Why gender equity is good for business

[Music]

hi

and welcome to tedx seattle community

conversations i’m your host phil klein

and today i’m here with sarah sanford

the founder

of thinkgen the gender equity

and inclusion organization that is

responsible for developing the first

certification

for gender equity at workplaces in the

united states

she is also a lecturer at the university

of washington

sarah thank you so much for taking the

time to join us today

thank you phil i’m i’m excited to be

back with the tedx family this is fun

yes well your talk has now received over

a million and a half views as i see

um so it’s thrilling to see that it’s

getting

additional attention in the last six

months especially

so congratulations on that and we really

look forward to hearing from you about

how the work has been going

what progress you’ve been seeing um

perhaps you could give us an update of

you know how things have been going in

your work

in the last 10 or 18 months since you

gave your talk

sure um since giving the talk

i mean it’s it’s been such a great tool

to have

and you know i’m gonna go full

disclosure and no way did tedx

ask me to brag about the great

experience that is tedx

but i think for our organization it’s

been great

because our approach to equity and

inclusion

isn’t something that really fits in a

tweet it’s not a slogan

you know it treats equity and inclusion

as being

as complex and nuanced as it really is

and so

getting the chance to give that talk and

have it recorded and then share it with

people

has been this moment in which people say

oh i get

it okay i understand the difference when

you talk about treating equity and

inclusion

like any other critical business

function um and what it means to really

focus on changing

mechanics rather than mindsets so

we’ve been working with you know a

greater variety of organizations and one

of the things that i think we’re seeing

play out now in you know the midst

of this crisis that everyone is trying

to cope with

is that the organizations that we

started working with

18 months ago or 12 months ago

are really riding out this crisis

better you know compared to their

competitors

a lot of them are saying that you know

the tools that they put in place

because of gen are allowing them to

continue to be more inclusive

even while everyone’s working from home

and so i think part of that is that you

know

if equity and inclusion have now been

front of mind

for a year it was front of mind

when they had to cope with this crisis

and they had to

really think of how is everyone still

going to play as meaningful a role

in the organization that you know that

was kind of a habit and a practice they

built up by then and then frankly one of

the things you know that we work with

organizations on

is making remote work inclusive and how

to make their flexible work policies

really be accessible to everyone

because we tend to see stigmas in the

workplace where certain groups

are really encouraged to take time and

other groups get stigmatized if they do

and so fortunately a lot of these orgs

really have policies

in place now going into the pandemic

where everyone can work at home and

still be included so that’s been great

to see

and in the certification that you’ve

been offering companies

what kinds of metrics still apply

and are easy to continue to measure

and manage you know now that we’re

social distanced and

many people are working remotely and

from home

yeah that’s a great question so the ones

that have to do with remote work are

obviously being emphasized a lot more

um so you know some of the things we

talk with organizations about

have to do with meetings and meeting

behaviors

especially you know when they used to

take place in person

um our focus on equity and inclusion

really is about driving organizations to

harness say

the collective intelligence of everyone

in the room so what we used to see is

that

companies would bring in diverse

recruits

and then they wouldn’t truly be included

and one of the places that really used

to happen was in meetings

so there was this common phenomenon of

people

either being interrupted or having their

ideas stolen by other people

and then they’re not giving credit for

them um or they just don’t get a chance

to comment so one of the things that we

found in our research

is that men and especially white men

are likely to respond the fastest

when being asked a question in a meeting

so they’re likely to raise their hands

before the question is even finished or

immediately after

women and racial minorities tend to take

longer

and have a bit of a pause that doesn’t

mean that they’re you know

actually thinking any more slowly it’s

usually that

their input has been held to a higher

standard so they’re considering more

factors

so one of the things we recommend in

organizations you know if they truly

want the input of everyone who works

there

and they want to harness the power of

diverse insight we

tell them to institute a pause you know

so we say ask that question and just

make it a rule that

nobody raises their hands for a minute

or for two minutes

and then ask for feedback so that’s one

of these tricks that we’re

recommending organizations really

transfer to the remote environment

you know because everyone’s having zoo

meetings now and

it’s created a new kind of playing field

to level

you know so we’ve been reaching out to a

lot of orgs about

how to make your zoom meetings really

intentionally inclusive

and still make sure to get that feedback

