00:18:13.800 –> 00:18:18.900
Lotus Buckner: Okay, welcome everyone. I keep hearing my beep. So it sounds like we will have some more people trickling in but welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today for this real people, real talk, virtual round table on recruiting for diversity and inclusion.

00:18:31.860 –> 00:18:36.120
Lotus Buckner: I’m your host Lotus Buckner. My pronouns are she/her/hers.

00:18:36.660 –> 00:18:54.600
Lotus Buckner: I’m the founder of LB talent solutions where we work with both individuals and organizations to maximize and amplify their talent potential. So we help with career strategy with a personal branding focus and you can learn more at www.lotusbuckner.com.

00:18:55.830 –> 00:19:04.230
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00:19:05.970 –> 00:19:13.470
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00:19:14.490 –> 00:19:26.070
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00:19:26.760 –> 00:19:31.020
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Lotus Buckner: We have only three rules for today during these sessions. The first one is, be respectful and open minded, regardless of your perspectives and opinions as all of us are here to learn and to unlearn.

00:19:44.310 –> 00:19:53.760
Lotus Buckner: Number two is be unapologetically candid. Because if we’re going to meet our goal of learning and unlearning, we really need to have these real authentic conversations.

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Lotus Buckner: And the third rule is, have some fun. So let your passion on this topic spill out. It’s a safe space and we love engagement and participation from our audience members as well.

00:20:06.000 –> 00:20:14.670
Lotus Buckner: So all of you will be muted except for our guests for the next hour or so. However, we encourage everyone to participate, using the chat feature.

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Lotus Buckner: If you’d like to submit questions directly to me for any of the panelists, feel free to do so using that feature.

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Lotus Buckner: Otherwise, share your thoughts and questions to the entire group. I am all about back channeling so please feel free to join in on the conversation through the chat. And if you’re able to stay after the session. Our guests have graciously offered an extra 15 minutes or so of their time to network with you or answer any further questions that you have. And at that point, I’m going to unmute all of you and you can come on camera and network with us.

00:20:51.150 –> 00:20:58.620
Lotus Buckner: So if you’re excited and ready to get started. What should we do today…type “hire differently” into the chat box for me.

00:21:07.170 –> 00:21:24.900
Lotus Buckner: Yay. There we go. Awesome. Alright, people are ready to go. So, we will start with some introductions and I’ll have the guests introduce themselves. And then we’re gonna just jump in and have an organic conversation about this very important topic. Cat, you want to start us off with an intro?

00:21:26.070 –> 00:21:30.780
Cat Colella-Graham: Yes happy to and Lotus, thank you so much for bringing us all together on a Friday again.

00:21:31.440 –> 00:21:39.510
Cat Colella-Graham: Happy weekend, everybody. So I am Cat Colella Graham, I am the founder of cheer partners, which is an employee experience agency.

00:21:39.900 –> 00:21:46.920
Cat Colella-Graham: I’m also co founder of the diversity marketing consortium in conjunction with Roland Capital Advisors.

00:21:47.370 –> 00:22:02.730
Cat Colella-Graham: I think what you want to know most about me is that I have always deeply felt that inclusion and creating workplaces of belonging, not only leads to a better employee experience but leads to business results. So thank you for having me here today.

00:22:04.110 –> 00:22:07.140
Lotus Buckner: Absolutely. Thank you. Candice.

00:22:07.770 –> 00:22:15.090
Candice McGlen: Yes, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here and to learn and share with you all.

00:22:15.780 –> 00:22:25.200
Candice McGlen: Candice McGlen again. I’m the founder of Gift It Works which is a social impact… where social impact and talent management consulting meet

00:22:25.620 –> 00:22:40.920
Candice McGlen: So really helping organizations with building cultures of inclusion. Also the co founder with the Rinker group where I serve as the VP of talent strategy and we help mid sized organizations with all of their talent management needs.

00:22:41.940 –> 00:22:51.420
Candice McGlen: For me I think my mission has always been because I come from more of a social change background and, you know, gotten to HR from there, but my mission has always been to disrupt any belief policy, practice norm, you name it that prevents us from reaching our highest potential. So I’m really excited to be talking about hiring differently. And what that looks like.

00:23:08.190 –> 00:23:21.210
Lotus Buckner: Candice, you have to tell us a little bit about your advocacy work because I just found that so fascinating how you brought that history and background that you have together with what you’re doing in HR

00:23:21.480 –> 00:23:23.220
Candice McGlen: Yeah. So you want me to share that now.

00:23:23.700 –> 00:23:24.720
Lotus Buckner: I would love for you to.

00:23:25.080 –> 00:23:36.930
Candice McGlen: I started off, you know, political science major. I was always attracted to change and seeing change and being a part of that I worked for various Nonprofit organizations and causes doing grassroots canvassing so I was the person going door to door trying to get people involved in causes and getting people just mobilizing people around you know environmental causes or you know, human concerns and work for a global environmental NGO, and at that time was working in development and grassroots

00:24:05.700 –> 00:24:11.970
Candice McGlen: And just started to see how if you really wanted to impact mission HR was a really great place to do that.

00:24:12.750 –> 00:24:29.430
Candice McGlen: It was about people power which is the number one thing that we talked about a lot at a lot of these organizations that I worked at. And so for me, people power is getting rid of barriers to inclusion and getting rid of barriers to participation and that’s really been my claim.

00:24:30.510 –> 00:24:34.230
Candice McGlen: So my work is sort of tying those things together.

00:24:35.670 –> 00:24:37.650
Lotus Buckner: I love it. Thanks for sharing that.

00:24:38.730 –> 00:24:39.660
Lotus Buckner: Rohini, you want to introduce yourself.

00:24:40.500 –> 00:24:55.050
rohini shankar: Oh, so thank you Lotus for organizing this. I’m so excited to see the passion and the number of people that have joined to talk about this very, very important topic. So my name is Rohini Shankar.

00:24:55.500 –> 00:25:04.020
rohini shankar: I am the Chief Human Resources officer of a company called Ciox Health. We are the business of medical records. So if you go to any hospital and you wanted…we’re a 3000 hospitals that we are a part of…and you wanted your medical records. It’s probably outsource to the company that I worked for

00:25:13.890 –> 00:25:23.820
rohini shankar: Where we have employees that sort of retrieved those records and give it to the patient or whoever wants the record at the right time and probably after that.

00:25:24.150 –> 00:25:31.290
rohini shankar: I had a long career with the General Electric Company and started with GE in India went to China.

00:25:32.010 –> 00:25:40.710
rohini shankar: Went back to India, then move to the US. I was then the healthcare business and then move to financial services and was in a series of roles. When I left GE to come work for Ciox health and in my role at GE. I was really passionate since I came to the US to work on diversity and inclusion.

00:25:53.610 –> 00:26:03.330
rohini shankar: I set up the affinity. I was a part of the affinity forums. When I was at GE Healthcare. And then I left the forums. When I was with GE capital before I left.

00:26:04.020 –> 00:26:08.160
rohini shankar: Left to come to Ciox Health in terms of making sure we were recruiting talent.

00:26:08.400 –> 00:26:13.800
rohini shankar: And then, the most important thing is getting talent in and then how do you make sure you retain them.

00:26:14.010 –> 00:26:28.650
rohini shankar: And you build the change from a cultural standpoint to make it inclusive, so have lots of stories about failures on places we brought talent in but we couldn’t have them stick so happy to get involved in the dialogue and engagement around this.

00:26:34.200 –> 00:26:37.560
Lotus Buckner: Awesome. Joe, you want to introduce yourself.

00:26:41.910 –> 00:26:42.930
Lotus Buckner: Oh, did we lose him.

00:26:47.280 –> 00:26:50.760
Lotus Buckner: We might have lost Joe for a minute. So hopefully he joins us back.

00:26:51.090 –> 00:26:57.690
Joe Marino: Hello this is Joe. I’ve had…I’m having some internet connectivity. So I think I’ll be on audio until I can fix it. And then I’ll be on video.

00:26:57.930 –> 00:26:59.880
Lotus Buckner: Oh perfect, you want to introduce yourself, Joe.

00:27:00.000 –> 00:27:08.040
Joe Marino: Yeah, yeah. So thank. Thank you all. I’m really excited to have this conversation with Cat Rohini Candice Lotus today.

