Recorded Webinar

Transcript

[00:00:00] Bola Akinola: Welcome. My name is Bola. I work with PILOT and I'll be hosting. Our seminar today is Fear Holding HR Back. We have two heavy hitters that we are so grateful to have with us because we will be getting some wonderful insights into how HR is working and as we also look into the diversity, equity, and inclusion space. We're going to get into our content momentarily. I want to turn it over to our amazing producer, Laura, so she can tell us the best ways in which we can engage and maximize our time in this space today.

[00:00:36] Laura Mastrorocc: Thank you so much, Bola. Hello and welcome, everyone. So I have to tell you, at PILOT, one of our values is vitality. And I call on you all to be very involved in this time you get out of this session what you put into it. Throughout our time together, feel free to drop questions in the chat.

[00:00:56] Laura Mastrorocc: Lastly you'll notice that today's session is being [00:01:00] recorded. We will send out the recording after today's session. So if you're ready to get started, go ahead and give me a high five. Give me a plus one in the chat and that'll let me know that you're fully present and ready to dive in.

[00:01:14] Bola Akinola: Thank you, Laura. Love to see that chat moving and the plus ones coming in. All right. Thanks for joining us in our session today. Good day to you. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for joining Is FEAR Holding HR Back? How to Recalibrate DEI Efforts for Learning and Talent in Uncertain Times.

[00:01:33] Bola Akinola: We will start with introducing one of our amazing CEOs Mr. Donald Thompson. Donald Thompson is the co founder and CEO of The Diversity Movement. And Donald Thompson is an amazingly globally respected and sought after business leader with a proven track record of success in growing firms.

[00:01:53] Bola Akinola: As a CEO, as a speaker, as an investor, as an advisor and as an executive coach, Mr. Thompson brings a [00:02:00] wealth of experience and expertise to any organization. Donald is a certified diversity executive, and as I mentioned, CEO of The Diversity Movement. The Diversity Movement is a powerful organization and is on the list of DEI Advocacy and FAST Company's 2022 World Changing Ideas.

[00:02:22] Bola Akinola: Okay, please take this opportunity to learn more about Donald Thompson, to learn more about The Diversity Movement, to connect with Donald Thompson on LinkedIn and we have a bunch of different resources that we can share with you around Donald's work in this space. Okay.

[00:02:40] Bola Akinola: Let us also take the opportunity to introduce Ben Brooks, our fearless leader of PILOT.

[00:02:48] Bola Akinola: He's one of HR Executives Top 100 HR Tech Influencers, and the author of HR Executives Coach's Corner. Alright, Ben is a pillar in the HR industry, and he's the [00:03:00] CEO and sole investor of PILOT, an award winning virtual employee development and group coaching program.

[00:03:06] Bola Akinola: Super passionate about HR and how to be transformational in that space. Ben Brooks has been a driving force to help other HR professionals and beyond avoid needless turnover. Great part of our conversation today. So PILOT as a group was founded to help everyone feel powerful at work. Our goal is to show participants how to use self reflection, how to get feedback, how to engage in self advocacy, and how to take effective action in their organization.

[00:03:36] Bola Akinola: And this is done through a multitude of ways to learn. We use our virtual sessions, we use all of the technology at our disposal, we use the opportunity to gain insightful information through executive fireside chats. And of course we set up one to one future focus manager feedback sessions where leaders and employees can focus on developing themselves and their objectives.

[00:03:57] Bola Akinola: And that's outside of and away from any [00:04:00] performance conversations. So we have all of those opportunities and please, and I'm welcoming Ben as well. All right. So that's a lot of information about our super panelists. Now we want to hear, we want to hear a little bit from you all. We're going to start with a quick poll.

[00:04:21] Bola Akinola: All right. We ask you all to participate. Answer this question. Are employer diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts stalling in 2023? What are your thoughts? And I'm seeing some of the answers come in. Love to see those numbers move. Are they significantly stalling? Are they somewhat stalling? Are they moving like 2022?

[00:04:44] Bola Akinola: Or do you feel like they are really accelerated year to year?

[00:04:48] Ben Brooks: All right. This helps Don and I get a sense of how to shape the conversation because I think it's based upon the audience and where you all are.

[00:04:58] Bola Akinola: I think we will go [00:05:00] ahead and close the poll in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And so I'm looking, so it looks like 43 percent of us think that DEI efforts are somewhat stalling. Interesting. All right. And right behind that is some of us feel 27 percent are progressing the same as 2022. Okay. Any thoughts about that? Before we move into some quick hot takes.

[00:05:24] Ben Brooks: It's interesting to me, if you combine the significant and somewhat, right, it's a majority, there's some sort of backward slide a majority of people on this call and that only 14 percent are saying that it's getting better or maintained. Don, what, how does that jive with what you see?

[00:05:42] Donald Thompson: Yeah, it jives with what I'm seeing in that the financial impact and kind of the confusion from an economic standpoint is hitting the DEI space, the HR space. Where one of the things we have to, we'll help today on this call with how do we better advocate for the financial value of what we're doing to push through this [00:06:00] storm.

[00:06:00] Donald Thompson: But the data tracks with some things I'm seeing. That's great.

[00:06:04] Bola Akinola: I think a lot of people are looking forward to getting some responses in favor of that. So, Donald, I'm going to turn it over to you just for some quick takes in your area of subject matter expertise, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[00:06:16] Bola Akinola: Thanks again.

[00:06:16] Donald Thompson: Yeah, thank you so much for that. And it really feeds right in line with the polling. We're seeing a lot of fear in the space simply because the landscape of businesses are changing so dynamically all at once. And people are scared for layoffs or they're scared when they put their toe in the water on a DEI initiative and it doesn't immediately go well dealing with that backlash.

[00:06:37] Donald Thompson: And so one of the things that's super important is how do we empower Resilience. How do we create resilience within our HR DEI leaders? And so that's one of the things I think we'll talk about more in depth, but I am seeing that. And I will tell you that one of the things that's super important from my point of view is knowing how to truly advocate in alignment with the business goals, [00:07:00] right?

