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ANGELA: Good afternoon, everybody. How's it-- all right. Let's try one more time. Good afternoon, everybody.
AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.
ANGELA: All right, not bad. My parents would be proud. Both of my parents were teachers. So this is-- and most of my brothers and sisters and their siblings were and my parents' siblings were teachers, so this is kind of me living that family dream. So one more time. Good afternoon, everybody.
AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.
ANGELA: Wonderful. Thank you for indulging me. How is the summit going so far?
AUDIENCE: Good.
ANGELA: Having a good time?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
ANGELA: Are you learning a lot?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
ANGELA: Wonderful. We're going to keep that going and I am absolutely delighted to introduce our keynote speaker for the summit. Tiffani Scott is a global diversity and inclusion leader. She leads diversity inclusion for a Fortune 500 company in the health care industry. And she's been doing this for several years now. Prior to that, this woman was a rocket scientist. Get this, yes. So literally a rocket scientist.
So she knows what she's talking about. She's done work in that industry in engineering for Fortune 500 companies in a number of capacities from project management to design and engineering. She's got a wealth of knowledge. She has earned her bachelor's degree from Brown University, so a fellow ivy. She knows what that's all about and what the student experience is, and she's also done tremendous work as an alumni member of Brown and was honored with an award recognizing her for innovation and putting on the largest alumni affinity reunion in Brown's history.
So she's devoted to this topic. She's doing this work in her company. And I'm just delighted and very excited to hear her speak about what it takes to create an inclusive climate in the workplace, strategies for attracting and retaining and recruiting diverse talent and also creating a climate where people can thrive. So with that being said, no further ado, I'm going to introduce Tiffani Scott.
[APPLAUSE]
TIFFANI SCOTT: Thank you, Angela. I'm very honored to be with all of you here today. I'm happy to share some of my learnings and some experiences to assist you in your journey to building a more inclusive workplace culture. So I want this to be interactive. So feel free to ask questions along the way, because we will have about five to 10 minutes with Q&A at the end, but also if you have a question, raise your hand, and we'll make sure we get a microphone over to you, so that everyone can hear your question.
So what I'm going to talk about today is a little bit more about my background, why I'm passionate about diversity and inclusion, about why it's important, because a lot of people say that diversity and inclusion is the right thing to do. It is. But it's also building the best organization. There's also business and organizational value in diversity and inclusion. I'm also going to talk about some of the key areas of focus of D&I work. And then finally, I'll end with elements of conscious inclusion, how you can do that individual level, at the team level, and also at the workplace level.
So a bit about me. Angela mentioned that I went to Brown. I majored in mechanical engineering. I was the first in my family to graduate from college, so I was first generation. And you know there can be some challenges with that. So most of my career has been technical.
My first job after graduating from Brown was as a rocket scientist or mechanical design engineer not with NASA, but with a company that had a contract with NASA, for design, development, validation, and certification of the space suit. So I did quite a few projects on the space suit to help update the space suit. And I gave quite a few presentations at NASA.
After doing mechanical design engineering, I moved into various roles, related project management, supply chain management, change management. And I would say, being a black woman within corporate America, it was always important to me to help build a more inclusive workplace. And not saying that was necessarily my job, but I believe that everyone has a unique perspective to share. Everyone has something to say. Everyone's voice should be heard.
So it's always important to me to do that as a volunteer within work, outside of work, as a Brown alum, to build that more inclusive culture, where everyone can be heard. And so with Brown, 10 years or so after I graduated, I wanted to get more involved. So that's when I volunteered to be secretary of one of our affinity alumni group associations. Through that experience, I saw that I had skills that I could use a kind of bring the greater community together.
So I served later on as President-elect of the alumni affinity group, later on as President. And that's when I plan these larger unions, which were the largest affinity group reunions in Brown's history at that time. I also helped lead an endowment of a scholarship, the first scholarship for an African-American student. So I really love my experience at Brown, and I really saw how important it was to bring people together.