00:27:08.580 –> 00:27:20.490
Joe Marino: Little bit about myself. So Joe Marino here. I’ve been in the recruiting world for almost 20 years I work for an organization called hueman people solutions as our Executive Vice President and I spend most of my time around how do we be better at recruiting. So this topic is exactly what we’ve been talking about for a while. But more importantly, over the last four to five months on how do we make a difference.

00:27:31.230 –> 00:27:38.640
Joe Marino: And and I’ll just start by saying the overall the overall climate today is all about change and it’s hard.

00:27:39.150 –> 00:27:48.600
Joe Marino: Like the topic. It’s hard to talk about diversity recruiting. It’s hard to talk about inclusion and how do you make that change. So I’m really excited and appreciate everyone’s time because it is a learning effort or learning process, but it also is let’s make a difference and actually put some things into action. So I’m excited to be here today. I’m out in the New Mexico area if anyone else has been out here. So I’m a mountain time zone guy myself. So thank you all.

00:28:06.930 –> 00:28:13.920
Lotus Buckner: I love it. Thank you. All right. Well, let’s start with I know everyone comes for solutions, but let’s start with a problem, feel free to jump in anyone, but what do you see as the greatest challenges with recruiting for diversity and inclusion right now. What’s stopping organizations from doing this well.

00:28:30.390 –> 00:28:34.020
Cat Colella-Graham: I’ll go ahead and start. I mean, I think for a lot of organizations.

00:28:34.050 –> 00:28:42.330
Cat Colella-Graham: They don’t know where to begin. Or they’ll say there aren’t enough diverse candidates in my field or in the…

00:28:42.900 –> 00:28:49.320
Cat Colella-Graham: Or conversely, they’ll say, we can’t hire managers, you know, that have this experience because they just don’t exist.

00:28:49.680 –> 00:28:57.300
Cat Colella-Graham: And I think there’s a bit of fear setting that happens when leaders, look at it from that perspective and they think, well, what can I do

00:28:57.600 –> 00:29:02.760
Cat Colella-Graham: They’re not in my industry. They’re not available. They’re not coming to our organization not responding to our outreach.

00:29:03.240 –> 00:29:12.030
Cat Colella-Graham: And if anything that’s where they really have to look inside first at their organization and make sure that they are welcoming that they have you know, diverse interview slates, that they have you know the right kind of systems in place to support them going out to you know historically black colleges to support them going out to organizations because frankly every industry today has affinity organizations, whether it’s National Society of Black Engineers or the Hispanic women in PR. I mean, there are so many different ways that they can…

00:29:37.230 –> 00:29:45.510
Cat Colella-Graham: They can move forward, but they first have to start from within, and then be very intentional about their outreach. I’ll start with that.

00:29:46.320 –> 00:29:50.190
rohini shankar: Yeah, I think that just to jump on what Cat said, I think one is

00:29:50.700 –> 00:29:58.620
rohini shankar: Is what does your leadership team look like and how are you, attracting and who’s coming to your company. And what’s your brand.

00:29:58.920 –> 00:30:05.760
rohini shankar: And so when you start the journey. You can’t just say, today I’m going to be more inclusive and I’m going to start recruiting people

00:30:06.030 –> 00:30:18.570
rohini shankar: Because people are not ready to come to you instantly because you just made a proclamation. It is. What have you done to make your organization more inclusive and what is your brand out there so that when people come

00:30:19.140 –> 00:30:28.230
rohini shankar: Do they have a chance of getting selected because one of the things we’ve noticed is that if this the selection panel has to be as diverse as the

00:30:28.710 –> 00:30:39.930
rohini shankar: Candidate pool that you’re looking for. So that’s not there, then it’s really hard to change the outcome of the assessment process or recruitment process because it has to start internally with it.

00:30:40.260 –> 00:30:50.340
rohini shankar: And then you start the outreach and it is hard work. Because you know people have biases. They have a way of doing things that they have done for so many years that has worked for them.

00:30:50.580 –> 00:31:04.380
rohini shankar: Well, and usually people go to their networks to start to recruit who was in my network and that your network consists of people like you. So how do you expand your network to start recruiting and bringing people in and what are you doing

00:31:04.710 –> 00:31:16.500
rohini shankar: To make sure that people are calm and then you they get the right shot and the job and then they can continue to stay. So I think it’s a big problem. Starting from the inside to the outside.

00:31:16.740 –> 00:31:23.250
rohini shankar: And recruitment is just a symptom of the bigger problem that we’re sort of trying to talk in address here today.

00:31:24.120 –> 00:31:29.280
Lotus Buckner: You brought up something interesting, you know, it is

00:31:29.820 –> 00:31:42.810
Lotus Buckner: A lot of organizations are making these like proclamations, like you said, right, and that’s not enough. Are any of you noticing it all. One of the things I’ve noticed is candidates are starting to ask about this as a question during their interviews.

00:31:43.110 –> 00:31:54.000
Lotus Buckner: Or any of you noticing that people are asking, you know, what does the diversity look like in your leadership team or in your organization or on the team that I’m about to go into. Are you noticing that at all.

00:31:55.200 –> 00:32:03.270
Joe Marino: Yeah, I mean, I’ll just say Lotus, we’re seeing that more and more, and they they’re going deep like what’s the percentage of diversity.

00:32:03.540 –> 00:32:15.630
Joe Marino: Is it people of color, is it more than that at the leadership team level, what is it going to look like in my department, the people I’m interacting with every single day and even to the to the, their customers if they have customers that they’re interacting with

00:32:16.650 –> 00:32:18.060
Lotus Buckner: People are asking for numbers.

00:32:18.390 –> 00:32:24.870
Joe Marino: Yeah, like what is the person. Exactly. Yeah. And if you think about. I know we don’t want a solution, but also to go back to that initial comment so

00:32:25.110 –> 00:32:35.940
Joe Marino: We sort of look at sort of a five step process to get started in one and I think cat maybe Rahini touched on it. One is sort of the leadership team. Like, what is your leadership team at the highest level CEO.

00:32:36.450 –> 00:32:41.400
Joe Marino: Then what is it, what is their approach. Do they want to truly solve the problem.

00:32:42.180 –> 00:32:51.210
Joe Marino: Or are they just saying they want to solve the problem. If they truly want to solve it. Then you have that support at the upper level. So that’s sort of the first thing is to understand that the second

00:32:51.660 –> 00:33:00.960
Joe Marino: Is what we what we’ve done, we recommend is do some type of data intake. So it could be a survey, it could be getting information out to your team members and letting them respond

00:33:01.320 –> 00:33:09.510
Joe Marino: And then you have to react internally to that, depending on what the results are. And that could be a focus. So three steps. Understand leadership team understand

00:33:09.870 –> 00:33:16.020
Joe Marino: what your team is feeling and believing that the organization has in place with diversity. Right now we’re…

00:33:16.320 –> 00:33:26.010
Joe Marino: So that’s the survey piece. The third is to understand and sort of synthesize the information and then create the plan. fifth step is to sort of re, re engineer that plan or adjust it.

00:33:26.490 –> 00:33:35.700
Joe Marino: And when you think about a survey. A lot of people get worried about that. Like, do we really want to know that usually, you get a lot of great responses like wow you do care.

00:33:36.180 –> 00:33:45.030
Joe Marino: But you have to come back and address the responses. Otherwise, it could be more dangerous than if you don’t. But if your leadership team is really willing to put that time in

00:33:45.390 –> 00:33:54.300
Joe Marino: Then, then you can actually go and start to execute, but it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes it takes, you know, months, years to be able to get into a good place.

00:33:55.320 –> 00:34:03.210
Candice McGlen: Yeah, and I would agree with, with everything that’s been said so far. I think a lot of times when we talk about diversity recruiting

00:34:04.080 –> 00:34:10.590
Candice McGlen: What, in my experience, we’ve focused and in taking a very narrow look at the problem.

00:34:10.980 –> 00:34:20.070
Candice McGlen: And so that’s why you hear statements like, well, there’s no…we’ve tried. There’s no diversity. There’s no in our industry in our field.

00:34:20.370 –> 00:34:37.980
Candice McGlen: And then that’s it. You know, and so our biases prevent us from stepping back and taking a deeper look at. But why is that, that can’t be the truth, right, that can’t be it. Let’s take a deeper look at who. Are we recruiting. How are you, recruiting like

00:34:39.000 –> 00:34:48.750
Candice McGlen: The panel mates have said right looking at your internal culture assessing it. I love the idea of a survey every time we’ve done a survey and in these cases, we found

00:34:49.110 –> 00:34:53.940
Candice McGlen: Gaps in even the internal pipeline of candidates are our candidates.

