Creating Equity in the Corporate Workplace

People are pouring resources into efforts to support #BlackLivesMatter and Diversity and Inclusion efforts, but racism is systemic and there are changes that can be made across companies and organizations that will impact black lives for the better – while improving working environments, cultures, leaders and more - for BIPOC employees in the short and longer-term.

Below are 5 actions you can take in your workplace to start discussions, create proposals and foster change to improve and empower BIPOC employees in your organizations and company.

This article includes ideas, potential metrics you can map to, leadership recommendations and more. It also features considerations if you’re looking to re-frame your DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) organization and metrics, which will become increasingly important as DEI becomes more central in corporations and these metrics start to become indicators of company success at the Board level.

Take this to your Diversity & Inclusion office, to your boss, to your leaders - and start these discussions. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it is a start.

It's okay if it's uncomfortable. It's okay if you experience push-back. It’s okay if you get it wrong – but it's not okay if you don't start thinking about and acting in new ways and with different methods to learn from, listen to, empower, promote, support and positively engage BIPOC employees in your company, organizations and on your teams.

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE:

LISTEN FIRST, THEN SET A BASELINE & UNDERSTAND YOUR ROLE

As you can see from the diagram that The Plug put together (below), we’re not doing well with BIPOC talent in technology organizations. Let’s take this data and look to set an organizational baseline of what companies need to do, can do, and how to improve and fix business, culture and organizational elements to create a supportive and inclusive strategy for BIPOC folks in the technology industry.

How can you set a baseline? Connect and listen to BIPOC members of your team and organizations. Understand what their experiences, anger and frustrations are and the feedback they have for the company, for the leadership team, for you (as their leader) and teammates and colleagues. Take initiative to find out what you can do to get educated, read, listen and watch to learn more about creating an equitable workplace. This may be difficult for you and the team; you will need to shoulder the majority of your education, as that’s not BIPOC employees’ roles in the organization or on your team. Understanding and opening doors for this while setting the baseline is absolutely the first step you need to take in re-setting organizational and company-wide goals for diversity, equity and justice in the workplace.

While building the baseline, consider putting aside your existing DEI metrics. They may or may not be the right ones to track, and in this phase of listening and learning, critical will be creating safe space for those speaking up. Metrics don't matter right now - what matters is your people and the type of environment you are fostering for positive and lasting change.

Data & Visualization via The Plug: www.tpinsights.com

(1) LISTEN & LEARN, ALLOW SPACE

The opportunity is here to restructure work environments that have been built with and negatively affected by anti-Black policies, embedded racism, and implicit biases. But first, it's time to listen, learn and give people the space to have emotions around what is happening in society and across races and gender groups.

Some ideas:

• Look to follow people on social media that don't look like you and think differently than you do. Encourage your leadership, your teams, your boss(es), and employees to do the same.
• Check in and create safe space for all of your employees right now - black people are mourning and fighting, others are joining in, and there is a historic movement taking place. Enable your teams to engage in it as they wish to and give them the space to do so. That may look like flexible schedules, time-off, extra vacation days, mental health days or more. Be prepared to fight for extra time off for your teams and also to provide them air-cover, if needed. Match donations. Also take time that you, as a leader, need to recoup and regroup for your teams. Be transparent about this and you'll likely gain more respect - now is not an easy time for anyone.
• Listen, Learn, Empathize: It's of importance to listen and learn right now, but also understand the immense stress and emotions that BIPOC employees are experiencing right now. As a leader it's your job to see this and give people the extra time and space they need. Please consider protecting BIPOC employees from undue stressors such as asking them to re-tell traumatic stories to educate you. This is an absolute no-go and if you see this behavior, stop it immediately.
• Consider holding weekly office hours or offer up an open-door policy to start new dialogue. All-hands meetings are critical, but ensure you have facilitators and/or a framework for discussion to ensure all voices can be heard in a safe and respectable way. Ensure facilitators are trained in anti-racism as it will be critical for these conversations to do no harm to BIPOC folks.
• It will be natural for you to want to share your experiences. Don’t – not at this time and not in this place. At times it can negate or disempower the experience of underrepresented and BIPOC folks and their experiences, which is where focus is needed.

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are also critical resources during this time. Properly funding ERGs and hiring resources (ie, part-time or full-time headcount) to run these groups is of utmost importance. Employees should be driving the content, but a full or part-time headcount should have the role of organizing ERGs as their full role and job.

Historically, these organizational roles fall to women and underrepresented folks who already have full-time jobs at the company separate from the ERG, and are working without extra pay or recognition.

