Building Better: Improving Cross-Functional Collaboration in DEI - Part 2: Where We're Headed

 In part one of our "Building Better: Improving Cross-Functional Collaboration in DEI" conversation, we did some truth telling about where we are in this DEI work. Now we talk about where we want to go. 

Part 2: Where We're Headed

Katura:
I think DEI needs to show up in everyone's work ─ whether you're formally tasked with running the DEI strategy or not. On LinkedIn I see a lot of questions about where DEI belongs in the org structure, particularly whether it should be an HR function. There's definitely a lot that sits within HR: recruitment, retention, L&D. But there's so much more to DEI. There’s Comms, Marketing, Community Impact, Procurement. The large companies usually have someone dedicated to supplier diversity, but if you're not at a large company and you do procurement there’s a DEI lens to that work.

Bria:
When people ask me what it takes to do business with Honeywell, I always say a lot. It’s not an easy lift given the size and scope of what Honeywell does all over the world. My goal is to partner with the procurement function to incorporate best practices for seeking out diverse businesses (i.e, MBE, MWBE, LGBT, Disabled, Veteran) to position us to respond to market forces. The pandemic (and there will be others over time) showed how important it is to have a cadre of diverse suppliers to combat supply chain issues. Putting all of your eggs in one basket can be very problematic. Being more intentional about including supplier diversity in the procurement strategy clears the path to actually growing small and diverse businesses. It moves the focus from maintenance, janitorial, catering kinds of contracts to larger, prime contracts. And our customers (and future customers) expect that now. And so that’s where I feel like I can be an advocate to inform the strategy (with a DEI lens) while the procurement organization sets the strategy where everyone begins exercising their DEI muscles in their work.

Terrence:
Because you brought actual build projects, like you know, the program, not the cleanup crew that comes after they build out the facility.

Bria:
And that’s the education piece. It’s getting people to be aware of how their behaviors and habits can negatively affect the workplace goals they’ve set and help them to make the shift. If you can’t connect your words with your deeds you have work to do. It’s not enough to say I’m not racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, xenophobic, it has to show up in your work. And it really does take leaders to model it.

Katura:
That's like the distinction between being “not racist” and being anti-racist. We need more people actively fighting against unfair systems, policies, practices. Simply not being a racist, a homophobe, a sexist, is not enough. I don’t think enough people understand the distinction.

Bria:
I'm doing a lot of work with our disability employee network and I’m learning so much from my colleagues that have disabilities. There are so many opportunities to learn and become an ally. Listening to people who have different experiences than me gives me the knowledge to think about accessibility in ways I never have had to think about it. Several years ago, I spent time with a family member just hanging out and doing cousin stuff. We had a blast! She’s paraplegic. I thought my awareness about accessibility was heightened back then, but my colleagues have opened my eyes in terms of how I can include accessibility even more in DEI work.

Katura:
Listening is key. A disability advocate and writer I follow named Imani Barbarin, says “nothing about us without us.” I try to apply that thinking broadly in DEI.

And Bria, your comment also ties into what I was talking about not siloing DEI. If you’re an event producer or a marketing manager, and you do events you have to think about accessibility. If you don’t, you're not doing your job well.  I remember bringing that up when I was doing comms for an event. There was an elevated stage with stairs - no ramp, no railing. We had an external event producer and they hadn’t thought of that. That was pre-pandemic. I’m hopeful that we have collectively become more aware and inclusive in these past few years. Because I don’t even see that as allyship if you are an event manager. That's just part of your job.  How can you do your job well if you don't have that lens? And obviously you don't wake up one day knowing all of this, but that's why partnership and having these conversations is so important. You keep learning.

I remember when social media started getting bigger in corporate spaces. There were social media strategists of course, but pretty quickly, PR, internal comms and marketing folks all needed to know how to manage social media. It was no longer reserved for the just social media team. And to me, that's a bit how DEI works. It’s not taking anything away from the DEI team who's responsible for creating and driving strategy. That’s a huge job. But to my point before, DEI shows up, or should show up in almost everyone's job, almost everyone's function. And if it's not, you kind of have to ask yourself, what am I missing?

Bria:
Terrence, I'm curious now that you're not in corporate spaces ─ how do you see DEI informing the work you're doing with your clients? Are you helping them access talent in a different way?

