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