Human Experience Excellence - June 2023

CHARTING A PATH TO HOLISTIC DEIB: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

- Krystal Hardy Allen, Founder & CEO, K. Allen Consulting

Top Picks

INDEX

Juneteenth: 4 Ways To Empower Black Employees All Year

Driving success with a diverse workforce

- Krystal Barker Buissereth, Head, Executive Financial Services, Morgan Stanley

43

Why Diversity Efforts Are Crucial

Top considerations for business leaders

- Susanne Tedrick, Writer and Speaker, susannetedrick.com and Bertina Ceccarelli, CEO, NPower

Unmuting Employee Voices: Cultivating A Workplace Of Open Communication And Inclusion

To drive engagement and innovation, companies should seek out diversity in opinions

- Logan Mallory, Vice President, Marketing, Motivosity

50 56

How Companies Can Support Women After A Leave Of Absence

Strategies for seamless transitions, skill development, and work-life balance

- Dr. Shirley Knowles, Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer, Progress

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The Power of DEIB: Building Inclusive Organizations for a Better Future

In an era of rapid change and progress, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) have emerged as crucial pillars for organizations aiming to thrive in the dynamic landscape of today's world. It is increasingly evident that DEIB is not merely a matter of moral and ethical responsibility but also a strategic imperative that yields tangible benefits for businesses. Gone are the days when DEIB efforts were limited to isolated departments or superficial gestures. They must now be embraced as an all-encompassing framework that permeates every facet of an organization, driving innovation, fostering resilience, and unlocking new opportunities for growth.

It is crucial to ensure that DEIB work includes and supports people of color, who, despite being marginalized themselves, have room for growth and the need to address biases. While short-term programs and initiatives can generate initial momentum, organizations must transition to long-term action plans with measurable goals.

Amidst the pursuit of DEIB, organizations must prioritize wellness and self-care. Promoting the well-being of employees ensures that progress is sustainable and that individuals feel supported throughout their journeys.

As we commemorate Juneteenth, a significant cultural milestone that marks the end of slavery in the United States, it is crucial to remember that DEIB efforts should not be confined to specific moments or events. Instead, they must be ingrained in the fabric of our organizations year-round. Educational support and engagement are also vital components of promoting DEIB in the workplace. Providing resources and opportunities for employees to learn about personal finance, investment strategies, and wealth-building can empower individuals from underrepresented communities to navigate financial challenges effectively.

The June edition of Human Experience Excellence features insightful articles that address the key considerations of DEIB and provide valuable tips for organizations to cultivate inclusive environments where individuals feel valued, empowered, and supported.

Krystal Hardy Allen (Founder & CEO of K. Allen Consulting) highlights five crucial considerations for organizations aiming to enhance their DEIB efforts in her article Charting A Path To Holistic DEIB: Where Do We Go From Here?

In the article titled Juneteenth: 4 Ways To Empower Black Employees All Year, Krystal Barker Buissereth (Head of Executive Financial Services at Morgan Stanley) outlines four steps to maximize the impact of workplace financial benefits. These steps are aimed at fostering a more inclusive workplace and supporting the financial well-being of employees, particularly those from underrepresented communities.

Susanne Tedrick, (writer and speaker), and Bertina Ceccarelli (CEO of NPower), emphasize in their article, Why Diversity Efforts Are Crucial that organizations with strong DEI programs are more likely to achieve financial targets and have high-performing teams.

In her article How Companies Can Support Women After A Leave Of Absence, Dr. Shirley Knowles (Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer at Progress) addresses the ongoing challenge of underrepresentation of women in the technology industry, especially in management positions.

In conclusion, the future of DEIB is critical in creating inclusive workplaces where all individuals feel valued and empowered. Organizations must adopt DEIB as a comprehensive framework, embrace intersectionality, transition to long-term action plans, prioritize wellness and self-care, and take year-round action to promote DEIB.

We hope you find the latest edition of Human Experience Excellence, featuring expert articles on DEIB valuable and informative. Your feedback and suggestions on our articles are always welcome.

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employees.

In a world of unparalleled challenges (global pandemic, racial injustice, political rivalry, digital 4.0, emotional malaise), uncertainty reigns. Finding opportunity in this context requires harnessing uncertainty and harnessing starts with reliable, valid, timely, and useful information. The Excellence publications are a superb source of such information. The authors provide insights with impact that will guide thought and action.

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Charting A Path To Holistic DEIB: Where Do We Go From Here?

Key considerations for future success

By Krystal Hardy Allen, K. Allen Consulting

Fororganizations of all kinds, even those who are actively engaged in efforts to center and advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, it is important to consider the future of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging and how we can all be more intentional and effective in our efforts. There are five key considerations I encourage organizations to make meaning of, discuss, and take action towards.

The first consideration is the adoption of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) as a holistic frame and lens for every function, domain, or aspect of the organization. Far too many times, DEIB work centers around a singular function, such as human resources (HR) or client services. However, the future of this work must call in every function, aspect, and domain of an organization or institution for examination so that there are aligned strategies, practices, policies, and commitment to DEIB across the board. We cannot piecemeal our way to an equitable and inclusive workplace environment.

While it is important to be realistic and thoughtful in not taking on more than we can chew, the ultimate goal should be full integration. The destination is not a fragmented sense of adoption, but it is a comprehensive vow we make to become an institution or organization that sees its very identity as being linked to this work.

Secondly, organizations must be willing to adopt an intersectional lens for their DEIB work. Too often, people and organizations equate diversity to race alone and negate the reality that diversity actually represents the vast variety of identities, lived experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives of people. This means that our DEIB work must open itself to discourse, reflection, planning, and action that centers on age, gender, sexual orientation, neurodiversity, and more.

None of us are monolithic beings, and addressing the way sexism, nepotism, ageism, elitism, and other forms of harm and injustice transpire within organizations every day is vital. We cannot piecemeal our way to justice. We must be willing to ensure that everyone, not just some or select individuals, experience fairness and psychological and emotional safety and are set up for success within workplace environments.

Third, organizations must cease assuming that staff or employees of color should be exempt from DEIB learning opportunities or assuming that they are the experts in this body of work. DEIBwork is for everyone, and black and brown staff and employees, just like everyone else, have room and opportunities to grow, unpack, and unlearn biases that they, too, are capable of carrying.

As a Black woman, I can name plenty of examples of problematic and unjust practices I’ve seen between a person of color to another marginalized group or members of our own racial/ethnic community. There are people of color who can be sexist, homophobic, and elitist, and perpetuate very problematic practices even within HR work when it comes to hiring and selection. So organizations must commit to ensuring that its DEIB work doesn’t just stop with race, and even when race is explored, we must also welcome meaningful and real discourse about colorism, classism, and respectability politics.

Fourth, organizations must shift from short-lived DEIB programming to building real DEI action plans or centering the buildout of its DEIB work within its overall organizational strategic plan. Your efforts must incorporate a real vision for what you want to see come to pass within this work. Your plan must encompass real key performance indicators and goals. Be bold about even naming owners or who will be responsible for what, and even a timeline, even if aspects of the timeline change or evolve over time. What gets measured gets monitored, and far too often, DEIB efforts are not grounded in a tangible plan that the institution then monitors as well as reports on in terms of its progress and shortcomings to date.

Last but not least, the future of DEIB work must consider wellness, rest, and renewal within the work.

So often, this body of work - especially for those that lead it every single day - can be not only mentally taxing but also physically and emotionally taxing as well. For hundreds of years, the burden of it has also too often fallen on people of color as well as women within organizations to carry.

We must create educational opportunities within our DEIB efforts about how to take care of ourselves mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, and more. Organizations should also embrace hosting opportunities, such as restorative yoga or offering affinity-based therapy, that honors the mind, body, and spirit. Fighting for what is right is always right, and at the same time, we cannot lose ourselves in the fight to the point that we cannot carry on the work well or at the bar we know the work should be done.

Of the considerations above, I encourage you to think about the one or two things you, your team, or your organization as a whole hold as growth areas, and welcome identifying them as areas in which you can take your DEIB initiatives, efforts, and commitment to the next level.

Krystal Hardy Allen is the Founder & CEO of K. Allen Consulting, and an education advocate and philanthropist. A native of Selma, Alabama, Allen is a well-respected former school principal and teacher. She began her career teaching elementary school, serving as an instructional coach, then asst. principal, and finally leading as a school principal. Most recently featured in TIME Magazine, she is a 2019 Gambit 40 Under 40 recipient, a 2019 Aspen Institute Ideas Festival Scholar, the 2016 Urban League of Louisiana Activist Award recipient, and serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Kid Smart; Success at Thurgood Marshall; and the Selma Center for Nonviolence.