These programs need to be elevated in importance and properly funded for support required – for headcount and for training and speakers to come in and foster dialogue as part of the ERG meetings. Additionally, it will be important for all levels of leadership to attend multiple ERG meetings - not to speak - but to further understand teams, dynamics, areas for improvement, recommendations - allowing for a more inclusive and accepting culture shift and reprioritization of business and resources. Beyond that, it also shows that leadership cares, and if your leadership team has yet to set time aside to attend ERGs, see if that's possible or if they are allowed to in a way that won't disrupt, but will help them to learn.

(2) ALLOCATE ADDITIONAL BUDGET FOR TRAINING & EDUCATION

What is your Board or C-level teams, or Human Resources team doing to help you, your team, your colleagues through this time? What are you doing to train and educate those (including yourself) that may not have the information needed to further understand what's going on in the United States and globally right now? If you haven't already, look to allocate an educational budget (separate of Learning & Development funds, those need to remain career focused) to enable group learning but also self-paced individual and independent learning.

This budget can be for teams to buy books, take courses, attend webinars, etcetera. People learn differently and companies should look to provide employees with the tools they need in the medium required. If your leadership teams aren't allocating additional budget, work with your finance person to take a cut out of your immediate budget in order to educate your teams on history, racism, implicit bias, more inclusive leadership and more. Likely there may be some additional budget from events that were virtual versus in-person or similar that you can pull from.

Look to hold training programs and seminars on anti-racism and overcoming bias on a regular and recurring basis. As part of your DEI program, education should be readily available and required for all employees, beyond just unconscious bias training and similar. Many training programs have mixed results, so multiple offerings will be critical until you find what works and works well.

As we move toward the creation of more inclusive workplaces, Inclusive Leadership will be a term we will be hearing much more about. Spark Labs will be rolling out a free inclusive leadership toolkit in the coming weeks to support this need and companies that require this type of training. 

(3a) INCLUSION & RETENTION BEFORE RECRUITING

Providing safe spaces and workplaces with empowerment & support mechanisms is increasingly critical for organizations. If BIPOC employees are leaving your company after only a short time or you see patterns emerging with certain divisions, leadership teams or individuals, it's time to take a deeper look at the data and at the organizational culture as a whole.

Your first reaction to the #BlackLivesMatter movement may be to try to hit the existing metrics your company has around diversity, but what if those aren't the right metrics?

Your diversity efforts won't work at your company unless you are providing the right pillars for employees to thrive, be included, get promoted and paid fairly, and get set-up on a leadership path where teams and organizations are actively engaged in ensuring success. So how do you get to the metrics that matter, and how do you tackle turning data into action?

Ask for your company's statistics on BIPOC employees: hired, retained (and for how long), how much they are paid in comparison to others, and programs that you offer to support (beyond ERGs). If you have other information you've collected, glean from that (but anonymize it first, preferably via a 3rd party).

If BIPOC employees are leaving your organization, find out why by collecting what information you can get from exit interviews or data on when employees are leaving or if there is a specific organization or group that these former employees had in common. Correlate the data and create concrete conclusions to why; partner with your D&I team and your leadership to create plans to fix the gaps. Consider making this information (current metrics, actionable goals, and progress) public if it's not already. Your audit system should be firing on all cylinders at this point to collect this data, and ensure your teams are correlating it properly. Data will be a critical part of the force driving these changes and should absolutely be utilized when leadership teams want an ROI on the programs they are administering (which they will). Moreover, this information will likely need to be seen by the Board for allocating real dollars, headcount and time to anti-racism and inclusion efforts.

Since many companies attempt to create diversity with their hiring pipeline first (before creating safe and inclusive spaces and environments for hired candidates), they cannot retain the diverse hires they bring in. This is largely due to the lack of these safe environments where people feel it is okay to act authentically and be their best self - which ultimately allows for them to do their best work.

Here are some tips and learnings on how safer workplaces can be created:

• Look at ways to create safe spaces for departments and teams by asking for feedback both individually and at the group level through town hall meetings, surveys, 1:1s and more. Be open to feedback and encourage opinions that are different. Get introspective and consider what safety means to you, to others and to your teams and employees. Largely psychological, it is potentially the most important piece of getting started properly when building DEI programs.
• Create programs that allow for employees to shape their work environments - from how they work to when they work (as much as possible) and then actively provide these flexible environments. Consider not open or closed office spaces, but the best way people can work with the flexibility they need - then trust them to do it.
• Establish clear paths for stretch projects and promotions and communicate this to teams so they have visibility into what leadership is doing to keep engagement up and retain employees.
• Ensure teams are aware of learning and development (L&D) dollars and educational opportunities. If your teams have yet to take advantage of their L&D budgets, encourage them to do so.
• Mentor and sponsor. Support BIPOC employees when they aren’t in the room. Have an opportunity for visibility? Give it to someone who deserves the spotlight and may not get it as often (or at all).

