Building an Anti-racist Culture in the Business Community

BY Emily Nonko | November 06, 2020

In response to the George Floyd protests of this summer, companies and other organizations released a flood of statements in support of Black Lives Matter. Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, founder and president of the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race (WISER), intentionally decided not to.

“It was not just the feeling of ‘Here we go again,’” she said in reference to past statements on racial justice that never lived up to their promise. “But that there was so much pressure, not just from the racial injustice we saw, but that it was on top of this political climate.” She worried that if Donald Trump were not the president, the business world wouldn’t pay as much attention to these longstanding issues. (Update: With the confirmed election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the U.S. will have the first woman, Black person and Indian-American to serve as vice president.)

Yet as Sharpe’s work consistently grapples with, racial injustice is baked into the past, present and future of this country. And awareness of that within the larger business community will only matter if it’s followed by action. “For me,” she said, “I want to know, What are you going to do?’”

Sharpe joined three other speakers for a From Day One webinar last week that explored the challenge of building an anti-racist culture in the business community. The moderator, Erica Licht, a senior fellow at the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project (IARA) at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, opened with a quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay.” It set the tone for a conversation on what business leaders can do to follow through on increasing diversity and inclusion at all levels of their organizations.

Kendra Proctor Goldbas, director of professional development for McKinsey & Company’s West Coast office, described three steps in the realm of talent development and professional growth. “There’s the work we need to do around knowledge, skills and then creating the space for engagement,” she said. Self-awareness, personal growth and knowledge should lead the work; that’s followed by skill-building to engage in anti-racism. “The third piece is the notion of engagement,” Goldbas said. “How do we engage one another, take action and be vulnerable?”

Speakers on the panel, clockwise from top center: Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe of the Women's Institute for Science, Equity and Race, Kendra Proctor Goldbas of McKinsey & Company, Bobby Griffin of CBRE and moderator Erica Licht of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project at Harvard (Image by From Day One)

Bobby Griffin, VP of diversity and inclusion for the commercial real-estate company CBRE Group, said the diversity commitment needs to encompass workplace culture, talent acquisition and the broader marketplace. “We want to enhance our relationships with diverse customers and our relationships to the various diverse communities in which we reside. It’s an ongoing effort,” he said. ‘It’s more like being in a relationship than speed dating.”

Sharpe emphasized the importance of data. In her work at the WISER institute, she supports more inclusive women-focused research. “We really advocate for a micro-analysis,” she said. “And that is to have folks disaggregate that data by the characteristics you think influence the outcome, and then take an intersectional lens to talk about why you might see a particular outcome.” She notes that a categorical term like “women of color,” for example, is far too sweeping to shed light on the experiences of individuals.

When it came to the topic of “uncomfortable conversations” on workplace equity, the panelists shared insights on their impact and how to go about them. “Growing pains don’t always have to be uncomfortable,” as Goldbas put it. Later in the conversation she offered a different term: “Radical candor.” She explained it as “a notion of how you provide both caring personally but challenging directly in the way you engage in feedback, discussion and conversation.” The key, she added, is that such conversations must start with a desire for change.

What could that change look like, beyond the solidarity statements released this summer? Griffin noted that CBRE set goals around “visibility, capability and accountability” and outlined specific and intentional actions to back them up. “For visibility, for example, we want to make better data-informed decisions,” he said. “So how are we providing information and metrics from a data standpoint?”

McKinsey set ten actions in place this year to move toward a more anti-racist culture, Goldbas said. The key will be tracking the progress of such actions in a year. “We have to be held to account for what we’ve committed to,” she said.

Sharpe echoed the importance of transparency. “When I think about accountability, it’s the transparency in what was your goal, what was it you were planning to do?” she said. “A huge part of that is who is making decisions. And when companies are talking about diversity and inclusion, who are they having conversations with? Who are you speaking to so that you get an understanding of the work you need to get done?”

A company that sets goals and is held accountable must respect the people who call them out. “Folks have to know they can speak up about injustice, in that moment, without losing their livelihoods,” as Sharpe put it.

In a robust Q&A session with their audience, the speakers discussed confronting racism head on as a systemic power structure. “White people historically and currently hold power–this shift of power has not changed,” Sharpe noted. Allyship with white people who want to “utilize their power for good,” as she put it, is far from impossible. “It’s incredibly important to explain to them, in your situation, what do you need from them as an ally?”

There’s no monopoly on diversity, Griffin added. It has to be about everyone, including those who still have some learning to do about people who are different from them. “It’s very important to have conversations in a way that doesn’t distance imperfect allies,” he said. “And allies have to be willing to show up and support with their imperfection.”

The panelist’s insights suggest that the conversations around racial justice may well lead to real action in the coming seasons. To wrap up the session, Licht left the audience with a fuller quote from Martin Luther King Jr.: “What always bothers me is that the long, hot summer has always been preceded by a long, cold winter, and that the nation has not used its winters creatively enough to develop the program, to develop the kind of massive acts of concern that will bring about a solution to the problem.”

Editor's note: From Day One thanks our partner who supported this webinar: McKinsey & Company. You can watch a video of the conversation here. Please visit our conference page to register for more upcoming events.