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Juneteenth: 4 Ways To Empower Black Employees All Year

Driving success with a diverse workforce

By Krystal Barker Buissereth, Morgan Stanley

Juneteenth is an important cultural milestone in our calendar year, but more importantly, let’s also think of it as a call to year-round action in the workplace. Maintaining a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) as an organization is incredibly challenging in today’s economic climate, where according to Indeed more than a quarter of companies say layoffs and budget cuts are negatively affecting their diversity efforts—despite earmarking DEIB as an integral business function.1

How can companies plan for what should be an ongoing process of growth in uncertain economic conditions? Workplace benefits are one area where we can move the needle without throwing off the balance sheet. Try these four steps to position workplace financial benefits as an MVP in your ongoing diversity efforts.

1. Get the Data

The most effective solutions begin with real data, not generalizations. Start by checking in with the affinity or employee resource groups within your business, both digitally and in person. These groups are rich resources for data on what employees in your company truly want and need from their benefits, as well as insights on what is working and what can use some improvement.

Start a dialogue. Do the employees know what benefits you already offer? Are they using their benefits programs? Why or why not? Also, make sure to remain thoughtful and respectful in what and how you ask so as not to burden employees with providing solutions: Being able to have input is powerful, but ultimately it is up to the organization—not diverse individuals—to put the data to work.

Also, gather data behind the scenes from your benefits platforms. Your providers can help you tally participation and engagement rates and segment that data by gender, race, and ethnicity to identify whether any particular employee group is missing out. From there, you can better define goals and success metrics that make sense for your business and begin to understand which areas might need to continue to shift.

2. Offer Benefits That Can be Adapted and Applied for Diverse Needs

Workplace benefits are a logical way to provide diverse employees with opportunities to help build and protect financial health, but it’s important to be intentional about making these plans more inclusive.

What does that mean? First, recognize that there’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to retirement, equity compensation, and other workplace financial benefits. Use your data to understand varying financial needs within different employee segments and look to identify offerings that could especially help lift up underrepresented groups or address certain gaps.

For instance, student loan repayment benefits often have an outsized impact in supporting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and female employees since these groups carry a disproportionate amount of student loan debt in the US.

Second, how benefits programs are positioned in terms of

eligibility, communication, and support can skew who participates—and who reaps the rewards. Equity compensation is a great example where what is actually a powerful benefit can inadvertently exacerbate inequalities for some employees due to who has access: Morgan Stanley’s research shows that just 13% of equity recipients at private companies polled identified as African American or Black.

This is partly because BIPOC employees and women are less likely to move up the corporate ladder into positions where equity is offered.2 Are there opportunities for your company to expand access to more employees? If not, there may be other ways you can build greater inclusion— such as by sharing data with HR and advocating with leadership to develop and promote more underrepresented groups like

BIPOC and women employees into leadership roles where equity is offered. Recognizing this broken rung on the ladder can become the first step toward change.

3. Provide Educational Support and Encourage Engagement

Of course, access to benefits is only part of the equation: Employees also need to be aware of what benefits are available as well as how to use them. As Christyl Lucille Murray, one of our Morgan Stanley leaders, has said, companies offering workplace benefits do us and our employees a disservice if we don’t explain, teach, and coach them on how to use these resources.

Employees from historically underrepresented communities may come to the table with less exposure to workplace benefits or financial planning, and offering guidance, education, and coaching can be especially important to help BIPOC employees thrive at work. For example, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA) found that while African Americans tend to exhibit lower financial well-being than whites across categories, it was true that those with greater financial literacy showed greater financial well-being.

The takeaway: Financial literacy can potentially help mitigate the financial wellness gap between African Americans and whites.3

Financial education shared through a thoughtful communications plan can help employees connect the dots between their workplace benefits and their financial needs. So, use the data you’ve gathered to tailor benefits education and communication campaigns for various employee segments. But keep it as simple and clear as possible: Frontiers reported that behavioral research shows information overload makes it difficult for people to make decisions.4 Work with your providers on this—they may even have targeted education and communications assets ready to go out of the box.

Also, consider offering employees access to a financial coach or your company’s Plan Advisor who can meet with them individually. Morgan Stanley’s data shows that employees increasingly want

retirement planning guidance and access to a Financial Advisor.5

4. Look for Opportunities for Your Organization and Your Employees to Keep Learning

The workplace can play a positive role in helping BIPOC employees build a more secure financial life. And a more diverse workforce can, in turn, help drive business success: McKinsey & Company found that diverse companies are more likely to outperform less diverse peers on profitability.6

Change doesn’t happen overnight. Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are very much an ongoing journey for businesses. While more change is needed on many fronts in our wider society to truly support greater equality and diversity, we as a business community must make the effort to continue to work to understand and meet BIPOC employees where

they are today. From there, we can take more effective, targeted, concrete steps to better support their goals and needs in the workplace.

Notes

1. Indeed, Nationwide Poll, February 2023

2. Morgan Stanley at Work, Transparency 2021: Addressing Gaps in Equity Compensation, 2021

3. TIAA Institute, Financial literacy, wellness and resilience among African Americans, September 2022

4. Frontiers | How Does Information Overload Affect Consumers’ Online Decision Process? An Event-Related Potentials Study | Neuroscience (frontiersin.org), Oct 21, 2021

5. Morgan Stanley at Work, State of the Workplace Study 2023

6. How diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) matter | McKinsey, May 19, 2020

Krystal Barker Buissereth is the Head of Executive Financial Services at Morgan Stanley. She is a CFA charter holder and entrepreneurial leader with diverse professional experience across wealth management, workplace financial solutions, investment banking, corporate strategy, and sales.

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The Future of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2023

Maintain the momentum of DEIB during times of uncertainty

The HR Research Institute, powered by HR.com, the world’s largest social network for Human Resources professionals, is a key part of our mandate to inform and educate today’s HR professionals. Over the past three years, the HR Research Institute has produced more than 85 exclusive primary research and state of the industry reports, along with corresponding infographics in many cases, based on the surveys of thousands of HR professionals. Each research report highlights current HR trends, benchmarks, and industry best practices. HR Research Institute Reports and Infographics are available online, and always

The Future of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2023

Maintain the momentum of DEIB during times of uncertainty

In light of recent social justice movements, corporations have responded by making bold statements and pledging money and efforts towards diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB).1, 2

Real change toward equity requires more than just diversity programs. It often requires a paradigm shift in the way businesses are run and deep cultural change that can be extremely challenging to achieve. Also, with the growing mobility of people across the globe, DEIB must be viewed through a different lens depending on varying cultural contexts.

To better understand the complex topic of DEIB, HR Research Institute conducted a study entitled, The Future of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging 2023.

Exclusive Study By The HR Research Institute

Key Findings

● DEIB in most organizations is immature and initiatives are seen as ineffective.

● While HR is responsible for DEIB in the majority of organizations, two-thirds spend just 20% or less of their average workweek on DEIB-related work.

● Organizations aim to build a culture of trust through DEIB initiatives but are hampered by a lack of time and leadership support.

● Organizations increasingly rely on basic workforce data to measure the current state of DEIB.

● Roughly half of the organizations are actively invested in understanding pay equity.

● Under two-fifths of organizations offer DEIBrelated L&D programs to all employees.

● Organizations use specific DEIB initiatives infrequently and rely on benefits to incentivize equity-deserving groups.

● DEIB leaders outperform laggards on several dimensions of prioritizing, measuring, and implementing DEIB.

scale from perfectly effective (10) to extremely ineffective (1). Just 6% rate themselves an 8 or above and an overwhelming majority (86%) rate themselves a 6 or below. In fact, more than half (52%) rate themselves very poorly (4 or below).

The poor effectiveness of DEIB initiatives can be tied back to the lack of maturity of the DEIB function in organizations today. Just 6% say DEIB in their organization is at the expert level where it is an integral part of the culture and intrinsically linked to strategic goals of the organization. Just one in ten organizations say they are at the advanced stage where they have a strategic framework and utilize metrics.

More than a third place themselves at the intermediate stage which means they have some DEIB initiatives, but they lack strategic importance and there is no measurement of success. A lack of strategic importance of DEIB is likely to curb investments in the form of time and money and this will have a negative impact on effectiveness.

For all the talk surrounding DEIB, there are only six Black CEOs leading Fortune 500 companies. This is just 1% of businesses  in 2022.3

Has DEIB Made Progress Over the Last Year?

We asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of DEIB initiatives in their organizations on a 10-point

Are Women and Ethnic/Racial Minorities Represented at Leadership Levels?

Our results indicate that women represent less than 20% of top leadership in one-third of organizations, and another quarter say women represent just 21% to 40% of top leadership. Just one-fifth of organizations are women dominated, with women representing 61% or more of top leadership.