[00:07:00] Donald Thompson: It's no longer going to be strong enough, good enough to have the, and this is super unfortunate to say, but the wind behind the work because of tragedies, right? Right. the wind behind the work has to be aligned with the business value case, the value points. And I think that works with bullet one and two.

[00:07:19] Donald Thompson: And I think bullet three on the political focus conversations, then I'll throw it over to you, Ben, is that we have some storm clouds coming, right? Every day, a book is being banned or we're talking about the woke narrative in, in, in DEI and all of these things that are really meant. to confuse the narrative of what we're trying to do.

[00:07:37] Donald Thompson: My advice to people is keep it simple. We're trying to create a better workplace for all. That is not in alignment with the narrative of negativity about DEI work. And we've got to get more forceful, more clear in how we articulate that.

[00:07:53] Bola Akinola: Thank you so much for that, Donald. Ben, over to you for for your look at it from your perspective.[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Ben Brooks: Yeah, since we're saying fear here is the title of our webinar and it was the first bullet point that Donald mentioned, I'd love to know if fear in your organization broadly, right? Fear about the economy, fear about talent, fear about funding. I would love to know that, that fear is that present, drop a yes in the chat.

[00:08:16] Ben Brooks: If there's not a lot of fear, maybe a no, or maybe a maybe if there's some fear. So if you're in your organization, fear, it could be fear about a lot of different things. Different people want to fear about different things. Someone mentioned oil and gas. So there's some maybes, quite a few yeses, some capital yeses, some plus ones.

[00:08:33] Ben Brooks: Upper management, April says in my organization fears the younger generation, which is interesting, right? Kelly says if there's fear, it's not slowing us down even if there is for which is also important to acknowledge to Kelly's point that you fear can be present you can still make progress right.

[00:08:48] Ben Brooks: Jennifer saying, no fatigue, though, and competition for attention. Some maybes, etc. Yes, fear certain demographics that they're being targeted for replacement, concerns. [00:09:00] Got it. More oil and gas folks here. So let's go to the next slide. But I think to Donald's point around tragedies, tragedies from like a social movement can catalyze action, but they don't always sustain change.

[00:09:12] Ben Brooks: Think about what you see when we see things around maybe gun violence or other things, right? You'll have people, maybe do a march or, draft legislation or raise money or something. And it's the start, but to have it sustain, right? That's where change breaks down, is sustaining something.

[00:09:29] Ben Brooks: And we know that from like an individual behavior change. The coach in me says, think about a habit you form or behavior. It's hard to, keep a habit up at the beginning of the year a new year's resolution or something like that, let alone keeping a change at hundreds or thousands of employees at once.

[00:09:45] Ben Brooks: There's an interesting dichotomy happening. I'm seeing in the market is a lot of organizations are making selective cuts or layoffs. They're not always the, front page 30 percent of the company. It can be much smaller, but at the same time, they're also asking for [00:10:00] money. And oftentimes in the Great Recession and other times when there was layoffs, there was never budget for anything else.

[00:10:06] Ben Brooks: So it's an interesting thing. And then I think the selling change initiatives is always been a challenge for HR and it's continuing to be HR. I think knows the right things to do what the organization needs to do, but getting others convinced of that and to marshal the resources and to change the behaviors and to share the power is hard.

[00:10:27] Ben Brooks: And then again, it has been a brutal few years for people in HR. right? Think about, three years ago in 2020, right? Everyone, remote baptism by fire, remote work, and, people illness and workplace safety and vaccine mandates and, return to office and, George Floyd's murder and protests and, great resignation and labor market surge.

[00:10:49] Ben Brooks: PPP loans. And you name it, right? HR has been through a lot. And I think there was a sense that, oh my gosh, maybe we'll get to some sense of normalcy in 2023. [00:11:00] And then the reality has been a little bit of a rumbling, almost like when you hear the thunder coming, you can't quite see the lightning, but the thunder's in the background and you're expecting it.

[00:11:07] Ben Brooks: That's been a lot of the emotional sense. Don, how does this track with things that you're hearing?

[00:11:10] Donald Thompson: Yeah, the thing I would extend with that is the pace of change is so daunting that you can have that dizzying effect. And then the intensity of the disagreements is making people walk a little bit on eggshells, right?

[00:11:23] Donald Thompson: There's less and less room for productive dialogue, right? And so we have to manage those environments, but that's the reality of it. The one cheat code I'll share with you all in terms of managing budgets and selling initiatives is, in particular in the DEI space, anytime we can align DEI work With the marketing team's communication strategies, internal and externally, we're able to find budget faster and for a longer period of time.

[00:11:53] Donald Thompson: Because people still understand the value of brand build, the value of talent and recruiting [00:12:00] aligned with key demographics you're trying to bring in the organization. But HR right now, DEI right now might not have the same level of influence as marketing, but if you align those objectives together in the communication plans, we've seen with a handful of our clients really good success there.

[00:12:20] Ben Brooks: And I think adding to that, also picking your spots about, where you want to make this work happen. There's a lot of change. You think about, I was in Washington, DC doing some lobbying on behalf of small businesses and startups about a week ago, and we have about 10, this nonprofit I volunteer with, we have about 10 different areas from immigration reform to tax, to capital access, to data privacy.

[00:12:43] Ben Brooks: We have all these different things we went and we were lobbying around a single thing, not all 10 of those things. because based upon the current Congress, we're like, what do we think is bipartisan? What's the thing that's in, you know, in the news? What needs to be changed? It's like the feasibility of the change, but then also the [00:13:00] impact of the change.

[00:13:01] Ben Brooks: And so we had research from the University of Michigan that quantified the penalty on startups by having state based privacy laws versus a unified federal privacy law. We're not against, we weren't lobbying against eradicating, laws. So I think that's a good analogy for like, we couldn't do it all at once, we'd have a clear message around the things and I think there's a little DEI fatigue because there was a lot of maximalism going for everything.

[00:13:27] Ben Brooks: We're going to do recruiting and we're going to do, Training, we're going to do mentorship programs, we're going to do community involvement, we're going to do grants, and we're going to give away product for free, and we're going to, sign amicus briefs in the Supreme Court, and it's a lot at once, and so I think that it's sometimes less of a fatigue of DEI, but it's just a fatigue of not prioritizing and doing too much at once.

