Jay Boykin (00:02.114)
Well, hello and welcome to another episode of just human. is the podcast that talks about a lot of different topics. talk about personal growth. We talk about leadership. We talk about some topics that are specifically geared towards men. but today we're going to talk about one of our true core tenants of this podcast. that is diversity, equity, and inclusion.
My name is Jay Boykin. I'm your host. I'm so thankful that you took time out of your busy schedules to either watch or listen. If you are watching on YouTube or listening on your favorite podcast provider, please take a moment and subscribe or leave me a comment or review. Always want to try to improve the show. So want to get all of those, those comments. So as I mentioned, we're going to talk a bit about DE &I today and
The question is, does DE &I still matter in 2024? If you're paying attention, DE &I, and again, that stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion, it has been in the spotlight quite a bit with many organizations finding themselves really at a crossroads. They are facing a
political attacks, they are really having to make decisions as to whether or not they are going to continue with their DE &I initiatives. And in many instances, companies are walking these back. You're seeing other areas, even my own alma mater, Louisiana State University, recently disbanded their DE &I programs. So why are these programs being scrutinized the way that
they are and do they still have a place in today's business world? So in this episode, we are really going to dive in on that. I've got some data here. So Bloomberg back in 2023 reported that about 28 % of companies were cutting back on their D &I initiatives compared to previous years. There is
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additional data by Reveleo Labs that said that there was a significant decrease in DNI-related roles. So there was a 33 % reduction in 2023 of these specific DNI roles compared to 2021. LinkedIn has also reported that there has been a disproportionate
decrease in these DNI related roles compared to other functions and their estimates are showing anywhere from 20 to 30 percent now I will tell you that back in the wake of George Floyd and the rise of Black Lives Matter there were many companies who stood up and began to
stand up DENI programs and began to donate many, many billions of dollars to DENI related initiatives. This is when I personally began to pivot into DENI, specifically in my career. But it does feel like as we get late into 2024, that things are starting to go the other way. You're seeing
a lot of companies cut back on these commitments. Now, in some instances, could it be related to the economy? We are in a tough economy. That could be the case. But there is some good news here for those that are in favor of DNI. And we're going to talk about why DNI is important. But there's another study that was called the Inclusion Barometer published by Bridge Partners that surveyed
400 executives from companies with 250 plus employees and at least $25 million in revenue. And this report is very, very extensive. But the key point is that 79 % of those surveyed that have a DENI program in place, excuse me, 79 % of those surveyed do have a DENI program in place.
Jay Boykin (04:46.218)
and 73 % indicate that they're going to continue with that, that they feel it's just as important today as it was five years ago. And 72 % say that they're going to enhance their DE &I programs over the next 24 months. So there is some positive news there as well. Now, many times if you talk to leaders,
and especially hiring managers, they will talk about the fact that they just want the best person for the job. They don't care if this individual is white, black, or orange. I just want the best person for the job. Well, here's the question that I have. How do you determine the best person for the job? Well, depending on the type of role that you're filling,
people might focus on what school you went to. This reminds me of a story from my own experience where I was interviewing for a position and I was nearly 20 years into my career and I had an interview with the CFO of this company. Now I had done my homework on him and
The CFO was a graduate of Wharton Business School. Now, for those of you that are not familiar with Wharton, Wharton is considered to be one of the top business schools in the country, if not the world. And so I'm sitting in this gentleman's office and he walks in very hurriedly and he tells me that he no longer has the time.
that he thought he was gonna have for the interview. He's got to head to the airport unexpectedly, but he just wants to ask me a few questions while he's packing his briefcase. And his first question was, what did you score on your ACT's? And my response was that was nearly 25 years ago. No one's asked me about my ACT scores since I was interviewing for my first job fresh out of college.
Jay Boykin (07:09.402)
And he stated that he feels that your ACT scores can be very indicative of your cognitive ability. And I said to them that, you know, look, I have a portfolio here of all of this great work that I have done over the last couple of decades. And you want to ask me about a test that
I took back when I was 16 that feels a little irrelevant to me. Well, he proceeded to want to know that he also wanted to know about the school that I went to and he wanted to know about my GPA and did not really seem interested in all of the experience that I had obtained since I graduated from college. I believe that this is a perfect example of meritocracy where
We are focusing on certain things that we believe define the best candidate. But I also believe that that has the opportunity to eliminate many people unnecessarily. for example, there are nearly 6,000 colleges and universities in the United States. There's over 25,000 colleges and universities in the world.