Survey Question: About what percentage of your organization's top leaders identify as women?

Note: this would include C-suite, senior managers, directors, VPs, etc. It would not include mid-level managers.

The underrepresentation of women is overshadowed by the dismal proportion of racial/ ethnic minorities in top leadership positions. A vast majority (73%) say not even 21% of their top leaders are ethnic/racial minorities. In fact, just 13% say ethnic/racial minorities represent 41% or more of their top leadership.

Should HR Be Solely in Charge of DEIB?

HR plays quite a pivotal role in DEIB in many organizations. In about half of the organizations, the HR department as a whole (25%) or a specific team or person within the HR department (21%) is primarily responsible for DEIB issues, programs and/or policies. However, in about a quarter of organizations, the responsibility falls on the DEIB function, either the Chief of DEIB (14%) or the DEIB department (12%).

When asked about the connection between HR and the DEIB function, a third say there is no DEIB department, function or representative in their organization. This means that DEIB is either non-existent or is taken on as an additional responsibility by HR professionals.

Is DEIB Today All Talk and No Action?

Roughly a quarter stress DEIB in the talent acquisition process (25%), consistently

communicate the importance of DEIB throughout the organization (23%) or include DEIB-related training during onboarding (22%) to a high or very high degree. Even fewer say they are embedding the topic of DEIB in all or most talent development materials (12%), have a formal budget allocated to closing pay gaps (13%) or take action on DEIB analytics (12%).

Survey Question: To what degree does your organization use the following initiatives?

Stress DEIB in the talent acquisition process

Suppor t employee resource groups (ERGs)

Include DEIB-related training during onboarding

Include DEIB in the succession management process

Have a formal budget allocated to closing pay gaps

Take action on DEIB analytics

Embed the topic of DEIB in all or most talent-development materials

Consistently communicate the impor tance of DEIB throughout the organization

Implement DEIB-specific EAPs and wellness programs

Analyze turnover using a DEIB lens

Do Organizations Understand and Prioritize Equitable Pay?

Remedying pay equity gaps first requires understanding it. Only half of the organizations say they are actively investing in understanding the pay equity gap in their business/industry to a high (34%) or very high (20%) extent. Slightly fewer are invested to a moderate (38%) or low (8%) extent.

Measuring gaps in pay among employees of comparable jobs (81%) or within the same pay bands (79%) is a popular technique since it is a straightforward way to uncover pay inequity. However, pay gaps also arise from inequity in pay progressions and pay for performance. This means that not just the recruitment team must be trained in DEIB to hire employees at equitable pay, but training must also be given to supervisors and managers who are in charge of performance management and pay progression recommendations.

Notes

1 Ben & Jerry’s. Silence is not an option. Retrieved from https:// www.benjerry.com/about-us/media-center/dismantle-whitesupremacy

2 Barrabi, T. (2020, June 5). Nike pledges $40 million to support the black community after George Floyd’s death. Fox Business. Retrieved from https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/nikepledges-40-million-support-black-community

3 Giacomazzo, B. (2022, May 30). The Fortune 500 list has a ‘record number’ of black CEOs - but there’s still only 6 of them. AfroTech. Retrieved from https://afrotech.com/fortune-500black-ceos

To learn more about how organizations can improve their DEIB practices and for key takeaways and recommendations on the topic, check out the full report.

Your Guide to Understanding Climate Surveys and Gaining Insight Into Climate’s Effect on DEIB

Patrick McNiel, Ph.D., Affirmity

Basic demographic data can only tell you so much about diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in your organization. Greater insights await with climate surveys and in this article, Affirmity’s Principal Business Consultant, Patrick McNiel, PhD, explores how to get the most out of this powerful analytical tool.

Climate survey methodology lets you ‘take the temperature’ of your organization. There are two main groups of climate study that organizations typically use:

● Molar climate studies focus on the overall, cross-organizational sentiment in your work environment and its effect on employees.

● Focused climate studies can instead concentrate on specific areas of concern such as safety, ethics, innovation—or diversity and inclusion.

Both are useful when measuring DEIB, and because climates are always subject to change, you should conduct surveys at least annually and iterate upon them. When designing your climate study, your diversity and inclusion environment can be divided into four main areas:

● Diversity Climates

● Inclusion Climates

● Prerequisite Climates (i.e. prerequisites for strong and sustainable D&I climates)

● Support Climates (i.e. further climates that complement or undermine positive D&I climates)

Each of these areas has subclimates—which can be measured with questions such as those shown below:

1. Diversity Subclimates

i) Representation

Is diversity visible to your people across job groups and levels, and do they think of the company as diverse?

Example question prompt: “There are a number of prominent women at the company.”

ii) Support and Intentionality

Do your people believe that leadership, their peers, and HR want diversity, and that all functions are pushing for it and are supportive of it?

Example question prompt: “The company leadership is committed to facilitating diversity.”

iii) Programming and Implementation

Do your people interpret your policies, procedures, and processes as fair to different groups and free from bias?

Example question prompt: “The company has policies and procedures that fairly account for the needs of diverse employees.”

iv) Group dynamics

Are people of all types treated with respect, consideration, and fairness?

Example question prompt: “People here seem to be at ease with others who have different backgrounds than their own.”

2. Inclusion Subclimates

i) Belonging

Is there a sense of camaraderie, do people like each other, and do they make each other feel like they belong?

Example question prompt: “People here feel like they’re an integral part of their workgroups.”

ii) Authenticity

Are your people able to be themselves, or are they only able to “belong” if they change how they naturally act or present themselves?

Example question prompt: “People here encourage each other to present themselves the way they are.”

3. Prerequisite Subclimates i) Justice Climate

A negative justice climate can cancel out any positive diversity and inclusion signals your organization otherwise has, so it’s an important prerequisite climate.

Example question prompts: for the subcomponents of a Justice Climate include:

● Distributive: “Compensation/rewards/ resources here are distributed fairly.”

● Procedural: “At the company, HR systems and processes are applied equitably to all employees.”

● Interpersonal: “Harassment at the company isn’t tolerated.”

● Informational: “Leadership here is candid in its communications with employees.”

ii) Trust Climate

If your people feel they can rely on one another, that they have each other’s backs, and that everyone around them acts with integrity, you have a positive trust climate.

Without this prerequisite, it’s considerably more difficult to be inclusive and to have confidence in the intentions and actions of leadership in relation to DEIB.

Example question prompt: “Leadership at the company is good, which helps our future success.”

iii) Molar Climate

A generalized negative perception of the effect your organization has on the well-being of its members can undermine your efforts in other climate areas. In DEIB terms, it can cause a fixation on inequities and unfairness, cause your people to question your motives, and create resistance or opposition to DEIB programs.

4. Support Climates

It can be helpful to cultivate the following complementary climates:

● Openness to experience: Are your people (and your organization) keen to explore new ideas, examine information, and engage with efforts at positive change?

● Psychological safety climate: Are your people constructive when mistakes are made, do they feel safe taking reasonable risks, and are they willing to seek support?

● Support climate: Do employees feel they have the resources, support, and information needed to work effectively?

Final Thoughts on Climate Surveys

While we recommend seeking expert assistance in developing your investigations, understanding the climates described above will be the first step on the path to using climates to better understand and nurture DEIB as it exists in your organization today. Once you have a complete study, you can then set about rebalancing resources or working to leverage the positive climates you’ve already built in areas that require attention.

If you’re ready to begin creating your own D&I climate investigations, contact us at info@affirmity. com to talk to an expert today.

Patrick McNiel, Ph.D., is a principal business consultant for Affirmity. Dr. McNiel advises clients on issues related to workforce measurement and statistical analysis, diversity and inclusion, OFCCP and EEOC compliance, and pay equity. Dr. McNiel has over ten years of experience as a generalist in the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology and has focused on employee selection and assessment for most of his career.

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The Top 5 Recruitment Trends for 2023

Katie Coleman, Circa

In the past several years we’ve seen a significant shift in the job market and labor force, and predictions for 2023 suggest that the Great Resignation will extend into the foreseeable future. In fact, the unemployment rate is projected to reach almost 4.5 percent in 2023 and about 900,000 jobs could be lost in the first half of the year.

There are several factors that explain this projected state of unemployment, including a tight US labor market, understaffing, expected declining participation, and an aging workforce. On top of that, the recession is projected to be short and the demand for workers may increase again in the second half of 2023. Once the US economy starts growing again, severe labor shortages could soon reappear. Here are five important trends recruitment professionals should keep in mind as the year progresses.