So after my tenure ended as president of Brown, as a volunteer, I thought, how can I bring that to my workplace. Because I'd been working at a company, Fortune 500 company in the health care industry. I was working as an IT program manager. And at the time, I felt as though-- because I'm a member of the African-American community. And I felt as though when I walked through the hallways, I didn't feel a sense of community. I felt like people didn't say hi to each other. And I was thinking, what can I do?
I was able to bring the Brown alumni community together. Maybe I can bring together my workplace community. So I had an idea and went to HR, that I wanted to launch an African-American employee resource group. At that time at the company, we already had two groups. We had a women's group, and we had a veterans' group. And they had kind of waned in their engagement in that they've been around a long time. And employees knew that those groups were around, but it's just they didn't have engagement they had when they first kicked off.
So I thought, well, maybe with an African-American group-- and not that we had that many African-American employees at the company. So some people told me, don't do it. Like, we don't even have that many black people here. So why would you even start a group. So I went to someone within HR with my suggestion. And I fully expected to be shot down, but they were like, we actually have a real interest in diversity and inclusion at this company. And we would love to launch a new group, and you will be the leader.
And I was shocked, because I was so used to being told I wasn't senior enough to lead or whatever. So the fact that I had an idea and vision, and that they made me the leader, like it opened my eyes and made me see the company in a different way. And that group launched, and it took off more than I ever would have expected. We had local chapters of the ERG across our locations, across the US, and the engagement was amazing.
We had a Black History Month event where we invited a diverse group of leaders to talk about their career paths or trajectory. They weren't all African-American. We made it a Black History Month event. It was really just about career development, learning from other people's challenges. And we were able to pack out the auditorium we have in our building, which is about 250 people. I never would have expected that we would have had a Black History Month event that attracted that many people. But the great thing was everyone got something out of it, because that's what diversity is.
It's not just about women, minorities, people with disabilities. It's about everyone. How can we build a better us? How can we build a stronger organization? So that experience with the ERG is what led me to my current role, because I would say when I started out my career as an engineer, I never saw myself as being a diversity leader of a company, because my role sits within HR. It's not what I saw myself doing.
But the way I've led my life and the things I'm passionate about, it does make perfect sense that this is where I landed. And when I started this role, and I posted it on my social media, I think I got the most likes I've ever gotten of anything I've ever posted, because I think people see my experiences through Brown and everything I was doing outside of work. It made sense that it should be the job that I had, that I get paid to do, not just as a volunteer.
So my take away from my experience thus far is don't be afraid to step up and speak out. If you have an idea, don't be afraid to share it, because there's a unique perspective that you can use that probably can help others. So always be bold and brave in sharing your ideas.
So I'll start a bit about with my definitions for inclusion and diversity, which are pretty standard definitions, which I'm sure most of you have heard. But inclusion is the state of being valued, respected, and supported. So this is about everyone feeling as though their opinion matters. Everyone has their own unique perspective that should be shared. Inclusion, when you make people feel included, you're going to get the best out of them. They're not going to be hesitant to speak up. They're going to give their all for the organization, because they feel included and because they feel that they matter.
Diversity is any dimension that can be used to differentiate groups of people from one another. So that's not just gender, ethnicity. That's any dimension that differentiates us. So here is the diversity iceberg, and above the waterline, you have gender, age, race, abilities, language, and accent. So those are the things that you think of when you typically look at someone. But these aren't all the characteristics that make them them.
Below the waterline, you have ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital or parental status, values and beliefs, gender identity, education. So all those things below the waterline are just as important to what makes you you. And all these things below the waterline should also be built into an organization's diversity strategy. It's not just about having more women and more minorities. It's about making sure everyone feels included, which can be challenging because we're all different. We're all unique individuals. Building an inclusive workplace where people feel comfortable being themselves, they're able to be their authentic selves. And that's, again, when you get the best out of everyone.
So, again, it's not just the right thing to do, because that's something that at my company when we first kind of kicked off our diversity and inclusion efforts, that's what our CEO would usually lead with. It's the right thing to do. Yes, it is. But there's also business value in it. Diverse teams tend to perform homogeneous teams. So McKinsey had a report called "Why Diversity Matters," and the research shows that across industries, across organizations, that companies with more diverse workforces perform better financially.