[00:13:46] Donald Thompson: Yeah, I want to add to that. I'll tell a quick story and I'll try to do it in like 90 seconds. We had a CEO that said very clearly, Don, love what you all are doing, want to implement DEI within our organization, but it seems a little cloudy right now with all the things that [00:14:00] are happening. What's the one thing you'd recommend that we could do?

[00:14:03] Donald Thompson: Low cost, high impact. We recommended to the CEO that he have his leadership team read the inclusive language handbook. that we wrote. Start with language that brings people to you, verse separates us. CEO and the leadership team loved that book. They ordered it for a thousand employees. So that is something they could afford, they could do, and now we're developing some momentum inch by inch, but it's backed up by the leadership at the top.

[00:14:31] Donald Thompson: So a lot of times we try to go too big too fast. When we need to find something small, build momentum, build on that.

[00:14:41] Bola Akinola: Thank you both so much for some quick insights. And now we are going to go over to our listening audience and see if we can get some thoughts from you all. We have a quick, another quick poll. And we want you to share with us which of these trends do you think are impacting you the most, right? So we've heard from Ben and looking at all of [00:15:00] the different things that have gone on in our social justice space.

[00:15:03] Bola Akinola: And then hearing Donald speak to sometimes how the narrative can be manipulated right in the DEI space. Which of the trends are impacting you the most personally? And I see, yes, I definitely see the answers coming in.

[00:15:19] Bola Akinola: I'm seeing a heavy amount of answers in the self care

[00:15:22] Ben Brooks: oh, interesting.

[00:15:23] Bola Akinola: Right? In the self care space.

[00:15:25] Ben Brooks: Again last word, just trying to use PULSE for the sake of using PULSE shapes the conversation today. Absolutely. And this is part of an inclusive webinar, frankly, is like, it's not just this predetermined top down content.

[00:15:36] Ben Brooks: We're running the audience to shape this.

[00:15:38] Laura Mastrorocc: Those just a few more seconds on the poll. If you haven't already responded, please click the submit button at this time.

[00:15:49] Bola Akinola: All right. All right. Here we are at 37 percent are experiencing very real burnout and fatigue. [00:16:00] We do not underestimate the impact of that gentleman. Any thoughts?

[00:16:04] Donald Thompson: I'll jump in with this one is yes. understand you're not alone. And so even now with that, what can we do about it for one another? And when I talk with executives, mid level managers, people leaders, HR leaders, it's one of the things to where we feel alone and we have to proactively attend events like this. We may need to get some coaching in the work we do because a lot of the burnout and stress is how do we organize our time?

[00:16:33] Donald Thompson: How many things are we trying to tackle? what things are we working on with our manager or direct leader, right? That are not expressed, right? If we think about, and again, I'm not trying to solve for the specific things, but I'm giving things I'm hearing and seeing. And a lot of times when we carry things that are unsaid or undealt with, that's extra burden in our backpack, right?

[00:16:53] Donald Thompson: That, that keeps us less energetic for the things we can solve for. Final statement on this, is smaller [00:17:00] things where we can win now to develop momentum are super important when we're feeling burnt out, when we're feeling a little frustrated, because there's something beautiful about success, even if it's small, right?

[00:17:12] Donald Thompson: I can't tell you the number of days personally that I've had a tough day, but if I have a good session, a good webinar like this, a good moment with an employee that it rejuvenates, even if it wasn't the biggest thing, but we got to find those small wins. I appreciate the honesty and candor in the poll.

[00:17:29] Ben Brooks: Yeah, I think it's so key as change agents around culture, DEI, employee experience in general, that if, you and or the organization are feeling burnout and fatigue, that's a problem that only gets worse, right? It's a little like infrastructure. If you have a crumbling bridge or a tunnel or something else, the more you wait to address it, the more costly it is, the longer you have to take it out of service, the more complicated it is, etc.

[00:17:52] Ben Brooks: And so part of this, back to prioritization is doing less. can be an act of compassion, right? [00:18:00] No is a love word, we sometimes say at PILOT. Or maybe it's not no, it's just not right now, because I think if you've got, a third of the team you had before, you shouldn't be doing the same amount of work as you were doing before, right?

[00:18:10] Ben Brooks: So I think that's part of the bargaining and negotiation based upon resources or based upon executives buy in and sponsorship. And I think, when we talk about it at PILOT, I like hit singles, you want to go up to that baseball plate and you want to, swing for the fences.

[00:18:24] Ben Brooks: And that sounds really romantic. And that's a great thing to do when you're up a few runs and you can afford it, but, getting on base is sort of the compounding effect. And it actually makes change stickier because, sometimes swinging for the fences is the pendulum swinging really far.

[00:18:39] Ben Brooks: And what happens is all systems find stasis, they balance back out, make a lot of progress with one, thing, and then you get a different sort of group in that wants it different. So a more consistent, my friend always used the analogy, it should be like the tide coming in, not a tsunami coming in.

[00:18:55] Ben Brooks: The tide is slow and steady and unwavering, but not [00:19:00] frightening. Where you want to run the other way or climb up a tree.

[00:19:03] Donald Thompson: So one of the things I'll, for those on the line that are people leaders, we talk about our individual feeling, but those things that are happening and you're seeing in your team.

[00:19:12] Donald Thompson: One of the best things you can do as a leader, and as we coach other leaders, is help reorganize the portfolio of your team, right? So if someone's struggling, we tend to focus on the area they're struggling. Why not shift to the three or four things they're doing well that they can do almost an autopilot that have value, give them some breathing room by reorchestrating the what they're working on in the next 30, 60 days to give some room for rehabilitation, for healing, for rejuvenation.

[00:19:42] Donald Thompson: We can't all just stop work, take sabbatical, we have mortgages and kids and just all these different stressors, but we typically can realign priorities. If you have a reasoned manager, even one that is not reasonable, but you explain it in a certain way, because no [00:20:00] leader today wants to go to zero productivity, right?

