On Wednesday, Steve Levy and I kicked off the first of three webcasts hosted by College Recruiter called: Honest Diversity Conversations. The aim of these webcasts is to step outside of the realm of the typical diversity conversations. We want to open the eyes of business owners and HR practitioners alike to the issues and missed opportunities that exist when we don’t consider the impact of what’s going on in society, their homes and most importantly the impact of our policies and procedures.
One of the questions we didn’t get to was:
“Speaking of the racially-fueled riots in cities around the US, we can imagine most companies being tight-lipped about what was going on. In your opinion, does the company have a duty to address social issues of the moment?”
Allow me to answer. Remaining tight-lipped about the racially-fueled topics of late is both a mistake and missed opportunity. When 9/11 happened 14 years ago, there was not a person that I encountered at work or after 5pm that did not want to discuss what happened. I suspect that was the case because we were so blind-sided by the event. However, I also believe it was a constant conversation because it was not just an attack on one demographic; but an attack on people from all walks of life.
The fact is unless an event affects the majority we tend to ignore it or minimize it. Likewise in HR, we tend to ignore racial undertones, sentiments and even discriminatory speech until it is a bigger problem. In my opinion, companies have a duty to speak up about atrocities in society. However, I’d like to add that it is really a matter of preference and what you want to be known for. If you care that your employees see you as a company that genuinely cares about the trajectory of the human race; you may be inclined to tackle this. Conversely, if you don’t see current events or news headlines as connected to your business this may not be something you would address. Either way, all of us in HR must remember that silence is as much of an answer as a carefully crafted one.
If any of these recent events directly affect any portion of your workforce, they will remember your laughter and never-ending chatter during the typical and often-times nonsensical water cooler discussions. They will also remember that you said nothing- if that is what you choose. Both are equally damaging as we live in a time where social responsibility is an expected business competency.
Compliance and legal considerations aside, we work in the human side of business where it is inherently required that we ensure the well-being of our employees. It is our duty to see that people can come to work everyday as a whole person affected by the elements of life and society without judgment.
Steve and I had a spirited conversation about everything from HR not having the guts to have these conversations to why most diversity programs lack on this webcast. We hope you will join us for the remaining two webcasts. You can register here.
Check out the webcast replay below and join the conversation.
Want even more? Check out my preview of the “Honest Diversity Conversations” webcast series on “The Voice of Jobseekers” Podcast here.
One of the things that has troubled me throughout my career is the inability for many people to be truthful in business situations. I’m not naive to the art and power of a carefully crafted message versus being blatantly honest; but I still think we could use more truth and integrity than not in business. HR in particular, has always been an area where I never understood the place for deceit. Fundamentally, people want and expect an increased level of both integrity and truth in HR because of the nature of what we do in an organization. Yet, in so many instances we disappoint when we don’t have the courage to be honest with the C-Suite about apparent organizational opportunities or concerns and equally so – when we aren’t honest with our employees. According to a 2014 American Psychological Association: Work and Well-Being Survey, 1 in 4 workers stated that they don’t trust their employers. The question is why do they feel this way and what can we change to turn this around.
When truth is a business imperative, trust is earned.
If we look at the racial events and rhetoric of the day, it is safe to say very few companies – let alone HR departments feel truthfully comfortable addressing what’s going on in society. Somehow, employers have decided it is a conversation for the water cooler, but not necessarily something for them to address. Just take a look at what happened when Starbucks kicked off their #RaceTogether initiative. Good, bad or indifferent, I still believe that Starbucks was well-intended and extremely brave for trying to tackle this very sensitive topic at an organizational level. The unfortunate thing is Starbucks is just one company. Most companies are generally conflicted as to whether or not they should allow dialogue around racism.
For sustainable change to happen on and off the job, we need many more companies and HR departments to stop and think about how you can constructively discuss race, discrimination and other social injustices in the workplace without being scared straight about the legal ramifications.
Every attempt to tackle racism, prejudice or bias in the workplace is generally seen as a liability. As such, we HR practitioners carefully craft trainings and communications to address things like diversity and inclusion, because it is safe, it’s avant-garde for HR and it fills a compliance need. Meanwhile, the burning questions among your employees about your position on social injustices are looming and your neutrality or lack of a straight answer is perceived as concurrence in the negative.