00:34:54.360 –> 00:35:07.980
Candice McGlen: Being able to progress within your organization. Let’s not even focus on the external piece right now because people are they do want to know what your organization is doing beyond the statements, now they want to really see

00:35:08.220 –> 00:35:15.180
Candice McGlen: That there’s action happening. And there’s movement and when diverse candidates and employees come and work for your organization.

00:35:15.930 –> 00:35:22.200
Candice McGlen: What is going to be the employee experience the employee journey from start until

00:35:22.560 –> 00:35:36.810
Candice McGlen: You know they decide to leave the organization. What is what it…whether they going to say about their experience at your company because a lot of recruiting happens at the referral level. It happens at people.

00:35:37.230 –> 00:35:48.630
Candice McGlen: Bragging and talking about their company. And so if people can do that you’ve won half the battle. Right. If people if you can hire from within, promote from within.

00:35:48.960 –> 00:36:07.080
Candice McGlen: And continue to build a culture where people not only want to be a part of it, but they grow within your organization. That’s a big piece of it. So for me, diversity of recruiting is employee experience from the start of contact with your brand to working in the organization.

00:36:08.550 –> 00:36:21.300
Cat Colella-Graham: I have to say that is music to my ears and just jumping in here because you know I think authenticity really matters. First and foremost, whoever your organization really is culturally

00:36:21.960 –> 00:36:32.940
Cat Colella-Graham: at the leadership level what that experience is like you. I think what we’ve seen is when you when you see these big, bold statements made by companies in the wake of social justice or a specific incident.

00:36:33.270 –> 00:36:44.670
Cat Colella-Graham: As opposed to, because that’s really who they are. That will unravel pretty quickly. Right. And it can be toxic to people of color differently abled people LGBTQ plus people that’s not okay.

00:36:45.030 –> 00:36:54.000
Cat Colella-Graham: And I think that these courageous conversations really need to happen within to make sure that they’re looking at a candidate experience that is inclusive.

00:36:54.420 –> 00:37:03.120
Cat Colella-Graham: That results in employee experience that’s inclusive, which therefore will give a better customer experience, reflecting the customers that your organization really serves

00:37:03.450 –> 00:37:08.490
Cat Colella-Graham: So I think you bring up such a good point there and and I think that there is that sort of

00:37:09.300 –> 00:37:17.940
Cat Colella-Graham: That I don’t know where to begin, or I don’t know what to do, where it’s always been done that way here and and by doing, you know, as Joe, you said that sort of full length mirror audit.

00:37:18.240 –> 00:37:30.480
Cat Colella-Graham: And creating those voice of employee programs we have either focus groups or surveys, you will get a better sense of what your employee experience really does look like and where you need to make some changes.

00:37:31.320 –> 00:37:47.160
Cat Colella-Graham: What I would say is that said you can’t say to your diverse employees. What do I do about this? That’s putting the accountability on them, not on you. It’s very important to make sure that this is a shared journey and a shared accountability experience.

00:37:47.670 –> 00:37:57.330
rohini shankar: Then just to maybe to add to that. So, you know, when I first moved to financial services in any one of you that work in financial services, it’s not a very diverse industry.

00:37:57.810 –> 00:38:10.740
rohini shankar: So I was tasked I was the talent manager at the time… to bring in all diversity into the business. So I went around, I had this great program of recruiting and you know it was a lesson learned, because

00:38:11.040 –> 00:38:25.080
rohini shankar: And our CEO was a female CEO really dynamic leader. She wanted to change the culture because if you look, she was a female CEO. She had a female chro and there was no other was in the business like we had 800 people

00:38:25.530 –> 00:38:37.260
rohini shankar: Was like zero diversity awareness is, you know, I mean literally zero diversity. So we got all these talented people. But what we realize is, we started to have done a why hide this really

00:38:37.590 –> 00:38:40.980
rohini shankar: Bright group of class of our new program to

00:38:41.400 –> 00:38:53.040
rohini shankar: fill our sales pipeline and then people started turning over so we had to sort of step back and I was really like this was my baby I delivered and now it was not having the results. 

00:38:53.310 –> 00:39:03.000
rohini shankar: And what we realized was that we have to change so many infrastructure things and how business is done to make it inclusive and successful

00:39:03.330 –> 00:39:13.830
rohini shankar: On making sure your diverse talent is successful in the organization. You can have the Spirit. You can have the intent, but like few things like our customers like to go to the bar.

00:39:14.520 –> 00:39:27.240
rohini shankar: Or or make deals while they are golfing now those things like if either person has never gone before they’re not going to…there’s a challenge in terms of how that relationship happens or if you have

00:39:28.170 –> 00:39:38.190
rohini shankar: female candidates that have to go to the bar drinking with strange man there was like an issue and how do you sort of change the dynamics and how business is done.

00:39:38.430 –> 00:39:46.830
rohini shankar: To make sure people are successful. So we have to step back and really look at some of these things and some of the cultural norms that we had as a business.

00:39:47.130 –> 00:40:00.360
rohini shankar: To make changes. So it becomes bigger than just bringing the talent. It’s literally how is business being done today and how do I change it to make it more inclusive for my new workforce that I want to build

00:40:04.290 –> 00:40:19.350
Joe Marino: For me, a question. So, so that’s the that’s sort of what Candice mentioned before, right, there’s sort of that bias like well you can’t change that because business happens on the golf course or it happens in the bar but but you have to change that. Right. It’s it can’t be accepted.

00:40:19.620 –> 00:40:28.980
Joe Marino: You have to challenge and challenge and challenge until something else happens is it was that your experiences, I’d be interested to hear what how that played out.

00:40:29.610 –> 00:40:43.860
rohini shankar: So we lost a lot of talent. So that was like that was one of my sort of disappointing points in my life and I sort of remember that. And then, yes, we started, I started having these conversations now of course that journey 10 years today is much better.

00:40:44.340 –> 00:40:52.440
rohini shankar: But at that point in time, I was like, so what are we going to change. Like if you want a different outcome of what we want our workforce to look like.

00:40:52.680 –> 00:41:02.430
rohini shankar: So what, like what is it that’s going to change. And we started and some senior leaders then started to see on the deal team. Hey, let’s not go for golf. Let’s go for dinner.

00:41:02.670 –> 00:41:09.510
rohini shankar: And so they were making these small adjustments in terms of how they were changing what the customer wanted

00:41:09.780 –> 00:41:18.120
rohini shankar: And, you know, like one of the women said that when they went to, you know, we did a lot of business around Wall Street, like the women’s bathrooms in most of these

00:41:18.780 –> 00:41:25.050
rohini shankar: Places at the back of the room because there’s not really many women professionals there. So, like, how do we make sure that

00:41:25.350 –> 00:41:38.340
rohini shankar: We did training to say, hey, can you check for the bathroom so that your female coworker can also participate in the conversation. So it was just the awareness of how does the leadership team start making small changes.

00:41:38.580 –> 00:41:44.460
rohini shankar: To make sure that the team feels more included, and more welcome. It’s been joining. Yeah.

00:41:45.570 –> 00:41:55.740
Cat Colella-Graham: Yeah, that really good point. And I think, you know, to everyone who’s here. I’m sure we all agree, but certainly the panelists have said it, and many different ways. It’s not about

00:41:56.280 –> 00:42:06.780
Cat Colella-Graham: Taking away a seat at the table and replacing it with another. It’s about adding more seats and creating a bigger table so that golf and and drinks are not the only option.

00:42:07.110 –> 00:42:14.490
Cat Colella-Graham: There are, you know, walk and talks, there are you know dinners. There are lots of different ways to connect, not just with customers.

00:42:14.760 –> 00:42:21.150
Cat Colella-Graham: But with each other and to really share those different perspectives that that will ultimately generate creativity and

00:42:21.420 –> 00:42:27.810
Cat Colella-Graham: And better results and and i think you know that’s really the argument to leadership is how do we line this initiative up

00:42:28.170 –> 00:42:36.930
Cat Colella-Graham: To business results so that they can see there is… Earlier today I have so many staff actually collect stats on this.

