who they are and what they’re currently working on, and then their question of the day, I was told last month it wasn’t challenging enough. So their question that I’m going to also ask them to answer is, what would you do if there was a zombie apocalypse tomorrow? So their options, get out of town, fortify and defend, find a community, or scavenge to survive. So Michael, lucky you. It’s coming over to you to introduce yourself and tell us about how you handle zombies.
Michael Keane 1:58
Well, since we’re talking about reality, this is one of those conversations, huh? So let’s start with the zombies. First, I’d find a community for actually many of the reasons that we’ll end up talking about. But if you gotta fight an existential threat, you’re much better doing it with a group of people who have a common interest than if you try to do it on your own. I also wouldn’t be very good on my own. I don’t think I’m just not one of those survivors types of personality. So the community wins. Love it. Can they handle introverts? Anyhow? So that’s that. That’s a bit of an introduction, I guess, in and of itself, isn’t it a good start? Michael Caine. Michael Caine, very nice to be here this morning. I have had a 30 plus year career, primarily in human resources in corporate for the last five years, I have been an independent consultant, doing executive coaching. I sit on board interim fractional, CHRO work, that kind of stuff, anything that helps organizations. My career has really been about helping organizations. Helping organizations become as capable as they need to be. I had the pleasure of working with Rebecca during my last corporate role at PF Chang’s, but most of my career was in some form of retail restaurants or consumer facing industry. So it’s a pleasure to be with you today.
Rebecca Warren 3:20
All right, Kirsten, on over to you.
Keirsten Greggs 3:22
Hi everyone. I am Kirsten. I am the trap recruiter. Trap stands for trusted relationship builder, accountable and proactive, and that’s just my approach to TA, which I have been in for 20 plus years now. Am the head of trap recruiter, so principal consultant. I also do career coaching, process improvement. I still recruit sometimes, and let’s see, I have a podcast, and I’m happy to be here with my good friend Rebecca, who I sat on the recruiter network board with a few years ago. And oh, the zombie question. Yeah, I told the zombie question two will find a community. Because, yeah, I can’t do this on my own. That’s all I’m gonna say.
Rebecca Warren 4:14
Okay, so Rebecca Warren, I’ve been at eight fold for coming up on four years now. A practitioner, in a former life, came on over to eight fold, helped build out the customer success team, and now have moved over into another group inside of marketing, where we are building a talent center transformation practice, helping folks think about focusing on people, as opposed to the job. And so this question is actually a fun one for me, because Michael, just like you talked about my husband and I have talked about this, and he’s like, yeah, we’d stay in the house as long as we can. We need out of cans, and then when the zombies come in, we’re like, here we go. We’re done. Okay, bye. So I don’t even know if we would get out to the community. Jeff is like, we’re just going to hunker down and then we’re going to give up. So I
Keirsten Greggs 5:00
I don’t know what that says.
Rebecca Warren 5:04
So now it is an interesting transition. Let’s talk about creating a diverse workforce, and our answers are all different. That’s part of diversity, right? Okay, so creating a truly diverse workforce requires more than just setting business goals, it talks about actionable, measurable steps that help to transform diversity from an objective into a sustainable reality. Michael, you talked about how we’re living in reality. So the benefits of a diverse workforce extend way beyond just fairness. It’s fostering greater creativity, innovation, improved employee satisfaction and retention, as well as driving increased profitability for the business. So we’re going to talk about what diversity is and isn’t, what the current landscape looks like, how AI can play a crucial role in contributing to a diversity strategy, and what we should be thinking about for the future and anything else that comes up, because that’s just how we roll. So when we think about what’s happening in the world today, it’s a lot. And so I would love to get your opinions on the current state of diversity in the workplace right now. I know it’s super broad, so feel free to take it wherever you’d like. So Kirsten, you want to jump in and talk to me a little bit about where you think diversity in the workplace is right now?
Keirsten Greggs 6:30
Yeah. So I know you all are expecting me to say it’s dead or at the best on life support, but I’m going to shift my perspective. I’m going to be a little bit more positive today and say that it is disconnected from both the hiring manager or the hiring perspective as well as the candidate perspective. And what do I mean by that? So candidates don’t understand how what we are, what organizations are putting out there, or what they did put out there prior to, you know, these latest dust ups of no more diversity in our organization, those things are disconnected from what they were used to, coming from 2000 or even the images that we put on our websites, or the other attraction or candidate experience models that we try to build that show diverse folks, you know, on our website, or we say we’re, you know, we’re interviewing people from diverse backgrounds. And we want to have this. We want to have that. And then when we get to the interviewer, when we get into the organization, there’s a disconnect there. There’s not much alignment between what they say and what they actually do. The same thing on the hiring side, you know, if your goals and objectives are not tied to a diversity strategy, your performance, does it tie to that strategy? It comes off as like, Well, why are we doing this? What is the actual value of me doing this, you know, what do you mean? There needs to be a sense of belonging in an organization. We interviewed three people, we hired one, we did what we had to do. So I think a lot of it is disconnected in terms of, like what we actually want and what we actually do.
Rebecca Warren 8:19
Got it? Michael, what are your thoughts?