1. The Emergence of Employer Branding

According to Talent Lyft, the employer brand is the position of a company’s reputation and popularity from a potential employee’s perspective and describes the company’s values. Employer branding does not only speak to potential employees, but also existing ones.

Strong employer branding results in higherquality talent and more satisfied employees, as well as longer employee retention. In fact, 83% of employers say that employer branding plays a significant role in their ability to hire talent and can positively contribute to a candidate’s interview experience. On the retention side, 83% of employees say they would leave their current positions if they were to receive an offer from a company with a better reputation.

This is where recruitment marketing plays a key role — in other words, applying marketing tactics to showcase your employer brand in places such as your career site, email campaigns, social media, and any other avenue that increases brand awareness.

2. Data-Driven Recruiting

Talent organizations that don’t embrace the power of data in 2023 (and beyond) will continue to have difficulty sourcing talent, nurturing job seekers, and hiring top candidates in an efficient, predictable manner.

With the mass amounts of data companies now have access to, recruiters and hiring teams no longer need to guess whether or not their hiring methods are effective. Instead, they can use software and analytics tools to inform their hiring decisions and create functional hiring plans. Datadriven recruiting also allows companies to identify which recruiting avenues bring in the most qualified candidates, determine the most effective stages of the hiring process, and make any necessary adjustments to the recruiting process that may be falling short.

3. Relying on AI-Powered Recruitment

Automating recruitment helps improve the process from end to end. It simplifies and adds consistency to recruitment, improves the productivity of the HR team and saves time by eliminating manual processes, and optimizes data collection. Additionally, it can help to identify more qualified candidates quickly.

For example, Circa’s AI recruitment tool sources from a database of 169 million candidates to instantly provide you with 300 candidates ranked based on how well their skills match your job requirements. Our Diversity Sourcing allows you to recruit authentically, remove job description bias, and amplify your recruiting outreach.

4. The Rise of the Proactive Recruiter

Proactive recruiting is all about sourcing and attracting qualified candidates before hiring demand is critical. This includes utilizing a variety of avenues like job boards, career fairs, local community-based organizations, universities and

colleges, and more to ensure you are reaching diverse candidates. This allows companies to establish relationships and create interest around employment opportunities even before positions become available.

After, expanding the avenues for outreach to candidates, a few steps that are key in the proactive recruitment process include creating an ideal candidate profile, engaging with your ideal candidates in a personalized manner, nurturing a conversation with potential candidates by staying in touch, and keeping them informed of the recruitment process. When the time comes to convert, the process will already be well in the works thanks to proactive recruiting.

5. A Developed DEI Strategy

Long before job seekers apply or connect with a company, they are educating themselves on the organization’s inclusivity and diversity (or lack thereof). Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has grown in importance not only for job seekers, but also for employee satisfaction and retention.

DEI has also evolved significantly in its definition. For example, employers and recruitment teams should go beyond race and gender in their DEI initiatives. Other forms of diversity include culture, age, disability, sexual identity, and more. And with that, employers should be sure that every stage of the employee lifecycle (job postings, sourcing, hiring, onboarding, etc.) is focused around a candidates qualifications and skill sets rather than any facets of their identity.

It’s important to make sure you are expanding your reach with different avenues, including leveraging state workforce agencies (such as Local Veterans Employment Representative (LVER), Disabled Veteran Outreach Program (DVOP), Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR), One-Stop Career Centers, State Job Banks), communitybased organizations, and diverse colleges and universities.

Reach out to us today to see how Circa can help accelerate your success towards building more diverse, innovative, and high-performing teams.

is the

Marketing

She works to produce webinars and write articles on diversity and other employment-related topics to guide employers, employees and job seekers in their professional endeavors.

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Katie Coleman

Product

Manager at Circa.

Onboarding New Employees in Today’s World

Carol Cohen, Infopro Learning

I

mproving the onboarding process is a common concern among many companies. Often this is based on a low retention rate or maybe a drawnout time to proficiency. Both of these outcomes are wonderful business metrics, but unless we examine the changes in the current workforce, success is far off.

COVID impacted all of us in many ways, some very surprising, and some we just realize now years later. That period has come to be known as the Era of the Great Resignation. Turnover rates shot up across the nation. In January of 2023, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 5.9 million separations. This is compared to 3.5 million in December 2019. According to new benchmarking data from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost per hire was nearly $4,700. But many employers estimate the total cost to hire a new employee can be three to four times the position’s salary. Knowing that replacing employees can cost this amount, this phenomenon places a huge financial burden on many companies. In some cases, it dramatically impacts production and even the ability to stay in business.

One big change has to do with the way employees look at their jobs and their employers. Their expectations have changed, and this is not just based on salary. This is based on workforce experience. At first, COVID felt like a big slowdown machine. It seemed everything had come to a stop. In reality, the pandemic turned out to be an accelerator of sorts. Companies that had been putting off consolidating their software systems, digitizing their training, or supporting a hybrid workforce found themselves forced to begin the transformation. Employees, for the most part, began to work from home. If their company didn’t provide them with support for making that transition, their children’s school did. Many parents were thrown into working with their children on the computer for their lessons. Many towns provided the children with tablets to use. In a way, the children were modeling the behavior of the hybrid worker. According to the US Census Bureau, between 2019 and 2021, the number of people working from home tripled to about 9 million. There is an expectation that the number will grow to 36 million by 2025. Globally, almost 20% of companies have gone fully remote.

Some of us have worked from a remote home office for decades, but for almost everyone, the work-from-home experience was new and seemed very daunting. In reality, they realized that it actually enabled them to work better, eliminating long, arduous commute times and those endless social interruptions that occur in the office. Additionally, our technologies supported our online communication through video conferencing. Employees began to realize they could live anywhere, be productive, and reap the financial and emotional rewards of a great job well done. Therefore, it has become the norm that a new hire comes to a job and expects flexibility in the work environment, expects to be skilled, has a succession path to grow, and hopes to be nurtured with a supportive network of supportive colleagues.

So, why would anyone ever hold a boot camp where they firehose information at a new hire or possibly give them hours and hours of reading to do when they get hired? Up until a decade or so ago, the thinking was that the new hire came with the exact skills required and fulfilled the profile of the perfect employee. That meant the only thing missing was

information, and many people with good intentions loaded the firehose and doused the new hire with this requisite information. Over time, a more student-centered approach to training was adopted. By focusing more on the learner, it changed the nature of training to look at the context and understand what you want that learner to be able to do, to say, to show, or to find differently than they do now. So, the transition here was from a contentdriven straining exercise to a learner-centric training exercise. In many ways, the collision of student centricity with a disruptive pandemic has brought us to this great day.

At Infopro Learning, we approach every training intervention by establishing a success plan. This is essentially Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model, but our focus flips it to look at levels three and four first. That means we’re looking at behavior change and business results. Now, if you think about hiring for potential and passion and recognizing that the knowledge and skill required for the job can be taught, the onboarding process becomes easier. Our approach is to look at it as people who need people and learners who need context.

One key element of an effective onboarding program is to establish a weekly huddle to just check-in. What that did was provide a network of peers, the class of some month and year, providing a kind of bond with those people so they didn’t feel alone. This eliminated that moment that we have all experienced when the hubbub of the first day ends and the new hire does not quite know what to do next.

There are some very good reasons to offer the huddle with rolling admission so those in the first week are with those in their sixth week. This practice provides confidence to those in their first week and empowerment to those who know the ropes a bit. It is also good to mix roles, so managers can be with individual contributors if possible. Most companies support a collaborative culture, and this practice emphasizes that. In parallel, more formal training was offered both in synchronous sessions and in asynchronous modules online. That insinuates the training into their context. If they only were going to do something once a year, then we would introduce that to them and provide a job aid they could

quickly find when that time was right. If it was something they had to know every day, then that required a different training intervention, but the reality was we were looking at the context, so they understood why they were learning about something.

This means they could grow in their job. It means they understood why they were there. It aligns with the mission of the company. And guess what? They want to stay. There’s your retention rate. They grow in their jobs and there’s your succession plan. They quickly understand what they need to be doing and that’s your time to proficiency. So, thinking about your success plan at the front end, considering your new hires as people who need context, and then hiring them for potential and passion enables you to unlock that potential and build a successful team.

Carol Cohen is Vice President of Strategy and Sales Enablement for Infopro Learning leading both the strategy and sales training practices. She is the author of the book REAL Selling, a Simple Solution to a Complex Problem. Her focus has been on success planning and learning strategy for today’s learners. In addition, her passion to enable sales success has empowered her to develop a new sales approach and associated customizable training modules. She is the author of REAL Selling, A Simple Solution to a Complex Problem.