I am not the neutral kind when it comes to racial injustice. The past few years of senseless killings and racial rhetoric in the U.S. have pushed my colleague/friend Steve Levy and I to write about how HR should be handling Race Relations in a rather blunt exposéof current events. Now, we are happy to share that we will be presenting three consecutive webcasts in September sponsored by our friends at College Recruiter to address the need for “truth in HR”. In fact, the hashtag for our series is: #truthinhr. The series is called: Honest Diversity Conversations. We will let you decide if you think we are “honest” enough. The three part series will address: Race Relations & HR, Discrimination and The Hiring Process, and Bias Leadership.
Please consider joining us. I am listing the webcast topics and dates below. We are aspiring to shift the way HR, jobseekers, and leaders approach these incendiary topics.
In addition, I am finally breaking my silence about some of the more recent events regarding race relations. I am providing an honest synopsis of how I feel. You can watch my latest “Ask Czarina” episode here to see what I have to say.
I hope to see you all next month. Let’s keep talking and thinking about how we can do this better. This is about social responsibility. When you’re in business, it should be a consistent consideration.
Unless you are fortunate enough to have women in your family who will share with you the impact of the inevitable decisions you will make both as a mother and a professional; you would have no clue about the difficult choices that lie ahead – when and if you take that leap. Amidst lackluster maternity leave, pay equity issues, real and perceived concerns of upward mobility among other factors, many women can find themselves feeling inadequate, overwhelmed and discouraged. Not to mention, that we can still see glimmers of the ongoing feud of who does it better: stay-at-home-moms or working moms – which presents another unnecessary layer of guilt. I would wager that we all are doing our best. We shoulder much more responsibility than we are given credit and the policies and practices of bigger business have not caught up with the reality of the average woman.
When I wrote about #EqualPayDay back in April, I asked a single question and sort of pointed the finger at employers by asking: what will they do differently now that “equal pay” is a prominent discussion? It was an important question to ask, because we are so easily moved to superficial action in the name of the latest salacious headline or social catastrophe of the day. As such, I wanted to remind employers that when #EqualPayDay, National Women’s Suffrage Day, Mother’s Day and any other consumerist holiday is over and the hashtags have stopped trending that there is a human that must continue on in obscurity trying to make sense of finances, life, family, identity and career in a society that simply has no place for them.
Sounds grim, but this is the reality of many women who have made a very natural decision to have children. In this process, many of us moms have loss a sense of self while performing one of the most benevolent jobs known to humanity. I had aspirations of climbing the ladder, grappling for a title and reaping the rewards of a decent salary. I chose motherhood and suddenly climbing that ladder had extra rungs that I never saw before childbirth and that decent salary seemed further and further in the distance. I bowed out, but not completely.
There have been glimmers of hope, like the announcement by IBM last week that they will ship breast milk home for traveling mothers free of charge. Still, so many other companies don’t understand or get the magnitude of the reality I have just illustrated and so women have to consider other career options.
You see we are in a time where you don’t have to live in obscurity. Becoming a mom doesn’t have to limit your personal and career growth. In fact, if your career has been at a standstill the problem isn’t your employer -it is you. Social Media and this new reality of global connectedness allows you to create your career reality. If you need to work for someone else, you can do it. If you want to start a business, you can do that. If you have always had a knack for writing, you can pursue that and be recognized. All of these options are possible because we are our own brand ready to be cultivated and marketed in the right setting for a specific purpose.
We all have a purpose. Women deserve to continue with their careers or shift gears if need be. Becoming a mother shouldn’t have to be an all or nothing endeavor. This is why I am so happy to be working with Dr. Hilary Berger, Founder of Work Like a Mother. She was one of my initial clients when I decided to launch my business a few years ago and now two years later I am partnering with her through her Work Like a Mother Career Academy to help some very deserving women get their career mojo back.
Through this academy, our participants will have everything updated from their resumes to their knowledge of how to use social media for personal branding and jobseeking purposes. I am so excited and honored to be in a position to help brilliant women discover their passions and further their careers. If this academy puts a small dent in the number of women who have lost their way in motherhood, I will feel like I have made a difference.
I will be teaching three courses over the next three months that will hopefully open the minds of my fellow mommies and help them get their career mojo back. Follow our workshops via the #wlmacademy hashtag.
If you feel compelled, send a kind word or words of encouragement to our academy participants to let them know they are already headed in the right direction.
Campaign/FTC disclosure:I will receive paid sponsorship for promoting this campaign. I only work with companies I feel have great products, services and offerings. In accordance with my blog disclosure statement, I will only work with and showcase products and/or companies I believe my readers will benefit from. This opportunity was made possible because of my participation in IBM’s #NewWayToWork Futurist Program. I am not formally employed by IBM. All opinions are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.