They found that companies that are gender diverse are 15% more likely to outperform a homogeneous team, and companies that are ethnically diverse are 35% more likely to outperform. And the reason isn't just because they have women or minorities on their leadership team. It goes back to the iceberg. It goes back to if someone has different education, religion, background, culture, that feeds into their perspective.
So when you have a diverse team with an inclusive culture, and you're able to bring those different perspectives together and challenge each other respectfully, you're able to arrive at a better solution, because you're all looking at the same problem different ways. And chances are, you're going to arrive at a solution that serves the majority of the needs of the population.
One thing about the company I work at is we're within the health care industry. So we want to help people. So yes, it's the right thing to do to be diverse and inclusive and have that type of culture. But it's actually, more importantly, we can better serve our customers and patients around the world, because we serve a very diverse base of patients and customers. So we want to tap into the insights of our employees, their unique perspectives, based on their culture, based on gender, based on their sexual orientation, their gender identity. So we want to use their insights to better serve our customers and patients around the world.
One thing that I was really proud about is just within the last couple days, on our internet, the communications team posted an article, where a marketing director, who happens to be African-American, he was able to develop a unique way to communicate with their customers, with our customers within his business unit.
And he was saying because his customers are very diverse, gender diverse, sexual orientation, ethnicity, so he was able to pilot a way to communicate with the customers more effectively, because he leveraged the insights of his diverse team to better communicate with those customers. So that's why it's important, because it's building a better organization, building better products, better solutions, better processes for everyone once you leverage those diverse insights across your team.
This quote really moved me because I was on a panel discussion last year, and one of my fellow panelists said this. Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. So all of us are talented in different ways. But what sometimes prevents that talent from being seen is we don't have an equitable playing field. So it's making sure when you are an ally, that you're helping to extend opportunity to those who deserve it, because extending an opportunity isn't about giving someone a handout. It's about giving someone a hand up.
I feel like that's what happened with me when I stepped up and had that idea to launch the ERG. I had senior leaders that I had never met before, but they liked my idea, and they supported me, and then when this job I'm in now was created, they tapped me in to interview for it, which I deserved it, but it was just great to have someone kind of shine that light on me to give me that opportunity to step up, whereas in other situations, sometimes at other companies, I felt like, I had to more be in the shadows, you know, like maybe my voice wouldn't be heard.
But it's important that as an ally that you're always doing what you can. Like, let's say you have a meeting, and there's someone who's usually quiet, and they don't feel comfortable speaking up, maybe you ask them their opinion, or maybe if they have a good idea, and they share it in the meeting, and let's say that good idea is overlooked, and they move on to the next topic, maybe what happens is-- maybe what happens-- oh, was there a sound?
OK. So one thing that's good is if someone calls out a great idea in the meeting that you help amplify that idea, you help amplify the ideas so that others within the team are able to recognize that idea and acknowledge it, and maybe that's the solution that solves the problem that the team was discussing.
Should I-- can I go to the next slide?
AUDIENCE: My apologies.
TIFFANI SCOTT: No, it's OK. Thank you.
So I'm going to talk a little about some of my challenges and successes of being within this role. And actually, let me pause because I've been doing a lot of talking. Are there any questions or comments before I move on to those challenges and successes? Any comments or clarifications? Remember just raise your hand if you have a question and we'll make sure we get a microphone over to you.
ANGELA: Any questions? No?
TIFFANI SCOTT: OK.
And feel free, if you have a question along the way, feel free to just raise your hand and ask. So some of my challenges and successes. So as I mentioned, this was a new role for me. Most of my previous career was technical. And my current role sits within HR. So one challenge was that I did not have corporate D&I experience. I had it as a volunteer, but there are a lot of things around the HR functions that I had to learn, which was a very steep learning curve, because I partner very closely with our talent acquisition and recruiting team. I partner closely with talent management, with our benefits team.
