Raising the Bar for Corporate Diversity and Inclusion Conversations

I am PwC's fifth Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Twelve years ago our US Chairman decided that making diversity and inclusion a firm priority was so critical to our success that he added my position to his US Leadership Team.  Making this a C-Suite role signaled to our employees, our peers, and our clients, that we would take diversity and inclusion seriously and devote real resources to chipping away at outdated thinking and building a better workplace. And it gave real power to our leaders to develop programs and allocate resources that would have lasting impact.

Under the guidance of five leaders, PwC has come a long way in its diversity journey and is now a leader in this area.  This week, I will be at Workday Rising and am joining a panel led by the incredible organization The Female Quotient to talk about how PwC’s diversity initiatives have evolved, and what we have learned on our journey.  We are indeed still learning, but one thing we know for sure is that different people need different things. And the things that affect our people outside the walls of PwC also affect them inside our walls.  It is our responsibility to make them feel safe, secure, and inspired. Because we ask our people to be creative, do their best work, and effectively collaborate, we cannot absolve ourselves of the responsibility to help them bring their true selves to work every day.

The way to know what our people need is to ask them, and in return, we must really listen to their answers and act on them.  Over the past two years, we’ve leaned-in to engage our people around difficult conversations about race and social issues.  The idea was to create a trusting and civil environment for our people to have discussions that could break down walls and change perceptions, enabling us to work better together knowing our firm was a safe space to be who we all truly are.

We had our first of these tough conversations in the summer of 2016.  I had taken on the role of Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer role on July 1, and just a few days later police shootings of unarmed black men were followed by the killing of police officers in Dallas. These events happened over the course of one week during a long and violent season that I’m sure we all remember well. We decided that, as a firm, we couldn’t expect our employees to do their best work when so many were feeling upset, saddened, angry, and stifled about what was going on in the country - we had to act to address how people were feeling.

This year, the #MeToo movement prompted us to host conversations around the country in different offices to talk about respect in the workplace, with a focus on sexual harassment.  Then this fall, a tragedy struck our PwC family.  Botham Jean, a black Assurance associate in Dallas, was shot and killed at his own home by a police officer who entered his apartment. The case is still being investigated and we don’t know exactly why this tragedy happened.  Our people were shocked, and, also, devastated.  There was an immediate outpouring of grief and concern in response to the news, and we, once again, gathered our people in offices around the country to share our pain, stories, and fears.  

For too many years we had been silent on topics of race and sexual harassment because we didn't want to offend people. But because we  care about our people silence is not an option. We should ask questions and talk about issues of race in respectful ways. The conversations shouldn’t just happen in a moment of crisis either. Work culture is changing. People expect their employers to care about societal issues and to address these in the workplace and outside the workplace.

This is a critical part of our talent strategy. The foundation of any organization or institution is built on trust and trust is something that no business leader should take for granted.  This week at Workday Rising I plan to call on all leaders to be inclusive,  to mentor other leaders -- and make sure you mentor leaders who don’t necessarily look like you or come from the same background or area or school as you -- and to listen to those leaders.  Let their voices guide your actions, too. 

Right now, PwC US has the most diverse leadership team in its history because our US Chairman made a unilateral decision to do so. And that diverse leadership team made a decision to host these tough conversations that we hope have made all our people more open and inclusive.  We are guided by our purpose -- to build trust in society and solve important problems -- and our values every day.  And we will return to them time and again to push us to do the right thing when things seem scary, and to protect us when people tell us we’ve gone too far.  As business leaders, we must earn trust by delivering on our promises, being transparent and accountable, and by deliberately and genuinely working to make our workplaces and communities better.