Michael Keane 8:21
Well, my thoughts are, are, I think, pretty compatible with what Kirsten just said. I look, we go through a lot of cycles in society. We go through cycles of business. And in this case, these two things are, to my perspective, highly, highly connected. You know, four years ago, diversity was a diversity program issue. I mean, I remember when I first became a leader, 20 plus years ago, and had to file annual affirmative action plans and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, not for the government, but for our business. So this is an active dialog. For a long time, it changed, I think, obviously, and intensified without a doubt in 2020 coming out of the George Floyd thing, and in which case, a lot of organizations, either that I was working with or that with whom I was familiar, you know, everyone was on, was on a spotlight. Now you have to prove that she got it. You weren’t, you weren’t callous, you weren’t ignorant and all that. And so some organizations really did have integrated programs, the way that Kirsten is referring to, but a lot of organizations didn’t, because it was simply a number that was reported on. And so you get a lot more public outcry. You get organizations like Blackrock saying, Hey, we’re not going to make investments unless you’re socially responsible. It becomes part of that conversation. So there was a big momentum, and it was so intense, you just knew it had to die down. And so sure enough, you know, in 2020, and 2021, it was we got to get what we have, or we have to enhance what we already have. So no matter whether you had something or not, you were putting something in with more focus and intensity. Hence, a lot more I don’t know what the numbers look like, but I’m sure they exist. How many more organizations? I created a chief diversity officer during that time frame, I bet the numbers exploded, so forth and so on. And they did things like ERGs. They did a lot of good things, right? Good activity. And then, just like businesses, though, the cycles on things are very short in businesses. And so we went from, let’s get it going, to so what’s really working? Is this really working? Which is a little nonsensical in all candor, because you’re trying to reverse, you’re trying to change the trajectory, if not reverse things that have been going on for decades, and so forth and so on. So to start to call the bet and start to say how much is this really working, was a little nuts, but it is, what goes on in business, on a lot of topics. And so that became the issue. Starting in 22 and 23 a lot of CHROs, I know they were, they went from how do I implement this almost immediately, to how do I measure it, which meant, how do I substantiate that what we’ve implemented is actually good? So I went there. And so certainly in the last nine to 12 months, for a variety of reasons, both internal and and largely external, because of the changes in the regulatory environment and the general permission to think more broadly. You’ve got people that are having to justify, whether they’re trying to justify it to their customer base, or they’re trying to justify to their investors, or they just, you know, just boardrooms in general. But I mean, we could, we could look at a sim the cycle similar to this, where to work, situation in a very it’s going, where to work, return to Office is going, you know, work from home, all of that is going through a very similar cycle now. So, I think that’s how I see it. And what’s going to be most interesting are the organizations where they don’t end up changing no matter what’s going on around them. And I think there’s starting to emerge some common threads around those organizations, which I’m sure we’ll talk about
Rebecca Warren 11:48
and all of those things I think are fair. I think it’s a great point to call out that this is a cycle, right? The folks seem to be in, and then they question, then they’re out. Can we measure it? What does it look like? How do we integrate it? Is it just performative? Is it actually making a difference? So, and I’ll throw this out to either one of you, as we were kind of prepping and thinking about this and thinking about what’s happening, you know, right now, with folks saying we’re not going to have a formal strategy, do you think that that’s just a little blip here and there, or does that lend itself to a larger conversation about what’s where diversity as a whole is going?
Michael Keane 12:35
Kirsten, you want to take the first shot? Or would you like me?
Keirsten Greggs 12:37
Yeah. Sony,
Rebecca Warren 12:39
it’s another basically,
Keirsten Greggs 12:42
Is it a blip? Here and there, perhaps? And I like, that’s a vague question, so I have to give a vague answer. And I think the reason why we can say it is a blip is because we are seeing large companies, but it’s still a small number of companies that are doing this in comparison to how many organizations there actually are. The danger is that some of these organizations are the leaders in their industry, so the smaller companies may follow them. I’m just optimistic. This does not even sound like me, but I am optimistic that the smaller companies are not going to follow that lead. I think that they have had the opportunity, because they have much more touch and a much more close relationship with their employees, because they’re smaller in numbers, and it’s easier to get and gather more perspectives and do what’s best for the collective I think that smaller organizations are going to continue to drive the diversity conversation forward in the long term, and really embedded into their business practices and their strategies and their hiring practices, like we said we wanted to do anyway. The only problem is that we don’t hear the good stuff. We are the only ones. We only hear what we consider the bad and the sensational and what’s going to get some clicks and what we’re going to read and what we’re going to debate about. So you know, that’s why we’re focusing on John Deere, that’s why we’re focusing on Tractor Supply Company and all these organizations that can polarize us on one side or the other, but we’re not seeing every organization roll back. So I think it’s probably not. Okay.