[00:20:03] Donald Thompson: So if you communicate to them that you're struggling and you don't want to lower a standard, you just want to change the things that meet the standard, most leaders are going to be open to that conversation in this day and age.

[00:20:15] Ben Brooks: And Bola, I know that we had some questions come in in advance, and I saw on the poll, political events and conversations is 20% are the of the respondents are saying that's the trend that's impacting them the most personally.

[00:20:27] Ben Brooks: Do you want to share, Bola, that question for Don and I to opine on?

[00:20:31] Bola Akinola: Yeah, the question came in, I live in Florida, the political climate can be harsh with respect to equity and inclusion. So, any advice around that is appreciated.

[00:20:42] Donald Thompson: Ben, I'm gonna let you go first.

[00:20:43] Ben Brooks: Oh boy. That's all right. That's the gift that I knew that was happening. I was like, okay. Oh gosh. So, I mean, I would just say move. No, I'm kidding. No. Now Florida, Florida is a great place. Bunch of great people in Florida but it is, and it's not limited to Florida.

[00:20:55] Ben Brooks: This is like around the country. And this is also in states that are less [00:21:00] kind of 50, 50 swing state sort of dynamics like a Florida might be. That, there is some fatigue, right? There's some rhetoric. Some of this gets weaponized. Some of this gets, put in. And so I think sometimes it is, how you say it and sometimes it's what you say.

[00:21:16] Ben Brooks: And so if there is a word that is just like being used unfortunately and often unfairly as a talking point in kind of, raw meat to bait, people to fight against each other and to be enraged online and to sell more ads on social media and all that, Use different language, right?

[00:21:32] Ben Brooks: Some organizations we're talking to they're talking about, equity and belonging, right? And that, that, that there was, if you remember 20 years ago, there was sensitivity training, right? We don't talk about sensitivity training anymore, right? That certain things get sort of a bad brand.

[00:21:45] Ben Brooks: So one of the things is considering is there different ways to talk about these topics that don't map directly to the campaign slogan or, talking point that's being used divisively. And instead, you can talk about it, in ways [00:22:00] that might not provoke such a polarizing dynamic.

[00:22:04] Ben Brooks: And really again, oftentimes as humans, we're far more in agreement than we're in disagreement. But our tribalism and things gets us into these corners and factions and silos. So starting where there is agreement, your shared values as an organization, progress, you've made so far, things that everyone can celebrate because sometimes we focus on our differences first, and we're like, oh, you don't think we should do this, and I think we should do this.

[00:22:27] Ben Brooks: And it's like hey, we had a huge win over the last two years and working on this thing or we've all said this is critical to our business strategy and success, and you start with some common ground, rather than going for the hardest thing back to the feasibility conversation, you may, there may be something that you say, hey, right now, just like my lobbying efforts in DC, guess what is not on the agenda right now?

[00:22:48] Ben Brooks: Immigration reform, right? For a lot of unfortunate but understandable reasons, it's an area that I'm passionate about. We didn't push on that because the climate and the conversation is out there. So we focused on data [00:23:00] privacy, which it is a good time for that, right? And so sometimes you have to adjust what you're pushing on based upon the environment, even though it pains me that we're not making progress, for instance, on immigration reform.

[00:23:10] Ben Brooks: Don?

[00:23:11] Donald Thompson: Yeah, I appreciate that very much. My thing, and if I were living in Florida and we have some clients there. I do agree with Ben in talking about the language. Let me give a couple of examples. One of the things that's always in vogue in corporations is leadership development, workplace communication.

[00:23:29] Donald Thompson: So I want to extend what Ben's saying, just to give a couple of specific things that you can move to, because you can still work in a very effective way. With a repackaging of a conversation, and so a lot of things that we're seeing, whether it's Florida, whether it's some of the marketing issues at Bud Light, middle, or light, different things like that, it's not the intent.

[00:23:49] Donald Thompson: that has to stand alone. Everything has to be marketed and packaged. So workplace communication, how to give and receive feedback, how to work across multi generational work teams. [00:24:00] All of these things are still going to create fundamentally good progress in around looking at the differences and the ways that we can work together more productively and should be able to fly under the radar.

[00:24:13] Donald Thompson: Because quite frankly, the folks that are talking about WOKE stuff and putting acronyms on DEI, they're not doing their homework. They're just picking a word and repeating it in a negative way again and again. So we can repackage it and keep our work moving, because they're really not paying attention to that.

[00:24:29] Donald Thompson: They're trying to score political points for a specific narrative. right? And so those are some of the things I would add to that. But it's a real thing that we have to do. And it's unfortunate but true.

[00:24:40] Bola Akinola: Thanks to both of you so much for addressing that topic because I know it's pretty top of mind for everyone, right?

[00:24:45] Bola Akinola: So we can really lean in and get into some of these questions, right? With clear minds. Okay. So the first question and just tying it back to one of Ben's quick takes, right? Here's this question. If money's tight and there are layoffs, [00:25:00] How can we get programs approved? And I think you, you all started to address that really well already.

[00:25:07] Ben Brooks: Yeah, I think building off what we've talked about, to, to Don's point of packaging it and linking to things that are these always important areas is really key. Because if it seems like an extra or a nice to have this sort of, experimental thing, it doesn't seem critical.

[00:25:25] Ben Brooks: But, some of the packaging, if you're smart in an organization, you start to parrot the same language as certain executives use. You'll hear, I remember I was in a business, 5 billion company, made a president of a division talked about, building the financial acumen of our teams, because we moved from selling to risk managers, from risk managers to CFOs.

[00:25:45] Ben Brooks: So it was all about financial acumen. So when I would talk to him about culture and change and internal social media, stuff that he didn't like at all. He was on a submarine in the Navy for 22 years and it got to him, I think. But, he didn't you know, we thank him for his service, [00:26:00] but it got to him.

[00:26:00] Ben Brooks: And, he didn't like talking about those things. When I said, Hey Joe, can I talk to you about financial acumen? He goes, heck yes. Because it was the right thing. Think of the thing that would have an executive open their door or open their calendar or open their email.