So I was learning a lot for the first time and things I just kind of took for granted, because being in the technical field, a different field, I didn't really think about what HR did. So that was a big challenge, but I would say that I've learned a lot over my years in this position, because I ask questions. I'm not afraid to ask questions. And I'm not afraid to tell people that I'm not an HR professional, so that they don't just take it for granted that I understand some of the basic HR functions.
So that's a challenge I feel like I've been able to successfully overcome. Another challenge is having limited resources and budget. So when I first started in my role, I was the only person within the Office of Inclusion and Diversity. And it's funny, because of my boss at the time, I told him I wanted to create the Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the company. I'm like, what do I need to do? He's like, just do it. It is funny because I was the only person within that office.
But now, we have four within our team. So it's great to see that we started with one, me, and now we have four. And it's a global team. The company has more than 50,000 employees worldwide. So there is a lot to accomplish, but it's just great to see that, yes, we started out with limited resources, but we're slowly growing. And that's common across any diversity and inclusion function in most companies. There are limited resources and limited budget.
But sometimes, the more you're able to demonstrate, the more resources that you get, and the more budget you're able to get. So I'm hoping that over time, our budget will grow as well. Also, another challenge is identifying tangible actions to actually make progress, because one indicator, I guess, that you're making progress with diversity and inclusion is, let's say, you have diverse people on your leadership team. But sometimes, you're far off from that.
So my challenge was trying to figure out what was achievable, what were some of the low hanging fruits, some of the short-term goals, and what could we do to make progress. So I would say in the short term, one thing was great that-- because I mentioned how when I launched the African-American group, there was just the women's group and the veterans' group. So when I was able to demonstrate success for African-American group, we had about six or seven more employee resource groups that launched within a year after.
So we now have a disabilities group. We have an LGBT group. We have an Asian group, Latino. I feel like I'm missing something. Oh, and we have a millennial group. So that was some of the progress that we launched these additional employee resource groups that actually all work together. They work together. They plan their own events. But they also work together to plan joint partnered events as well, and events that help appeal to various audiences within our organization.
And I would say another tangible action is hosting events where we highlight diversity. One example is the Black History Month event, where it wasn't about African-Americans specifically, but it was about diverse leaders in their career path. So it's also offering content and education that can help bring everyone along within the organization. And then the last challenge was the metrics, because one big thing we measured ourselves against at the beginning was representation.
So representation, how many women do we have in leadership positions? How many women do we have at management level positions? How many minorities we have? And it was the bane of my existence, because I had to calculate everything manually because we didn't have the support at the time. But I am a rocket scientist, so I was able to figure it out. And I had a massive spreadsheet of 50,000 lines. I had to build my own pivot charts to try and calculate our metrics and then calculate it for each leader. It was very challenging.
But I'm happy to say we've moved forward, where now we've built out an HR analytics function, which their job is to do HR analytics. But now we've automated more of these reports. And as opposed to just measuring ourselves against representation, which is more of a lagging indicator, now we're measuring ourselves against more leading indicators, which I'll share more metrics on later slides.
And some of my successes. So I did go into this role, I would say with rose-colored glasses, because I kind of thought, not having an HR background, I was thinking, like, oh this is easy. We just need to do this, this, and that, and then that's going to change everything. I didn't realize how complex the organization was that I worked in, and, you know, any organization is complex.
But when I realized how involved it was, what was really encouraging to me is that as I started to travel to our various locations around the world, how well I was received. And I would just go, and I just had a roadshow, where I would talk about diversity and inclusion, why it was important, just to educate people. And I started posting more things on our internet, just to share content, share learning, share that the ERGs were hosting successful events.
And it was great that when I went to these other company locations the people knew who I was, which I didn't even expect. Like, people in the hallway didn't even know-- like you're doing a great job. Like wow, am I? Like, thanks. And so it was just great that being at a company-- because the company I'm at has been around for over 100 years. So it was amazing that it was well-received and that employees did want to be in a more inclusive work environment.
So I was happy. It was just nice to have people cheer me on and for more people to help pick up the work and help further inclusion and diversity at the company. So that's something that really was encouraging to me, that it wasn't just me trying to change the world. There was a whole coalition behind me that's growing and that we all want to make a difference and build a better organization for everyone where everyone feels included.