Rebecca Warren 14:44
Anything you want to add to that? Yeah,
Michael Keane 14:46
I would, I would extend Kirsten point. I would say here’s how I think about organizations, or how I react to organizations that I don’t know when I hear we’re going to suspend, you know, like Harley Davidson, whatever picks them. Company, right? It doesn’t by definition mean that they’re no longer interested in all of the things that underwent whatever they were calling their de and I programs. None of that begins that, none of that is by definition true. It could be, but it is not by definition. So I think that the organizations, and I know, I know many of them, this is a non event for them, because they have so clearly, as Kirsten indicated, they’ve so clearly integrated this topic within their larger conversation about just how to make their organization stronger, and because that is the context for the conversation, and not a non merit based, you know, or other other than merit based, not non merit, but other than merit based, conversation about advancing people who are different. And if your programs were about that, you probably feel very vulnerable right now, potentially, if, however, your programs are just part of one of several things you do to be the most attractive workplace that has high retention rates. And you can make a link to that. I don’t even think you have to make a cause and effect link, but you can just say, hey, we have data. So many organizations do employer engagement, survey data, all that kind of stuff. You can make the case if, in fact, you’ve tried to, and if that has been your intent. And in this world, I don’t see anything going on in this world that would cause an organization that’s doing it that way to have to say, Yeah, we need to get rid of it. So I think it all depends.
Rebecca Warren 16:29
Okay, yeah. And I think, as you both said, this is a bigger topic than we could address right now, as well as all of the nuances that go along with it, depending on many different factors. But as we think about that, I would say that it takes courage to talk about this, to face it head on, to figure out what’s happening. So as we think about especially the two of you in your roles as advisors and consultants, how with where we are right now, how would you advise HR, leaders as they think about diversity in their organizations? And I’m deliberately saying diversity and not a program. So how would you advise folks to think about diversity in their organization? MK, why don’t we go to you
Michael Keane 17:19
Sure? I would advise them to say, think about first of all, you should measure where you are, so that you understand, you understand the representation within your workforce. You certainly understand an issue like pay equity. I mean to me, that one is a glaring sort of check that box. Not check it just to say you checked it, but to check it to see if you have an issue, because that is one of the areas in my experience where disparity and inequitable treatment will show up without a doubt, and it’s an easily, easily understood situation. So that would be on my really short list, really early on. Are our people are non white males getting paid proportionately and equally to their white male counterparts? It’s really not a hard question to serve that’ll tell you a lot about the systemic nature of your organization. For those of you that have been there, I would say, and you’re part of the organization, you’ve already crossed that bridge, I would say, just be really, really focused on how all of your plans to make your organization stronger and more capable, because that’s what you get paid to do, and that’s what that’s the common interest here. And if you are creating supporting processes and capabilities, whether it’s around talent assessment, certainly how performance is managed, how potential is assessed, if you can then go into how you acquire the decisions that you make about who you promote. To me, one of the things I learned late in my career is we cough and talk about the most important decision you make with people is who you hire. I actually came to believe that, and you and I talked about about this a lot at Chang’s Rebecca that actually the most important decision is who you promote, because you give a lot of authority to perpetuate not just the culture, but the operating standards and everything else that goes with making a company and an organization good. Those are the things I would send someone to focus on, with an eye toward whether or not you’re creating a less than fully fair environment.
Rebecca Warren 19:27
I love that. That totally makes sense.
Keirsten Greggs 19:30
I think you covered everything. MK, yeah, like through my list, and I’m like, Yeah, he got that absolutely
Rebecca Warren 19:40
well. And I think Kirsten, we were talking about this, that this is, this is bigger than a trend, it’s bigger than a program, it’s bigger than a class. But let me ask you this question, should organizations still have diversity classes? Right? Focusing on. Inclusion or, Oh, I saw your face. Tell me more.
Keirsten Greggs 20:05
So I have a problem with training for training’s sake. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like,
Unknown Speaker 20:15
can you imagine
Keirsten Greggs 20:16
telling someone? I mean, we all go through this. We have our mandatory training, whether they be when we first start an organization or then quarterly. I mean, we don’t even like to change our passwords. You know, we get anxiety when it comes up and says you have to do something. It is required, it is mandatory. And when we put those types of words, those types of restrictions, those types of demands on something that should be embedded, on something that should be a part of your culture. We are telling people this is not good. It’s going to cause you to challenge you in ways that are going to hurt you. People are like, I’m not doing this. Why do I need this? I have black friends. I’m married to a woman, you know, like, there’s all of that. So we gotta take the language and the nest like the demands out of it. People will come if it’s something that is exciting, but because we set these trainings up as, like I said, an exercise in futility, a checkup, a checkbox to say we did it, because we want to say, Oh, we’re an organization that does diversity training, so now we can get government dollars to do these programs. And yes, I’m calling out certain organizations that even I used to work at so, you know, like that. That’s got us that’s gotta stop, and then we can go ahead and get rid of the change in your password every two days too.
Rebecca Warren 21:53
What a correlation.
Keirsten Greggs 21:55
I love it. Listen, I tell people I’m older and I can’t. I got too many passwords. I got too many. Yeah, exactly.
Rebecca Warren 22:04
Oh, I hear you and never, and the only time you get locked out is when you’re late for a meeting, right? Okay, so I love what you said there, and I think that throughout everything that I’m hearing both of you say it’s diversity is not a word, right? It’s not a thing. It needs to be part of the culture. It needs to be table stakes. It needs to be in the organization, not as separate trainings, not as, here’s our program. But what does that look like to make your organization better? And Kirsten, you said that too, where you said, when it’s part of the organization, people want to do it, when you make it a positive thing, when you say, this makes us better, as opposed to saying, we’ve done something wrong, and now we’re penalizing you by making you take this training right? It’s flipping the viewpoints on that as well. So let’s talk about another thing that’s polarizing in the HR space right now, AI, another, another piece of crazy. Let’s add into this conversation. So when we think about what AI looks like when we bring it into the workplace. How would you say that AI can support diversity strategies and goals? And I’m using AI in the broadest sense of the word. It could be chatgpt, it could be algorithms. It could be true, you know, large language models. It could be a whole bunch of different things, but in general, I’d love to hear how you think AI supports diversity strategies and goals and maybe makes it easier to embed into the organization.