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Why Learning to Pronounce Your Colleagues’ Names Will Build a More Inclusive Workplace

Firstly, let’s acknowledge that our names are a crucial part of our identity. They shape our sense of self, our family and cultural background, and our individuality. When someone mispronounces our name, it can be a jarring experience that leaves us feeling uncomfortable, disrespected, and unseen.

Unfortunately, name mispronunciation is all too common in the workplace. According to a recent Namecoach study, 74% of workers have experienced struggles with name mispronunciation at work. These experiences can create a sense of mistrust, discomfort, and even lead to employee turnover.

Namecoach

In recruitment, it’s especially important to make a good first impression with candidates. Name mispronunciation can quickly sour a candidate’s experience, leaving them feeling unwelcome and undervalued. By taking the time to learn and respect their preferred name pronunciation, you’re not only showing them respect but also communicating that your organization prioritizes diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The same principles apply to current employees. By taking the time to learn and recognize each other’s names, you’re building a more connected and inclusive workplace. When employees feel a sense of belonging, they’re more likely to stay in the organization and contribute to its success.

This is where Namecoach comes in. Namecoach is a tool that helps everyone at your organization learn each other’s names and build stronger relationships. By utilizing Namecoach’s email integrations, you can access a comprehensive

database of accurate audio name pronunciations, saving you time and hassle. With Namecoach, you can ensure that everyone in your organization feels valued and respected.

In conclusion, proper name pronunciation is an essential aspect of creating a more inclusive and respectful workplace. By taking the time to learn and respect each other’s names, you’re building stronger relationships, boosting employee retention, and ultimately contributing to your organization’s success. With tools like Namecoach, it’s easier than ever to make this a priority in your workplace.

To learn more about how Namecoach can benefit your organization, visit www.name-coach.com

Making a world of a difference, one name at a time.

Namecoach provides a simple and effective soltuon to the common problem of name mispronunciation. Accurate audio name pronunciations are seamlessly integrated with your online tools to easily learn and remember how to say themperfectly.

Start off every interaction on the right foot. Promote a sense of belonging across your organization. Ensure prospective employees feel respected from your first interaction. Help build stronger relationships between colleagues. Avoid the time and hassle of searching for inaccurate name pronunciations.

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Why Measuring Job Competencies is Critical for Employee Retention

Employees are leaving their organizations in record numbers. Discover why measuring job competencies is key in retaining critical talent.

Nadine Butler, SHL

Organizations globally are grappling with the challenge of both finding new talent and retaining existing employees. We are all familiar now with ‘The Great Resignation’, more recently termed ‘The Great Reassessment’, with up to 4.5 million Americans quitting their jobs every month and similar numbers of resignations challenging organizations in Europe and Asia too. In a Global Talent Trends Report for 2022 released by LinkedIn, they revealed that 41% of the global workforce have said that they are likely to consider leaving their jobs within the next 12 months—if they have not already.

Employee retention is more critical than ever. Organizations need to find more effective ways to ensure that employees stay with the organization and are engaged and productive. This is where job competencies play an important role. Job competencies are commonly understood as sets of behaviors, values, motivators, skills, and abilities that define the requirements to perform in a role or organization successfully.

One way to ensure that employees are engaged, perform, and ultimately remain with the company is

to establish that they fit well into the competencies required by the role they are in and that they have a clear development and career path for their future in the organization based on their natural strengths and competency potential.

How can measuring competencies help in retaining your employees?

1. Focused, Individualized Development

Employees often rank the opportunity to learn and develop in their roles as among the top drivers of both attraction and retention. To engage and retain people, particularly your ambitious high potentials and top talent, employees want to know about and have a clear plan for their individual development path.

Never block individual development—by enabling employees to keep growing and learning, one wins loyalty and increased retention. Also, do not just focus development on your top talent or seniorlevel employees. Not everyone needs a promotion to feel like they are developing and growing in their careers, but every single employee does need to have a growth path of some kind.

Employees need to also know what to grow!

Common mistake organizations make is starting development programs that are very generic and not focused on each individual; or starting programs without a clear view of where the competency gaps are and how their employees’ bench is against what is out there in the market. Development becomes so much easier if an organization and each individual have an objective view of their weaknesses and strengths that can be leveraged, by incorporating a job competency measurement to include behavior, motivation, and natural ability.

With a clear picture of how each employee fits to the key competencies of both their current role and future roles, the organization is then able to identify and fill gaps with focused competency development initiatives, mentoring, coaching, and job rotation or exposure opportunities.

2. Individualized Career Paths

Career paths have become increasingly fragmented and unclear for both organizations and employees in recent years, despite their relation to employee retention. Employees want more flexibility, transparency, and control over their careers and want to be able to see and understand what the next opportunities are for them in the organization. Without a view of where they could go in their career with a company, employees are likely to plateau in their current role and start looking for new opportunities, often outside of their organization.

of the company. It further allows the organization to uncover hidden potential by getting a view of what latent talent is available in the business already and how this can match business priorities.

LinkedIn research has found that where organizations have a high level of internal mobility opportunities, employees stay at these companies twice as long. Without a clear vision of what your employees’ aspirations and competencies are, which has been made increasingly more difficult to visualize with remote working, organizations are unable to adequately engage with each employee to plan out potential vertical or lateral career paths for them based on their individual needs and the organization’s needs.

To engage and retain people, particularly your ambitious high potentials and top talent, employees want to know about and have a clear plan for their individual development path.

3. Role Performance and engagement

Fitting people into the right role in the organization is critical for employees to ultimately perform in their jobs. Many organizations are fairly good at matching people to role competencies when recruiting new employees, but often do not have a good and objective view of what their current employees look like in terms of competency fit on either an individual or group level.

Understanding employee fit with key job competencies is also a great opportunity for an organization to tap into the aspirations of its people and use their aspirations and strengths for the good

Poor alignment and fit to the role typically lead to lower overall engagement, motivation, and commitment. The employees are likely to underperform and eventually move on to greener pastures where they fit the requirements better. Job competencies help employees in the role understand what ‘good’ or even ‘great’ looks like

and provide clear standards of excellence of what they need to achieve and perform. Having this clarity can lead to increased job satisfaction and motivation. Employees are likely to do much better in their jobs, be more engaged and happier, and far likelier to stay with the organization for longer.

Tips for Using Job Competencies to Retain Talent

● Competency frameworks used to define roles should be rooted in psychological theory and research and developed to a rigorous and comprehensive standard. They need to be future-focused and relevant to your organization.

● Ensure that your organization uses valid and objective ways to measure employees against the job competencies.

● Implement flexible and innovative technology to quickly visualize competency fit across your organization enabling you to respond proactively to the talent retention challenge.

● Act on the insights gained through focused individual and group competency development initiatives and career path planning.

● Use approaches to understand competency fit throughout the talent lifecycle from hiring and onboarding to development, performance management, and succession planning.

● Communicate with employees! Employees increasingly wish to own their development and careers and a lack of transparency and communication on plans and initiatives will lead to lower engagement and unwanted turnover.

Not all employee turnover is bad for the business of course and not every employee who leaves your organization is unsatisfied with their development and career path. However, high turnover is costly, time-consuming, and detrimental to employee morale. By effectively adopting some of the above strategies and tips to ensure a fit of employees to the job competencies of today and tomorrow’s job, organizations are likely to see an improved employee retention rate.

SHL’s Talent Management solution, Mobilize, delivers organization-wide actionable people analytics—helping you understand if your employees fit with the job competencies required for now and in the future.

Book a demo with us today and let us help you retain critical talent in your organization!

Nadine Butler is a registered I/O Psychologist with over 15 years’ experience as a senior specialist talent advisor helping organizations across diverse industries achieve business value through assessment-led talent interventions. She has consulted in areas ranging from assessment and development projects across organizational levels, work and job analysis, designing competency models, providing integrated assessment feedback, to advising clients on assessment solutions to assist in talent management, acquisition and mobility. In her current position as a Senior Talent Management Specialist for the EMEA region, she partners with both internal teams and C-Level Executives, Functional Heads and HR leaders to help identify, advise on and accelerate opportunity within the Talent Management space. As the key Talent Management expert in the region, she assists SHL’s clients with impactful solutions to help them identify, develop and mobilize their people with unrivalled insight and predictive power. Would

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Why Diversity Efforts Are Crucial

Top considerations for business leaders

By Susanne Tedrick, susannetedrick.com and Bertina Ceccarelli, NPower

1. Organizations with strong DEI initiatives are more likely to meet or exceed financial targets A comprehensive 2014-2019 study by McKinsey & Company found that workplaces with strong gender and ethnic diversity are more likely to produce better financial results than less diverse competitors. The study found that in 2019, companies in the top quartile for gender diversity on executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability than companies in the bottom quartile. What’s more, in terms of ethnic and cultural diversity, top-quartile companies outperformed those in the bottom quartile by 36 percent in profitability that same year.