Image courtesy of IBM.com
There isn’t a week or month that passes where you don’t have the bad fortune of coming across a doom and gloom article about Millennials. If experts aren’t warning us of the demise of the workforce as we know it – they are busy labeling an entire generation of people as being needy, lacking work ethic, technologically savvy and many other half-truths that seem to be fodder for the usual generational conversation.
With our workforce slated to be infused with a 75% millennial workforce by 2025, it is clear that we either need jump on the millennial bandwagon or move out of their way. This generation has learned well from previous generations. They know what they want and will not settle for anything less. Call it “obnoxious” or “entitled” it doesn’t much matter. The point they drive home is that we all have a purpose- we just need to find it and execute.
If we are to believe any of the stereotypes, the millennial-led startups in IBM’s #NewWayToStartUp competition will certainly provide a different lens for this often misunderstood generation.
What is the #NewWayToStartup Competition?
It’s easy to say we support innovation but what are we actually doing about it? IBM has taken action to foster innovation by creating a startup competition of ten millennial-led companies that are focused on social good. They invited one member from each startup to SXSW in March to pitch their venture to an expert panel. Ten startups pitched their companies whereby five startups were eliminated.
The remaining five teams went on to participate in a week long accelerator that included daily challenges and granted them the a year’s access to IBM’s Watson Analytics and their newest software, IBM Verse.
The progress of the startups is documented in webisodes that have chronicled their participation since the pitch event at SXSW.
The grand-prize winner of the competition receives free entrance into TED@IBM for up to three team members.
If the prize sounds cool- you will be equally impressed with the actual companies and founders.
Putting good things back into the world
If you’re going to go to the trouble of putting in the hard work, blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice that is synonymous with entrepreneurship, why not create something that benefits everyone? This is the kind of innovation and creativity that IBM is trying to foster through the #NewWayToStartup competition. Each of the five companies have founded their companies on the premise of being helpful and putting something good back into the world. After watching all of the webisodes, I was inspired. It left me feeling like the world may have a chance – if we have founders and companies like the ones I’m about to describe.
Being under the pressure of strict deadlines and the lens of some of the greatest minds in business is nerve-wrecking. Anyone who has ever pitched their company or has been a spectator of a pitch competition would know how that feels. Bravery comes to mind when I think about how vulnerable you feel as a founder sharing your idea with the world. At a minimum, they should all be applauded for taking a chance on themselves and their companies.
If you think I’m pulling your leg about the greatness of these startups, here is a short description of what each company does. I dare you to not feel inspired by what these millennials missions.
The Lassy Project– gives parents the ability to notify an entire local community about a missing child in seconds. They use a combination of community, data, and technology to create a new global standard for personal and public safety.
Owlet Baby Care-is a wearable infant monitor that can alert parents if their child’s heart rate or oxygen levels are in a dangerous range. They are caring parents who want to usher in a future where, just like a car seat, every baby comes home with a wearable health monitor. A future where there are less infant funerals, and more empowered parents.
Sproutel– makes health and wellness a playful part of everyday life. Their first product, Jerry the Bear, is an interactive learning companion for the 18% of children with chronic illnesses that combines animated content with an electronically enabled stuffed animal.
Stretch Recipes– is an app developed to help everyone eat better and save more by building an amazing app that will help empower people who are stretched for time, energy, resources, and knowledge to enter their budget, choose their meals, and automatically get their shopping list and coupons.
Charity Charge– is a platform to help customers create positive impact each time they make a purchase. Their first tool is a credit card enabling customers to donate 1% cash-back earnings to charities and organizations of their choice.
As a parent, I was immediately moved by ‘The Lassy Project’ ‘Owlet’ and ‘Sproutel’. The worst thing in the world that can happen to a parent- is to have a child go missing. The Lassy Project makes notification simple and quick by notifying networks of loved ones and friends-with the ability to escalate to authorities-if need be.
Two years ago my youngest daughter became ill with a bout of Pneumonia and we nearly lost her. A product like ‘Owlet’ would have been extremely helpful in our initial assessment of her condition. Not to mention that this has the ability to rid us from anymore sudden infant death cases.
With regard to ‘Sproutel’, who doesn’t love a cute teddy bear? It is beyond cool that children with chronic illnesses can have a friend in Jerry The Bear- while also learning more about their disease.