Terrence:
I've been in business eight months, so [I’ve been focused on] understanding the landscape and having some great conversations. What I'm working on with my clients is understanding why they are having so much turnover in these particular roles? Then talking more about their diversity initiatives and what they envision for their company. What are their business goals? What is their team make-up right now? Then providing additional coaching to them on how they can be more intentional about the diversity aspect of recruitment and what I’m doing as a staffing company. I'm bringing you diverse candidates. So like it or not, you're going to get a diverse candidate pool when you're working with me. We're going to definitely make sure that we have quality, we understand what it is that you're seeking. But at the end of the day, it's going to be a wide range of diversity that I present to your organization.

Katura:
So we all come from all these different perspectives. What do we think is working well in terms of DEI and our collaboration? And what’s not?

Bria:
One thing I think is working well is Comms/Marketing/PR. That function is more attuned to telling stories from diverse perspectives. Now there's plenty of work to be done, especially with who’s telling the stories. What’s not working is I think some people understand DEI to be charity or a favor. It’s important to undo that perception. Like “these poor Black and Brown people or these poor women need us to get them jobs.” Or “these HBCU students can't get internships.” Yes, they can. Half of the Fortune 500, let alone the Fortune 100 are absolutely investing in HBCUs and their students. So, the work is shaping the story to ask do you want to miss out on top talent?

I think what is working between DEI and HR is that we're using data to inform decisions. I’d like to see more intentional use of the data instead of focusing solely on demographic data. It’s looking at the movement of diverse talent holistically. Where is diverse talent falling out of the recruiting process (i.e., application, interview, etc.) How can we action the data? How are you capturing experiences of diverse talent before they leave? 

Terrence:
I agree with that. Then it gets to the percentages or trying to get to an actual number for me. My thing is let’s be fair and equitable across the whole process and get the best talent needed. You have a lot of groups asking what is success in diversity hiring?  Is it 5%? Why are we putting a number to it? Why don't we look across the board, open up and be more intentional about where we seek talent. As we talked about before, expand to student organizations within these campuses, open up more internship opportunities, partner with HBCUs. As a Black guy coming from a PWI, when those companies come to our campuses to recruit oftentimes, we are not their target. We have to truly be exceptional to be on the radar. Or because of their diversity quotas, they're reaching out or recruiting at HBCUs. So getting out of a quota standpoint and just being intentional about more equitable hiring overall is a big thing for me.

Katura:
I like what you're saying about looking at processes practices and making sure that they're equitable ─ not just getting stuck on a number.

And yes, to more intentional storytelling and using data to inform decisions. I think about the amount of DEI work that’s been done without data. People deciding almost in a vacuum that we need a certain program. But based on what? What does the initiative support? What challenges is it helping us address? There is no copy paste in DEI. So just because X company has eight ERGs doesn't mean that you need that too. We need to ask what is our company strategy? What are our challenges, what are our opportunities? What's happening in recruiting or retention or operations – and how can DEI play a role? I think companies are making good progress there, but we definitely need more.

Something that’s not working is hyper focus on recruiting to improve diversity with little to no focus on retention. Terrence, I know recruiting is your lane so I’m really interested in your thoughts.

Terrence:
So we had this initiative focused on bringing in more diverse talent, and it was a zero sum game. Because as soon as we were bringing them in, we were losing those two- to three-year employees who had been uncomfortable because we did nothing to help develop them. They didn’t have people speaking on them in rooms that they weren't in, so they left. We were always chasing numbers – and at the end of the year we were basically at net zero.

I put together a development program that identified that subset of people. I worked with our L&D team and we selected 20 individuals. It was 75% diverse -- ethnically and gender based. This cohort got exposure to other leaders and other organizations. They got to lead meetings and worked amongst themselves as a cross functional group. One of the things we were bad at was African American female representation in leadership roles. It was almost obsolete at that company. We had a talent management discussions focused on Senior Managers and above in Operations, roughly 4000 employees. The Senior Manager and above group totaled 73 and ask me how many of those 73 individuals Senior Managers and above were African-American female? I'll save the suspense. Zero. We created some additional awareness and accountability around that demographic of Black women in the energy space. So yeah, it's the retention piece and being intentional about allyship and mentorship programs for diverse individuals.

Bria:
I think some of the challenge around retention is being able to hone in on what is keeping diverse employees from staying. The exit interview doesn't give you a lot of data. People are always wary to provide information. People never believe that surveys are anonymous. They don’t believe that surveys are not being tracked. So, they're even more reticent to give real information in a formal format.

What does the growth and development piece actually look like for them? We have sponsorship programs, mentorship programs – but we’re still not getting enough of that feedback from employees. I want to create safe spaces for people to say what they’re experiencing. 