Michael Keane 23:52
Kirsten, I think you have a lot of good thoughts on this, so I would, I would love to start for the group.
Keirsten Greggs 23:56
So I definitely, of course, come from the from the recruitment perspective or talent acquisition perspective, and the task automation, the enhancement of our key processes, improving the candidate matching 24/7 engagement with the use of things like chat bots, so someone can ask a general question and get an answer and not have to wait for someone to come and read their email. The data analytics and insights that a lot of these tools provide so that you can measure and so that you can enhance your processes, so that you can make data driven decisions that will benefit you. Of course, all of those things are important. And you know, when we had our original conversation, we’ve all talked about how, you know, we laugh at the fact that everyone is pretending that AI is new, but we use it. We’ve been using applicant tracking systems for some years. We’ve been using job search boards for many years. Because we, you know, we use LinkedIn. We can now ask folks, we can now ask GPT to help us with our job descriptions. We can now ask chat GPT to remove bias from things. Or, I don’t want to keep harping on chat GPT, because it’s not the only tool out there. But you know, there, there are a number of things, you know, even looking at mitigating risk in the in the forefront, you know, there are AI tools that do background screenings in different ways, not just the one where you fill out your your paperwork, and of course, you have to sign and say, I allowed them to to check these things. But you know, you’re looking at folks, social media, their past behaviors, if you know, where are they? A sexual harasser? Are they someone who’s violent in the workplace? Like all of those things need to be brought because at the as MK said, he mentioned that the goal is not always hiring, and I think we do get stuck on this, bring the right people in, but we don’t spend enough time, as MK said, promoting them, and we definitely don’t spend enough time thinking about how we are going to retain them. So using AI tools for those types of things is definitely going to be a value add going forward. They’re not what we all think. They’re tools. They’re tools. Yeah,
Michael Keane 26:23
I totally agree with that last part, just to extend on what Kristen said to me, continual learning is enabled by AI on a very large systematic basis, obviously, because of the nature of what it can do. And so to me, continual learning through AI can drive continuous improvement. And so to take it to what, how can you open up those tools to help you understand the true differentiators that already exist in your organization? You know, one of the things I learned over 25 plus years in corporations is the answers almost always exist inside the organization. The difficulty is figuring out which questions to ask and then how to mine those insights. And to me, AI offers a huge quantum step forward in that process, because it enables you to get access. First of all, it enables you to ask a lot more questions simultaneously. Secondly, it also allows you to get access to quality data driven responses that can form hypotheses that you can then pursue. It doesn’t give you the perfect answer. It doesn’t give you the complete answer, but it helps you guide your thinking about where to go next. So just to give you just to take that conceptual statement and drive it to a specific so what are you with? Ai, tools? Now, organizations probably are doing some version of this. Now, I know some of the ones I was in did it. We didn’t do it very completely. But what truly differentiates your highest performers versus your mediocre performers? Because your lowest performers are the ones that are most obvious. How do you lift all the water there? You know what characterizes them. How long does it take for people to get up to speed? What are the differences and then situations between people who get up to speed quickly versus those who don’t? How do you even know how to measure getting up to speed and reaching full performance? How does that affect your onboarding program design? What are those true differentiators between that? What are those true differentiators between people who stay with you a long time and people who don’t know how much of it is performance, how much of it is characteristic, how much of it is competence. You can just grab all of this data now, and you can cut, you can ask the question and you can get an answer. It may not be the answer, but it’s what characterizes your leaders who have the highest engagement versus the lowest engagement. I mean that one’s just screaming sitting there right now. And I would argue, any organization that’s running an engagement survey, you have the core data, and I can tell you it’s not being generated, probably by your engagement survey provider, because what they generate, and what they’re in the business of doing, is an insight about here’s the data, here’s what it was for this group, because that’s it. That’s going to allow them to meet their objective and commitment to you with the least amount of expense. So asking those second level questions, I think, to me, is where this gets really, really helpful.
Rebecca Warren 29:15
Yeah. And when we think about this, a system of intelligence, if you have in your organization a system of intelligence that does what you’re talking about there. MK, sorry, I should call you Michael. MK, is just to have it. I might entertain the rest of this session.