00:42:37.290 –> 00:42:41.910
Cat Colella-Graham: To really show that there is a business case for this beyond just creating a

00:42:42.390 –> 00:42:52.800
Cat Colella-Graham: Better employee experience. There’s a real business case for this. And I think for for anyone on this call, who’s thinking about, well, how do I go to my leadership and really put these imperatives in place and

00:42:53.070 –> 00:42:58.170
Cat Colella-Graham: And really make these things happen. I think that’s, that’s one place you really can begin.

00:42:59.100 –> 00:43:07.650
Candice McGlen: I’m glad you said that because that that piece is critical for I think this journey, understanding that this is not

00:43:08.160 –> 00:43:13.920
Candice McGlen: An argument of either or it’s yes and right and i think that story that you

00:43:14.910 –> 00:43:26.760
Candice McGlen: You know, that was shared about, you know, the bar and golfing. It’s what else can we do like let’s look at the full picture and figure out different ways to do things and and that’s where to me.

00:43:27.060 –> 00:43:35.280
Candice McGlen: That business case because if you’re you’re starting to expand and challenge assumptions naturally do that through the work.

00:43:35.610 –> 00:43:41.940
Candice McGlen: You’re going to start doing that in other places in your work. And so, innovation, all these other things are able to thrive.

00:43:42.240 –> 00:43:53.550
Candice McGlen: Because you’re creating a better culture that seeks different perspectives that looks for new ways to solve challenging problems. So the business cases definitely there.

00:43:56.220 –> 00:43:57.150
Lotus Buckner: You know that so

00:43:58.470 –> 00:44:09.990
Lotus Buckner: Joe, um, you kind of touched on this, but we had an audience question to on, you know, there’s the recruiting piece. But isn’t it just as important

00:44:10.560 –> 00:44:23.910
Lotus Buckner: To make sure that we focus attention on this and the onboarding piece. And how do you really sell these efforts. So we have been talking about some solutions and where people can start. But how do you sell some of these solutions to companies.

00:44:25.050 –> 00:44:32.670
Lotus Buckner: That don’t want to put in the extra work. So that’s one of our questions I hope you’re here, Lauren. And that was a question that you submitted.

00:44:33.870 –> 00:44:36.060
Joe Marino: Yeah, I can sort of react to that. I mean,

00:44:37.230 –> 00:44:46.650
Joe Marino: If you’re not willing to put in the work. It’s going to be difficult to make a material change. I mean, is this. It’s not easy. It takes a ton of time and

00:44:47.460 –> 00:44:55.800
Joe Marino: I’ll give an example. So, and it’s not exactly on the onboarding side but it’s more on the front end when you’re understanding like for us we we went through a survey.

00:44:56.100 –> 00:45:05.730
Joe Marino: We asked our employees. We segregate we looked at all the data by the sort of by race in diversity and we didn’t we just didn’t go by people of color, but we looked at look at it through that lens.

00:45:06.240 –> 00:45:15.000
Joe Marino: And when we initially got the survey results in an extremely large percentage of our black employees did not respond to the survey.

00:45:16.260 –> 00:45:22.290
Joe Marino: And so when we looked at that we said, well, they’re, they’re not late, the black folks in our organization are not

00:45:22.560 –> 00:45:29.970
Joe Marino: Even giving input. But yet, we’re doing all this work. Right. Well, the reality is you could you could say, well, they didn’t give input and it’s their fault.

00:45:30.480 –> 00:45:35.160
Joe Marino: And my opinion that is completely unacceptable. They’re not responding for a reason.

00:45:35.730 –> 00:45:44.130
Joe Marino: To maybe it’s the forum. Maybe they’re scared. Maybe they don’t they feel like it’s going to fall on deaf ears. You’ve got to do something different to get their voice heard.

00:45:44.880 –> 00:45:51.870
Joe Marino: And that specific example. And if you don’t do that, you’re going to, there’s going to be sort of excuses all over the place.

00:45:52.320 –> 00:46:00.510
Joe Marino: Right. The golf example all over the place and it has sometimes you don’t even realize that you’re doing it as a leader or someone that’s assessing the organization.

00:46:01.110 –> 00:46:04.230
Joe Marino: And so you just have to be so top of mind and just

00:46:04.860 –> 00:46:12.270
Joe Marino: Almost like you know sometimes you have a timekeeper, you have to have someone looking for those in your leadership team meetings or have the whole team looking for those things.

00:46:12.570 –> 00:46:24.030
Joe Marino: Because it’s so easy to say we tried, but we fail. We tried, but we felt it was too hard we try and this is the reason you try to quantify or you try to quantify the reasons our excuse me qualified why you can’t be successful.

00:46:25.290 –> 00:46:30.870
Joe Marino: So, so I don’t have a specific answer on how to do it when it’s hard. I think you could find some leaders.

00:46:31.230 –> 00:46:43.380
Joe Marino: That maybe are willing to do something different within your organization. If the whole organization isn’t able to do it and then try to use them sort of as a pilot or, you know, get, get some folks to read or be on webinars or podcasts.

00:46:43.710 –> 00:46:57.270
Joe Marino: To just expose themselves to different things. Because what I’ve learned with with my peers in going out to my network. A lot of people want to learn, but they’re still there. So guardrails, even when they take off the guardrails, they’re still on the looking at 90% of the field.

00:46:58.080 –> 00:46:58.530
rohini shankar: You have to listen

00:47:00.390 –> 00:47:07.020
rohini shankar: To what you were saying, Joe, like it’s so resonates with me is, there’s a couple things that you have to sort of help is

00:47:07.260 –> 00:47:18.060
rohini shankar: You have to get some leaders who are going to be your champion. It can’t be HR, really, you need the business people to drive this agenda and if you are driving it. It’s never going to get there.

00:47:18.240 –> 00:47:22.110
rohini shankar: So you need somebody who’s passionate and you’ll have to do a lot of work.

00:47:22.500 –> 00:47:30.090
rohini shankar: Under the covers to find a different levels of the organization. Who’s going to be your advocate in your champion and your role model on this.

00:47:30.270 –> 00:47:43.590
rohini shankar: Because it’s this is not a journey that happens on its own. So that’s one really really important thing is to understand those those people that will be in this board rolling with you, helping you getting you sort of across

00:47:44.400 –> 00:47:55.170
rohini shankar: The finish line, so to speak, and then you can use them as people who can make decisions and I see somebody asked a question around executive leadership team is just paying lip service.

00:47:55.410 –> 00:48:01.440
rohini shankar: You have to maybe call them out on it and talk about like what is the follow through action.

00:48:01.680 –> 00:48:11.100
rohini shankar: Because there’s no other way to do it outside of having these uncomfortable conversations and even in my organization that I just, I’ve been here a year, year and a half.

00:48:11.370 –> 00:48:19.350
rohini shankar: One of the things that leaders said to me is, I’m just scared. I don’t know how to have conversations I have never met somebody of another is your

00:48:19.710 –> 00:48:30.690
rohini shankar: …And they’re like, I don’t have the tools to be able to engage with my diverse team, and it was sort of, to me it was

00:48:31.140 –> 00:48:38.820
rohini shankar: Eye opening moment that sometimes we don’t give our leaders, the tools to be able to confront and have conversations and

00:48:39.390 –> 00:48:56.880
rohini shankar: Be uncomfortable with knowing that there’s differences and that you will step on it and it’s okay. But it’s important to sort of move forward with that. So for me, that was a big lesson learned in the last few months, is that how do I give my leaders tools to not be scared.

00:48:59.100 –> 00:49:01.830
Candice McGlen: And and I would say to to that.

00:49:02.940 –> 00:49:18.510
Candice McGlen: All of those are extremely great points and you know it makes me think when we talk about, you know, it’s hard, or what’s hard. I think we should back up and qualify that a bit more and really understand how we’re qualifying what’s hard

00:49:20.250 –> 00:49:29.730
Candice McGlen: For me, and for a lot of us on this panel I and even here. We’re here today because we understand the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:49:30.120 –> 00:49:40.620
Candice McGlen: And that value is real. And so I’m saying that because I don’t know, a company that does not have challenges that are not tied to

00:49:41.100 –> 00:49:57.570
Candice McGlen: The lack of building a culture of inclusion bringing in diverse perspectives. So I would say instead of focusing on the work ahead that needs to happen. Focus on the challenges that the organization’s facing that align with not having

00:49:58.230 –> 00:50:18.210
Candice McGlen: Strong a strong commitment to DEI because I guarantee you, whether it’s, you know, a related to employee, you know, employment law types of things, whether it’s innovation, whether it’s customer satisfaction, whether it’s a talent shortage in the industry completely

00:50:19.230 –> 00:50:30.300
Candice McGlen: You know, there’s the list can go on whether it’s having a strong brand. There is something that’s happening in that organization that needs diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:50:30.600 –> 00:50:42.480
Candice McGlen: So I would look at the challenge more on what we’re missing as an organization versus what we have to achieve because that works is a lot easier than staying in the problem.