I also am proud that there's increased awareness and understanding of the value of building a more inclusive culture, because I wanted to move away from it's just the right thing to do to this is something that we're doing to build a better company to become more profitable, to be more innovative. We're doing this to drive change, change for the better. I also appreciated that there became more shared accountability across the organization.
One of my early successes was that while everyone's measured against their own performance goals, right? So at the end of the year, you're measured against what performance goals you set the beginning of the year, and you have your review with your manager. One addition was having a common performance goal related to diversity, where everyone was measured against something that they did to further inclusion and diversity.
And with that, you know, some of people's goals were a little fluffy, like I attended an online course, or I watched a webinar. But then some people were able to actually have more meaty goals, like I actually attended a career fair to recruit diverse talent. So that's something that, again, it was a shift. It was a culture shift in that we realize it's not just about HR trying to figure it out, but how can we, as an organization, as a team, build a more inclusive culture? So what can everyone do to help make a difference, because, again, it's not about just building a better culture for those that consider themselves diverse. It's building a better culture for everyone, so no one's feeling left out.
And then as I mentioned, the automated standardized measures report. So I was very happy that we've come along with that. I work with the HR analytics team to help build these reports. So it's made my life easier. And also, it's helped equip more people with information.
So as opposed to them just emailing me, asking me what their representation numbers are, and all that, now they're able to run the reports themselves, so they also can drive change where they need, to see where maybe they could do a little bit better in terms of being more inclusive and diverse within their organization within the larger organization.
So I'll pause there. Questions or comments? Yeah. Oh, actually, microphone.
AUDIENCE: Hi, my name is Vanessa. I just had a question. How did you go about getting leadership's buy-in to incorporate diversity metrics in the evaluation process?
TIFFANI SCOTT: Well, I would say what was on my side is that my boss at the time-- it's something that he was already interested in before I even took on the role. It's just he wasn't able to help execute it. And he was a great advocate in that we needed to make it more tangible. So I would say with his support, it helped, because not everybody was for it. But he was able to kind of get his counterparts at the leadership level to see the value of it.
But it was a little controversial, because some people were like, that doesn't make any sense. Why are we even adding that to everyone's performance goals? But it's something that it stuck. So for the last couple of years, that's what we've done. And I would say, that's been most important probably with anything I've tried to do is that if I have senior leadership support or at least one person that's on my side, they'll help to get others to see that this might be something we want to try. This is something we might want to do. If it doesn't work, fine. We don't have to do it. But let's at least try and see if it makes a difference. Any other questions before I move on?
AUDIENCE: How do you avoid having employees just go through the motions and just take this course and take this other course and attend this talk and believe that's it?
TIFFANI SCOTT: Right. Well, that can be challenging, because one thing I've noticed is that it seems like sometimes the numbers, the metrics can be very political, in that some organizations are like, oh, well, you calculated my metrics wrong. Or the report's wrong. We actually have more women, we have more minorities. And it's almost like they're so caught up in the numbers that they're not seeing the bigger picture that we're trying to build a more inclusive workplace. It's not just about the metrics.
And also there's a challenge where sometimes people say the right things, but they really don't believe it that we need a more diverse and inclusive workplace. So I would say it's just trying to reach people in different ways. So it's not just about going to career fair. It's not just about taking an unconscious bias class. It's also asking. I would see those people that maybe don't believe in it, what are some of their ideas of what would make it real for them, because sometimes that helps, because you might be coming at it from one direction, and they want to do it-- and they have a completely different perspective.
So I think that's helped, like asking others what they would like to do as opposed to just going through the motions of what you're prescribing for them to do.
AUDIENCE: So on that line of thought, do you like do teamwork that is intentional that you mix people from different identities?
TIFFANI SCOTT: Well, that's something that we've been working on. We do, of course, always encourage diverse teams. But we're looking for ways that involve our employee resource groups in helping to solve business problems, which is something we're still figuring it out. We don't want to set up the ERGs to fail, because we want to make sure we're giving them a business problem that makes sense, and they have the expertise to approach the problem.