We’ve been grossly overlooking this in many cases, and we need to immediately fix work environments to be inclusive, supportive, empowering and safe.

(3b) RECRUITING AND HIRING

It's not a pipeline problem, it's a people problem.

Look harder, find other channels, join new communities and reach out to people that don't look like you to learn where they hire from or where they would (and pay them for this information). If you have yet to ensure inclusive environments, back up and create this. Per above, inclusive environments need to be in place for recruiting to work. Look at #BlackTechTwitter hashtags and Diversify Tech, a newsletter for underrepresented folks and hiring. Facebook's site houses many diverse technical and product groups as does LinkedIn. Look at your local non-profit coding organizations and institutions. Reach out and see if there are ways to partner or help those looking for jobs to map to roles your company is offering. Ensure you also compensate these organizations and people that help you find candidates – they are often non-profits or run by volunteers, and it’s important to recognize that they also have an important place in this effort.

Take a look at who your recruiters are: do they look like who you are recruiting? If not, it's important to consider this and how it may impact hiring BIPOC and underrepresented potential employees. Consider removing educational requirements from your job descriptions.

Also, if your diversity metrics are aligned to how many BIPOC folks you hire and this number alone and uncorrelated to anything else, you need to re-adjust this to accurately tell the story of inclusion and retention in addition to recruiting. Looking at this as a pathway from recruiting to hiring to retaining to education to leadership - and connecting those dots - will increasingly help this.

Get creative and think of different ways to hire and retain. Companies (not all but many) have a headcount funding model out of "departmental" budgets for hiring. This leads to hiring people that look like existing folks (ie, white folks) in that organization. Moreover, funding of “incentive” programs like monetary kickbacks for finding new employees is also potentially discriminatory if you look at the people being brought in by it – largely those hired in under these programs are white folks versus BIPOC and underrepresented folks.

Now start thinking outside normal funding models. Are there referral awards you can provide for hiring BIPOC and underrepresented folks? What about a pool of open headcount each quarter that the company can allocate to divisions that require diversity and have roles available to create? Where are your leadership gaps? Look for BIPOC candidates for these roles. Take a look at options, come up with ideas and work with your DEI, human resources and legal teams to ensure it’s a fit for your organization and abides by laws. If done properly, this can start to remove the barriers of "I don't have headcount" or competitions against other divisions for hires or headcount. This enables a hiring loophole that greatly benefits all, if created in a way where this system is not taken advantage of and supporting frameworks are put into place. It may not be a long-term solution, but it is a jump-start method while longer-term plans can be created.

(4) SUPPORT BLACK BUSINESS

Corporations carry a multi-billion-dollar pocketbook, and now is the time to crack that open to be more inclusive and diverse – and start enabling black businesses and economies. There needs to be more balance and equity in how business is done with BIPOC owned organizations, and this is a good way to looking at a different (but important) way to track DEI.

Some ideas and metrics for tracking this include:

• Partner Programs: How many BIPOC-owned businesses do you partner with? How much revenue do you drive to or through them? New metrics should be established that aim to increase numbers in both categories. Heads of partner programs should consider implementing this as data that is expected in Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and yearly roll-up reporting. This will likely drive *additional* revenue for organizations and help these teams further meet their revenue goals.
• Suppliers: What is your percentage of BIPOC-owned suppliers? How much do you spend with each per quarter and per year? Is there an even distribution? How are you recruiting diverse suppliers and how can you improve these numbers?
• Vendors: Look at your vendors – what percentage are BIPOC businesses? How much are you spending with them or utilizing them? Are go-to contractor firms diverse? Are your vendors sourcing you with diverse resources? Look at this when selecting and utilizing vendors. Push contract firms for BIPOC and underrepresented candidates. If you're a F500 company whose vendors are in business because of you, this is something that can trickle down from leadership and be implemented as a requirement with additional incentives when becoming "an approved vendor."