You would have likely heard the term diversity, equity, and inclusion (or DEI), given such an increased and intense focus on the subject in the last few years. DEI programs, often led by human resources departments, are seen as offering valuable education and interactions and adding to an organization’s moral and ethical “compass.” But DEI efforts are also viewed as measures that do not add to the financial bottom line. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This article will address how business leaders, from C-suite executives to human resources (HR) and everyone around them, can offset this narrow view and more fully realize the business case for diversity.

2. Organizations with strong DEI initiatives are more likely to have high-performing teams. The business case for diversity goes beyond quarterly financial reports. Competition for talent in the business world is often fierce, and organizations viewed as prioritizing DEI are in a better position to succeed. The job search engine Glassdoor reports that 67 percent of job seekers indicate that a diverse work environment was a key factor in their decision to work for an employer.

In addition to employees, the investment community is also prioritizing DEI criteria. The Institutional Limited Partners Association’s (ILPA) Diversity in Action initiative requires participants to track hiring and promotions by race and gender and report employee demographic data while raising funds.

Private equity firms low in DEI indicators risk losing coveted investments from large-scale institutional investors.

3 Organizations with strong DEI initiatives are more likely to be considered agile and innovative. In today’s fast-moving corporate environment, agility and innovation are imperative to success. Business agility is the ability to adapt quickly and effectively in the market and the environment. Agility embraces a people-centered, organization-wide capability that strongly encourages continuous improvement, trust, and collaboration. Agility empowers teams, individuals, and companies to satisfy customers’ changing needs and expectations, in turn driving innovation.

Barriers that impede agility and innovation include Lack of Prioritization

A business may take its customers for granted, assuming they are satisfied with periodic product upgrades. Such a firm may not invest enough in innovation, in turn neglecting customers’ needs and failing to reward the strong innovators on their team, some of whom may accept job positions elsewhere. In these cases, the organization will lose headway to competitors.

Apathy Dampens Original Thinking

“Success breeds success,” but it can also lead to complacency and initiate procedures more intent on protecting that success rather than ensuring its evolution or identifying the next big idea. There is no question that certain standardized systems and practices are important. The danger lies when an organization begins accepting only one right way of doing things.

Humility Is Overlooked and Undervalued

Any organization needs confident, assertive leaders. But problems occur when they are not approached with humility, that is, an acknowledgment that others may have a piece of the puzzle that others have not discovered. A lack of true empowerment can lead to arrogance, stifling agility, and innovation.

4 Organizations with strong DEI initiatives are more likely to achieve or exceed business outcomes.

A 2018 study by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that companies with above-average diversity among their leadership ranks have a greater financial return on innovation and higher earnings before interest and tax margins. Moreover, BCG found that firms with above-average diversity on their management teams reported revenue that was 19 percentage points higher than organizations with less diverse management.

In conclusion, while important, business drivers should not be the only reason to act. There is a compelling moral and ethical case to pursue DEI programs, as all workers deserve the right to be treated with dignity and compensated equitably.

Bertina Ceccarelli, the CEO of NPower is committed to helping young adults and military-connected individuals launch tech careers and remove barriers to economic mobility. As a leader, she works to model an inclusive workplace, providing opportunities for growth at all levels. Bertina is a co-author of Innovating for Diversity: Lessons from Top Companies Achieving Business Success through Inclusivity (Wiley, 2023)

Susanne Tedrick is a writer and speaker who is dedicated to expanding the professional opportunities of women and people of color within the tech industry. She is a co-author of Innovating for Diversity and author of Women of Color in Tech, A Blueprint for Inspiring and Mentoring the Next Generation of Technology Innovators (Wiley, 2020).

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Recognizing Cultural Genius™: The Future Of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, And Belonging

Reimagining leadership paradigms

By Dr. Joel A. Davis Brown, Pneumos

Historically, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) served as a form of organizational triage to address grievances and correct inequities that institutions created by internalizing historically based systems of oppression. Over time, leaders and practitioners took a more “diversity mature” approach and recognized that DEIB work was not only important to avoid litigation but to successfully harness the talents of a multicultural workforce. Along the way, enticing slogans such as “diversity of thought” were offered as perhaps the preeminent benefit of supporting DEIB strategically.

Yet, even the “diversity of thought” rationale misses the value of intragroup sensibilities in sponsoring greater leadership. While many recognize the importance of using intragroup knowledge in today’s human resources (HR) departments to foster better community relationships, stronger marketing campaigns, and more successful recruitment and retention strategies, what many of us have ignored is how intragroup wisdom can be informative not just for a specific department or for a particular

organizational initiative, but how it can be instructive for the entire workforce overall. In fact, the cultural insight, wisdom, and perspective gleaned from underrepresented communities can help anyone (regardless of their industry, profession, or avocation) learn how to hone their leadership skills in a fundamentally different way.

As we move towards the future of DEIB, this means appreciating the understated “cultural genius” of underrepresented communities and how that intelligence can benefit the larger global workforce. Cultural Genius™ is the leadership and social acumen that people acquire by virtue of their cultural pathway. It constitutes the body of knowledge, wisdom, and real-world skills that minoritized groups use in order to navigate an often hostile, unpredictable, and rapidly changing society.

When examining the cultural profile of a minoritized group like the LGBTQ+ community, their cultural genius or leadership acuity goes beyond mere survival; it can actually provide a prescription for how others can facilitate transformational leadership.

In fostering transformational leadership, leaders are being asked to build cultures where people feel seen and valued. HR leaders, in particular, are charged with being architects for constructing purpose-driven environments where people feel tied to a larger cause. As such, HR professionals not only need guidance as to how to co-create these types of cultures but the inspiration for modeling how to be transformational leaders themselves.

The prospect of transformational leadership asks us to think more critically about how we lead others and how we lead ourselves. Fortunately, the answers lie with the marginalized communities who have to be transformational every day in order to survive.

Don’t believe me? Let’s examine the confluence of social events that have impacted our world in the last decade alone: not only have we had to contend with a global pandemic, but the increasing scourge of right-wing extremism, rising inflation, polarizing social discourse, and deepening disparities related to education, income, and healthcare. What each of these factors speaks to is a world that is more

volatile, unpredictable, complex, and ambiguous. Social scientists have long determined that V.U.C.A. (volatility, unpredictability, complexity, and ambiguity) is an apt description for our society and that these phenomena will continue into the foreseeable future.

If we understand the lived experiences of groups like the LGBTQ+ community, then we should recognize that those communities have subject matter expertise in navigating the V.U.C.A. phenomena that have besieged organizations across the globe. That expertise, which incorporates the LGBTQ+ values I discovered in my Queer Ethnographic research, such as equity, authenticity, resilience, community-mindedness, zest, adaptability, and innovation, includes the same competencies that today’s employees want to see in their leaders

Therefore, as we move forward into a new era of DEIB, the impetus for global HR leaders is to highlight, celebrate and leverage the Cultural Genius™ of communities like the LGBTQ+ community as a way of transforming the organizational culture.

To that end, here are a few recommendations to help HR professionals foster this type of thought leadership:

1) Recognize the importance of cultural genius. While there is certainly nothing wrong with leadership skills groomed in business schools, it is important to recognize the cultural genius of underrepresented groups, specifically that of the LGBTQ+ community.

2) Study underrepresented groups to learn more about their leadership acumen. It is a disservice to the field of DEIB to treat intercultural engagements simply as an occasion to learn a history lesson. HR leaders would do well to create mutual mentoring opportunities with groups like the LGBTQ+ community to learn more about the practical aspect of transformational leadership.

For example, the LGBTQ+ leadership skills of creativity, cultural intelligence, community-building, adaptability, integrity, authenticity, problem-solving, and innovation should be integral in elevating the leadership brand of any organization.

3) Change the business case. The key to recruiting and retaining underrepresented talent is to recognize and utilize their unheralded leadership acumen. For example, HR leaders can use employee resource groups to not only address organizational dynamics

but to develop a leadership culture that speaks more to the needs of today’s workforce.

Using the experience and cultural acumen of groups like the LGBTQ+ community can help cultivate a more collectivist, community-minded, and congenial form of leadership that can make any organization an employer of choice.

In honoring the Cultural Genius™ of social groups like the LGBTQ+ community, the future of DEIB will not be relegated to just overcoming inequality, it will be the foundation for fomenting a new era of leadership based on ingenuity, heart-centered imagination, and limitless possibility.