Michael Keane 29:35
I love Kirst doing it. That’s actually,
Rebecca Warren 29:37
I know. Yay. We’ve got everybody on the MK train. So when we think about a system of intelligence that takes that, that reactive data analytics, and puts that into proactive insights, that’s where it starts to democratize your playing field. That’s when you can start looking at folks from a skill basis. Right? So. So diversity is embedded in there, because you’re not paying attention to the things that don’t matter. You’re paying attention to the things that do right, the skill sets that somebody brings to the table. Doesn’t matter what college they went to, it doesn’t matter how many tours they had through a particular department. It now starts looking at what they have. What do they know? And how can we get them to that next level, right? How do we decide who to promote using insights as opposed to using analytics? Changing the game and AI is the piece that makes it happen, especially when you’re using models that have been seasoned for years that understand all of the new, incoming data and continually and dynamically change what those skills are for organizations. Because, as we know, things are changing faster than ever. You know we’ve seen that in the HR space. We’ve seen that in the world, and the shelf life of skills is continuing to go down. So how do we make sure that we are deciding, I love that, Kirsten, you called it out too. Not who do we hire? Who do we promote? How do we decide what that next level is going to look like in the organization? So I think the ways that we’re thinking about AI are all very clearly focused on making diversity embedded in the organization, not specifically saying we’re going to promote from this particular group. We’re going to look at who’s right for the organization, and give everyone the opportunity to take that forward.
Michael Keane 31:39
Yeah, there, there’s, there’s, you know, the use of measures and metrics is one that is more nuanced than I sometimes think we all want to believe. You know, there’s very few single metrics that are perfect in a business. One of them happens to be profit, but, but there’s a whole lot of metrics that all businesses generate and get a lot of energy, and they are just a component of a puzzle. They’re a piece of a puzzle. They’re not, they’re not the entire story. It’s the connection of multiple pieces that actually allow you to build some form of whatever picture that you wish to create and wish to understand. And so the AI capabilities of the core technologies of large language learning models, whatever, however you want, machine learning just enhances your ability to create hypotheses and all that they actually, I was never good at in science. The more I went along in my career, the more I started to think like a scientist. And I used, I would use, I know you heard this, Rebecca with us. You know, if our hypothesis is this? What would we have to know in order to know if that hypothesis is valid, you know? And that’s just scientific logic. And then you run either test pilots, we call experiments, or pilot pilots, or experiments, right? So forth and so on. So this is going on in lots of places. I think AI just enhances your ability to do more of that kind of stuff on a more, even more finite basis, and in some cases, a really large basis, because we have large organizations all the time, so you need to get access to a lot of data and get your arms around it. And it allows you to do that, either more finitely, more broadly and also more frequently. And to me, it’s about it embeds this issue around curiosity as a leader, as a member of an organization. The importance of curiosity is ever growing.
Rebecca Warren 33:27
Yeah, and something else that we had talked about briefly before today was we shouldn’t include tech for Tech’s sake, regardless if it’s AI or a new tool or a new system. We have to think about what we’re solving for, right? What is the problem, and then how are we going to solve it? Fall in love with the problem, not with the tech. So I think what you’re saying, MK, is that very thing, what are we solving for? And then how are we going to find the right solution? If it’s tech, great, if it’s some other data that we’ve gotta get out of the organization first, then that’s the way to look at it as well. Does that sound like a fair summary? Yeah.
Keirsten Greggs 34:09
Can I just add one, one thing? Because it’s one of my mantras, like, we really have to find that balance, though. Especially, again, I’m always coming from the TA perspective, from a balance between the high tech and the high touch, that way we can, you know, maximize the benefits of technology and then minimize the challenges that we face when we allow technology to take over. So AI is not perfect. Obviously, bias is embedded in AI, bias is embedded even in our humanness. But you know, if we have those double checks where we could say, you know, tech doesn’t AI, tech is not going to assess soft skills as well as a human being if AI doesn’t have the highest level of transparency. There’s. A lot of programming and a lot of science that goes into, you know, determining compliance and regulations and privacy and all of that in any over reliance on things like a keyword or, you know, because security can mean physical, you know, someone that secures a building. Security can mean something in terms of the financial field, uh, security can mean something like data security or tech technology security. So like, when we, when we don’t have that balance, I think that’s where we come into, we come into issues. And like I said, there needs to be a balance between the high tech and the high touch like that way we can maximize the benefits and minimize the risks,
Rebecca Warren 35:49
right, and still maintain what HR should be focused on is the people right. Okay, so let’s take that in a little bit of a different direction, but I think we’ve agreed that we need to make sure in all things that we’re doing, whether it’s tech, whether it’s specifically AI, whether it’s diversity, that we need to focus on what’s right for the business. If we see things that are off, we need to call that out, right? Looking at those metrics. Okay? I thought that was a great call out like, hey, let’s look at pay disparity. We’ve got that information right now. Let’s look at the things that we know, and let’s figure out then what’s the right thing for the business so that my next thought is around strategies to make sure that diversity initiatives become business as usual, instead of a one time or a one off focus. So I would love to hear and I think we touched it very briefly at the beginning, about some companies shifting and some not. But what strategies should we be thinking about to make sure that diversity is not a one off or just an initiative.
Michael Keane 37:08
I’ll take a first shot at it already. No. Go ahead. Kirsten, you feel free, please. I
Keirsten Greggs 37:13
was going to be very brief, so I’ll probably just piggyback on what you say. So I’m going to let you take
Michael Keane 37:19
it. That’s a, that’s a nice way of saying, let’s see what you can come up with.