00:50:45.150 –> 00:50:49.260
Cat Colella-Graham: Yeah, that’s, that’s so right and i think that you know

00:50:50.280 –> 00:50:54.360
Cat Colella-Graham: So he knew when you said it’s hard. I don’t know what to do. I like it’s just so hard.

00:50:54.750 –> 00:51:02.250
Cat Colella-Graham: I mean, there are ways you can start to broaden and get comfortable with the uncomfortable and learn some new things. I mean,

00:51:02.640 –> 00:51:09.090
Cat Colella-Graham: Just starting with a diverse supplier program not already puts out to the universe that you’re committing

00:51:09.420 –> 00:51:16.290
Cat Colella-Graham: To diversity and your suppliers that doesn’t even affect internally but it’s an employee price point. If that’s the case, and it will also attract candidates.

00:51:16.920 –> 00:51:25.080
Cat Colella-Graham: You can have, you know, celebrate heritage months, creates an employee resource groups. These are small steps that will enhance and improve your culture.

00:51:25.350 –> 00:51:29.520
Cat Colella-Graham: But also help broaden everyone’s thinking and have these courageous conversations

00:51:29.910 –> 00:51:36.390
Cat Colella-Graham: But with the with the eye towards connecting your team and collaborating as well and really helping

00:51:36.690 –> 00:51:42.690
Cat Colella-Graham: With cognitive diversity, which is really what diversity is supposed to do for business. Anyway, now just because I’m a woman.

00:51:43.080 –> 00:51:50.850
Cat Colella-Graham: Or Candace you’re black, or Rohini you’re of Indian origin. We have a different lens that we will help create

00:51:51.300 –> 00:51:58.020
Cat Colella-Graham: We will help create the solutions, but also uncover what the rest and opportunities are. And I think by starting with some of these smaller steps.

00:51:58.260 –> 00:52:06.990
Cat Colella-Graham: We can get there. I mean, unconscious bias training for everyone is a must. I think manager training and helping them really identify and micro aggressions and helping

00:52:07.260 –> 00:52:18.780
Cat Colella-Graham: Develop some Allyship programs as a must. But these are relatively easy things to implement and I think it’s something that will really help broaden the lines of not only leaders.

00:52:19.170 –> 00:52:28.560
Cat Colella-Graham: But also, you know, sort of break that squad mentality. This is what I’m used to. This is why I’ve worked with, I don’t want to change. And I think that’s, that’s really a good place to begin

00:52:29.580 –> 00:52:40.710
Lotus Buckner: Cat. For those of our audience members who might not have heard that term before. Can you talk a little bit more about the squad mentality and what the issue is there..

00:52:40.740 –> 00:52:50.910
Cat Colella-Graham: Absolutely. And look, we’re all guilty of saying, hey, I’ve got a new job they have an opening. I have a friend. And they were so great to work with, let me bring them in.

00:52:51.540 –> 00:53:02.310
Cat Colella-Graham: I think that so many people are so used to being with who they are used to that. It takes work to get used to who you’re not used to a ways of working that are different.

00:53:03.210 –> 00:53:13.500
Cat Colella-Graham: So people move around with their squads either people they went to college with that are from their hometown that they worked with previously. So, what you get is pockets.

00:53:13.770 –> 00:53:21.990
Cat Colella-Graham: Of these squads that never actually connect and integrate and work well together because they’re not reflective of the customer of the community of the business.

00:53:22.410 –> 00:53:33.300
Cat Colella-Graham: And I think it’s really hard to sort of break that break that thinking. I mean, you know, we’re all we all look for the familiar. We want to be comfortable that is human nature.

00:53:33.750 –> 00:53:40.740
Cat Colella-Graham: But there is a lot of joy and comfort in breaking that up and looking at different perspectives and thinking, wow.

00:53:41.610 –> 00:53:51.900
Cat Colella-Graham: My job can be improved, because I have a perspective. I never thought of before, or an experience that that that sort of helped us look at the risk and maybe not take a step, we should have taken

00:53:52.230 –> 00:53:59.910
Cat Colella-Graham: And overall, you get greater employee employee satisfaction and engagement rates when you have these these real

00:54:00.270 –> 00:54:11.760
Cat Colella-Graham: deep conversations around breaking up the squad mentality, not just going from job to job to job with your beeps, but really looking at how you can be reflective of an industry that is changing and demanding more

00:54:13.680 –> 00:54:25.830
Joe Marino: Cat that that makes me think of something that could be useful for sort of a tactical way to get leaders who are stuck on really embracing change around the diversity and inclusion.

00:54:26.850 –> 00:54:36.030
Joe Marino: To be able to be to be impactful. And one way to do it is to look at, you know, if you’re in HR, you should be able to look at the your overall organization to look at the percentage of white, black,

00:54:36.870 –> 00:54:47.700
Joe Marino: gay, lesbian, whatever it is, right. Look at all those different dynamics. Compare that to where your footprint is or where your employees said if you’re in a metro area multiple locations. Compare that to your customers.

00:54:48.420 –> 00:54:53.460
Joe Marino: And if you’re aligned and all of those places. Then, then you may be in a decent place.

00:54:53.880 –> 00:54:59.010
Joe Marino: Most organizations are not. So if there’s an outlier, then you can bring data to the table to your leaders.

00:54:59.310 –> 00:55:09.480
Joe Marino: And say we’re not aligned. If they they would probably say, well, really. Tell me more. Why is that important. What do we need to do to get there. So just a thought that can sort of help be a catalyst for that discussion.

00:55:11.070 –> 00:55:19.080
rohini shankar: Joe, What you just said goes to what Candace was saying around the vision on why D&I is important. And I think when you get the data and say,

00:55:19.320 –> 00:55:25.830
rohini shankar: This is what our customer base looks like. This is what the communities that we operate in look like. And this is what we look like

00:55:26.280 –> 00:55:39.840
rohini shankar: And I think that might be a powerful way to get the leaders that are not supporting you to get around the vision and mission on why it’s important because if your customers are changing. If your communities that you operate in are changing.

00:55:40.230 –> 00:55:46.680
rohini shankar: It’s really incumbent on you to continue to be successful in those areas is to change who you are, to

00:55:49.590 –> 00:55:54.810
Candice McGlen: say, often with that too. You know, you have the business case and you have the data.

00:55:55.230 –> 00:56:02.760
Candice McGlen: It may seem scary because it for leaders, it may feel that they have to restructure everything in the organization in order to

00:56:03.030 –> 00:56:14.820
Candice McGlen: To go back and include diversity, equity, and inclusion right but oftentimes if you look at a company’s vision, it’s inspiring and you can, you know, integrate the

00:56:15.510 –> 00:56:26.190
Candice McGlen: Case for diversity and inclusion and equity within just you know that existing framework and, you know, I highly encourage it to be integrated and not be seen as

00:56:26.610 –> 00:56:34.830
Candice McGlen: A one off project or something that’s separate from the business but truly integrated and cat said your squad.

00:56:35.520 –> 00:56:47.010
Candice McGlen: That sort of approach, it reminded me. I do a lot of D&I training. And one of the things that we do is this called the seven circles. So I’m not sure if anybody’s done that before but you

00:56:47.430 –> 00:57:01.230
Candice McGlen: You look at maybe seven or your circle of trust. Rather, and you think about seven to 10 people that you know are not in your immediate family that you are that you trust that you say you trust and

00:57:01.770 –> 00:57:09.150
Candice McGlen: Write those names down and at the end as a facilitator, you know, start listing off some social identities and demographics race.

