Weaving Diversity and Inclusion into Your Employer Brand

July 27, 2018 at 9:46 AM by Lisa Holden

Untitled design (4)-1“Diversity and Inclusion isn’t just the right thing to do - there’s a clear business case for it,” said Yasmin Zarabi, head of business development for Entelo, at a recent diversity and inclusion event earlier this year. But how do we relay that to leadership, internal team members and importantly, our own candidate audience?

That was the topic of Thursday’s panel, hosted by Sapling in downtown San Francisco, where the company brought together talent acquisition professionals and employer branding aficionados to discuss what it takes to not only walk the talk, but talk the talk and make sure the right ears are listening. I was honored to be a panelist among thought leaders including Erin Carter, recently head of D&I at Planet; Steven Huang, head of D&I at Culture Amp; Natalie Simmons, D&I at Zendesk and Albrey Brown, senior program manager for D&I at Pivotal Software.

The discussion was raw, rich and eye-opening and what follows are the biggest takeaways that I hope others can incorporate into their own D&I programs.

The Business Case for Diversity and Inclusion

Portland State University recently found that companies with more diversity programs had higher innovation results. And a McKinsey study substantiated this, finding that companies in the highest echelons for racial and gender diversity saw statistically significant increases in financial returns compared to companies with less diversity. My advice was to show these metrics to your leadership team and fight for more resources to formalize a plan for diversity and inclusion, but Steven Huang disagreed.

“Don’t go the business case route,” urged Huang, head of D&I at Culture Amp. “Some of your leaders might want to see the numbers but at the end of the day, remind them that minorities shouldn’t need a business case in order to be considered for your company.”

His point was well-taken and this topic went down many paths as practitioners in the audience grappled with their own company cultures, some which pushed for more resources on D&I, but didn’t have a clear direction to go in, and some for whom leadership wasn’t willing to even examine more than gender diversity metrics throughout their organizations.

Accountability for Diversity and Inclusion

As a senior program manager for D&I, Albrey Brown works at Pivotal Software to bring not only awareness but positive action to the software company when it comes to its inclusion efforts. After founding Telegraph Track, the only program specifically designed for underrepresented students that simulates a real world tech environment, Brown is well-positioned to foster D&I at Pivotal Software. With multiple locations and thousands of employees, he’s often faced with the challenge of getting people in the same room or even the same time zone to have an honest discussion about bias, and take it seriously. “It all begins with leadership,” he remarked. Reminding the audience that, “Diversity and Inclusion has to be a priority at the very top of your organization. If not, people won’t take it seriously and your efforts will go unnoticed. Leadership needs to have the courage to prioritize it.”

To hold management accountable for D&I, Brown recommends tying inclusion efforts to bonuses so that leadership is clearly communicating the priorities of the organization. At Zendesk, Natalie Simmons fosters accountability through management trainings that focus on one core value, “Empathy is at the center of these trainings,” she explained. “That can mean many things to different people, but if we all begin with a basic understanding and appreciation of our differences, we’re starting from a good place.”

The Best Resources for Diversity and Inclusion

Bart Macdonald, founder & CEO of Sapling, moderated the panel and moved the discussion to technology that can help with D&I by asking, “How do you mitigate unconscious bias?”

I reminded the audience that there are products like Entelo Diversity out there to help you find candidates from under represented groups, and even tools to help mitigate bias at the sourcing level, but if your organization thinks technology can do this entire job, it’s time to wake up.

Culture Amp makes it easy to collect, understand & act on employee feedback, and Steven Huang’s job is to develop the company’s diversity and inclusion function by aligning business strategy, executive input, and data-driven feedback. He makes use of these technologies but also acknowledges that teams need intensive hands-on training to address and reduce bias that happens during the interview process, and once someone is hired.

Erin Carter, most recently people partner for D&I at Planet has more than a decade of recruiting experience, having operated talent acquisition in many environments including California Shakespeare Theater, Robert Half International and comedy company, Killing My Lobster. Planet recently took the courageous step to release its D&I numbers and interestingly, they report 19 percent of tech roles at the org are held by women, 1 percent above the national average, as reported by Entelo back in March. Carter says, “Few companies have gotten D&I just right, but as we examine where we are today, that’s an important step in determining where we need to go.”

Rarely do organizations have such rich diversity numbers that they’re willing to shout them from the rooftops but this discussion was important because it acknowledged that none of us have gotten this quite right yet. Our programs to bring diversity and inclusion to light are in infancy stages and while no one on our panel could confidently say we had it figured out, we all left feeling far more confident about the community around us to help us continue building these vital programs at our own organizations.

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Lisa Holden

Head of Communications, Entelo

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Lisa Holden leads communications at Entelo, the recruiting automation platform modernizing hiring. In this role, she is responsible for the company’s overall voice and reputation, including its customer and employer brands. Having spent five years at Glassdoor, specifically on the team that produces the Best Places to Work list, Holden is uniquely positioned to advise organizations on how to present themselves to top talent. With a decade of public relations experience in the HR technology sector and a sociology degree from the University of California, Irvine, she is a reputation expert and uses her credentials to present Entelo to the world.

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