[00:26:13] Ben Brooks: What's the opener? Right? If you're in marketing, you know some of these things with email subject lines, copy on the top of a website, et cetera. You have to have the message that immediately has them curious or interesting. And so that's going to vary by organization, right? You may not be having layoffs and it may not be about, finding more affordable ways to provide a good employee experience.

[00:26:35] Ben Brooks: But if that's the case, you might be using vendors rather than internal develop programs because it's cheaper for a vendor to do it, right? Because you have fewer headcount now. But it may be something else, right? Maybe about beating the competition or figuring something else out, right? Or protecting quality, being more global.

[00:26:51] Ben Brooks: You want to find the specific, avoiding the language that's the divisive, thing you hear about, woke warrior stuff and, political pulpit things. [00:27:00] And instead, on either side of the aisle or any of it, like it's not about a party or anything like that but, you want to get to the thing that is the thing people are very excited about and you're essentially aligned with the strategy.

[00:27:09] Ben Brooks: Don?

[00:27:10] Donald Thompson: So I'll give an example, right? So ADA compliance is critical from a legal and a risk mitigation standpoint, right? Using, building a website, things like that. If you talk about building a better user experience for your digital tools to increase your conversion rate, now you're talking in monetary terms.

[00:27:32] Donald Thompson: Now we're not talking about ADA compliance from a DEI or compliance standpoint. We're saying building a better user experience on our digital tools will drive more conversions and help our bottom line. It's using language to basically drive a revenue conversation and DEI tags along with that.

[00:27:52] Donald Thompson: Reducing the cost of turnover, right? Because if we have a team that's retained, we retain institutional knowledge. [00:28:00] We build a stronger culture. And now all of a sudden, how do we do that? How do we build a better talent strategy? Then we now need to look at creating more inclusive job descriptions.

[00:28:09] Donald Thompson: But again, we want to be sure that we're teaching our team members and leaders how to link the work we want to do with the goals that the company has to do to survive and thrive. And those are just a couple of examples.

[00:28:22] Bola Akinola: Thank you so much and just aligning with a couple of examples or resources to help our thinking along.

[00:28:29] Bola Akinola: Laura is going to drop in chat some really wonderful resources for everyone to be able to leverage. Right, this is Ben's How to Buy HR Tech - Getting Started with the Strategy, and the link will be in chat so you all can take advantage of or I like the word leverage better than taking advantage. Leverage that.

[00:28:46] Bola Akinola: And then we have yet a, and there's also a QR code up on the screen for those who can have access to that. The link is in chat. And then the next piece of information we want to share with you, right, [00:29:00] a workshop. How to justify the cost of employee development when there are layoffs. So a really great tie in with how to make sure that programs get approved effectively and a way for us to make sure we're giving you what you need in order for these conversations to flow fluidly.

[00:29:14] Ben Brooks: And I was mentioning, Bola, on that, a spreadsheet is often more powerful than a slide.

[00:29:20] Ben Brooks: Talk about it. So, so preached, right? Like, yeah. Yeah. Everyone's like, put, you know, yeah. Tell us, you know, more.

[00:29:28] Bola Akinola: Tell me more.

[00:29:29] Ben Brooks: Yeah. Like, you know, I'm thinking what, I, I wanna spreadsheet you up, you know? So often organizations and senior leaders really speak in numbers right? Something is real when it can be measured, right? And so sometimes merely showing the math, which does not mean like the math, like you're calculating one 10, 000th of an inch on a screw on an F 35, like it's not that kind of math.

[00:29:54] Ben Brooks: It's sort of directionally correct business case to say, okay, if we spend 1 percent of an [00:30:00] employee's, annual compensation on development, we think we can get a 5 percent productivity enhancement, like a five to one return on our money.

[00:30:07] Ben Brooks: And you may not be good at spreadsheets. That's okay. There are templates. We built one with PILOT. I'm sure, diversity movement has, business costs and calculators and all sorts of different things as well.

[00:30:15] Ben Brooks: But, it's then you all of a sudden are a lot more confident rather than try to win an argument. You're really engaging in math and they might say, Oh, we think we're going to get a 4 percent productivity improvement, not a 5%. You're like, great. So it's a 4 to 1 return rather than a 5 to 1 return.

[00:30:30] Ben Brooks: Is that still seems like we're in the money and that makes sense that we should move forward because that's often where, I had an executive once at a large global Fortune 250 company. She said, When you ask me for money, the thing that I'm asking myself is, has he thought this through? And it was a wonderful moment that she decoded herself, Lori, in that moment.

[00:30:52] Ben Brooks: It's just her birthday this week, so we exchanged messages but, we stayed in contact, over a decade later because she was so useful to me in a career because she told me [00:31:00] what she needed to resolve for herself. So when I showed the math, She was very detail oriented, right? Insights Discovery.

[00:31:07] Ben Brooks: She was the blue energy, right? The introverted thinker. And so I knew that about her. And so by showing her the math that said, I've thought through where the money comes from and how we justify it and what she, my boss, needed to tell finance, right? And the president and the COO of the company about why we were doing a thing.

[00:31:26] Ben Brooks: So I think that's where really think about the numbers in addition to the narrative on selling in this change. Right? Because it can tie back to things that the organization is already measuring, turnover, recruiting costs, efficacy in certain markets, service level quality, customer retention, things that the organization is thinking about that aren't HR words necessarily, but they're things that are really critical.

[00:31:52] Ben Brooks: And when you link to a metric that they already care about, All of a sudden they wanna pay attention.

[00:31:59] Donald Thompson: Love [00:32:00] that.

[00:32:01] Donald Thompson: In the Q&A somebody posted an anonymous question that I want to just speak to really quick. And it was very specifically around their executive team was gung ho, put out a lot of press release after George was murdered, and then things dwindled down.

[00:32:15] Donald Thompson: And then how do you really. reenergize, or make that message resonate. Ben gave a lot of quick nuggets just a moment ago on that tie in to the financials, so I'll just say this one thing as a higher narrative to specifically answer that question. Thinking in the mindset of the executive is not as complicated as we make it.