Katura:
That’s why I think stay interviews are so important. Even during your one-on-ones – using a few of them as informal stay interviews to find out how your people want to grow. I spoke to a DEI leader who worked with HR to identify trends in attrition as they related to underrepresented groups at the organization. They used that data to begin having more intentional stay interviews with employees from groups that had higher attrition rates. Great example of strategic collaboration.

Bria:
Stay interviews, exit interviews, one on ones – they may all be happening. But there are a lot of managers, leaders, other professionals who don't have the skill sets to have meaningful conversations during those meetings. We need to teach people how to have meaningful conversations about people’s growth and development and their experiences, so it’s not a check the box activity.

Katura:
How can we better collaborate? What’s one thing that we can do as HR, Comms, DEI leaders or business partners in other areas of the business?

From a Comms perspective, it’s important that we clearly communicate the WHY of our DEI efforts. Not just the business case for DEI. I mean sharing why we’re launching a certain initiative; what impact we hope it has for our employees or community; how the initiative supports our DEI strategy and larger company strategy. We can’t save the “why” for the post-event article, or the leader’s opening remarks at an event. It needs to be established and communicated as part of the planning so all parties – DEI, HR, facilities, procurement, Marketing – are aligned on the initiative’s purpose and the role they each play in our success.

Terrence:
For me it’s understanding each other's role in the organization. What DEI is, what HR is, what Communications is, and how can we help get the message of what we're trying to do to the masses, to the business to help them understand it – to motivate and inspire people to want to make change.

Katura:
What do we need more of?

Terrance:
More collaboration. More joint meetings where it's not just DEI talking about their strategy, HR talking about theirs, and everyone sort of pushing and fighting against what the other one is trying to do. More breaking down the barriers and the silos of each of those organizations.

Bria:
We have to agree on what success looks like. Yes, it's collaboration so that we all know [and support] what others are doing. It’s also so that we know and agree on the outcome that we want to see. If we agree on those outcomes and everything that we're doing within our respective functions -- that's the direction we move in. And if I'm doing something that doesn't add to that success, if I'm doing something that may get in the way of that success, then we need to stop doing it, right? And I think what's hard for a lot of people is they don't know what success looks like.

Katura:
More employees and teams in all areas of the business asking: “how should DEI inform my work?” That's what we need.

 

Thanks to Terrence for being our first guest on the blog and for lending his important perspective to this ongoing conversation. You can learn more about his work at: https://expresspros.com/houstontx/

Building Better: Improving Cross-Functional Collaboration in DEI

A DEI leader, HR leader, and Comms leader log on to Zoom. The topic? How we can be better partners and improve our collaboration to drive real change in diversity, equity, and inclusion. We had a lot to say (two hours worth of conversation!) so this blog is a two-parter.

Part 1: Where We Are

Katura:
I’m really excited for this conversation. Before we jump in – cause I know we’re ready -- let’s introduce ourselves and share how we got into DEI. Terrence, you’re our guest on the blog, so you can go first.

Terrence: 
I'm an experienced HR leader turned business owner. I own and run Express Employment Professionals, a staffing agency with deep roots in the Houston community. My strengths are in change management, leadership development, and creating diverse and inclusive environments.

Bria:  
I probably have been doing DEI work my entire career without it being called that particular thing. I’ve worked in corporate as a project manager, nonprofit as strategy leader and as an independent consultant in multiple industries. Building high-performance teams, driving organizational strategy and taking a people-centric, stakeholder-focused approach shaped me into the DEI leader I am today.

Katura:
I come to DEI through my work as a communication leader. I started by doing some writing in support of corporate DEI and purpose initiatives years ago and expanded to more comprehensive DEI communication, including messaging for executives. Eventually I began developing and leading DEI initiatives: from managing ERGs and heritage events to launching education workshops and a sponsorship program.

---

Bria:
Terrence something you said once was that a COO you worked with was a champion for DEI.  I'm curious, what are the some of the things that he did or didn't do that make you consider him a champion?

Terrence:
The COO would always challenge our leadership team using the data, such as diversity Power BI’s that included overall and department specific diversity numbers -- both gender and ethnicity.  He was always looking at talent within the organization, wanting to understand where they are, what they want to do, creating succession plans for them, and having conversations with me (as an HR leader) about those individuals and their talents.

And when it came to programming, he’d find ways to create synergies or close gaps. I would go to him with proposals. He wanted to understand impact and desired outcomes. After thorough questions and analysis and he would give me the blessing to go ahead. If I got any pushback, at our next [team] meeting he would talk about the importance -- the why behind what we were doing and his expectation that they would support the programs or the initiatives. He understood the impact diverse teams had on an organization which made it easier for me to make an impact in the organization.