from everyone

and in some ways you know it i think for

some people

it feels more inclusive um they can you

know write their feedback in the chat

window

they have other ways now to really be

included

but we’re also seeing that you know it

can be harder to evaluate work

um so we’re also working with a lot of

organizations on how to make their

performance evaluations still mean

something because i think now you know

we’ve realized this isn’t going to be a

week this isn’t going to be a month

this unfortunately is something that has

lasted a long time

um and so we’re working with that and

then

honestly for a lot of them it’s it’s

that they were in the midst

of creating these really great dei

inclusion strategies and then the

pandemic came

and they had to pause and they’re kind

of panicked

and they may have a different

organization

you know that they go back to in 2021

and so we’re really just helping them

figure out how do we keep dei front of

mind how do we not let this go how do we

not give up on this

wow so no shortage of opportunities for

improvement

i would love to slow down and unpack

some of what you

shared you described

the importance of doing an assessment

you know at the beginning of working

with an organization

and then there is change that is

uh surfaced and that can be implemented

through

uh some of the specific recommendations

uh that you suggested

and then there is what the

uh progress of that actually looks like

in the workplace and then measuring that

progress

so there’s plenty of complexity in that

can you walk us

through a scenario where you start to

see that change

actually taking root and taking hold and

then

generating results if there are examples

like that

yeah that’s yes that’s a great question

um so our assessment you know i think

everyone has survey fatigue

at this point and i completely

understand why

um so you know our assessment does

include this employee survey

we’re proud to say we’ve gotten the

average time to take it down to 14

minutes

um but what that survey is designed to

do is

really reveal these gaps and experience

between certain groups in the workplace

so

it’s not really a typical employee

engagement survey

we’re not asking these big nebulous

questions like do you think you work in

a

fair workplace we ask questions

like has your manager asked you

about your career development goals in

the last 12 months

and so as an example looking at our

national data because we keep the survey

open on our website just to keep getting

a baseline

when i look at that national data right

now as an answer to that question

72 percent of men say yes and 44 of

women

and so our employee survey is really

full of questions like that that are

just

asking if people you know have been

talked to by their senior manager if

they’ve been invited into professional

development opportunities that are

business related

things that are really objective and

trackable

and those tend to be the moments that we

bring to leadership and that’s their aha

moment

you know so that’s kind of the first

place where we see change you know we

talk about we don’t do trainings

and we don’t but in a lot of ways the

results of the data

end up being their own training and that

they become this opportunity for leaders

to look at this data

and see in really tangible ways okay

different groups

have been having very different

experiences in our organization and

that’s you know despite good intentions

that’s despite the fact that leaders

really wanted to center equity and

inclusion

um so we start with that you know we do

this employee survey

we do a processes audit which just which

is sounds like such a scary word when we

say audit

but it just means that we ask a point of

contact

what the written policies in an

organization are you know so do you pay

leave policies do you have

a nursing room do you have remote work

what does your recruiting strategy look

like

and then we pause and you know we

look at that data that comes back from

employees we look at that data that

comes back from hr

and so yes we look for those gaps

in experience but we also look at gaps

between those two stories

so sometimes you know an hr rep will

tell us

yes we have a paid leave policy and then

none of their employees are saying that

um and so that tends to be this good

moment in which you know it’s not that

we think hr is lying to us

but a lot of times like hr has put in

all this work to build inclusive

policies and they just haven’t been

communicated out

to the organization effectively and that

ends up being kind of another moment of

change where the organization goes oh

this is why people aren’t happy they

actually don’t know these things exist

um they actually don’t know that we put

this kind of effort in

and then you know the other part that

really takes up you know most of our

work

in a great way is seeing that there are

well-intended policies that

unfortunately aren’t evidence-backed

um that haven’t been implemented in

the right way and we look at those

policies and we end up revamping them to

counter the impact of bias you know we

really end up

optimizing them to counter the impact of

bias so

as an example of what that looks like um

panel interviews are a common example of

this

they became very trendy in the dei

conversation

people thought okay if we have a panel

that’s interviewing a candidate

and we have a woman or

a person of color on that panel then

we’ve done our job then we have diverse