Unknown Speaker 37:23
Michael,
Michael Keane 37:26
then I would say again, and I’m gonna, I’m probably starting to sound like a rewinding tape, but, but it all starts with, what is your plan to make the organization stronger and sustainably more competitive and more capable. And are you so the questions that I think you should answer, and if I was a board, I would want to, I would want to know on a regular basis, is, to what extent is the organization getting its fair share of the talent market, and how do you define that talent market, and and how do you know whether or not you are without regard to whether you whatever you think you are. How do you know? And therefore, how have you integrated it into your system of measuring and tracking and being ready to make different decisions because of those measurements? And how do you know whether or not you’re retaining your highest performers? Period, you can say every organization has turnover so let’s just say you have a 10% turnover rate. But by definition, are the people that are the highest performers in a measurable manner, not just whether or not you give them the highest performance ratings, but in terms of their delivery. Are you retaining them instead of at 90% like the rest of the organization, you want to be retaining at least 95% because you never want to lose your highest performers. And how do you know what’s going on when you do lose your highest performers? What is your ex interview process? Exit interview processes are all over the map. They, by and large, are lowly, have low participation rates, and they are not actionable data that organizations actively use. I see this with almost all my clients and it’s because it’s seen as an administrative conversation, as opposed to a business organization enhancing conversation. What if? What if? What if you took a more intentional approach around something like just understanding why the people leave you leave you, but especially those people who agree, who were, who were recognized as high performers, and if you’re focused on those kinds of things, then what are you doing to allow, in the name of retention organizations, to the people in your organization, to feel like this is a place that belongs to me? How do you even know whether or not people think this is a place that they belong to? What’s your sense of that? What is your plan for understanding that, if you don’t even try to understand it, you sure as heck are never going to manage it. Those are the things that I ask, really non diversity oriented questions, because they’re common sense. This is what we need to know, and how are you managing to do this? To make yours. Organization stronger that will drive these kinds of things.
Rebecca Warren 40:04
So let me jump in something real quick here, and then Kirsten will go to you. So MK, the idea of exit interviews, that’s a whole nother thing. But let me just ask you your opinion, isn’t it too late by the time you’ve gotten an exit interview, like, what if we, you know, and there’s all this conversation about stay interviews, but is it too late by the time you get to that exit interview? Absolutely,
Michael Keane 40:27
absolutely. I mean, if the focus of the interview is to change the decision, well, clearly, that’s too late. And even then, I think that’s part of the reason why they have such low participation rates, is because people, you know it’s all about. It’s an either or. It’s a binary situation. I’m either engaged enough to do this or not. So it’s a really fair comment. It probably reflects a lot of people’s realities, but that also makes you civil. That’s why I go back to how do you know whether or not you have good, solid relationships with the people that are creating the most value in the organization. That’s it. That doesn’t mean that I have to do exit interviews. It doesn’t mean I have to do interviews. I just have to answer that question, and I can come up with a whole bunch of different ways to
Unknown Speaker 41:16
answer that question,
Michael Keane 41:18
but you spend money, but organizations still spend money on exit interviews,
Rebecca Warren 41:21
I know, and then what do we do with it? Right?
Michael Keane 41:24
There’s money that could be spent differently. I mean, that’s, that’s the, that’s the extension of the foolishness. Yeah, that’s fair.
Keirsten Greggs 41:33
It’s just, it’s just too reactive. It’s all you mentioned earlier. MK has mentioned it a few times, like it’s always in response to something, instead of being embedded in our culture, instead of being embedded in our business processes, all of them, not just hiring for hiring sake, not just when we’re looking at training and development, not just When we’re trying to see if there’s bias in a certain practice, but it needs to go across all of our processes. It needs to be embedded in your business. It needs to be embedded in your culture, and then it has to evolve and adapt. What’s happening today is not going to be the same type of initiative, and I don’t want to minimize it, because we’ve already decided that diversity is not an initiative. It is a cultural mainstay. You know it is, it is our every day. It’s a part of our lives, because each person is going to show up differently. Each person is going to bring their own perspectives to the table. So it has to be something that is also adaptive, also that’s evolving. And not that these are our goals to get to this place. But guess what? Your goals need to continue to evolve and adapt to your diversity, inclusion, belonging, whatever equity everything needs to continue to evolve and adapt as well.
Rebecca Warren 43:09
So 100% and so just thinking about where that goes next. So when we think about diversity, we think about the context of work. Where do we see things going as we go forward? Right social pressure right now has put a lot of focus on programs. What diversity looks like, what it is, what it isn’t. Where do we see where you all see diversity, the ongoing role of diversity in the context of work going forward, any thoughts or predictions on what it could or should look like.
Keirsten Greggs 43:46
I’m seeing because I work mostly with smaller organizations now, from a consultant perspective, I am seeing more organizations start from where they are what makes sense to them, because it doesn’t make sense to have 14 ERGs when you have 20 employees. That does not make sense. It doesn’t
Rebecca Warren 44:10
These are a lot of single people hanging around in their ERGs.