Bria:
The champion piece is huge. What I'm finding is that people don't know how to do the things that you discussed, Terrence. Challenging their peers, mentoring people not like them, sponsoring Black, Hispanic and Native people and women to get to executive levels of leadership, which is quite frankly, where it matters. What does it look like to actually give people the accoutrements that go with those big titles? And then supporting them with intentional action. You usually have a group of passionate folks who want to see change and say “let's go do this thing.” But without those champions who really have the cache and influence to implement initiatives and programs that hold people accountable for success or failure, people run out of fuel (passion). 

Katura:
When I hear champion, I think about the term “ally” and how many people want that title, but don't want the work that comes along with it. It's not a crown that you put on. There's real work behind being an ally, being a champion, being an advocate. I think some people really do believe they’re champions even if they haven’t done the work. They may say and truly believe, “Everyone is equal.” They might spout the “I don't see color” (which is problematic, but that’s another conversation.) But those things don't say anything about what you actually did. What action did you take in support of those beliefs?

Terrence:
And then they go back to Texas A&M to recruit engineers.

Katura:
Same old places! But what system did you help up-end?  Who did you stand up for? What thinking did you challenge?

Bria:
And that’s the important part right? How do people show up in action. I appreciate a good debate or discussion. One recurring discussion I remember having was about development programs being for everyone, not just diverse talent. Should everyone have development opportunities? Yes. Also, DEI leaders have to ring the bell and remind folks that employees from marginalized communities (not everyone) require additional support getting these opportunities (i.e., face time with leaders, identified for succession, etc.) because of historical and structural barriers.

It’s the same thing when we're discussing college recruitment strategy. Black and Brown students attend HBCUs and PWIs. So, when you’re recruiting at PWIs you also have an opportunity to connect with them through student organizations that focus on tech, engineering, law, business, etc. Most large professional organizations have student chapters on campus. If we’re not prioritizing in this way, it’s exactly what you’re saying Terrence, recruiters keep doing the same thing and DEI goals aren’t met.  

Terrence:
That’s how I worked with my HR team to partner with DEI. Because they were the ones building those relationships with the collegiate chapters, and the national chapters of those organizations that you spoke with. I'm getting intel from DEI about the engagements that they have on campus. I'm sharing that information with the leaders of the organizations and coming back with recommendations: “We have to spend more time here; we have to invest money here.” We started doing a great job of attracting diverse talent. We created an interview process where we encouraged a diverse candidate pool before we moved forward. This allowed those who would typically be overlooked to at least have an opportunity to be interviewed.

So, you’ve got to have people who are willing to challenge leaders in those spaces. From an HR standpoint, that doesn't happen a lot because “they're the hiring managers, it’s their money, their hire – so they get to bring in who they want to.” No -- we have a strategy. We are trying to increase diversity across the board, not just diversity of thought. We want to see diversity from a gender standpoint, a race/ethnicity standpoint, etc. And we can't do that if we keep doing the same thing. So here's the plan. And of course, it's not [always] 100% right off the bat, but we will tweak it, and wherever the gaps are, we will fix them along the way. But we’ve got to have that feedback from everybody involved – from our DEI team, on the candidates that they are helping us identify, as well as in communicating what we're trying to do to increase diversity, which ultimately increases engagement of individuals who are already in the company. Then they see they have a path in this company as opposed to getting hired and then three years later, they have all the skill sets that they need to advance but nobody is even giving them an interview. Programs and initiatives, such as what we created, allow those individuals to get an interview. You’ve got to have people who are bold enough to challenge that and then work across the aisle to ensure that we are doing what's right and what will help the business advance. You also want to make sure we’re not setting the company back by doing it just because everybody else is – like it’s the flavor of the month. No, we’ve got to be intentional about it.

Katura:
Two points came to me when you both were talking. So many good ideas – great ideas – come from DEI professionals. We're resourceful and creative. Many of us come from marginalized communities, so we have to be. We may also want to be -- but it’d be nice if we didn’t have to be so resourceful sometimes. Anyway, what seems to happen is that someone else in the organization hears one of those ideas and says “everyone should experience that.” I don’t think there’s anything wrong recognizing a good idea and wanting more people to have that opportunity. But I do think we’re seeing a tendency to skip to equality when we haven't done the equity piece yet. Giving people from underrepresented, marginalized groups the access and opportunities that they’ve historically been denied – which is what initiatives like sponsorship programs do -- should come first. Then you expand to groups who haven’t experienced that historic marginalization. But you can't do that if you haven't done the equity work.