[00:32:35] Donald Thompson: Yeah, measured on business performance. So if you think about what you do relative to the business performance of that executive, and here's the kicker, if you ask them, and this is another thing I'm really extending what Ben said, they'll tell you. A lot of times what you're doing is we're trying to sell something to a business leader without asking them how they buy and what motivates them.[00:33:00]

[00:33:00] Donald Thompson: Right? And once we know what motivates them, what causes they link to, what they can care about, then let's start there. So the marketer may care about conversion on the website, right? The sales leader may want to understand how inclusive language can help make their deals go further when they're selling to other women executives or other, or leaders in companies that are people of color.

[00:33:25] Donald Thompson: So you've got to understand that executive's motivation, and then you can build a narrative that links with that. And it's not as hard as you, we may think if we slow down to look at their point of view. Okay. And run with it, instead of trying to change their point of view. The reason it's difficult is we try to change someone's point of view.

[00:33:45] Donald Thompson: I'm trying to align with it to get what I need to get done within what they're willing to support, and then build momentum from there. But I appreciate the question in the chat. I wanted to get to that one. that was anonymously put in there.

[00:33:58] Ben Brooks: Yeah, I appreciate it too. It's [00:34:00] very useful. And I think that I my first boss in HR, a guy named Orlando Ashford, a great guy, he's now the head of HR at a company called Fanatics in sports apparel and business and things.

[00:34:08] Ben Brooks: He, he said, you know, at Motorola, they measured what they call the say do ratio. We said, we're going to do this. We did do this. Mike Bloomberg, when he was mayor of New York City. He had all of his campaign promises and he had someone track them in a spreadsheet, back to spreadsheets, probably on a Bloomberg terminal and did they do them, right?

[00:34:24] Ben Brooks: We said we're going to plant a million trees. Did we, you know, we planted 850, 000, right? So there was this thing. So when to the anonymous question, right? Hey, we made a big DEI announcement and a bunch of goals. When this happened, we said, but did we do? Right? And so the challenge is if you take the DEI content out, right?

[00:34:42] Ben Brooks: Let's say you're going to implement a new IT system. Hey, we're going to implement a new IT system. You don't do it. Hey, we're going to do some other initiative, some other change initiative. We're going to acquire another organization. We don't do it, right? We're going to change an HR person.

[00:34:54] Ben Brooks: We don't do it. It starts to lower the believability of [00:35:00] the executives. their credibility. They become a person that people will start to discount. And so again, back to data, leveraging engagement survey datas, right? Or doing a Pulse thing, you know, leveraging third party, Fast Company, Wall Street Journal, a bunch of things have shown a lot of organizations are in the same spot.

[00:35:17] Ben Brooks: They set a lot on commitments to DEI, but they didn't do a lot. And employees are pissed off. Right? Because well, you're going to like virtue signal and put up something on our Instagram and our corporate page and go speak at a conference and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, but the reality is for people that are already here that are underrepresented or what we're doing isn't moved.

[00:35:35] Ben Brooks: And so I think figuring out if there's any data you can collect or leverage third party to say, Hey, when we make commitments that we don't follow through, This is decreasing our ability to affect, believability and change around what if we change our business strategy and no one believes us because we didn't do the DEI things either.

[00:35:52] Ben Brooks: And so it starts to have people make, commitments that they're really are honoring to keep and if they don't, they need to acknowledge that those didn't [00:36:00] happen and explain why and then make new commitments about what's going to happen and it just gets back to a simple word, which is integrity, which is not being perfect, right, but it's honoring your word as yourself.

[00:36:10] Ben Brooks: is a core basis of that. And you're risking the executive and the organization's integrity when you make a bunch of statements and commitments that are hollow virtue signaling. Agreed.

[00:36:24] Bola Akinola: Thank you. Thank you both again. We have another question and just want to thank you for the insightful thoughts for some of the questions that come up in the chat.

[00:36:32] Bola Akinola: But this one, I'm gonna, I'm going to direct this at Donald to start, right? What's the most effective way to prove the return on investment, excuse me, of a new HR program? What are your thoughts, Donald?

[00:36:43] Donald Thompson: I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one because I think we answered some of this with the linking whether it is the hiring the turnover the different things.

[00:36:52] Donald Thompson: What I will add is we want to make sure of what success looks like. [00:37:00] And that's super important because we have to promote the wins. So part of return on investment is also about how do you build and sustain momentum, right? So let me give a quick example, and I'll answer this question. Many folks start ERGs, they start out with a lot of energy, right?

[00:37:19] Donald Thompson: And then they hit a little bit of a wall. And the executives are like, all right, I've got 12 ERGs, six ERGs. What is the business gaining from them? So part of the way you prove an effective return on investment is documenting and agreeing upon what you set out to do in the beginning and not having it be abstract so that everybody has known measures of what success looks like.

[00:37:43] Donald Thompson: Right? And success can look strong in terms of increasing your employee engagement numbers. It can start there. It can say the number of applicants for a particular position. Success can be we're going to hold open a position until we at least have 25 percent of [00:38:00] the applicants from a diverse pool. You can set reasonable stair step goals, but it's hard to set reasonable goals if you leave them abstract.

[00:38:09] Donald Thompson: then the stakeholders that may or may not be for you are going to put larger goals and expectations on you and kind of set you up to fail. And so the biggest thing I would add different than what we've already talked about is be very deliberate of what success looks like when you're launching something new and get that as a part of the buy in strategy with the leadership.

[00:38:31] Ben Brooks: And I think what I'll just add is that if you don't define what often we say W G L L, what good looks like, right? What is success of a program? What is a positive ROI? You have to do that at the beginning, right? We have a new customer that just kicked off with PILOT recently. We had an hour and a half strategy session and built an entire charter that's going to be shared with the whole executive team that [00:39:00] says, here's what we're doing.

[00:39:02] Ben Brooks: Here's who's it's involving, right? Here's the link to our business strategy. Here's how we're going to measure the success. And here's what we expect that to be right. Because you have to do that before you show them the reports or the data, right? Because then it's like, Oh, in the case of one of our customers said at a panel last month, we had an in person, he said, When we do compliance training, we expect 96 percent completion or higher, right?