Keirsten Greggs 44:12
Well, I mean, like, who’s leading it, and then what value is it giving? You know, fair, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to stand up certain practices when I’m going to have to go back to earlier parts of the conversation. MK, made us a great point about pay equity. You haven’t even analyzed the data that already exists, and you’re trying now to add on to that, or to bring in new things that don’t actually affect your business. So start from where you are, and I am seeing smaller organizations really ease off the what’s popular, what’s trending, what’s going to have us in the news. News, or what’s going to make sense, or what’s in the news even, because, again, a lot of those companies aren’t even your competitors. So why are you trying to model your business around what they’re doing? Pay attention to your internal employees and pay attention to the customers that are also your potential employees, by the way, and that’s where you did start, start where you are. I don’t like the term low hanging fruit, but it really is the low hanging fruit that gets you to the most impactful journey, and and the honesty and the authenticity and the transparency that’s needed to move these things forward,
Rebecca Warren 45:42
yeah, because if we take that down to the base level, people want to feel right. This is the belonging, the inclusion. People want to feel like they are working in a fair and equitable place. People want to feel psychologically safe when they come to work with the ability to bring whoever they are to the office and feel like it’s valued. So what you’re saying is not just deciding to put in a blanket program or because I came from a place that had ERG, so we absolutely need to have ERGs here. Doesn’t make sense, right? What? What does your organization need? And if we go to that very bottom of the hierarchy of needs, it’s to feel safe when you come to work and feel like you can bring whoever you are into the workplace and feel like it’s going to be valued. Okay, I cut you off your No,
Michael Keane 46:37
no, you didn’t cut me off at all. I would say, in addition to everything that you both have said, which I think is fair and real, I think organizations are going to rationalize it. It’s funny. Kirsten mentions ERGs before things started on a public basis, there’s a group of 20 plus CHROs that I help gather. We gather every six months and all that back in the early 2023 people in that group were starting to say that they were questioning their ERGs, not that they were valuable, but whether, but to what extent, they were valuable. And then, lo and behold, you know, that was just a precursor to things that were going on. And that wasn’t because anybody said, Hey, we’re getting questioned about it by an external force or something. That was just part of the normal course of, okay, we’ve put in all these programs now, which ones are the ones that count? So I would say, I think that what’s going on, without regard to where organizations are, is, you know, rationalizing for impact versus activity, because we clearly had an explosion of activity again, to prove that people were on, you know, they had religion, so to speak. But you know, I love, you know, do we need to? We need 14 ERGs for a 20 person organization, of course, we don’t, but, but some make total sense. Some make complete sense to the extent that they’re connected to your talented organization strategy. You know, I’ll give you an example. One of my clients has been, is, is, is a retailer, they have six and a half 1000 hourly people, and they have roughly in the mid to upper 30% turnover rate. So they are hiring almost 2000 new people a year, and that is the lifeblood of their business, these people that they’re hiring and and so one of the things that we started was veterans ERG, just as part of a larger veterans focused hiring strategy, because there were persist, there were parts of the organization that we thought would be really amenable, and that people who came from military backgrounds would actually translate into very well. So that combination was really powerful, because now I have an erg that can enhance work that I’m doing. It can inform the work that I’m doing on this other piece. But the goal is, how do I find the best talent possible in the organization? I think that’s where more organizations are going to start to go. And so it doesn’t really so it represents a positive evolution in my mind.
Rebecca Warren 49:18
Yeah, and who wants to connect in your organization, right? I mean, I think about us at eightfold, we don’t have a ton of ERGs, but one that is the most powerful and the most engaged is our women’s erg. Because we are primarily a remote workforce. We’re all across the world, but there’s a lot of similarities in our desire to connect, and our ERG is not just isolated to women. Everyone in the organization is able to join. And one of our meetings that we had, we had a whole bunch of guys who joined, who gave us some really good insights and feedback and contributed to the conversation. So. For us, the women’s ERG is really important because it helps connect us. We’ve got some other areas that we don’t have engagement clearly, because folks are like, that’s not what we need. So some of it is also driven internally, right? That groundswell, as opposed to someone in, you know, the CHRO saying we need to have six ERGs, right? So who wants to connect and why is also another reason to have them, and what is that going to do for the business? Does it make people feel more connected? Does it feel like, Hey, we’ve got someone to talk to. I would never talk to half of the folks that are in this women’s group that I’m now in a small group pod with, had I not been part of that erg. So that connection piece, I think, is part of that inclusion, belonging. Who do we want to connect to? And how do we stay connected? Okay, so we’re coming up on the tail end of our time. This is gone quickly. So I have one, one big question that I want us to cover, and then I want to get a one minute takeaway for for the both of you, but this last question, and it came up in the chat as well with someone who is on the line, what tips can you share about avoidable mistakes, which HR leaders should be prepared for when thinking about diversity? And I think we’ve talked about some of them right, doing tech for Tech’s sake, having, you know, performative ways of doing things. But would love to have us just open this one up for a minute or two on what are avoidable mistakes when we think about diversity. Maybe we’ve already said all there is to say,
Keirsten Greggs 51:39
reiterating like not doing it, just to say you did it like, what is the impact going to be? Is it going to be meaningful? Is it going to move the needle? Is it going to make people feel good? Is it going to bring your organization closer together? Is it going to improve retention? Is it going to improve your life, work, life, balance, whatever you’re trying to measure, what is the value of it? Like? Don’t just do it for the sake of doing it.
Michael Keane 52:12
Yeah, yeah, to grow up, to not grow, to add to that, I, to me, it all starts in the beginning, because there’s no shortage of activities that can be done. So, so, so I think that the number one place to focus on is, you know, what are the questions that you’re trying to address with, with whatever you’re going to choose to do? So you know, what outcomes will you want to make different, and what problems do you want to help solve? And, you know, and changing representation at levels is a problem, I would just ask, is that really the problem? So, for instance, you know, do you truly have a merit based promotional process? And how do you know that? To me, you know, so those asking the right question before you decide upon your path, is, to me, where CHROs can be really, really value added.
