S5 E2: Fueling DEI in Your Organization

Podcast March 26, 2024

• Learn more about AIM Business Connect
• Learn more and register for AIM HR Solutions’ DEI Training Course
• Do you have questions about DEI in your company? Email Karen Wallace at KWallace@AIMNet.com
• Connect with Karen Wallace on LinkedIn

Transcript:

Pete Wright:
Welcome to Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People who Love HR, from AIM HR Solutions on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright.
In the rich tapestry of today’s workforce, the threads of diversity, equity, and inclusion are not just woven in, they’re becoming the very fabric of organizational culture. It’s a bold experiment that promises to reshape the corporate landscape.
But what does it really take to dye these threads into the cloth of our companies? Imagine a workplace where the mosaic of its people’s backgrounds isn’t just celebrated on special occasions, but is the cornerstone of every policy, every team, every decision. We’re venturing beyond the buzzwords and diving into the marrow of what DEI truly means for the heartbeat of a company.
In the wake of seismic shifts such as the latest Supreme Court decisions, we probed into the tectonic impacts of recruitment, internships, and mentorships, confront the myths and misconceptions that cloud the DEI landscape as we bring the truth into sharp relief. And who better to guide us on this exploration than Karen Wallace, Executive Vice President of Economic Inclusion at AIM. Karen stands at the vanguard of championing inclusive growth and understanding the economic imperatives of DEI.
Karen, welcome to Human Solutions.

Karen Wallace:
Thank you, Pete. I’m happy to be here.

Pete Wright:
Let’s talk a little bit about the DEI landscape. Are we making genuine progress beyond, let’s say, I don’t know, performative activism, empty promises? How are we doing?

Karen Wallace:
It’s a great question. How are we doing? I’m going to say we’ve made some progress. And at the outset of the tragedy and the murder of George Floyd, it really felt like we were moving into great space where people were very conscious of making sure there were different people at the table having the conversation. I will say that with the advent of the recent SCOTUS decision, I feel like we’ve taken 10 steps back from where we were. And it’s really, really very, very unfortunate because as I hear the conversations and how people are thinking about this, they’re not thinking about it in the right way. And that’s why it’s become such a landmine to talk about diversity these days.

Pete Wright:
Well, let’s talk about that. So first, for those who aren’t up to speed on the Court decisions, just give us a summary of where we stand in terms of the legislative landscape, and then what is the right way to be talking about this?

Karen Wallace:
Yeah. So I will say, from a legislative perspective, the SCOTUS ruled down using race consciousness in terms of it admittance for colleges. Again, it was limited to colleges and university, and it was about being race conscious, so putting your finger on the scale for race as one of the attributes that you considered in an application and admission decision. Now, that had nothing to do with private companies or anything like that. However, there have been a number of lawsuits, there have been a number of legal opinions and all that has really contributed to a number of corporations running scared, so to speak, and saying, “Well, let me stop this before I get in trouble and it goes any further.” And again, in my opinion, a really bad way to think about it.

Pete Wright:
Because it was limited to colleges, right, it is interesting to me, I think, to sort of play out this game of chess. Why are we concerned at the corporate level about decisions made about putting your finger on the scale of race in college admissions?

Karen Wallace:
So we’re concerned in the corporate environment because we have seen some lawsuits come through and some wins on some of those lawsuits. And so, when you have that, then the fear is that there’s going to be an avalanche of this and you might be caught in it. And so, I like to think about it, and again, diversity has become a word that’s an absolute landmine right now. So I’d like to think about it as simply inclusion. And it means making sure that you’re including different perspectives around the table so that you come out with better decisions, because you’ve got multiple people from different perspectives kind of pushing and tugging on a problem in different ways. And you’re ultimately going to come out with a better decision. People often equate diversity with race, and that is not all diversity is. There’s diversity-

Pete Wright:
It’s the easiest way to define diversity.