Both ‘Stretch Recipes’ and ‘Charity Charge’ have great promise, as we are in a time where every penny and minute counts for so many families. They are saving people time and putting customers money to work in beneficial ways.
As I mentioned in the beginning, so much of what you hear about millennials is negative. These millennial-led companies are doing what they love while adding to the greater good. In fact, the team at Owlet has taken lower salaries just to see this venture through. This is the kind of passion and sacrifice that awakens the senses and creates engaged workforces. I will wager, that we can all learn a great deal from these founders.
Whether you work for someone or for yourself, it is a necessary practice to ask yourself – if you are:
1) Being of service to others.
2) Working with a purpose in mind.
3) Passionate about what you do?
In Webisode 3, I love the talk the Mayor of Austin, Texas has with the founders. He mentions to them that what they are doing is not an academic exercise. He emphasizes the importance of failing quickly and creating something great in the world. This kind of advice is completely contrary to the advice fed to previous generations. With several generations in the workforce at once, it is no wonder there are misunderstandings and disconnect among the generations.
How much more productive and cohesive could we be as a workforce if we became comfortable with failure? In this webisode, you come to understand that failure is not a negative, but a necessary stepping-stone towards success.
Who will win?
Social voting is going on and ends today. The winner will be chosen on July 1st at 1-2pm EST. I won’t dare make a prediction. The original 10 were great and certainly the final five are all fantastic.
Call me a nerd, but this is the sort of reality television I could get used to. These founders are tackling some of the most important problems of our time. The reach and magnitude of what they are developing has the ability to change lives and the world. IBM should be applauded for giving these innovators the spotlight to share their gifts and passion with us all. This competition has the ability to not only inspire younger children to start their own businesses, but to inspire older generations to create the business they have been putting on the backburner.
The workforce is beginning to look very different- which may scare some. I prefer to get excited about the future. There is definitely something different about millennials, but it isn’t bad. They see the world differently than most generations. At the core of who they are, they care about others and are dedicated to creating the kind of society that favors everyone. On that sentiment alone, I have a renewed sense that the future for my children is bright because millennials are on a mission to make the world better one startup at a time.
Join me in supporting these impressive men and women, by watching the entire webisode series. You can check out the pitch competition below- along with links to all of the subsequent webisodes.
There’s no question that there are things that HR can do to change how we service both the business and our employees. The other side of the coin that rarely gets discussed is how HR is fairly low in the food chain when we look at the contributing factors of why the overall workforce has challenges and issues.
The decision to lag the market, lead the market or remain stagnant with regard to wages- like what we have seen in recent years is administered and managed by Compensation. However, wage increases or stagnation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It has to have higher levels of approval than HR. We can say HR may not be as diligent about pushing back, but how far can we really push it? Unless you have a CEO or CFO who appreciates the value of HR’s consultation; HR is fighting a war with no armaments.
If you canvas the open job vacancies online long enough, you will find a strong presence of job descriptions that appear to include responsibilities and duties enough to for 2 FTE’s ; but it is being marketed for one person. In addition, if you go a step further and apply to a few of these jobs and are lucky to have a conversation with some of these companies; you will also find that the pay isn’t nearly as competitive or fair as you would expect given the employer’s expectations. It’s easy to ask HR why wages are down or stagnant, but perhaps we should be asking the CEO’s why they choose to stagnate wage increases when it is clear that they want more from their workforce. What is further interesting is: a 2014 report from The Economic Policy Institute reports that CEO wages at the largest corporations have increased 937% since 1978 (when adjusted for inflation). According to Rebecca Hiscott of the Huffington Post, the average worker’s compensation grew only 10.2% during that same time period.
Less income has caused lower assets, decreased net worth, increased debt and liabilities. Throw in familial obligations and other personal concerns coupled with work pressures and it may not be hard to understand how we still have around 70% of the workforce being disengaged. I believe the tone gets set at the top. Toxic leadership often leads to toxic HR, particularly when we don’t have the balls to speak up or leave. HR can only be effective in addressing workforce issues if and only if the CEO values the people. They don’t have to necessarily love and buy into what we do in HR. If they have a talent first mentality, they will urge HR to do whatever is necessary to attract and retain talent. Under these circumstances, HR has advocacy at the top as well as the license to create programs and initiatives that favor both the business and employees .