00:57:09.510 –> 00:57:20.250
Candice McGlen: Age and the goal is to just check people who are similar to you. So it’s similar to me bias, but people who are similar to you and then you realize that

00:57:20.970 –> 00:57:33.600
Candice McGlen: You know there may not be a lot of diversity on your list and most people are people who look like you think like you have the same demographics, as you. And so when you put that into the context of an organization and recruiting

00:57:34.620 –> 00:57:39.930
Candice McGlen: You know, and giving shiny projects or opportunities to those who

00:57:40.740 –> 00:57:47.190
Candice McGlen: We want to, you know, I call it the tap on the shoulder, who gets tapped on the shoulder for the development opportunity at the company.

00:57:47.610 –> 00:57:56.190
Candice McGlen: And we see it’s about trust. When we trust people we give them opportunities we make decisions in favor of those people

00:57:56.490 –> 00:58:09.630
Candice McGlen: And so if you don’t have diversity on your list, you may want to start thinking about your decisions and the decisions that you’re a part of because nine times out of 10 you may have that that bias operating in a lot of areas.

00:58:11.670 –> 00:58:13.890
Cat Colella-Graham: Yeah, I mean, it couldn’t be more right

00:58:15.390 –> 00:58:28.320
rohini shankar: Sorry. It reminds me, I don’t know if you’re read the story of the film, not mine a karmic harmonica when they the orchestra and they were looking at recruiting talent and, you know, everybody. It was a very male dominated

00:58:28.980 –> 00:58:34.830
rohini shankar: Industry orchestra in general. And when they wanted to do supply that they had to sort of

00:58:35.490 –> 00:58:49.620
rohini shankar: Do they decided to interview by having people perform, but they had to do it without people were in their shoes because they started to see that and they, the people couldn’t see if it was a man, woman, whatever your ethnic identity is they were just have to

00:58:50.130 –> 00:59:04.260
rohini shankar: hire them based on how they play the instrument and they saw that it really changed the outcome. So when you’re doing recruiting is like is there a way you don’t show the identifiers to cats points so that they don’t get your

00:59:04.980 –> 00:59:17.760
rohini shankar: Your tribe or your squad or whatever you call it. And you can sort of identified just based on the merit of the resume without removing some of these identifiers to say, does that make a different outcome.

00:59:19.590 –> 00:59:28.800
Lotus Buckner: You guys are making me think… Candace your exercise reminds me of a similar one, a network audit that I do in my training.

00:59:29.250 –> 00:59:35.580
Lotus Buckner: And I kind of want to get your thoughts on something. So we talked a lot about authenticity here right and

00:59:36.450 –> 00:59:47.460
Lotus Buckner: It. I think a lot about or talking about recruiting and dei at work. We are so focused on this professional network that we have. How do you see

00:59:48.300 –> 01:00:07.260
Lotus Buckner: The importance of our personal networks as well because one of the things that I talk a lot to when I’m doing DEI training is it’s a personal audit. It’s not just about work. We go through categories of like neighbors, family members, your closest circle of friends.

01:00:08.820 –> 01:00:15.780
Lotus Buckner: professional network people at work, your bosses like lots of different categories of our lives and people in our lives.

01:00:16.140 –> 01:00:23.850
Lotus Buckner: And you kind of look at that from a diversity lens in the same categories that you had talked about and you see where your gaps are so

01:00:24.240 –> 01:00:43.200
Lotus Buckner: How do you kind of see the importance of who we interact with in our personal lives and how diverse that is really impacting what happens at work, how we hire people how we recruit for people, how we bring in our squads what our similarity bias impacts are

01:00:43.830 –> 01:00:50.580
Candice McGlen: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. I, for me personally, it is personal first

01:00:51.540 –> 01:01:00.450
Candice McGlen: And I think what who we are spills over into the other areas of our lives, including work so I

01:01:00.810 –> 01:01:10.860
Candice McGlen: Personally challenged myself to continue to grow to learn in the space. I can’t take people anywhere that I’m not willing to go myself. So to really

01:01:11.250 –> 01:01:31.380
Candice McGlen: Be personal and to really be a an ally and a champion of this work in all areas of my life, including how to raise my child. And, you know, so on and so forth is to me being a true champion of this work. So I think that personal aspect is is definitely important. And I know historically

01:01:32.880 –> 01:01:46.230
Candice McGlen: D&I trainings in the past have been, you know, shut your bias off at the door before you come in at the door. I don’t think that’s effective i don’t i think we really have to help people connect the dots between

01:01:46.620 –> 01:02:03.060
Candice McGlen: What being an inclusive human being means for a better lived experience period right and just living a better life. So just connecting those dots to wellness to who we are, to grow to continuous learning

01:02:04.200 –> 01:02:08.880
Candice McGlen: That that matters to me. And you know what I tried to push forward, I hope

01:02:09.540 –> 01:02:16.560
Lotus Buckner: I love that. I love your phrase have a better lived experience because I really believe in that. Right.

01:02:16.980 –> 01:02:21.180
Lotus Buckner: Our career and our work. It’s one part of our lives like we keep

01:02:21.540 –> 01:02:30.750
Lotus Buckner: thinking of it as the separate thing and we have this history of this endless Chase for work life balance, right, and everyone now is talking about work life integration because

01:02:31.020 –> 01:02:36.390
Lotus Buckner: It’s really, it’s a part of our lives we act like we can just shut off our lives. And then we go to work and then we

01:02:36.660 –> 01:02:43.590
Lotus Buckner: And it just doesn’t work like that. So I love that idea of a better lived experience. And we really kind of have to

01:02:43.980 –> 01:02:56.820
Lotus Buckner: Grow our diversity and inclusion efforts, not just at work, but in our entire lives right and everything that we do and people we interact. But I love that. Thanks for sharing that. Anyone else have thoughts on

01:02:58.020 –> 01:02:58.770
Lotus Buckner: That topic.

01:03:00.150 –> 01:03:10.680
Joe Marino: I’ve got a I’ve got a few actually Lotus, so when I, when I think about it personally. So I’ll just give you guys a story. So I have a 12 year old daughter. I live out in New Mexico. My kids go to a charter school

01:03:11.040 –> 01:03:21.720
Joe Marino: And up until last year there was a Spanish focus charter school. So there was a ton of diversity. My kids in the school were the minority but not not in the area where we live.

01:03:22.140 –> 01:03:29.280
Joe Marino: But at the school and we never thought anything of it. And then they hop on to zoom meetings this year they’re at a new school. It’s not internationally or language focus

01:03:29.700 –> 01:03:36.450
Joe Marino: And they’ve got 25 kids 20 kids on the screen and I pop my head in, and every almost every kid on that screen now is white.

01:03:37.740 –> 01:03:43.230
Joe Marino: So I went to my kids. I said, What do you think about that, they’re like, well, what do you mean. I said, well, you went from this diversity school

01:03:43.530 –> 01:03:53.340
Joe Marino: Now to a non diverse school but there’s a couple of people who aren’t so they’re like, well, maybe I should reach out to Erin, who is diverse and see if she feels different. Like, I’m like, just talk to her, see what she’s thinking

01:03:53.790 –> 01:03:58.860
Joe Marino: Because maybe there’s a way that we should be encouraging the school to recruit more diverse students

01:03:59.370 –> 01:04:07.890
Joe Marino: Right, it’s the same. So it doesn’t just stop when you stop working. Like, it’s everywhere it to me when I I’ve used the word hard, which I know is not very technical.

01:04:08.640 –> 01:04:16.080
Joe Marino: Right. But to me like it’s hard everywhere. You don’t just it just doesn’t leave you when you’re gone. And if you have a friend that doesn’t have that view. How do you

01:04:16.440 –> 01:04:20.550
Joe Marino: How do you get them on a Saturday night to think a little bit differently about things.

01:04:20.970 –> 01:04:31.440
Joe Marino: You know, and you don’t want to, you want to, you want to enjoy your evening, but to me it’s you just don’t put it on the shelf and do it from eight to five. You’re doing it all the time, and it is and it is a journey.

01:04:32.880 –> 01:04:43.530
Joe Marino: So, and I’ll see her on the on the work front. You know when you, when I think about leaders most I think most people want to figure out how they can be more diverse and more inclusive.

01:04:44.160 –> 01:04:51.780
Joe Marino: But they don’t have the they don’t have the tools to do that. So if you do have someone that’s open to change. Go to the hiring manager. We did this recently we were recruiting

01:04:52.050 –> 01:04:56.670
Joe Marino: A diverse slate of candidates to be interviewed about a year and a half ago for one of our partners.