Karen Wallace:
You’re absolutely right. It’s the easiest way, it’s the most visual way, et cetera. But there’s diversity of socioeconomics, age, geography, neurodivergence. All of that plays into this notion of having a diverse workforce. And there is this play out there of this is going to impact white men. This is not a zero-sum game. It’s not a zero-sum game. There’s a table, and there are certain people who are sitting at that table now. We’re just saying, “Pull up a few more chairs. Let some other people sit at the table.” That’s what this is about.

Pete Wright:
But Karen, really, how much does this weigh on those people that you’re talking about,And how much they just don’t like being told what to do? Is that a controversial statement?

Karen Wallace:
Is it a controversial statement that it weighs on them? Are you saying does this weigh on white men?

Pete Wright:
No. I’m saying how much of it is impacted by the fact that white men in positions of power don’t like being told what to do?

Karen Wallace:
That’s a lot of it. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.

Pete Wright:
Oh, my God, we solved DEI together.

Karen Wallace:
We solved DEI. We solved DEI. Well, the thing is, how do we get to a point where people don’t feel threatened by the fact that someone is saying, “You might not have all the answers. You might have some of the answers, but gee whiz, if you included somebody else, not only might they have some answers, the two of you together might get to a better set of answers, a better set of solutions.”

Pete Wright:
So then it sounds like it comes to a situation of DE&I not being sold right. How often are we able to successfully make the case to those who haven’t experienced it, that even white men sitting around a diverse table, their worlds get better at the result of it?

Karen Wallace:
I hear what you’re saying that DE&I hasn’t been sold right. But I guess when you think of it historically, the only way that you could say it that was impactful is that you need different people at the table.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Karen Wallace:
And if the table is all white men, then what happens is it becomes a gender and a race issue.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Karen Wallace:
It just becomes that. But that is not all it is. When white men understand that we’re not saying, “Get away from the table.” We’re saying, “Just make some room for us.”

Pete Wright:
“Make a bigger table.” Right.

Karen Wallace:
“Just make a bigger table. Just make a bigger table. It’s not that you’re getting kicked out, it’s just make room. Just make some room.” In the wake of the George Floyd murder, the attention was on race. And so, most companies who got into and leaned heavily into DE&I at that point, it was about race. And so, unfortunately from that perspective, it was not sold correctly. It was not positioned correctly. And now we have all this backlash.

Pete Wright:
I worry that the answer to the next question is going to be even more depressing, but I’m going to go ahead and ask it. What are you seeing happening? You said that the word diversity was a toxic word essentially in the corporate sector right now. What are we doing? What are we seeing in terms of building diversity programs in the sector? Is it just stopped at this point? Are you seeing rays of light? How do we move the discussion forward in an era post these SCOTUS rulings and the sort of partisan terror?

Karen Wallace:
So it’s a great question, and the answer is not as depressing as you would think.

Pete Wright:
Okay. How nice.

Karen Wallace:
Yes, there are some organizations that are rolling it back. I think we’ve seen in both Florida and Alabama, the decimation of certain DE&I departments. We’re seeing some of that now in corporate America. We’re also seeing a lot of people, again, not using what has become the toxic word of diversity, but really leaning into inclusion. And I think that’s a good thing.
What I will say why this isn’t a completely depressing story is that some corporations did this and they really meant it. And so, those organizations are not stepping back. As a matter of fact, they’re leaning in and saying, “This is who we are and this is who we’re going to be, ad infinitum.” And they’re smart to do that, because there’s studies out there that show, for example, Gen Y, Gen X, about 60% of them have said, “You don’t have these kind of programs, you are not comfortable with making a room for all mankind, we don’t want to work for you. If you don’t have ESG programs that talk about focus on environment, on social justice, on governments, we’re not going to work here.” And so, those types of things make it really positive for those companies who are leaning in to say, “We’re leaning in for the right reason because our employee base wants this.”
The other thing is we are moving very, very rapidly to becoming a minority majority country. Don’t you want your company to look like your customers? Is that not in the best interest of your company? We see some companies making huge, huge mistakes because they don’t have the right people around the table to say, “That’s a bad move.” The one that I think of most frequently is H&M a few years ago had an ad out with a little Black boy with a T-shirt with an ape on it. Now, had they had somebody of color around the table, they would have immediately said, “You can’t do that. You can’t do that.”