So I would say that's something-- I'm hoping once we're able to do that more consistently, that will show, again, like the business value of diversity, because I mean, right now, we're leaving it up to business leaders to kind of figure out to have diverse teams, but we're not really able to measure are their diverse teams doing better. But I would say with the ERG it's a good way for us to pilot how can we show the value of diverse teams. Any other questions before I move on?
So the goal of this is to increase employee engagement. So this shows that uniqueness plus belonging equals engagement. So you want employees to believe that they're unique, their unique perspective has value. You also want employees to feel as though they belong to the organization, that they're part of this greater collective. And when you put together a uniqueness and belonging, you get increased engagement.
Employees are willing to go above and beyond to meet the organization's goals, because they feel as though they matter, that they also belong to this larger team. And when you have environments where you create this sense of uniqueness and belonging, you find that organizations are twice as likely to meet or exceed their financial targets, they're three times as likely to be considered a high performing team, six times more likely to be innovative, and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes. So again, it's not just the right thing to do. But it's really value for the organization when you're able to create this type of environment.
So now I'm going talk a bit about some of the key areas of focus within D&I work. So this isn't an exhaustive list, but just some of the top things that I've focused on over the last year or so within my role. So first, metrics. I'll talk about different types of metrics. I'll speak briefly about how to get leaders engaged, why it's important, and then also communications and transparency. If you're not talking about what you're doing and communicating that out across the organization, people are going to assume you're not doing anything.
So it's important to really communicate the large successes, the small successes, just so everyone knows progress is being made, and also people might have suggestions on what else could be done to build that more inclusive workplace. So these are some of the metrics that leaders are held accountable for. As I mentioned, representation. That was our only metric at the beginning. That's the only thing to measure that's something we have data for. And that is more of a lagging indicator, because if we had-- it's great if we had female leaders on our team, but sometimes, it takes years for that to happen.
So that metric was OK, and it's still important, but we started to add more leading indicators, so that we could see how we're doing, as opposed to just waiting to see, do we have diverse leadership. So another one is diversity attrition rates. So with diversity attrition, it's looking at the turnover, who are we losing. And we look at who were losing, those who are considered diverse, but we compare that to our group of white men.
So are we losing women or minorities at a higher rate than white men, or is it equal? And if it is higher, than is there a reason why? Are there some trends that we can address, some structural issues and challenges we can address? So we look at that across demographic groups, what's our attrition. Also diversity recruiting that's one that I've gotten much closer to recently, because the company I'm at, we've been going to career fairs for years, but usually we just show up.
We don't necessarily hire people. We just show up and have our booth. And so now, what we're trying to do is actually hire people, because that's what other companies are doing. So now we have metrics around the recruiting. So it's how many resumes did we collect, how many candidates did we interview at the career fair, how many people applied for certain roles online after they heard about us at a career fair, after they applied online, how many of them got interviews, how many were extended offers, and ultimately, how many were hired, because we want to measure at each career fair venue, how are we doing. Like, career fairs are very expensive to participate in. So is it worth the investment? Are we hiring people? Are we finding the right types of talent?
So that's something that we've really expanded-- I'm working with analysts now to design a diversity-- a talent acquisition dashboard so that we can better track what happens with the career fairs. Diverse employee engagement. So part of that is basically just how do employees feel. Like, do you have a survey? The standard questions, maybe focus groups, because at my company we do both. We have standard surveys, but also I helped implement some focus groups where we actually had a conversation with different groups of diverse employees. Ask them how are things going, like, you know, are there areas we can improve, what's some of the feedback that you have one things we could do differently, and what are some of the things that you feel you're doing well?
Because a survey is one way to get information, but having that qualitative conversation is helpful to identify other opportunities. Diverse talent mobility. So similar to attrition, we also measure the promotion rates of diverse groups as compared to white men at the company to see is it in par, or are certain groups moving faster than others. And again, if that is the case, then what are the reasons. Like, are there structural challenges or barriers, or what can we do to make sure that everyone does have an opportunity to be promoted or make lateral moves throughout their career?