Bria:
So true. I’ve seen this jump to skip over the hard parts and pivot to diversity of thought and perspective because everyone has that, right? They skip equity because equity’s the hard part and look for ways to make everyone the same (i.e., we all have different perspectives). To have a conversation with your business leaders about pay equity, cross-level representation, accessible job descriptions is the hard part. As a DEI leader I have people come to me with these issues and I can escalate it, but I'm not HR. My role as a business partner is to advocate, educate and come up with great ideas.  But from an execution standpoint, my challenge has been that with other functions collaborating often looks like: we need the DEI leaders to go execute this.

Terrence:
At a previous employer, our DEI team saw what we were doing. They saw that the leader was involved and engaging well. So we had a great partnership. DEI had ideas and they would come to me asking if they could pilot them in our organization because our leaders understood the importance. We’d pilot the program, work out all the wrinkles and work with Comms to show the impact that the program was having and why we were doing it. My team was always partnered on initiatives from DEI. As HR practitioners, when you don't understand the impact of not having diverse teams, how can you really be the voice of the people, be a true partner to your organizations and make the company better?

Bria:
What happens to DEI in my opinion, too, is that it becomes an HR thing, a thing for HR to do versus HR really driving their leaders to do these things. It can't just be that every time we talk about DEI that Bria is the only one talking about it, or HR is the only group talking about it. This has to show up everywhere. So every all-hands meeting, webinar, town hall should have DEI in it in some way, shape or form. I worked with a leader who agreed diversity and inclusion needed a bigger priority in company-wide meetings, including strategy planning. Comms saw that as DEI having a speaking role in those meetings, but it’s really an opportunity for leaders to connect DEI to the business. If we’re talking about strategy for the company, why wouldn’t we talk about how inclusion and diversity is part of that strategy?

Terrence: 
That's a great point. I was in the room while leadership was creating their business plan for the following year. So I'm in those sessions, I'm working with them on the business plan. I hear what the business is looking to do, what their goals are, and I use that to create our people strategy. From a people strategy standpoint, I’ve identified things that we're going to do to help the business realize their goals. In our strategy meetings, I bring in the DEI team, Labor Relations, Comms and we have these conversations. So as my team and I are fleshing out what the people strategy is, we are pulling all these different groups in to see how we can partner on making this happen. The result is something that everybody has contributed to, and it's focusing on what the actual organization's business plan is.

We all must understand the end game. What are we trying to do this year? What is the business trying to do? And then how can we all leverage that information, and remove the landmines that the business might encounter? Ego must be put aside. Everybody is usually hierarchical, in their silos. We’ve got to make these structures secondary. The people are primary.

Bria:
Exactly Terrence, all business functions should be looking at this holistically. When we’re focusing on the strategic plan for the next year, that conversation focuses on growth and profitability. But how do you get to growth and profitability without inclusion and diversity? How do you get there without talent? How do you get there without a strategy in place for expansion into global markets that centers inclusion of diverse populations? We need to be able to tell the story of what we're doing, the role DEI plays, and how all of these things work together.

Katura:
I think you’re both speaking to a couple of great points. One, the importance of DEI strategy – not just having DEI programs. Two, the importance of DEI both being informed by and helping to inform company strategy. Another is how problematic it is for DEI to be in a silo regardless of the reporting structure. When DEI is siloed, what you get is: I'm planning a townhall. You have three minutes to talk about DEI. But that’s just providing a DEI update. How else is Comms supporting DEI? How is DEI woven into Comms and vice versa?

DEI won’t necessarily have a spot on every meeting or all hands agenda. Some companies do them weekly or twice a month.  You may not have anything to report every time. But DEI should always show up in Comms. For example: who's speaking during your all hands? If you lack diversity in your senior leadership ranks, that might mean you're putting the same people on the stage all the time. Who else you can bring to the stage? What other kinds of stories you can tell? How are you telling those stories?

Companies also can’t rely on Comms to serve as a defacto DEI. I see that sometimes with social justice issues - a heavy emphasis on statements. Yes, a well-crafted statement can be part of how a company responds to DEI or social justice issue, but it can’t be the only thing a company does. What are you doing to support and hold space for employees? How are you showing up in the community? Are you using this time to reexamine policies, practices and see where you can make your workplace safer, build more trust?

Our conversation continues next week with part 2. But in the meantime, we'd love to hear from you. What's your biggest challenge related to collaborating to drive impact in DEI?