S4 E75 | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Recap

Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management. Listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent. We’re glad you’re here.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:16
Hello, everybody, this is Chris Hoyt. I am the president of CareerXroads. You are listening to the CXR broadcast, which we’re actually going to do a recap today. I’m pretty excited about this. We did our first DE&I meeting of the year for 2021. I can’t believe 2021 is here already quite frankly, I’ve got a couple of folks with me but also my co host the lovely and talented Gerry Crispin, Gerry, say hello to everybody.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 0:39
Hello, everybody.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:43
So we’ve just wrapped up our first meeting, we thought it might be fun to just talk a little bit about it. And a couple of big takeaways and with us to do that, I have Cris Castillo Brizard of MMC and Cris say hello.

Cris Castillo-Brizard, Marsh & McLennan Companies 0:55
Hi, there.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:57
We have Chad Godhard longtime CXR member from Assurant Chad, how are you? doing? Great.

Chad Godhard, Assurant, Inc. 1:02
Thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:03
So guys, this was really interesting. We had a guest speaker, from thoughtworks, she was lovely, she shared a little bit about the journey with some of the work that they are doing. And just just kind of set the stage with things that they are doing with regards to sort of attacking from a DE&I standpoint, attacking the funnel. So really taking a look at collecting information with regards to gender and gender identity. And looking at the attrition within the funnel, how to prevent that I thought that was fascinating. But then we also broke and we did an exercise on solving for hiring more females in the workspace. So well, sort of dissecting the entire meeting. Cris, I’ll just I’ll ask you first. Did you have? Was there a big takeaway? Or was there something from from the conversations that we had today to our meeting that just sort of resonated or that, you know, you’re going to walk back to the office with the virtual office with an implementer? begin to talk about with your peers?

Cris Castillo-Brizard, Marsh & McLennan Companies 2:00
Yeah, no, absolutely. The first one was the comment from Raja around, just rethinking what gender looks like. And I loved how she made the distinction between the gender identity versus the legal definition of gender for that individual. So that was an aha moment, because at Marshall McLennan we’ve been looking at, do we have an opportunity to re label the way that we’re asking people to self identify their gender. And this is not one item that we discussed. And the other takeaway for me was from the group discussions, and it was about the, what I heard from everyone on that call, just the importance of flexibility of companies really creating a culture where there is genuine, flexible programs in place, but that they apply not just to women who have children in the workplace, but also individuals who are caregivers, and just kind of redefining what it means to have flexibility and not just being applied to women. I just thought it was a really valuable concept to think about all of our colleagues and how they’re being impacted by the state of work today.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:06
Yeah, I love that, Kristen. I think so. So my B piece there, my big takeaway when Ryan was presenting was that there is a difference. I think we’re creating two funnels of data, right to two silos of data from a talent acquisition standpoint of what we’re collecting. And now as more of us begin to collect gender identity on that front end, and what’s actually being collected and recorded on sort of the hiring side or the the company side, so that the HR side of the talent acquisition side, and what’s ultimately at least in the US being reported on one reports. And we’ve got an exchange conversation taking place. And it’s really sort of interesting, the EEO one report has not changed in ages. And right now, if your company opps, to report gender identity, they’re told to put it in the comments box on the EEO one report, which I just find frustrating, but but fascinating as well. Yeah. Chad, Chad, what about you big takeaways.

Chad Godhard, Assurant, Inc. 4:01
I would just add on that piece, though, like, you know, also, you know, the complexity of balancing the legal perspective of this right, with the, you know, good faith effort of ta organizations and HR organizations, right, that are trying to make improvements, and how companies balance you know, that that risk reward option, so it’s going to be going to be interesting to see how that plays out. So yeah, I would, I would echo what Cris was saying. And I would also add, you know, one of the things that was really interesting and how Raja position it was, like, the complexity that’s introduced also from a global perspective, in different cultures, you know, and how all that’s looked at. And then one of the big takeaways for me was, you know, not just looking at it from an applicant perspective, but making sure that you’re looking at it throughout the pipeline, right. Look at it from applicants To who you’re interviewing to you’re offering and ultimately who you’re hiring, you’re, you know, any organizations challenges for, for for any underrepresented group, you may have a, you know, a candidate generation challenge, you might have a selection challenge. And unless you’re looking at that data, you know, it might not be an obvious one. So, you know, kind of interesting to make sure you’re, you’re looking at it throughout the pipeline there.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 5:28
Yeah, that’s a good call. Gerry, did you have any you have any thoughts or something you