01:04:57.150 –> 01:05:08.430
Joe Marino: And they didn’t change the diversity makes it that group. But we went to that leader and said, are you doing anything. Are you telling the story to the candidates of why you’re inclusive to people that are diverse

01:05:08.970 –> 01:05:15.840
Joe Marino: And he’s like, well, we don’t really do anything. Well, he’s like, but we can like we can change. So I apologize. Someone mentioned sort of having

01:05:16.080 –> 01:05:29.280
Joe Marino: Different events, you know, like Hispanic month or have a celebration will do some of those things. And then you can tell that story in the recruitment process as a hiring manager and then actually deliver on it when they’re working in, and that person is going to feel more inclusive.

01:05:30.630 –> 01:05:34.200
Joe Marino: So anyway, sort of touched on two different points, but I’m pretty passionate about both of them.

01:05:34.980 –> 01:05:41.130
Lotus Buckner: Yeah, no, I like that. So I actually want to. I know we’re getting close to time here already, but

01:05:41.520 –> 01:05:54.120
Lotus Buckner: Since we’re talking about recruiting for diversity inclusion today. I know that a lot of people. It’s on their minds right now and I would be remiss with this topic, not to be timely and touch about the fact that

01:05:54.510 –> 01:05:57.720
Lotus Buckner: This topic is all over the news right now. I did not plan it this way.

01:05:58.620 –> 01:06:09.180
Lotus Buckner: To have this topic, but you know we have, I won’t bring names, but we have a big bank. I think most people know about with a very famous CEO who made the comment that

01:06:09.480 –> 01:06:22.620
Lotus Buckner: black talent is nearly impossible to find and that went viral. So I’d be remiss not to talk about that and why that comment is not appropriate, and

01:06:22.920 –> 01:06:28.860
Lotus Buckner: What organizations really need to do. So if you’re feeling like that maybe you’re in a location I hear this a lot, where

01:06:29.070 –> 01:06:41.790
Lotus Buckner: Well, my organizations in a location that’s very homogenous. So, we do match our community. Right, so how am I supposed to find diverse talent. So can you all respond to that so that our audience.

01:06:42.240 –> 01:06:53.820
Lotus Buckner: Get some ideas around how they can recruit for diverse talent and not fall into that similar mindset or mentality.

01:06:54.690 –> 01:07:04.020
Candice McGlen: Yeah, I’ll, I’ll start. I think the only lack that shows with that comment is the lack of awareness, not a lack of talent.

01:07:05.490 –> 01:07:20.340
Candice McGlen: You know, and I say that because, again, and we’ve talked about it in so many ways during this session, but it goes to the accountability. Like if you want something to happen. You’re going to make it happen.

01:07:21.420 –> 01:07:32.250
Candice McGlen: I don’t know what the processes. I don’t even know what the full context of the conversation was, but I know that this is a statement that I’ve heard personally many times and

01:07:32.760 –> 01:07:44.790
Candice McGlen: Every time it’s it’s really that sort of linear one cause one effect way of thinking like we we sent out or we applied or we

01:07:45.300 –> 01:07:57.180
Candice McGlen: Posted the job to diversity boards didn’t get any applicants and that that’s the conclusion and accepting that conclusion is where the lack of awareness comes from

01:07:57.660 –> 01:08:11.040
Candice McGlen: I would say, let’s use our Lean Six Sigma or project management skills root cause analysis and ask why, at least five times to figure out what’s really happening in the organization.

01:08:11.550 –> 01:08:21.030
Candice McGlen: I would say check your brand reputation. If you have challenges and your brand. If your company is known for not being

01:08:21.750 –> 01:08:30.180
Candice McGlen: You know, talented employees period they want. They’re picky. They’re very picky about where they work. They know they have options.

01:08:30.390 –> 01:08:41.310
Candice McGlen: So if you add talent in diversity to that not only do they want to work for a company that’s good has career and growth opportunities but diverse candidates are going to be looking for.

01:08:41.820 –> 01:08:48.330
Candice McGlen: Will they have psychological safety when they’re in your organization. Is it going to be high. Are they going to

01:08:49.380 –> 01:09:04.320
Candice McGlen: Be met with constant micro aggressions unchecked bias because that is not safe for one their brand their career reputation and their health, ultimately, to be in the company that just is completely unaware, and does not

01:09:05.010 –> 01:09:21.540
Candice McGlen: I like how it was put earlier, you know, inclusive to diverse candidates, because I think we get inclusion in many ways, but when there’s difference that team tends to go in different ways. Right. And so doing that I’m

01:09:22.830 –> 01:09:34.320
Candice McGlen: Looking at transferable skill sets, this is a great opportunity. We’re talking about upscaling re skilling use this opportunity to find new sources of talent and how they can add

01:09:35.130 –> 01:09:42.090
Candice McGlen: You know value to your organization every industry is pretty much disrupted in some way and call us for that.

01:09:42.450 –> 01:09:47.790
Candice McGlen: And then I’ll just, I don’t want to take up too much time, but I’ll just say, look at your internal pipeline.

01:09:48.300 –> 01:09:58.830
Candice McGlen: To make a statement like that and have black employees, people of color in your organization, you have to understand what the impact of such a statement would be

01:09:59.160 –> 01:10:11.100
Candice McGlen: And so if that’s if that’s the statement that’s happening, then your army or is your internal pipelines strong enough where people are progressing through the organization. How did you get to where you are in the

01:10:11.460 –> 01:10:20.010
Candice McGlen: You know, so how did you develop your skill set, make sure that that same processes model for everyone across the board. So just leave it at that.

01:10:20.490 –> 01:10:32.670
Lotus Buckner: I really want to just call out something you said that that stood out to me and it’s a tactic that everyone here can take away and use and it’s so simple and that’s five why’s, so I’m six sigma. So, hey,

01:10:33.600 –> 01:10:46.680
Lotus Buckner: Um, it’s a Six Sigma strategy for process improvement, but I love being able to use that in this scenario when you even have a thought like that, or when you hear one of your leaders, your executives or your peers make

01:10:47.040 –> 01:10:58.260
Lotus Buckner: Comments like this. And by the way, that was not a direct quote I was. Paraphrasing, paraphrasing what the CEO said which like Candice said is a very common thing that we hear, um,

01:10:58.800 –> 01:11:10.830
Lotus Buckner: But ask why multiple times. If you’re not finding diverse candidates ask why, if people in your organization. Don’t feel included keep asking why until you get to the root of the issue.

01:11:12.030 –> 01:11:12.390
Lotus Buckner: Yeah.

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01:11:12.840 –> 01:11:16.380
Candice McGlen: There’s never there’s no diverse candidates or talent.

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01:11:19.350 –> 01:11:28.800
Joe Marino: Yeah, to piggyback on that Candice and Lotus. If so, if it’s the senior leadership does not believe that there’s candidates that are diverse at a certain level.

01:11:29.160 –> 01:11:35.850
Joe Marino: Right. And they could be biased and you can’t change that. Well, this is not a two month plan. This is multi years

01:11:36.120 –> 01:11:41.580
Joe Marino: To make a difference. So go back to the scholarships. You’re giving our interns in the summer.

01:11:41.880 –> 01:11:49.650
Joe Marino: Maybe you’re going to support some scholarship or maybe you’re going to put more money towards diverse scholarship programs and you are anywhere else, or nowhere else.

01:11:49.980 –> 01:11:56.760
Joe Marino: And hire people in and maybe there’s three or four people that are going to be at the manager level. And that’s going to be a diverse candidate internally.

01:11:57.150 –> 01:12:07.170
Joe Marino: So that two, three years from now, your organization looks a lot different. And that plan from our experience with many organizations from if you can paint that picture.

01:12:07.680 –> 01:12:17.190
Joe Marino: Then you can get that organization, you can get the diverse candidates who don’t have someone to look at, right, if there’s no senior leader that looks like them. It’s hard for them to imagine they’re going to be there.

01:12:17.760 –> 01:12:25.020
Joe Marino: So, but if they know there will be someone in that in those higher level seats in a year or two, and managers in six months.

01:12:25.290 –> 01:12:32.100
Joe Marino: Then they can start to say, well hey they they delivered that and you’re communicating that and if you don’t meet the goal, tell them, but you’re still working on it.