ERG participation. So we also measure in terms of what's the membership lists of the various ERGs, how many people attend their events, what do people think about the ERG, because now that some of our ERGs have been around for a while, we actually have the ERGs doing their own surveys, we ask their members, is the ERG providing what you're looking for? And then finally we have our D&I training and scores and participation.
So we're rolling out unconscious bias training. So we're also having people rate it to see basically what do they think of the training? Is the content meeting their needs? So leadership engagement. It's really important to make progress. So to make progress, you want to get you some good leaders onboard. You don't want just HR or certain functions talking about diversity an inclusion. You want your leaders to understand why it's important and for them also to be sharing the same message.
At my company, we have an Executive Diversity Council, which has been around about a year. And so what they do is they provide advisory support for our function. So we share with them our strategy and things we're doing, and they provide feedback in terms of what do they think and does it meet the needs of their particular business unit or region.
They also help raise general awareness of D&I, so they amplify some of the messages and talking points, so that, again, they're not just-- people across the organization aren't just hearing it from the office of D&I. They're hearing it from their own leaders as well. They also help engage employees, get their feedback on what matters to them, and they also, overall, help improve our organizational D&I outcomes and efforts, because when you have more people involved and more people's perspective being accounted for, it's going to help drive better business outcomes.
And this is just high level some of the communication channels, because as I said, if you don't communicate about what's happening, people assume nothing's happening. So what I'd use is working with corporate communications have a newsletter, so they'll be a little blurb about diversity and inclusion within the global newsletter about the overall business and what's going on, but sharing some of our wins, some of the great things that have happened, and sharing it across the organization, and making sure that we share stories from various regions, so from Latin America, greater Asia, and so forth, so they're not just the United States focused.
But in our case, it's a global organization. So we make sure we're showcasing global stories so that everyone knows that progress is being made across the organization. Also, there's targeted email distribution. That's when maybe the ERGs want to send out information to their particular mailing lists. We have our intranet, where we share a lot of our success stories and contribute articles. We have our town halls and meetings, where our CEO and other senior leaders share, again, successes.
We have our social media, both internally and externally. Externally, we used to be very, very, very conservative with sharing anything externally on our social media. But now, that's actually improved over the last year, where we feel more comfortable sharing our successes. We're at a career fair, we'll share it on social media, because hopefully we'll get more people to come to our booth. And then also, video, and that's video used both internally and externally, maybe snippets of a successful event. Maybe it's educational content.
But video is also very helpful with reaching people. And this is my last slide. So elements of conscious inclusion, because all of us have unconscious bias. All of us have stereotypes, where we might assume someone feels a certain way or just because they look a certain way. But what can we do to consciously include those that are like us, those that are not like us? And we can do that at the individual level, at the team level, and at the workplace level.
So at the individual level, again, it's important to be your authentic self. But feel comfortable reaching out to someone different from yourself and maybe inviting them to lunch, maybe having a conversation. Maybe they have a different perspective than you do, and maybe you ask them some questions about it, just in a curious way, just to learn more, because in most cases, we have more in common than what's different about us. So just don't be shy about reaching out to learn and get to know people that are unlike yourselves and not just staying with your own homogeneous group.
At the team level, you want to build community through bonding and bridging. So maybe there's team building exercises. Maybe work on a problem together. Maybe there's some type of reward for whoever has the most innovative idea. But it's important to consciously include your team members. What I mentioned before was if you're in a team meeting, and let's say that you have a team member that doesn't speak up, or they're kind of shy about sharing their ideas, maybe you ask them their opinion, so that they can share it, and they're more comfortable speaking up.
So there's always something you can do to help build that more inclusive team atmosphere. And finally at the workplace level, honor the narrative. So the organization has a collective narrative. Who are we as an organization? And you also want to incorporate the individual narrative. So one thing that we do at my company is we have these dialogue sessions where senior leaders actually share their own story as it relates to diversity.