[00:39:29] Ben Brooks: So when I do any other HR thing, their anchor point already is 96%. But if I do a DEI thing or a talent thing, I'm not going to get 96%. Okay. So what good looks like has to be defined up front because their anchor point is something unrelated or a prior company they worked at. So a lot of this to Don's point around executives are often less complex than you think, but you have to affect their psychology and their expectations.

[00:39:57] Ben Brooks: And so part of this is from the metrics and the [00:40:00] ROI. It may be that part of what good looks like is, hey, we need to have visible progress. You know, you made commitments around DEI after George Floyd's murder. We've done jack crap since. We need to have something tangible, invisible. this quarter, right?

[00:40:13] Ben Brooks: That may be part of it is to say, like, there's, and there's an awareness survey. Did you hear of this initiative? Or do you feel we're making meaningful progress? So you're affecting the ROI is the perception of progress, right? That can be it, right? It may not be that you've, eradicated pay inequities in your organization immediately, although that's something that you should work on and do.

[00:40:31] Ben Brooks: And there's tools to do that actually fairly efficiently. But but, that's the kind of thing that, if you don't figure that out, either others won't, or they'll figure it out different than you've been optimizing for, and then it won't look like you succeeded.

[00:40:48] Bola Akinola: Great, thank you so much for that.

[00:40:49] Bola Akinola: How about in chat? Drop some thoughts on what metrics you think resonate the most with your stakeholders when you're discussing ROI.

[00:40:55] Bola Akinola: I see a couple answers coming in already. We got retention, [00:41:00] got lower attrition, revenue, client satisfaction. Turnover. Okay. Health equity, right? That can be industry specific. Okay. True. Thank you, Lauren. All right. So I think everything, everyone, depending on the industry, something different and their leadership body I think, different things are going to resonate differently for you all.

[00:41:23] Bola Akinola: Any thoughts on these before we move on to our next question, sirs?

[00:41:29] Ben Brooks: Part of the return on investment is you want to make sure that you're not the only one that knows what you're talking about, right? So if you were to talk about I don't know some super technical DEI term that you knew because you just got a certificate and you went to a conference and you've been reading research and you got a great book, and it's amazing, but no one else knows what you're talking about.

[00:41:47] Ben Brooks: The social incentives in an organization aren't going to be, I'm not familiar with that, can you explain it to me? Because people feel like they look stupid. So what they'll do is they'll smile and they'll grin at you in the meeting, and be indifferent and walk out with no idea. [00:42:00] So you have to either define what these things are, but better yet, use the thing that's already being used.

[00:42:06] Ben Brooks: So someone put in there, Ashley Russell put in net promoter score. If you use net promoter score and everyone in your organization knows what net promoter score is, That's great, right? And then you say, Hey, we think we can improve our net promoter score results, which we realize are highly linked to our customer retention.

[00:42:23] Ben Brooks: And our net promoter score results are lower because, we're not representing the customers we serve. right? Our customers are not feeling heard or included. They're not getting good service. And so you start to use that and then, you know, versus it's a very different type of measure that they've never heard of, then you've got to convince them of the measure and how it's measured and what drives the measure, et cetera.

[00:42:43] Ben Brooks: So start with the thing you're already using, because it's hard enough to drive change. Then you, if you have to teach someone the alphabet, oh boy, that's a lot of work.

[00:42:55] Donald Thompson: I agree with that a lot. And the only thing that I have to add really is that [00:43:00] a lot of times people aren't ready to have a return on investment discussion, and we should just talk about goals, objectives, and whether we hit them or not. A lot of times ROI is a big term when you're just starting different initiatives.

[00:43:15] Donald Thompson: Right. So actually just by that question, it's a set up to fail question, right? Because when you're talking about ROI from a 150, 000 a month marketing spend, well, that's enough money, right? To generate momentum, right? To determine that return on investment. If you're talking about a 15, 000 program that you're doing for DEI, and they want the same level of of digital data behind it, it's kind of an unfair playing field.

[00:43:41] Donald Thompson: So I try to take that question back to say, Right now at the phase that we're in, we're going to talk about goals, whether we met them and whether we've got engagement, right? Things that are more controllable within the construct of what you're spending and investing. And that's what I try to do to make sure you have a fair [00:44:00] chance to create business momentum.

[00:44:02] Donald Thompson: And then as you're building out something that's more of a transformational program, then I think ROI makes a lot more sense. And so I try to change the narrative a little bit in a set of metrics I can win with, is what I do with companies and organizations I work with.

[00:44:18] Ben Brooks: And I think that's part of what good looks like.

[00:44:19] Ben Brooks: It may be what good looks like is you're going to learn. Right? We're going to test, we're going to experiment, we're going to pilot, we're going to demonstrate, we're going to have a proof of concept because again, to Donald's, you've got things that your organizations, you've got people that have car allowances and country club stuff and legacy IT systems that don't work, all sorts of things that would never pass an ROI test.

[00:44:38] Ben Brooks: They just pass the inertia bias, right? They've been there long enough. They just keep rolling on, right? Like a bowling ball rolling down a hill. You're trying to push something up a hill often with these things. And so I think, also setting the right expectations if we're getting started, right?

[00:44:52] Ben Brooks: If you were to get a puppy or have a kid, you're not talking about the ROI, right? You're like, we're just figuring out how to take care of this thing, right? So I think it's, it's [00:45:00] something new. Give yourselves and your organization some compassion to say, Hey, we're going to have some measures to understand and to learn, and we're going to be rigorous with this, right?

[00:45:07] Ben Brooks: But we're not going to say that this for a first time thing is going to be this immediately. highly repeatable scaling ROI thing.

[00:45:16] Donald Thompson: One thing I want to add in this I've done a couple of times and I've coached folks to do. You're getting ROA questions a lot of times from folks that don't completely buy in just yet.

[00:45:27] Donald Thompson: And I'll just add the phrase increased ROI and success is generated with leadership engagement. What's the best way I can get you involved in a positive way? I flip the question. And not a gotcha, right? Is it something you can read that you, if you have some concerns, can you help articulate those in a meaningful way so we can address them, right?