(5) PARTNER WITH DEI & HR ORGS TO DRIVE SAFE WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENTS & TRANSPARENCY

In McKinsey’s 2020 Diversity Report, it states:

“While overall sentiment on diversity was 52 percent positive and 31 percent negative, sentiment on inclusion was markedly worse, at only 29 percent positive and 61 percent negative. This encapsulates the challenge that even the more diverse companies still face in tackling inclusion. Hiring diverse talent isn’t enough—it’s the workplace experience that shapes whether people remain and thrive.”

Human resources organizations can be a tight-lipped box that few get the opportunity to crack because the organizations are intrinsically not meant to support the people - they are there to support and protect top senior leadership and the company. This notion needs to shift and the organizations that have yet to support the “human” element of “resources” need to start strategizing and implementing how that works.

If Human Resources organizations are going to thrive, they need to drive transparent and community-led change that supports the people's needs. In order to do this, HR organizations should create truly open and transparent communication lines (consider having a 3rd party run components of this or outsource it for true anonymity) and employee recommended policies that map to the culture of the company leaders and employees want to have.

Why is a non-transparent organization driving the human element of the business? It shouldn't be unless it commits to fair transparency practices, goals and metrics for a diverse leadership team and it employs people that look like who the organization wants to hire.

For further data, see this breakdown of data from Lars Schmidt on LinkedIn. Clearly this data is not indicative of who organizations have hired or who they are looking to hire - and some of this needs to be examined to further understand a better way to transparently support organizations of the future with the right leadership and employees in place.

New pillars for what that company is going to look like need to be added to existing vision, mission and goal statements and HR teams need to be trained up on not only anti-racist and implicit bias, but also on empowering existing employees in new ways, with new benefits and new messaging – one that empowers, provides a safe environment, and one that enables success in new ways via pay raises, promotions, career acceleration, learning paths and new hiring & retention practices.

WHERE DOES DEI RESIDE INSIDE COMPANIES? 

If you have an organizational management background, you may be thinking in the same direction: perhaps DEI organizations are actually more operational and need to scale to meet the company needs in different capacities beyond HR.

This would solidly place DEI organizations in more of an operational organization, potentially reporting to the Chief Operating Officer (COO, or CEO if possible). This allows for DEI organizations to have more political capital (likely), scale, budget, headcount - and more flexibility to adjust to the rapidly changing requirements to create inclusive environments.

Moreover, it will be easier to report out data on diversity to the COO for quarterly and yearly reporting calls to the public and the Board of Directors, which will increasingly be requesting this as data continues to show its impact on revenue’s bottom line.

Now back to Human Resources: Since most HR teams have a representative mapping to each division, it’s important that the person representing HR in each division be trained on how to actively support their business partner leaders, teams, individuals and especially BIPOC folks. HR leads for each division should be meeting regularly to discuss best practices each division is creating, how divisions and leaders are creating inclusive environments, and which new pilot programs work/don’t work and why – and then roll out the programs that are successful at scale to a company. You need to experiment to get things right, and the fail & fail fast to succeed product model is actually applicable to HR as well. Trial, error, trial, success. Failure is okay, but fail fast, not big. Creating that culture of making this okay and rewarding folks that can drive models like this should be strongly considered.

To the point above, consider reporting out diversity numbers and metrics on a quarterly basis to the company first, and then start reporting these out in analyst and investor calls. If I am an investor and I know that the data says that diverse companies drive more revenue, I'm going to start asking these questions anyways. Analyst organizations are creating diversity teams and this area will be increasingly important as we move from 2020 into 2021.

CONCLUSION

 McKinsey recently released a report in which they conclude:

In the case of ethnic and cultural diversity, our business-case findings are... compelling: in 2019, top-quartile companies outperformed those in the fourth one by 36 percent in profitability, slightly up from 33 percent in 2017 and 35 percent in 2014.

The data remains clear and is consistent with earlier reports from McKinsey and others. It’s time to move from hand-waving and soft metrics to business drivers and results – which requires improving inclusion and diversity in organizations.

These are simply recommendations, and there is so much more we, as a collective and forward-looking industry, can do to help. Please use this as you need for the organization you are in, and if you can provide recommendations to your executive leadership teams and human resources organizations, use data and anonymized BIPOC experiences as the leverage points to help your case. This will likely be easier in the short-term - but critical while easy is setting up the models that will be required for long-term success.

In the coming weeks I will be releasing a free “Inclusive Leadership Toolkit” that includes reading, guidance, resources and suggested metrics for momentum and success. Stay tuned to learn more, and hopefully this kit will be of further assistance to companies, organizations and teams as they work towards a better and more diverse future.