So if we focus on a handful that we think are the best, how many people are we eliminating from our potential candidate pool? I was guilty of this myself as I was building teams and looking to hire people. I had a lot of success hiring people from a certain local school. And as the old expression goes, if it ain't broke, why fix it?
So I kept focusing in on those candidates, those resumes from that particular university. And I was really not paying good attention to individuals who came from other universities. I was guilty of meritocracy. So as we continue to talk about DNI, many times when you
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discuss this. People think that DE &I is about quotas. They think that DE &I is about giving jobs to people that are not qualified for them. And it is so much more complex than this. It is more complex than we will even have time for in one episode. And we're going to talk about many aspects of DE &I overcoming episodes. But I want to focus in on
the diversity aspect of DNI. Diversity is not just about race. That just tends to be our default view. If you Google diversity, there are many areas that will pop up that might actually surprise you. And so there are a wide range of characteristics that go beyond race. And let's go over a few.
just so that we can understand how broad diversity can be. first of all, there's gender diversity. So there's obviously individuals who identify as male or female, but there are also individuals that identify as non-binary and
Despite how you may feel about that, there are many, many talented individuals out there who are non-binary or gender fluid. And I think that it is important to recognize that individuals who, no matter what their gender identity is, can bring some strong skills and some strong talents to our teams. There is age diversity. Now,
In my younger days, I would not have really focused on this, but now as I am in my upper 50s, this is something that is important to me. And so in workforces today, you have individuals that are very early in their careers, very young, talented individuals, and then you've got more seasoned professionals or seasoned individuals. And those...
Jay Boykin (11:52.422)
diverse skill levels because of those ages and those experiences are are very important for us to recognize. There's cultural and ethnic diversity. So again, you have individuals from different ethnic backgrounds, nationalities, cultures, and so we need to recognize that. There is educational diversity. Again, as I mentioned, I was guilty of focusing in on
one particular school because I had been successful with recruiting there. But there are individuals that come from different backgrounds, different schools, smaller schools. There are also very talented individuals who didn't go to a college or university, but they have great experiences that we can bring to the table. So if we make it a requirement that someone has a four-year degree,
we're eliminating individuals that might have great experience that they can bring to our teams. There's diversity as it relates to abilities and disabilities. So again, you may have individuals who have certain physical disabilities, physical conditions, even mental health conditions, but that does not mean that they can't be valuable members of our team.
We talked a bit about, we leaned into gender identity, where there's also sexual orientation diversity. There's also neurodiversity. There are individuals out there that are potentially diagnosed as being on the spectrum. might have autism, they might have ADHD, dyslexia, things like this. But these individuals, I work with many individuals who are
extremely talented and bring a lot to the table, very valuable team members. And then again, diversity of work experiences. If we focus on the same type of work experience that we had as a hiring manager, there are many individuals out there who may have taken a different path, but that doesn't mean that they don't have the talents that we need to improve our teams.
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and to bring a lot of value to our teams. So the beauty with DE &I is that when we take individuals with all of these various backgrounds and experiences and perspectives and we bring them together and we form this great team, using a sports analogy, you can't have a football team where everyone is a wide receiver.
You have to have people that play other positions. You have to have people that are offensive linemen. You have to have quarterbacks. So you have all of these different positions and by the way, you've got talented individuals that come from a lot of different schools and make their way to the highest leagues. And so if we think about it that way, you can't have the same type of
person and create homogenous teams in our workplace.
So let's talk about the challenges that are facing DE &I today. When we focus on the workplace, many companies are finding it extremely challenging to implement and to sustain DE &I programs and initiatives. One of the biggest challenges that companies have is that there's a resistance to change. We've always done it this way. When you have a company that has
what they consider to be a good culture. Many times they think of DE &I as a nice to have and not something that is necessary. And you will also have individuals who will argue that DE &I does more to divide individuals than it does bringing people together. And I think that DE &I done wrong, there is a danger in
Jay Boykin (16:19.054)
creating divides as opposed to inclusion. But I think that done the right way, DE &I and recognizing the strength in our differences can be a very, very good thing for our cultures and our workplace. So the question of does DE &I still matter here in 2024?
In my opinion, absolutely. And let's talk about why in many episodes, to come, we're going to go a lot deeper into some of these reasons, but I'm going to give you a few that I think are very important. The data indicates that diverse teams, teams that have a variety of different perspectives, experiences, and approaches.