As an HR practitioner, I have had the experience of working in many different environments. Despite our best efforts to make a change or address a concern in our organizations, there were many instances where no changes were made (or the changes were completely different from our initial recommendation). This happens because; ultimately we are not the final authority. A lot of what we do is in consultation to our internal partners. We can argue that the quality and substance of our consultation are the contributing factors to the success of any workforce change or initiative. Still, owners, founders and figureheads need to shoulder some of the responsibility for workforce related issues. I’m not blind or ignorant to the unnecessary complexity and toxicity HR is capable of creating in an organization separate and apart from the CEO’s vision; but it doesn’t come from nowhere.
There was a time that CEO’s could say they “didn’t know” or “they weren’t aware” of the systemic issues in their companies. With social media being the go-to platform to expose companies for everything from fraudulent practices to unfair and discriminatory workplace conditions, you better know what’s going on in your company and be vigilant about addressing any issues. HR can do a lot, but we can only do as much as executive leadership will allow. If the organization is driven by greed and lining the pockets of board members and leadership, HR will be directed to aid and abet that approach.
The question then becomes an ethical and moral one for HR. If you are working in a company that is not doing right by the employees (including HR), do you continue to fight beyond your obvious lack of power settling for marginal wins or do you keep your head down and do as you are told?
Every year, I like to find a different way of celebrating my favorite day: my birthday. Since I am turning 32 next month (I know…awww…), I’ve decided to share 32 revelations I have had during the course of my life about everything from life in general to business. Think of it as daily inspiration for you and therapy for me. It is a challenge for me, because I don’t think I have ever published a post everyday in the entire existence of The Aristocracy of HR. Plus, I recognize that while I am fairly generous in sharing on social media and here, I have only just scraped the surface on sharing who I am when I’m not pontificating how HR and Business can do better. Let’s use the month of March to get to know one another better. I hope at the end of the month, you walk away with something you can use in your own life or business.
Day 16 of 31- Life Data
There’s a lot of talk about pay equality, race equality, women’s rights etc. Equally, I feel that the rhetoric against equality on all of these fronts is increasingly divisive and disrespectful. Additionally, there is something to be said for what goes unsaid, because that too is an answer. Those that read my posts regularly know I don’t shy away from the tough subjects. I have tackled everything from Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” campaign to “Race Relations in the Workplace”. Each time, I learn a little more about the moral paradigm the U.S operates under.
When I called the NYPD out for not dealing with their race issues, I got responses like: “black people are always complaining” or “black people commit most crimes and if they didn’t situations like Ferguson wouldn’t happen.” When I talked about how I thought Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” and “Lean-In” campaigns were short-sighted, I had a man tell me that “there is no such thing as pay inequity.” In all of these instances, I shared my experiences. The comments and moderate backlash is not something I take personally, but I do have a problem when people confuse “experience” and “opinion”.
If I say I have never experienced being discriminated against, but offer up some thoughts based on what I think being discriminated against is like- that is an opinion. If I have worked in Corporate America as a black woman and been passed up for promotions and paid less than my white counterparts- that my friends is a bonafide experience. It is something I would like to call “life data”. No, it hasn’t been incubated and studied with a proper sampling, controls and variables aligned. However, it is something I have experienced and have unofficially corroborated with other black females across the country in similarly situated positions and everything in between. That said, I have every right to speak about these issues.
We have become so excitable about data and proof, that we forget that even one instance of any event serves as some proof that something has occurred. When we are faced with employee complaints or claims in an organization, they are often singular instances of issues that are dealt with on a case-by case basis. It is those individual complaints that often times lead to larger narratives that have to be investigated. If we were to discount the experience of individuals until we had a collection of people coming forward with the same issue- we would:
1) Be dealing with bigger issues because the employee would probably sue or file an outside claim.
2) We would be catching a problem far too late to the detriment of both the workforce and company.
We have gotten very good at discounting the experiences of others in this country. The sentiment is if it’s not happening to me or anyone I know- it isn’t a problem. While I will agree that some of us humans have a completely skewed and screwed up way of viewing the world, even that phenomenon is life data. Everyday we open our eyes and interact in the world, provides experiences that become data we use to inform our decisions in life.
I tell you all of this to say, I am sick and tired of people telling me and others that what we see and experience isn’t real or is at a minimum “a humble opinion”. Until you have walked a day in another person’s shoes, you have no frame of reference. It is not reasonable to swap their experiences out for your sloppy opinion.
The individuals who risked making the comments above forgot to arm themselves with data. I am happy to note that I didn’t go commando, but instead reminded them of the facts using data; I haven’t heard from them since. Poof be gone!
Czarina’s Lesson: Your lack of experience and understanding, isn’t a reason for me to be both silent and blind.