Pete Wright:
Oh, my God.

Karen Wallace:
Yeah, yeah. Something like that is, you would think it’s pretty doggone obvious that you don’t do that, but there you go.

Pete Wright:
It’s out there.

Karen Wallace:
It’s out there.

Pete Wright:
I’m sort of floored, and at the same time you’re describing a capitalist fever dream. Everything about that last response was, “Look, diversity and inclusion can happen in a market-driven economy.” Right?

Karen Wallace:
Exactly.

Pete Wright:
Market-driven for employees and employers, and I think that’s a pretty special kind of irony.

Karen Wallace:
It really is. It absolutely is. You really have made a great point there. It absolutely is. This is nothing to be afraid of. There’s all goodness here.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Karen Wallace:
There is all goodness here. If we embrace it from the notion that we’re just talking about bringing different perspectives, different lived experiences to the table to help us solve business problems in creative and innovative ways.

Pete Wright:
Okay. Let’s talk about the table. The table is important, and the fact that my hunch is, is it’s not one table. So let’s talk about what… I have my favorite. I made up a company. My favorite company, it’s a manufacturing company in Massachusetts. It was a startup two seasons ago, and now it’s flourishing. Let’s just say it’s flourishing. What does it look like if I want to invest in inclusion programs? I’ll say staying away from the toxic words, if I want to invest in inclusion programs to make my company look and think more like my customer.

Karen Wallace:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Where did you start?

Karen Wallace:
Yeah. That table has a number of different types of people around it. There are people who just started with the organization. There are people who are long in the tooth and have been tenured and been there for quite some time. There are people of very different colors who are around the table. There are people who came from different places around the world or even across the country. There are people who have had different experiences from an educational perspective. I’ve been at some companies where if you’re not Ivy League, you’re not at that table. Well, you know what? There are people who come from community college who have something to bring to the table as well. So it’s a real melting pot of a bunch of different people with different perspectives.

Pete Wright:
And you’re challenging though, some long-held beliefs of hierarchy, right? And I think this is the point, right? When you talk about bringing new people to the organization to a larger table, you’re talking about saying tenure isn’t the only thing that counts. Because in an older organization, tenure generally means a less diverse table.

Karen Wallace:
It generally means a less diverse table. But think about bringing someone new to the organization who’s come from someplace else, has very, very different ideas. They’re looking at the company through a different lens. That person could be hugely helpful and beneficial to a problem-solving, to innovation, any of that. Just to say, “You haven’t been here long enough,” that’s actually a benefit to bring that person to the table. It’s a benefit.

Pete Wright:
Right. What about the sphere of influence outside the organization? We hear a lot about supplier diversity. How do we think about that and the impact that we have as an organization on those who work with us?

Karen Wallace:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
What do we have in terms of influence?

Karen Wallace:
So when I think of supply diversity is a really specific area that I am very, very passionate about, and I’m passionate about it for a number of reasons. The first is when we think about supply diversity, often people think again, we’re bringing disadvantaged companies to the table. These companies are not disadvantaged. Many of them have great capacity, great product, good value proposition. They just need an opening to get in.
And then, once you bring them to the table, there’s a whole set of impacts that can happen. You’re impacting your community. Giving them an opportunity gives them the ability to create new jobs that are really impacting and influencing the economy of the place where your employees work and live, right? They’re bringing different viewpoints again about solutions to your problem. A lot of times because they tend to be smaller, they can be more nimble and they have to be creative in that nimbleness, and they’re bringing that to the table. You can diversify your supply chain. You always need to have some bench strength there, so why not have some bench strength that might be different? So there’s just a plethora of things that a diverse supply chain can bring to the company.