They are much better at problem solving and innovation, creativity of thought than homogenous teams. When you are trying to recruit and get really good talent, younger generations specifically are looking for companies that are reflective of their values. So they're looking for companies that have a social stance, that they're willing to
stand up for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and also willing to stand up for environmental issues. So when you're trying to attract job seekers, this could be a question that they're going to ask you is, how do you feel about diversity? How do you feel about the environment? You have the opportunity with diverse teams to create a really positive corporate culture.
When you create inclusion efforts, when you give people the opportunity to feel that you truly value them and that they belong, all that's going to do is make your culture that much stronger. And people are going to want to come to work every day and to support the projects and the programs that you've got going. So it really does help to create a positive culture.
Jay Boykin (18:40.742)
And it really, when you have a DE &I program in place, it helps to create long-term business sustainability. know, those companies that have these type of programs and initiatives, those companies that are embracing diversity in their workforce are definitely better positioned for long-term success. You are able to adapt
to changes better, you're able to adapt to changing demographics, you can be more competitive, especially if you are competing in a global market, this is gonna make you a much more attractive company.
So now how can companies leverage DNI for better success? As companies begin to think about this, we've talked about the fact that it can be challenging. It starts with leadership commitment. You cannot do any sort of culture change in any business if you don't have buy-in from the top. And when those top leaders help to champion
DENI, the rest of the organization is very likely to follow. And so when you're thinking about these strategies for diversity programs, you really need to think about creating comprehensive DENI strategies. You have to go beyond surface level efforts. You need to think about opportunities for training.
You need to think about opportunities for creating employee resource groups. You need to give employees avenues where they can give feedback to leadership on how they're feeling about different things. So that is very, very important when you're thinking about your strategies is making sure that they're very, very comprehensive. You want to foster an inclusive workplace culture. So.
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Yes, it is important to hire diverse talent, but you want to make sure that all of your talent feels like they are included, that they feel valued, that they feel empowered and that they feel heard. So again, I reiterate the fact that you want to create avenues for feedback so that if you have someone who is experiencing a challenge that they can provide that, that feedback to leadership.
And you also want to make sure that you have leadership diversity. So as you are hiring diverse talent into your company, make sure that your leadership levels, your management team, that that reflects the company that you want to be. And this gives the diverse talent that you're bringing in something to look up to something that they can say, there's a path for me.
I have an opportunity to succeed in this company because look, they've got diverse leaders that look like me or identify like me.
Jay Boykin (22:03.884)
Now, as we think about the future of DNI, I think that there's going to be some interesting trends that we should pay attention to. One is I believe that there's going to be more emphasis on the equity aspect of this. Diversity is important, but equity ensures that everybody has access to
the same opportunities. We'll talk about this. It's not just making sure that everyone gets the same thing, but making sure that everyone gets what they need, even if it's slightly different than someone else in order to succeed. We want to make sure that we've got that in place. I think that since the pandemic, remote and hybrid work became very prevalent.
And while there are companies that are walking those back and trying to get people to come into the office a bit more, I think that hybrid work remote work is here to stay. And I think that companies need to make sure that their D E and I initiatives take into account the fact that you have employees that are remote, that you have employees that may be hybrid and.
making sure that your inclusion efforts also include those employees and that we're not leaving anyone out. And I also think that DE &I is going to focus not just on the bodies that are inside of our buildings, but it's going to talk about the people that we're trying to engage with, namely our clients and our customers and the communities where we are, where we're serving.
So companies are going to need to really take a more holistic approach. And again, not just focusing on how DE &I works internally, but paying attention to their customer base. If you are a company that is a global company, you need to think about the areas where you are looking to expand, where you're looking to sell. I think that those are very, very important to have those type of efforts.
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in this global workforce.
So I really do believe that DNI is here to stay. Some form of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are going to be very important for companies. It's going to make you extremely attractive. I think that this goes beyond just ethical considerations. But
It's becoming a business imperative. You can be more competitive. If you've got two companies that on the surface seem the same, they sell the same product, they compete in the same spaces, I believe, and the data supports the fact that companies that are more diverse are going to be more successful than the companies that do not.
It's going to help you to drive that innovation and you're going to be able to position yourself for long term success. So I hope that this episode resonated with you again, leave me some comments, give me some feedback, hit that subscribe button. We are going to go much deeper into DNI and into specific aspects of this in future episodes.
So I hope you will continue to join us on Just Human. Again, my name is Jay Boykin and I thank you for joining me today.