Emily Nonko is a Brooklyn, NY-based reporter who writes about real estate, architecture, urbanism and design. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Curbed and other publications.


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Just having a great conversation in an interview is not necessarily enough.But the interview process can still be helpful if you are asking the right questions. “The research still says that behaviorally based questions are the most valid. And there’s really two types: ‘Tell me about a time when’’ past experiences, or situational questions,” Rotolo said.Rodas believes it’s also important to have an honest conversation about the nature of the role and pay attention to the applicant’s response. “The recruiter can [now] spend more time with the candidate talking about how they would endure the type of workload we’re going to put on them. 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Katie Chambers | March 19, 2024

The Long-Term Shortage of Talent in the Post-Industrial Age: How Companies Can Respond

In the early industrial age, companies had a hierarchy built around manufacturing and machinery. But now workplaces are organized much differently. Their new priority? The talent. We’ve entered an era where the shortage of workers, obsolescence of skills, and new levels of employee agency will present employers with historic challenges. Most companies are not ready.The new Intelligence Age is a time when skills, employee creativity, information and AI will define our companies. 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How Innovative Employers Are Making Their Benefits More Inclusive

Company benefits have never been one-size-fits-all, but today the employee landscape is changing even more rapidly than ever. The more varied the workforce, the more varied their benefits needs are going to be.That’s certainly true for Liz Pittinger, head of customer success at Stork Club. In the last three years alone, family planning and fertility benefit needs have drastically changed.Pittinger spoke to this at a From Day One’s webinar along with three other panelists. Lydia Dishman, senior editor of growth and engagement, at Fast Company, moderated.Millennials are further in their careers now and want company benefits to better reflect the changing workforce as well as align with diversity, equity, and inclusion, Pittinger says. That has opened the way for Stork Club to create a more inclusive path for people to start families.“People are waiting later and later to start their families, so you have single women in their 30s and 40s, who are concerned about fertility preservation,” Pittinger said. “Then there are same sex couples who have typically been excluded from a health plan and fertility solution.”Companies now can’t afford not to offer these inclusive benefits. Especially if they want to attract and retain the talent they need.“I think it's really important to ground ourselves on why DEI is important,” she added. The answer: because it’s important to employees who are searching for and staying at jobs for different reasons than previous generations. According to a study by Fortune and the Institute for Corporate Productivity of 1,200 HR professionals around the world, overperforming organizations are those that focus on DEI. “In other words, company culture, even over compensation,” said Pittinger.That is to say, however, not every company needs to offer every type of benefit. Organizations must cater to their workforce, their unique makeup, and their unique needs. “It’s about understanding the company goals and demographics,” she said. “Some industries just traditionally run heavier on single women in their 30s and 40s. You may have a large LGBTQ community.” It goes back to understanding their needs. How? 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Rather than expressing and sharing, the reporters were internalizing what they were seeing.“We had a situation where an employee called our EAP (Employee Assistance Program) vendor, and the story that they were sharing about what they were experiencing during one of the protests was so impactful to the EAP counselor, that the counselor themselves started breaking down,” Antoniou said. “It was a role shift for the employee, where they felt like they had to now counsel the counselor.”With that information, they now had the responsibility to do something about it. So they implemented a peer-to-peer support group, and hired clinicians to train employees. 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One way they do that at JLL is training managers to recognize symptoms or indications among employees so they can help them take the next step.An employee came to Lucksinger with personal issues at home, specifically an adult child with mental health concerns. “They were dealing with their gay son who needed some mental health services provided to them because they were experiencing a couple of their friends who had just committed suicide.”Any parent with stressed children is also stressed themselves, she added. Acknowledging that hardship, and the impact on the employee’s life, were important first steps. Next was to ensure the employee and their child got the help they needed with a professional with experience in the LGBTQ+ space.“Just having had that conversation with this employee, you could just see the relief in that employee,” explained Lucksinger. “We are trying to go that extra mile to ensure that our employee experiences go above and beyond.”Take the Proactive ApproachThe key takeaway from the panel was thinking outside the box. Straying away from the traditional approaches to company benefits and incorporating the values of DEI into offering the benefits people really need. And it all goes back to listening. Sometimes employees will come to you, but you also need to proactively seek them.In the case of Lisa Singh, managing director of global benefits at Silicon Valley Bank, they met with their military and veteran employees to get their specific feedback. The employees gave their thoughts on experience and processes, which Singh said they took into consideration and made adjustments to their policies. Education goes a long way, too, Singh added. At the bank, they hold mental health safety trainings and offer other ways to educate so employees are better equipped to help themselves and others. They hold regular webinars about different aspects of health, which is an opportunity for the company to let employees know about their benefits. One piece of key advice to make sure this kind of change happens? Take matters into your own hands to best serve your employees.“Your healthcare vendor may say, ‘yes, you’re competitive. You have fertility coverage, don't worry about it.’ But we really need to look under the hood at that,” she said. “If we don't ask the questions, if we don’t work with our consultants, even push our consultants, then we’re going to have these gaps that we don't know of, and we’re not going to be meeting the needs of our diverse population.”Carrie Snider is a Phoenix-based journalist and marketing copywriter. 

Carrie Snider | December 04, 2023