[00:45:51] Donald Thompson: It's whatever that leader can do, but I want to get that person on the side of the table with me. Versus me trying to address questions that are feel like kind of [00:46:00] gotcha questions. And I think that's super important. And a lot of times what I've found in working with folks, I'll give a super quick example of a sales executive.

[00:46:08] Donald Thompson: They were really dis disarmed around the EI. Once we started talking about how heterogeneous teams help you win more business, right? It's that linking back to what that individual needed to understand about their workflow to get them aligned with now the overall program for the company.

[00:46:29] Bola Akinola: Great. Thank you so much.

[00:46:30] Bola Akinola: A really good lead in to our next question, I think, and Laura's going to pop it up here, right? What are some ways that we can handle some common objections to diversity programs, right? And I'm sure we've heard a lot of pushback. We've talked about some of the things that come up today, even in our conversations.

[00:46:48] Bola Akinola: So we want to give you an opportunity, audience, please drop in chat. Some of the objections or some of the pushback you tend to hear around equity, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. So we [00:47:00] can maybe, help you if you haven't gotten the answers through all of the dialogue so far we can help you formulate some of those responses.

[00:47:09] Ben Brooks: And while those are coming in, I will say there's a question that came in on the Q& A. It says, I'm in the process of looking for a company that is committed to implementing. And actually doing what it says when it comes to DEI. Aside from researching their website or social media pages, what should DEI success look like?

[00:47:23] Ben Brooks: Is there a question that I should be asking in the interview that will highlight their efforts or lack thereof? So it sounds like this is around, recruiting and you're looking for a role is what I'm taking this as. I, certainly every company wants to have a about us, teams, careers DEI, right?

[00:47:40] Ben Brooks: You probably know most that do that, but I think part of it, is looking right at, who your colleagues would be and talking to them about their experience, who's different on the team, what changes happen, who succeeds around here, what are the unwritten rules of success, who fails and what do they have in common, right?

[00:47:58] Ben Brooks: Ask the people that are there to look [00:48:00] for patterns and make it less about DEI and more about success or advancement and navigating because you go through a bit of a side door to get to some of those thoughts. Don, what do you think about someone looking for a job in a place that's DEI friendly?

[00:48:13] Donald Thompson: Yeah, the quick answer that I would ask on an interview and different things is just tell me about some of your executive involvement in your DEI initiatives. And stop there and let them speak and just read the room, right? If they were able to say, well, XYZ executive serves on the ERG council for why this is what our CEO is proposing.

[00:48:32] Donald Thompson: Here's some of the things we're doing. They'll have a quick answer or you'll feel an awkwardness right, where they're trying to fish for the right thing to say in that moment would be the thing that, that I would do. And the one thing, because I know we're running a little bit on time and so I want to jump in with one of the objections and different things that I hear pretty commonly from a DEI standpoint is, is DEI just about race?

[00:48:56] Donald Thompson: I'm tired of having a race conversation. Right? [00:49:00] I'm not a racist. I'm a good person. Why do I always have to feel like I'm the villain, right, when we talk about DEI? And one of the things where that's really important is that's a real point of view, that's a real feeling, and that's a real reason why we don't get a lot of the engagement.

[00:49:16] Donald Thompson: I highly encourage folks that are building out DEI programming to look at the kaleidoscope of DEI. and really look at generational, look at intellectual disabilities, look at gender, look at sexual orientation and race, but not try initially to have a high octane race conversation at the outset while you're learning to navigate the frameworks within your organization around what DEI can do.

[00:49:41] Donald Thompson: And so that's the one that I wanted to throw out there as we're kind of driving on, on our time, cause this flew by, but I wanted to throw that one in to, to answer that question.

[00:49:52] Ben Brooks: And I'll just share a very brief story. I remember it was 2008. I was sitting around a big Korean barbecue table with a bunch of my colleagues in Vancouver, in [00:50:00] Canada.

[00:50:00] Ben Brooks: And we had launched our Global Pride Employee Research Group and I was the co chair and essentially it was me coming out to the whole company and not everyone knew it, that I was LGBTQ at the time. And, you know, we had a partner from one of our offices in Texas and he read the thing and it was from the CEO about this group and his little response to this was, are we getting sued?

[00:50:21] Ben Brooks: Are we getting sued? And the assumption was we're doing this because we're screwed. We're in trouble. We have legal litigation. So some of the things, the objections I'm seeing in here is like, well, we don't have a problem. We've got other things to do, or it's nice to have, or our engagement surveys are fine, et cetera.

[00:50:37] Ben Brooks: And we can't always have to wait for either a tragedy or a lawsuit or wrongful termination or something, right? This is a thing to be competitive in the future, right? To attract. More than your fair share of quality talent to sell to expanding markets. This is a thing you have to be good at to be competitive, not as a moralistic platitude.

[00:50:59] Ben Brooks: This is a thing [00:51:00] about existing in the world, right? Because part of the globalization is the fact that the internet and cloud technologies have our products and services and talent everywhere. And so you may be in a homogenous, geographic area and you think, Oh, we're good with our people here for talent or sales or whatever, but the future of your organizations are likely going to change people or people are moving around a lot more.

[00:51:21] Ben Brooks: And so I think it's about long term competitiveness, right? And, that's the thing that really stokes and executives, that you get in the, you talk about being competitive, you're like, I don't want us to become irrelevant. I don't want our competitors to take our lunch. I don't want us to look better, have our brand deflated.

[00:51:36] Ben Brooks: And those are things that they will lose their mind over. So, that's what I would say is kind of tapping into that competitiveness. But I know Bola, we gotta hand it back to you 'cause we're right on time. So

[00:51:45] Bola Akinola: Yes. And just quickly giving Donald a few seconds to just speak to this, to yet another resource for us to leverage

[00:51:53] Donald Thompson: and so we talked about Inclusive Language Handbook earlier in my comments.

[00:51:56] Donald Thompson: So if you'll just click the link there and then feel free to [00:52:00] connect with me on LinkedIn, if I can ever be helpful. And I'll just leave it at that.

[00:52:03] Bola Akinola: Yes, thank you so much.