Gerry Crispin, CXR 5:31
want to add to that? I mean, the conversation was great. Yeah, I did think that the conversation was really extraordinary, because there were so many people on the call, we had something like 45-47 people, I think, at the peak, and I, I would guess that it was probably two thirds, three quarters, women. And many, many of the folks who are on the call, we’re in high end leadership positions. We didn’t have an awful lot of recruiters on this on this particular piece. And, and I found that fascinating, because obviously, there’s a there’s an expectation on the part of leaders to start figuring out how to solve these problems. And, and get recruiters to the point where they can execute against that. And I, it seemed to me a lot more of the companies were talking about the level of transparency that they can deliver to the recruiter, and talking about the quality of the data that it has to have. Chris mentioned the, the insights you you derive from this. So we’re talking about upskilling recruiters in a number of different ways. If we’re going to move from a risk point of view to a reward point of view, I was blown away by Riah, talking about candidate identity, I’m going holy cow that’s like, it’s like asking everybody what pronouns they want to use. And, and the inferences that come off of all of that, to me are fascinating. And here is a woman from Hamburg, talking about this, by the way, and knowing a good deal about what’s going on in the United States, but also having in depth knowledge about the differences that exist country to country. And I’m going Holy cow, there’s no real resource out there, that shows the difference in how we think our worldview of diversity from the window of each of these countries. And yet we talk about claiming our value system is from a diversity point of view. So there are a lot of light bulbs for me in terms of just listening in. The one the one gap, I think, is that we had a lot of conversation about mentoring, which really focuses internal to an organization. But I’m convinced that corporations are going to increasingly not just for women, but for everyone have to invest more in coaches, professional coaches, who can help people talk about work, consider their job in relation to their career, in their career in relation to their life. Because more and more we’re blending our work life with our home life with our family life with our friend life. And and lots of people are confused in terms of how to how to work that. And I do think that’s going to be a key issue going forward in the next couple years.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:41
I thought the concept of the mentorship piece is broken. I think we need accessible champions for this piece. And I think that lends itself to ways that you’re looking for coaches that are helping us sort of think about things differently. I was blown away with the concept of setting the system up for success with regards to each market that has a completely different idea of what diversity is or delivery of what diversity is in their market. So it might be gender parity in one. It might be ethnicity and another and I think we she raised a really good and the conversation came up. There are there are countries where race from an ethnicity thing. That’s just that’s not a thing. From an employment standpoint, right? Not a concern that much bigger pieces that sit sort of in these other buckets that are a challenge.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 9:29
The putting myself in someone’s shoes, a recruiter who’s world class, the moment that a wreck comes open and hits my desk, I want to push a button that tells me within that job family or that job, what what is the underrepresentation in that group, because it could be any number of things. And that will inform to some degree, some of the sourcing efforts that I’m going to have To ensure that we have a qualified pool that’s representative of that underrepresented part of what’s going on. And in one case, it might be women another case, it might be color, it may be whatever. But I want to make sure that I can easily stack a slate with solid qualified candidates that that help us move the needle on that underrepresentation can hold somebody accountable

Chris Hoyt, CXR 10:30
When you get into transparency. And we’ve been preaching that for how many years not accountable if you don’t let him see it.

Gerry Crispin, CXR 10:37
I know. But you know, I’m hearing more willingness, if you will, to collect the data to be able to start doing stuff like that. And I, I think that’s a that’s a movement in itself.

Cris Castillo-Brizard, Marsh & McLennan Companies 10:49
I think that’s massive. But I think the only thing that I’ll add to that piece of the conversation is as helpful as data has become an is it’s also created a new set of problems, right? Because, again, like we talked about earlier, what is the data telling us we have yet to really understand that. And we have pockets where the data quality is questionable, we still have individuals that are adverse from self identifying, because they do not trust that any self ID information will be used in their best interest. So how do we navigate that, right, and like we talked about it in our meeting discussions, when you add the global nuances, and then the legal considerations, they’re looking leaders are looking to us business leaders are looking to us to solve for this, but we’re still having a hard time, just really sorting through the data and understanding what it means and how we can actually derive solutions to solve

Gerry Crispin, CXR 11:43
That’s a great, that’s a great insight, because, you know, we’re trying to create something, you know, and while we’re doing it, and yet the public still has a set of concerns about the fairness of our process. And I think that’s what you’re addressing, Chris, is that is that if you ask somebody who is a potential candidate for, you know, for your company, they they have a jaundiced eye if you will, as to whether or not any of the data that you give them would be used inappropriately and so and so being able to pitch why we have created or why we’re moving towards a fair approach and showing them how we’re going to use the data in order to enhance what we do is going to be a an interesting challenge that I don’t think many companies really focus on right now.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 12:40
Yeah, so Chad, take us out with your your final thoughts on the first DE&I meeting for CXR this year.

Chad Godhard, Assurant, Inc. 12:49
I mean, I thought the meeting was awesome and so many so many participants and so many great ideas and what I what I think is like even a zoom out a little bit more is really interesting is you know, the window of opportunity right now with the way that we work right and what you know what in office or work from home and flexibility all these structures that have been flipped upside down by the pandemic, but are so closely connected to be able to address a lot of the you know, diversity and inclusion challenges that companies face. You know, I think the next year or three as that gets redefined, is going to be really interesting to see how it you know how it stays connected to the D IP so exciting times.

Chris Hoyt, CXR 13:41
Good stuff. I love it. Love you both. So much fun to have you at the meeting. Thank you everybody. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

Announcer 13:48
Thanks for listening to the CXR channel. Please subscribe to CXR on your favorite podcast resource and leave us a review while you’re at it. Learn more about cx are at our website CXR.works facebook.com and twitter.com/careerXroads and on Instagram @careerxroads. We’ll catch you next time