And it's their story about how they grew up, and maybe they grew up in a diverse environment, or they didn't. But they share either way, because it kind of helps you get to know people at a deeper level, so that you're not just making assumptions based on how they look, where they're from, where they live. It's about getting to know people on another level. So that's something that our dialogues around diversity have been very successful. I think we have one like every month. And it's something that we're trying to adapt across the organization, because, again, it's just helping to get to know each other at a different level. And that's how you're able to build inclusivity, because people are comfortable being themselves, and you're able to bring everyone in.
So I will pause now for Q&A, because I know I'm almost at time. So questions, comments.
AUDIENCE: Thank you. That was really interesting. In terms of assessing the reasons why people are not retained [INAUDIBLE], do you have specific exit interviews or what kinds of-- how do you tease out that information in particular?
TIFFANI SCOTT: So the way we do it now, and I think we need to do a better job. So some organization-- some sub organizations have exit interviews, but it's not a formal process. So right now, there's a reason code within our HR information system. And the reason codes are like work-life balance, career interest not offered.
But they're so generic, it was-- I think we have-- a formal exit interview process would be good, because I heard once that there was a lot of senior women leaving finance. Why is that? And like, you know, work-life balance might be the reason. But then I heard anecdotally, well, no, it's because it's not an inclusive culture. It's a boys club. Everyone's gone out for drinks after work, and I can't do it because I have kids. I need to get home to my kids.
So yeah, that's something that we're starting to look at, and I think we just need to dig a bit deeper to find out those common reasons why people are leaving.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, I'm wondering if because of the new reliance on HR technology and HR systems that are all generic, we're not getting at those reasons.
TIFFANI SCOTT: Not yet. I think the exit interview would really help.
ANGELA: Not to hone in, but I do just want to-- this is Angela. I'm sitting down still. But I did want to share, because this is coming up, that we do have an HR analytics function now here at Cornell, and we do have ourselves an exit interview that has been rolled out since the start of this year, where we are collecting that data.
So as you're hearing Tiffani speak, you know, I hope you hear and see the parallels between our metrics, what we're trying to do and some of the stuff that's happening in the private sector as well. And for more questions--
TIFFANI SCOTT: More questions?
AUDIENCE: You mentioned something about some of the trainings that you were rolling out, and I'm curious as to whether in your company, there are mandatory trainings or whether things are still at a voluntary--
TIFFANI SCOTT: Yeah, so what we're doing is we don't want to mandate it, because a lot of times you mandate the type of training, there is a backlash. So what we're doing is we're strongly encouraging each of our business units to roll it out. But it's really more so on the-- so HR isn't mandating that everyone gets trained. It's more that the business unit determines for their organization, do they want to train everyone, do they just want to change train their people managers, just want to train their leadership team at the very top?
So it's something that I don't think we're ever going to mandate it, because I think yeah, you force people to do it, then they're not going to want to do it. So we want it to be more like the carrot versus the stick, so that we kind of create great training educational content, so people want to take the training. So that's the way we're approaching it.
Another question over there.
ANGELA: You mentioned you guys have an unconscious bias training. What other types of trainings do you guys offer?
TIFFANI SCOTT: Right now, that's the main thing we have, because we do have this other online learning tool where you have custom learning paths, not just about diversity, but other things as well. Something else we're also doing is it's a training called Managers' Essentials where we have diversity and inclusion as part of it, so that we're teaching managers to be more inclusive, how to better manage a culturally diverse team.
So that's something, again, it's not mandated, but we're trying to incorporate that throughout more of our trainings, diversity and inclusion. So people don't see it as an add-on, something separate, something extra that they have to do. We want diversity and inclusion to be ingrained into what we do, ingrained into our culture, so that, you know, everyone just does it naturally. You don't have to think, oh, let me go include that person. No, you do that because that's the way we do things here.
More questions? I know we're almost at time. OK. Well, thank you so much for indulging me today. I really enjoyed it. And feel free to reach out if you have any questions that come up after the session. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Tiffany Scott, Global Inclusion and Diversity, the keynote speaker at the first Inclusive Excellence Summit June 11, 2019 with workshops and facilitated sessions for Cornell staff.