Rebecca Warren 53:11
Yeah, and one thing I think I’ll add to that too, is when we think about diversity, we, and I should have brought this up at the very beginning, is we deliberately use diversity as a term, but it’s so much more than just ethnicity and gender, right? When we think about what divertes true diversity in the workplace from different backgrounds, it’s a different understanding of work. It’s neuro diversity, it’s non-traditional backgrounds, it’s LGBT, it’s veteran status, it’s disabilities, all of those things are what make people who they are. So when we label diversity, we feel like sometimes we’re making a really narrow definition over something that’s super broad. So I should have brought that up initially, saying, hey, when we talk about diversity in our context between the three of us, we’re not just talking about ethnicity and gender. We’re talking about what that broad swath looks like that allows people to bring their whole selves to work. So in conclusion, I’m going to stop talking in a second and have you two do your one minute wrap up. But one of the things I was talking to our CHRO, Darren Burton about this topic. And one of the things he said that really resonated with me, and I think this is going to be something for a future webinar. Future thing for us to think about is he said, we have to create an environment where we tolerate differences. And right now, I don’t know that many organizations do that, because a lot of times I hear, well, we just don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about religion, we don’t talk about politics, we don’t talk about who you are outside of work. We just talk about what’s happening inside of work. And I think that’s where we may be hanging ourselves up a bit, because we’re not talking about the things that matter to people and learning how to tolerate differences, as opposed to saying we’re just going to pretend they don’t exist. And so he had talked about getting past the optics and really focusing on respectful conversations. And I was on a panel with folks at a webinar, we were talking about that new book radical respect. And I think that’s something that we need to bring to the table, is what does that radical respect look like? So I think that’s my takeaway from all of this, is, what does that look like past the optics? How do we respect each other? How do we bring that to work, and how do we tolerate differences? So I am done talking outside of the wrap up, so Kirsten, I’m going to throw it to you. Give me your one minute or less, takeaways, thoughts, things you want people to hang their hat on when they disconnect from this webinar. I
Keirsten Greggs 55:45
think the only thing that I haven’t mentioned so far seems to be a problem in a lot of the organizations that I worked in is that we never like, for lack of a court, you know, using the corporate term, the pm term, like we never race seated, so we never decided who was going to be responsible, who was going to be accountable, who was going to be consulted, who was going to be informed. We didn’t do those things. So we got to start there, because there’s an ownership issue in terms of when we are starting to talk about diversity in our organizations, and that’s why you saw so many companies hiring a chief diversity officer that didn’t actually have a role. Because, like I said, we didn’t, we didn’t racy it upfront. So so we got to do that before we before we try and before we start rolling out, before we start measuring, before we start analyzing, before we start hiring that those the diversity team, before we start adding ERGs, we need to, we need to take a step back and decide who’s going to own the who’s going to own this. I love that,
Rebecca Warren 56:59
All right. MK, over to you final thoughts: Sure.
Michael Keane 57:02
You know, in preparing for this, I was reminded of a situation that I was a part of on the front end and the very end in an organization that was in the early 2000s it was the stereotypical non diverse organization, and it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t white male. It would happen to be white female, a certain size, I was in retail, and a certain hair color and, and, I mean, it exhibited all the counter behaviors within it, as in people writing down, not, not, not a fit, which was purely around size and, or color and or everything else. I mean, that’s how that’s how embedded this was. And it was seen that in that, those cultural norms were seen as essential to the success of the business. So this was a lot of reworking. And so while I was in the role, we started to break down those barriers of understanding that, no, that is, this is not by definition starting there. Then I left the organization for basically eight years, and when I returned almost a decade later, you would not believe the difference in that organization. And it had nothing to do with HR programs. It had everything to do with your point, Kirsten around, around, accountable, an accountable leader who was really, really focused on what was true performance. And the benefit was that they could find people, they could call out people who looked the part but weren’t performers. They were also really focused on potential. And when you think about where we all want to be, no matter what kind of organization we’re in, we want, I think the overwhelming majority of us all want to be recognized for what we do and what we can do and and so to me, the this entire process has just reinforced the significance of that. And if you are really, really good about focusing on just a couple of things, and don’t make it more complex than that, because those are hard things to do. They’re hard things to do. They’re hard things to do in small groups. They’re really hard things to do systemically, but you can get it done. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s very workable, and you will get all the spectacular results, plus the business results, and that’s what everybody wants.
Rebecca Warren 59:16
Yeah, I love that. So to wrap that up, I think we absolutely have agreed that diversity needs to be table stakes. We need to focus on what’s right for the business overall, focus on the right measures of success, and then make sure that we’re having those honest conversations with each other, so that people feel psychologically safe when they come to work. I am going to wrap us up here. We could keep going on, but we are out of time, folks. So thanks so much for joining us. Pay attention to your inbox for what our next talent table is going to be focused on, around some spooky stuff around HR. Thank you so much to MK and to Michael. Sorry. Add Kirsten and we will catch you later.