Pete Wright:
We have to let go, I think, of maybe some older assumptions around our influence as a corporate entity, right? This is an opportunity, again, to extend an olive branch say to our suppliers and invite them into a conversation, not to just start cutting off old relationships, right? That’s where I think the more peaceful approach to growing a diverse segment might play in.

Karen Wallace:
Should be invited into the conversation, because again, we all benefit. I was looking at some numbers the other day, and if we started to get to parody in terms of women-owned and minority-owned firms in the workplace in the same way that white and male-dominated firms are, it would increase our GDP like three or fourfold. The numbers are just outrageous. And so, it really is one of those things where a rising tide is going to lift all boats. So it’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s like, “Let’s bring them on in and let’s all benefit from this.”

Pete Wright:
Yeah. But it’s also challenging some really old thinking around scarcity and the value of just sort of competition for attention that we’re still learning how to undo.

Karen Wallace:
Yeah. And I hear you, and I know that it’s nerve-wracking for some people, but I challenge companies to start from a perspective of you don’t have to completely upend an incumbent that you’ve had for a while. There’s enough, share the wealth. If you have this person in there for how many every years and they have 100% of a particular contract, can’t you just shave off 10% maybe and give it to someone else? You are increasing your bench strengths, you’re bringing new perspectives, potentially bringing innovation. Now you’ve got two heads, so to speak, versus one. And it’s all goodness for everyone.

Pete Wright:
Who’s doing it right? You got any stories? You work with a lot of people. You got any stories of organizations that are really exemplars of the points you’re making right now?

Karen Wallace:
Two that I’m thinking of, the first is a bank that is too small to be a community bank but it’s not a national bank, and that’s Eastern Bank in Massachusetts. They are phenomenal, phenomenal. They have looked at, and I’m talking about it from a supplier diversity perspective first, they have looked at supplier diversity. And they have given their procurement professionals the wherewithal to celebrate when they could bring someone new into a fold. It is really tied to their performance. And when I say tied to their performance, I don’t mean that you’re giving somebody increased bonuses for bringing in a new person. It’s not that. There’s no money involved. But it is allowing someone to take the risk of hiring someone new in and giving someone new an opportunity. So doing that is a good thing, so you don’t have to feel that, “Oh, gosh. There’s going to be punitive action if this doesn’t work.” It might not, but chances are it will. So they’re doing a great job.
Some larger companies that are doing a really good job, P&G is doing an amazing job. Fidelity has done some really, really great work recently, not only in supply chain, but also in things that they’re doing internally from a recruiting perspective, making sure that there are mentoring and internship opportunities for folks, using their ERGs properly to help kind of funnel inclusivity through the company. They’re doing a great job. They’re doing a great job.

Pete Wright:
Two questions that I hope will pivot us toward a bright future for our inclusion efforts. First, how do you know it’s working? How do you measure success of your inclusion efforts? Are there metrics you look at?

Karen Wallace:
A lot of the metrics are embedded in your employees. The companies who have not backed off from this understand how important this is to their employees from a retention perspective, from a loyalty perspective, and so a lot of them are measuring this in employee satisfaction, employee engagement, employee loyalty. There are also ways that you can measure this through brand measurement. Again, as I said before, there are a lot of people who won’t work for companies who are not doing this. So how are you perceived in the marketplace and is this elevating your brand? I look at Dove soap and some of the work that they’ve done on women of different colors and ethnicities, women of different shapes and sizes. And what that has done for that brand has been amazing. So there are a number of different ways that you can measure success, sure.

Pete Wright:
As we get to closing up, we started and have sort of teased through our conversation about some of the language related to DEI that has become, thanks to the political environment, toxic. If you were going to give my fictitious manufacturing organization some guidance on updating our language the way we think about this, that might help us build some more traction toward building the kind of company that we want, how would you suggest we start? Give us some ideas on language that’ll help us actually turn heads.