insights being provided on who we should

hire

what actually ends up happening you know

we talk about the hippo effect the

highest paid person in the room

um is that everyone on that panel

if they’re together will just default

to the opinion of the highest paid or

the dominant person in the group

so we really recommend to organizations

like split up that panel have each

person on that panel

separately interview the candidate with

their own sets of questions

and then we help them you know

standardize the rest of the interview

evaluation process because it’s this

area that is just so prone to our biases

whether or not we want to believe it

you know in ways that have nothing to do

even with gender race where we found

that if people interview candidates in

the afternoon

they’re less likely to hire them than

people they interview in the morning

so it’s something that really can be

impacted by design at every level

and then you know we see these other

changes that

i think organizations may may never hear

the impact they have

the one that you know got to me

is that we heard from

an employee of an organization

that we were certifying that ended up

expanding their health care to cover

dependence

that’s one of our you know criteria in

the certification we look at their

healthcare

and so the employee wrote to us and said

that she was

able to now leave an abusive

relationship that she had been in

because she was previously dependent on

her partner’s health care

to cover their child together and now

she didn’t have to be in that anymore

because her employer was providing us

and so she could leave

so you know one of the really incredible

things that we get to see is how

the impact of these changes end up

extending

far beyond the office into people’s

everyday lives

yes that’s that is powerful i mean that

has the transformational effect in

individuals lives and

you know thinking a little more on this

question of unconscious bias

uh there is a way in which

it sounds like you’re seeing people feel

like if they’ve done anything

then it’s easy for them to think they’ve

done everything

right and that the problem is solved as

soon as they’ve taken the first

step and it can be harder to kind of

keep looking

as you uncover either that bias

or aim towards a new state a changed

state

um and if you take a a a very specific

uh problem maybe like getting credit for

their ideas

uh for women and people of color to more

actively being

given credit for the ideas they come up

with in an organization

can you see uh that kind of change

happening and what it looks like

when an organization fully and clearly

gives credit where it’s due

yeah i the word that comes to mind that

other people have told me that like i

don’t get to be there and witness but

the other employees tell me is that it’s

energizing

um i think one of the coolest things

about it is that it has this impact for

everyone in the organization

that they end up having this return to

innovation

and this really energizing return to

having new ideas

being presented in the workplace because

you’re finally hearing from people that

have been there for years

but for a variety of reasons have had

barriers that have prevented them from

being heard

um and so obviously you know i think for

the underrepresented or i often like to

say

it’s an arlen hamilton phrase i have to

give her credit the underestimated

people in the workplace it’s just this

relief and it’s something incredibly new

to finally have your ideas heard um

you know i get asked a lot

what the most common problems are

that we see in the workplace for women

and people of color

and you know usually that question is a

bit leading and there’s there’s a

preamble that’s like oh i bet you see

some really terrible me too incidents

um and i say you know sure those happen

but what i see most frequently

are these barriers to just

being taken seriously you know if i

could put kind of all these problems

into one bucket

i think it would be not being taken

seriously and that that actually ends up

being the most pernicious

you know where i’ve worked in the

finance industry before

um i was there for five years and it was

like both things happened

you know i was sexually sexually

harassed in the finance industry

and i had situation after situation in

which i was ignored

and i know that that in many ways felt

more harmful

for me to feel like i put in all this

work and wasn’t hurt

and so i think for a lot of women

minorities it’s this moment where

all of the work they’ve done up to that

point is finally

honored um and i think you know part of

the change that happens is that we get

these great stories of leaders

reaching out to their employees and

saying you know

we got back this data i’m sorry we

haven’t really acknowledged this in a

real way up to this point

and leaders acknowledge we’re at the

starting line and i think that is the

most impressive thing that a company can

do i think that’s the thing that ends up

having the biggest impact i

i understand why a lot of organizations

hesitate to say

we have a problem you know the moment

you say that

you’re liable for fixing that problem

for doing something about it

um but otherwise employees just feel

like year after year they haven’t been

heard

they feel a little bit of that am i nuts

sense

and that moment in which you know their

stories and knowledge

tends to really shift the energy in

organizations

sarah thank you so much really really

appreciate you taking the time

chris thank you phil i appreciate it

you