Dr. Joel A. Davis Brown is an Organizational Development Consultant, Professor, and Author of the recently published book: The Souls of Queer Folk: How Understanding LGBTQ+ Can Transform Your Leadership Practice. He is based in San Francisco and New York City and is also the Chief Visionary Officer of Pneumos.

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Unmuting Employee Voices: Cultivating A Workplace Of Open Communication And Inclusion

By Logan Mallory, Motivosity

The mute button can be a lifesaver in Zoom meetings, especially if you’re working from home. When the dog starts barking or your roommate decides it’s a good time to vacuum, you can quickly click over to silent mode and keep the meeting moving.

But ironically, forgetting to turn the mute button off can also interrupt the flow of a meeting. Someone pipes up to share their opinion, and while their lips are moving, no sound is heard. Their silence can bring the meeting to a standstill.

Then comes the inevitable “You’re on mute.” A second later, the mic

is clicked on, and the person asks, “Can you hear me now?”

What if, however, the mic never got turned back on? It would probably be frustrating for everyone involved. Those who were stuck in silence begin to “check out” from the meeting. Those who were asking the questions would never get the feedback they needed.

Giving employees a voice is an issue that reaches far beyond Zoom meetings. It’s something that organizations have to make sure is happening all the time. The best organizations are places

where leaders go out of their way to make sure every employee is encouraged to contribute to the conversation.

The Benefits of Listening to Employees

Every company wants to see its employees highly engaged, but few realize how engagement is connected to feeling heard. The correlation is so strong that a recent survey revealed that highly engaged employees are three times more likely than highly disengaged employees to report that they have a voice in their workplace.

To drive engagement and innovation, companies should seek out diversity in opinions

The same survey found that 74 percent of employees say feeling heard makes them more effective at their job. Many organizations invest large sums in training, technology, and other things they think their team members want when employees say that one surefire way to boost their effectiveness is the simple willingness to hear what they have to say.

Another survey revealed that 41 percent of employees had left a job because they didn’t feel like their opinions mattered, and an additional 37 percent of those surveyed said they left a job because the feedback they had given was not taken seriously. Engagement isn’t the only thing affected when you don’t listen to

your people. You might even see retention issues, too.

Organizations that value input from all employees, no matter what position or background, also benefit from higher levels of innovation When you bring together people with different experiences, skill sets, and perspectives, you’ll start to hear more creative solutions and increased interdepartmental connectedness.

Steps to Identify Employees “On Mute”

For many companies, the first step toward ensuring every employee has a voice is, determining who might be “on mute.” In other words, they need to identify those who are too distanced or underrepresented in decisionmaking processes.

To start with, companies can pay attention to who is at the table when decisions are made. All departments that are involved or impacted should be represented in some way. Those who are left out, for whatever reason, have been effectively muted.

The next step is paying attention to the discussions that happen around important decisions. If decisions are made quickly with little debate, it is a good sign that some viewpoints have been muted. If this is happening, new people with new perspectives need to be invited into the decision-making process. Another solution is to coach the dominant voices to be more aware and the silenced voices to be more confident and vocal.

Companies that seek “diversity in opinion” gain a deeper understanding of what is at stake. While more perspectives may mean more time is spent in discussion, the end result will be a better-informed decision. Companies that are committed to giving every employee a voice are better equipped to thrive in today’s complex marketplace.

Best Practices for Obtaining Feedback

Creating an environment where employees feel empowered to contribute their thoughts is more complicated than just ensuring that all mics are on. Welcoming feedback is one part of the equation, but accounting for different feedback styles is just as important for that feedback to occur.

Providing multiple methods for feedback will increase the comfort level of employees. Inviting feedback during a Zoom meeting can be intimidating for some. Employees may feel more comfortable voicing their thoughts in a one-on-one meeting with their

manager or via an anonymous survey. By introducing a topic and then genuinely encouraging feedback, companies allow all employees to give their genuine opinions without the fear of suffering retaliation or contempt.

The guidance that companies provide when inviting feedback also plays a role in giving all employees a voice. Being specific about the type of feedback that you are seeking makes it easier for employees to provide relevant responses. Be intentional about the kinds of questions you’re asking. Give enough prompting that they know what kind of feedback you’re looking for, but don’t pigeonhole your employees into an answer that they don’t feel comfortable giving or don’t agree with.

Providing follow-up is another key to encouraging every voice to contribute. While you might not implement every piece of feedback, it’s really important that your employees feel like they’re heard and acknowledged. If you want to let your team know their voices are valued, express

gratitude for their opinions. Whether it is positive or negative, any employee feedback should be appreciated and taken into consideration.

The Attitude that Inspires Input

In the end, companies that truly want to give each employee a voice need to go above and beyond to encourage conversation. Provide plenty of background, context, and time for feedback. When thoughts are offered, practice active listening rather than interrupting or challenging what is expressed. Arguing or becoming defensive — even when the feedback is off base — does not communicate that you want open and honest dialogue.

In a Zoom meeting, giving someone a voice is as simple as clicking a button. In the workplace at large, however, it takes much more effort. Culture must support it, leadership must encourage it, and practices must empower it. The driving attitude must be that every employee’s voice is valuable.

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Logan Mallory is the Vice President of Marketing at Motivosity. Mallory is a public speaker, professor, and thought leader on culture and leadership in the workplace to achieve employee retention.

How A Team Experience Mindset Improves The Employee Experience

The crucial role of managers in shaping the employee experience

By James Brogan, PepTalk

People are leaving companies in droves - research from 2022 showed that 44% of U.S. employees are actively seeking a new job, according to the Global Benefits Attitudes Survey. Many people assumed this would reduce with the threat of recession, yet according to Fortune, there is still a large proportion of people who start looking for another role after just three months.

Even when you manage to hire someone, keeping them is harder - 63% of companies say retaining employees is harder than hiring them, according to a source from Zenefits. Many organizations assume that people leave for more money, but that only happens 12% of the time.

Numerousresearch studies have shown that employee experience is directly linked to organizational success, impacting customer satisfaction, profits, rate of innovation, and much more. But in 2022, employees who weren’t engaged or who were actively disengaged cost the world $7.8 trillion in lost productivity, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report. It’s a staggering loss equivalent to 11% of global GDP.

In today’s world of remote and hybrid work, highperforming teams have become more important than ever before to employee and organization success. If you read any business book or take a training course, they tend to focus on the individual only. But as we know, a person’s experience in work is mostly affected by their team and manager.

Organizations have spent millions of dollars on employee engagement without making it easier to hire people or keep them.

So, What Has Gone Wrong, and How Do We Fix It?

My favorite business book is Extreme Ownership by Leif Babin and Jocko Willink - it looks at the impact of working in a team can have on the individual members, the leader, and the organization. Towards the start of the book, there is an incredible story about two teams competing against each other - one was at the bottom of the scoreboard, the other at the top. In order to demonstrate the importance of leadership, the trainers swapped the leader - and within two rounds, the previously losing team was now winning!

Team experience is the emotional proximity and cultural connection shared between a group of people working together to achieve a goal. Emotional proximity is the level of connection, trust, morale, and sense of belonging. Cultural connection is habits, behaviors, beliefs, values, alignment, and environment.

It’s the collective experience of a group of individuals that dictates how ready and able they are to perform at their best on any given day. It’s the levels of trust, morale, and motivation they have, as well as the support, mentoring, and coaching they offer each other.

When you have a great Team Experience, high-performing teams thrive.

Employee experience is centered around an individual’s experience, whereas team experience focuses on the optimum experience a group of people needs to work well together.

Why Managers Are Key

The single most important element of an employee’s experience is the relationship with their manager and team. How culture shows up on a daily basis is mostly down to your relationship with your manager and your teammates. You might see or talk to your CEO on a monthly basis, or the VP of your division on a weekly basis, but the day-to-day experience is really down to your manager and teammates.

Managers directly influence the people in their team on a daily basis and are also responsible for aligning

the performance of their team with organizational goals. Managers have the single biggest impact on organizations, but countless studies show that managers are struggling and need more support, training, resources, and coaching.

Managers account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement, according to Gallup. Sixty-nine percent of people surveyed say their managers have the same impact on their mental health as their partner or spouse. Clearly, managers have an enormous impact and influence on their staff, which is why it’s critical for organizations to empower their managers to excel in people skills, leadership, and communications.

How Team Experience Works

Monthly check-ins between managers and their teams are a great way for managers to gather information from individual team members about how they are doing in collaboration with their team, their manager, work projects, and day-to-day tasks.

After taking the team pulse with check-ins, managers can then organize monthly team talks for the team and the manager to discuss any issues raised during the team check-ins.