Karen Wallace:
Well, the first thing I would do is because there are some words out there now that are toxic, I would go and make sure that I take a look at all my public statements, all the public filings, and just make sure, “What have I said? And is the language inclusionary versus exclusionary?”
As you think about ERGs, for example, you want to make sure that there isn’t anything in the charter that says, “This group is only for women, and only women can participate and benefit from this.” The charter of the group is to talk through issues that women may have, solve for things that may be impacting women, and, “We welcome all perspectives and anybody who is interested in and wants to contribute to this conversation.”
If there are ways that you want to think about, “Wow, I’m looking at the table, and again, there’s nobody at this table who isn’t white and male,” then you can look at potentially asking questions or going to recruit in places where they have a larger group of people who have overcome hardships, right? There are hardships that women have overcome, that folks who have divergent challenges have overcome. And so, there’s a way there to open that space up to say, and there are ways that white men also have overcome hardships, so there’s a way to be inclusive there. And still if you need some diversity, that you can kind of get it without being exclusionary. Where are you recruiting? Are you recruiting in areas that you might find the population that you’re looking for? Are you looking at women’s colleges? Are you looking at HBCUs, that type of thing.

Pete Wright:
One of the topics that we talk often about on this show recently, in particular, the last year, I think, is on the dangers of AI and using these sort of machine learning systems to help you define things like the kinds of people you’re recruiting for. Because the systems learn if you’ve only hired straight white men, then they learn to recruit for straight white men. And so, some of this seems to also come down to what systems and tools are you using to give you support and help, and being aware at a new level of sensitivity of the kinds of things that are inherent in the system that work against your inclusion efforts.

Karen Wallace:
Right. I would recommend that folks really think long and hard if they are inclined to lean in here, and I hope they are, that you do focus on someone who lives and eats and drinks and sleeps this every day. There are folks who are inclusion consultants, diversity, equity, and inclusion consultants who can help with the language. They can help people understand what microaggressions are in the system and how to get through that. They can help people understand what it means to be more inclusive. People can be, you could sit in a room that is full of white men and still not be inclusive. You could have the same, and we do that often. It’s the same senior leaders of the organization who have been around for X number of years who have all the answers. And that’s not an inclusionary environment either. That’s very exclusionary.

Pete Wright:
What you describe is the boardroom in the movie Barbie. Tell me you saw Barbie, Karen.

Karen Wallace:
I did see Barbie.

Pete Wright:
Oh, my god.

Karen Wallace:
I did see Barbie.

Pete Wright:
You just described it. That’s it. That’s the Mattel senior board.

Karen Wallace:
There you go.

Pete Wright:
They played themselves. Karen, you’re amazing. Thank you so much for talking with me for the last half hour. I so appreciate you joining the show. I could go on, but I’ll let you get back to your day.

Karen Wallace:
Peter, it’s been my pleasure, it really has been. A subject near and dear to my heart, so it’s been a pleasure.

Pete Wright:
For sure. As a representative of AIM, is there any place on the website, any tools that you want to share with folks that we can put in the show notes and make sure they look for specifically?

Karen Wallace:
Yeah, absolutely. We have a great supplier diversity program called AIM Business Connect. You can find information on our website. And I’m happy for people to reach out to me if you want to put any of my information out there, KWallace@aimnet.com. If you are in business and you’re looking for diverse businesses to help you, businesses that will help you be more inclusionar: women, minority, LGBTQ+, neurodivergent, veterans, all of that is in this pot, and we’re here to help you.

Pete Wright:
The room is better when it’s bigger, everybody. Check it out.

Karen Wallace:
Absolutely.

Pete Wright:
This was really, really great. Thank you, Karen Wallace. As always, you can find links and notes about the show in the show notes. Just swipe up in your show notes wherever you’re listening to this podcast or visit AIMHRSolutions.com. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe in Apple Podcasts or Spotify or YouTube Music now. We’re everywhere. You’ve got us all over the place. On behalf of Karen Wallace, I’m Pete Wright. We will see you next week right here on Human Solutions: Simplifying HR for People who Love HR.