01:12:32.550 –> 01:12:41.040
Joe Marino: And if you looked at, you know, we’re all on zoom now with I know 25 different people. And if everyone was not diverse. How does that look more diverse in three, four or five years.

01:12:41.460 –> 01:12:48.540
Joe Marino: And that, again, it’s, it’s not something that happens overnight, but man, is that powerful when you deliver that to that to your overall organization.

01:12:48.900 –> 01:12:55.530
Lotus Buckner: And to Candice’s this point. That’s how they got there, right. So, my response to all of these comments. It’s always

01:12:56.790 –> 01:13:06.450
Lotus Buckner: Your diverse talent exists where you’re getting the rest of your talent like let’s not act like any college in the United States that you go to only has white students

01:13:07.050 –> 01:13:19.230
Lotus Buckner: Like every school has diverse candidates. Yes, you can go to HBCUs, lots of nonprofits that are specifically driving this cause, but these candidates also exist where

01:13:19.260 –> 01:13:20.610
Lotus Buckner: You’re getting the the rest of your candidates. 

01:13:21.090 –> 01:13:23.610
Joe Marino: most diverse candidates are not at HBCUs.

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01:13:24.990 –> 01:13:34.350
Lotus Buckner: Like it always boggles my mind that we still hear comments like that.

01:13:34.830 –> 01:13:51.540
Lotus Buckner: That we can’t find diverse talent, but we are just about at time. So I wanted to give each of you a chance to give us the one takeaway that you want everyone to get from this session and let us know how we can connect with you further and continue the conversation.

01:13:53.580 –> 01:13:54.720
Lotus Buckner: Joe, you want to start us off.

01:13:57.270 –> 01:14:03.510
Joe Marino: All right, I’ll go first, this, this, there’s so many things. I think I’ll come back to just leadership.

01:14:03.930 –> 01:14:19.680
Joe Marino: Try to engage your leadership. Be creative. I’m sure any one Cat Rohini myself Candace Lotus would be open to talking with you all. But try, try to get your senior leadership if they’re not thinking the right way to just be open to some conversations, one on ones.

01:14:20.910 –> 01:14:31.500
Joe Marino: Data, whatever it is, because it really, if you can shift that thinking, then the rest of it is not easy, but it’s easier. So that would be my suggestion.

01:14:33.030 –> 01:14:50.730
rohini shankar: And I’ll go after Joe because mine is leadership and numbers metrics matter. So what you show what you inform people it causes people by surprise. So sure data, get your leadership engaged and that’ll help drive change.

01:14:55.650 –> 01:14:56.070
Lotus Buckner: Candice.

01:14:59.670 –> 01:15:10.620
Candice McGlen: So I’ll share a sort of method that I came up with for because I think it’s about broadening the scope right how we look at this and so

01:15:11.640 –> 01:15:14.880
Candice McGlen: You know, radar. When we think about radar. It’s actually

01:15:15.840 –> 01:15:26.700
Candice McGlen: You know, it helps us with expanding our site. So the first one that are on radar would be reimagined, like I said, like many companies are facing some form of disruption right now so

01:15:26.970 –> 01:15:38.910
Candice McGlen: There’s an opportunity to really understand what skills you can build and rebuild within your workforce and also just reimagining this the skills that you need and what the roles look like you may find

01:15:39.300 –> 01:15:47.220
Candice McGlen: That you can pull from an abundance of diversity, you know, and talent on through just doing that, I would say, be an advocate.

01:15:47.820 –> 01:15:55.680
Candice McGlen: Joe really mentioned, like it is a long term plan. Right. It’s not just that quick. We hired someone so

01:15:56.550 –> 01:16:07.170
Candice McGlen: You know, just understanding why things are the way they are and solving for that being so committed to d&i that you’re doing things like scholarships and bringing in

01:16:07.440 –> 01:16:15.690
Candice McGlen: More talent. The same way that people have continued to build their careers, just follow that same process and put a premium on diversity.

01:16:17.010 –> 01:16:23.010
Candice McGlen: Develop right find ways to develop and build more stronger pipelines within your organization.

01:16:24.150 –> 01:16:33.630
Candice McGlen: And then build an ally culture. I think that’s important. It’s one of the things that we’ve been talking about. It’s all about inclusion. If you don’t have that in place.

01:16:34.410 –> 01:16:44.070
Candice McGlen: I the analogy that comes to mind is like a fish right getting a fish and not having taken water like without that people can’t be successful and just retain

01:16:44.610 –> 01:16:54.000
Candice McGlen: Really put a premium on not just recruiting, but keeping good people in your company. And so when you do that all the other things will follow. I think

01:16:56.820 –> 01:17:02.010
Lotus Buckner: I love that. I just put that in the chat for anyone who didn’t catch all of those things.

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01:17:02.730 –> 01:17:03.660
Lotus Buckner: If you don’t mind Candice

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01:17:04.770 –> 01:17:08.430
Lotus Buckner: can put that in the newsletter to when we put the recording out

01:17:08.880 –> 01:17:09.240

Candice McGlen: Sure

01:17:12.390 –> 01:17:16.500
Cat Colella-Graham: I’m going to make this real quick things. We didn’t touch on that I think are really valuable.

01:17:16.950 –> 01:17:27.960
Cat Colella-Graham: To the news that just came out about this big bank where seven black female executives left the bank, because that’s what the CEO said unfortunately that’s going to make our jobs harder.

01:17:28.320 –> 01:17:34.260
Cat Colella-Graham: For every Clickbait title out there. It’s going to make CEOs less likely to commit to diversity.

01:17:34.770 –> 01:17:42.630
Cat Colella-Graham: Start small you can do this. You can start with all the things we talked about today, but start small make those incremental changes.

01:17:42.900 –> 01:17:49.950
Cat Colella-Graham: And don’t forget a great resource is engaging your community and your community leaders will you’ll find existing talent.

01:17:50.160 –> 01:17:59.040
Cat Colella-Graham: And you’ll find existing perspectives that’ll really help influence and shape your diversity, equity inclusion practices last comment when you’re interviewing

01:17:59.400 –> 01:18:04.110
Cat Colella-Graham: I always think it’s a good idea to make sure that you allow people to choose to be off video

01:18:04.560 –> 01:18:20.040
Cat Colella-Graham: They may not want to reveal themselves on video, and that’s okay because we can’t prioritize who people choose as their identity and and that’s really important to. So thank you everyone. Thank you load is Candice gel Rohini. This is an amazing conversation think

01:18:21.000 –> 01:18:32.040
Lotus Buckner: Oh, I love leaving on that note. That’s a really great tip to allow people to stay off video. Thank you all so much. Cat Candace, Rohini, Joe.

01:18:32.340 –> 01:18:38.850
Lotus Buckner: This was amazing. And I know we could have … the five of us could talk for another five days about this.

01:18:39.420 –> 01:18:49.590
Lotus Buckner: But I appreciate you so much and all the insights that you provided and a huge thank you to our audience as well. I absolutely love the engagement, the insights from all of you in the chat as well.

01:18:50.250 –> 01:19:01.320
Lotus Buckner: Lastly, please, please, please, please go and register now for our next round table on overcoming the stigma of mental health. So that’s a huge topic. Again, we’re going

01:19:01.950 –> 01:19:13.050
Lotus Buckner: On November 20 Same place, same time, and I’ll be joined by another astounding panel of guests to talk about how we can begin to really break away from the stigma around mental health, why it’s so important.

01:19:13.320 –> 01:19:16.380
Lotus Buckner: And how it lends itself to a more inclusive society.

01:19:16.830 –> 01:19:28.200
Lotus Buckner: I’d love for all of you to join us and contribute to that conversation. We’ll have Dr. Joe Novak of solutions North Shore and private practice Morgan Williams previously of Uber and my first repeat guest.

01:19:29.040 –> 01:19:37.290
Lotus Buckner: Julie Sowash of disability solutions and Joshua Mendez of Salesforce and the US Army that’s gonna be huge topic and

01:19:38.010 –> 01:19:45.330
Lotus Buckner: living up to our mission as well again with another awesome diverse panel of people for you to learn and unlearn with

01:19:45.810 –> 01:19:49.230
Lotus Buckner: So go to lotusbuckner.com/events to save your spot now.

01:19:49.860 –> 01:19:56.340
Lotus Buckner: Thank you all so much again and we’ll see you on November 20.