Team talks are non-work-related sessions that last for about 20 minutes each month. Managers need to use an informal and relaxed approach during team talks in order to cultivate psychological safety amongst the team members so they feel open and comfortable to talk freely and be themselves. This approach also helps managers build and establish their authenticity as leaders.

Additionally, organizations can use team experience metrics and insights. Some technologies and platforms provide managers and leadership with real-time insights into employee engagement. These metrics-based solutions can also provide insights that help identify team experience friction points and problem areas, as well as action plans outlining specific steps managers can take to address issues and improve the overall team experience.

The ability to continuously measure team health arms organizations and their leadership with an early warning system that enables them to predict the human factors that impact team engagement, retention, and performance and take action to address these issues.

Team Experience in Action

A real-world example is the best way to demonstrate the importance of a team experience mindset to support organization and employee success.

A manufacturing company wanted to improve the team experience specifically for third-shift staff working overnight. There is extensive research that shows that working night shifts means that sleep can be impacted due to changes in circadian rhythms.

The company implemented a team experience program that delivered expert-led courses that employees could access on-demand via their mobile devices or laptops. The courses were designed to build sustainable habits through small regular actions. The program was specifically focused on sleep and work/life balance for shift workers. The results after the program was completed were very positive:

● 93% learned how to improve their sleep

● 97% improved their eating habits

● 96% found the program improved their work/life balance

● 98% understand how the environment and exercise impact sleep.

Providing a regular opportunity to check in with each employee, giving managers proven team talks to help build psychological safety, and providing dedicated training for managers all help build employee engagement. Thinking about employee experience in terms of the team experience is a great way to focus on what makes people happy by measuring how happy people are within their role, their team, and their manager. This measurement helps to identify where there are issues across the organization and provides much-needed support to middle managers.

How Companies Can Support Women After A Leave Of Absence

Strategies for seamless transitions, skill development, and work-life balance

By Dr. Shirley Knowles, Progress

Despite the efforts of inclusivity and diversity programs and times of recognition like International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, women are still a minority in the technology industry — particularly in management roles. This unfortunate trend cannot continue, especially since research shows women in top management make companies more successful in the long term. While there are many programs established to encourage young women and girls to get involved in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs, there is still plenty of room for businesses to support women in their career progression.

One career hurdle many women face as they advance toward management positions is a leave of absence, such as maternity leave or taking time away from work to care for a family member. Research shows that more women are choosing to have children later in life than previous generations, which often occurs around the same time they are being considered for management positions. Similarly, millions of people in the US — many of whom are women — have left jobs to care for sick and aging family members, leaving them worried and anxious that their extended leave will hurt their careers. By implementing a few best practices, companies can support women through these absences and smoothly transition them back into their jobs.

Provide Communication Options

During extended times away from work, women often feel disconnected from their careers and their colleagues. Companies should therefore offer them the opportunity to continue exchanging ideas with their colleagues through communication platforms — always as an unrequired option within the framework of labor law regulations.

As a result, the time away can feel less massive for women and make it easier to rejoin their teams. This approach is also worthwhile when women (or men) leave the workforce altogether due to childcare or other reasons. If they ever consider returning to work, they will be much more likely to contact their previous employer if lines of communication have remained open.

Provide Learning Opportunities

Especially in the fast-paced tech industry, women returning from a leave of absence often have the feeling that they are no longer up-to-date and informed on the latest technology. With regular training and education programs, employers can help them quickly catch up on anything they missed. However, it is important that women can schedule and complete these training within working hours rather than continuing their education during their personal time.

Additionally, mentoring programs can be extremely valuable to women who have taken extended time away from work. By having the opportunity to speak and work with a woman who has taken a similar leave of absence, women can share advice, express any concerns, and overall have a better experience of transitioning back into the workplace.

Support Flexible Working Models

For many women who are caring for others like young children or aging parents, returning to work can be intimidating because it is difficult to balance care duties and full-time work. Flexible working hours and teleworking allow them to combine work and family commitments.

Since many companies have now seen success with hybrid working models, there is no reason to require employees to come into the office five days a week — and certainly not for technology companies. However, employers must avoid the trap of favoring office workers over remote workers and remember that in-office attendance should not be valued more than productivity. With measures such as virtual meetings or regular video calls, companies can ensure that remote workers have sufficient opportunities to network with colleagues and managers.

Both Sides Benefit

The shortage of skilled workers is real and a huge problem — especially in the tech industry — and companies simply cannot afford to lose talent. Simultaneously, women should not be forced to choose between their careers and their families. Companies need to adjust their operations to provide the appropriate training and benefits packages to best support women returning to work. With these improvements, companies can boost their retention rates and create a better employee experience — a win-win for all sides.

Dr. Shirley Knowles is the Chief Inclusion and Diversity Officer at Progress. She holds expertise in the fields of Internal and External Corporate Communications, Community Investment, Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Leadership, Social Media Management, Event Planning, Team Building, Media Relations, Journalism, and Mentoring.

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It’s Not Just The Job. It’s The Job Culture

Three important takeaways toward reducing turnover

By Mike Jacquart, Write it Right LLC

Having the specific skills for a particular job is important, but even the most qualified job applicant may not pan out if there is a poor “fit” between the position and the workplace. Whether one wants to call it job or corporate culture, work environment, or “fit,” it’s not just what you do for a living but also where you work that can play a strong role in success.

When someone suffers from a mental health challenge such as depression or an anxiety disorder, the right “fit” becomes even more important and potentially costly for the employer if overlooked. Take, for example, the case of Stanley Stringer. Stanley lost several jobs during his 35-year career as a reporter, writer, and editor. He was convinced that a poor fit between his personality and a fast-paced work environment - which depression and anxiety issues exacerbated - played a significant role in his termination.

Stanley is far from alone. According to Forbes, untreated depression among employees cost employers $44 billion annually in lost workdays. This article will explain three main takeaways for managers to help ensure better “fits” for the employee and management.

1. Never Underestimate How Many Employees Are in the WrongJob

Most employees seen by the manager of a corporate mental health program came in to see them because they were unhappy at work. “Nine times out of ten,

their unhappiness was due to a very poor fit between the employee’s personality and the work environment,” wrote Marina London in Climbing out of Darkness: A Personal Journey into Mental Wellness. Marina found herself repeatedly recommending those employees look for a more suitable position.

At a time when recruiting new hires is more competitive than ever, what company can afford excessive turnover, especially when it could have been avoided? While performance issues are an obvious cause for concern, many signs of unhappy workers are more subtle. They include:

1. Becoming more withdrawn socially;

2. Lacking energy and motivation;

3. More easily distracted or stressed;

4. More instances of anger than in the past; and/or

5. Showing changes in outward appearance.

2. Don’t Overlook Potential Solutions

Every workplace has interruptions, but they were endless at one company. Our example, Stanley worked at a firm that he said was an otherwise pleasant place to work. The problem was it was a little too exuberant for him. Multitudes of coworkers would stop by his cubicle area each day. “Cubicles were in close proximity, and with concentration issues, the continual disturbances were very difficult to cope with.” As Marina wrote, “When you are depressed, everything is an effort. That includes socializing.”

There were some slower, less stressful, and quieter work environments at this firm, but when Stanley talked to human resources (HR) about working elsewhere, he was told the company was not in the habit of providing “lateral transfers.” In other words, the new job had to be a promotion, not one that involved similar work. As a result of “staying put”, Stanley was terminated less than a year later, and the company lost an otherwise punctual, hardworking employee because they did not bend their rules and moved him elsewhere in the organization.

3. Take the Time to Help Ensure a Good “Match” From the Start

Determining whether the person can do the job is an important part of any job interview, but too often the discussion ends there. As in our example, a reporter who is good at writing is not enough. If the individual is skilled at writing in-depth stories, he will be a poor fit at a newspaper where spontaneity to cover fires and accidents is stressed over lengthier essays.

If the position requires working various work schedules, but the individual prefers steady, regular hours, the job is not likely to work out. Probing questions that go beyond the nuts and bolts of a resume or application can be very revealing. For

starters, “What types of jobs have you enjoyed the most?” “The least?” Taking extra time to screen an applicant is time well spent.

In conclusion, there is indeed no perfect job. That said, when it comes to selecting a work environment, the more you know who you are, the better choices you can make. But job “fit” remains a two-way street. It is still vital for an employer to learn the person’s wants and needs, strengths, and weaknesses. Staff attrition is inevitable, but a better understanding of job culture will go a long way toward reducing turnover.

Mike Jacquart was a longtime editor of the Journal of Employee Assistance for the Employee Assistance Professionals Association. He is currently involved in other writing and editing projects at Write it Right LLC. His new book, Climbing out of Darkness: A Personal Journey into Mental Wellness (with Marina London, LCSW) is available on Amazon.

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