Ep 24: How to foster workplace diversity and inclusion

[00:00:00] Jennifer Kim: Diversity, equity and inclusion refers to the holistic practices that make your company more diverse by improving upon everything that you do, whether that's hiring, performance management, feedback, communications, so that internally you are building a stronger team, which then leads to better innovation, better communication with your new team, better able to serve the customers that you have.

[00:00:28] Andrea: Doesn’t matter who you are, you benefit from diversity and inclusion. So I want to talk about the how. Let’s get into how we can foster workplace diversity and inclusion.

[00:00:40] HOST: Hi, This is Small Business, a podcast by Amazon. I’m your host, Andrea Marquez. This is one of our This is Small Business Minisodes - shorter episodes for those of you who want a quicker binge. On this episode, we talk about how to foster workplace diversity and inclusion with Jennifer Kim, the Founder and CEO of Workflow.

[00:00:58] Jennifer Kim: So, I am the founder CEO [00:01:00] of a company called Workflow. We work with startups well, primarily from tech to get people operations, hiring, diversity, inclusion, right from the very, very beginning. So we do that through courses, a community, really anything that helps people take this work seriously given that when you're running a business, getting people right is the most important thing you can do. So I started Workflow.

[00:01:26] Andrea: How can I, as a small business owner ensure diversity throughout all my practices, like the culture of the company from hiring to marketing vs just infusing the company with the word diversity?

[00:01:36] Jennifer Kim: So diversity work, you can see it as a leadership development challenge for yourself. I'll give you an example. Let's say you're running a small business and you are trying to hire a new employee. The easy thing to do is tap into your own network friends, acquaintances, You get a couple maybe interested people, like, okay, this sounds good enough. You know, you're hired. [00:02:00] That is one way of hiring, but by sticking to what's comfortable, maybe what we're missing out on is a pool of candidates that were maybe you wouldn't have considered, that wouldn't have gotten access to you, but ultimately, they end up being a really, really fantastic hire for you.

So diversity is a really key point. It's not necessarily the goal itself. Diversity is the result of really excellent people, HR, culture, practice. So when your hiring is really, really good, you are going to get more diverse players into the fold because instead of just hiring from my friends who statistically, according to studies, they're much more likely to look like you. They're coming from the same background, but that means they probably have similar strengths, but also the same blind spots. If you're building a business, you want to be really building for diverse range of skills, able to see around corners, think much more nimbly, act flexibly, in which case people from different backgrounds [00:03:00] are actually going to help you achieve that more. From there, you're going to be constantly making improvements to your employee experience, your culture, making sure you're open to feedback. And you know, whether you're trying to stay a small business or not, what you're really doing is making your business so much more nimble instead of just hiring many copies of you.

[00:03:22] Andrea: How do we implement that mindset to make it happen?

[00:03:24] Jennifer Kim: So a lot of this work comes from initially having the mindset. I personally do not believe I am good enough to convince you that diversity matters if you already decided you don't care about it. However, what we can do is for people who do care, people who already understand that, you know, valuing diversity means better working environments, better output, better performance, which by the way is not an opinion. This has been scientifically proven over and over again through many, many studies. From there, it is really taking a much more thoughtful, holistic approach to everything that you do internally.

[00:04:00] You know, a few years back I was hiring for an IT position. So when we put up that posting, I think it was like 90 plus percent of applicants were male passing. So if we just went to the convenient way of like, okay, let's just hire, you know, interview a few of these people and see who's the best. We were guaranteeing that this person would end up being a male employee. And that's not a bad thing. If that is absolutely, you know, who is the best hire, that's what we need to do. But to ensure diversity, we decided to go one more step. Why don't we send out a few reach outs on LinkedIn, tapping our networks. Hey, we have this fantastic role open. Here's who we are as a business, why we think this is a good role. So we went out of our way to go tap into some folks who weren't actively looking, but we thought could potentially be good for this role and by targeting people from more marginalized backgrounds, our final slate of candidates ended up being something like, I think it was like two men and two women. [00:05:00] From there, it happened to be so that one of the women was just so wonderful. We would love to have you on the team. If one of the men had been the best ultimate candidate, we would've hired him. And by doing this process, we would've been sure that this is the absolute best candidate. So even if it takes a little, you know, more work, don't you care about having the absolute best talent possible for your team? It's not just more work, if you really believe that people are so critical to getting it right to improve your business.

[00:05:30] Andrea: Can you point out your top two ways to ensure diversity within your business?

[00:05:34] Jennifer Kim: So when it comes to hiring, one of the most important things you can do is actually be very thoughtful and intentional in the very, very beginning when you are literally writing the job description. You can really think about what are the business needs of this role? What does success look like? What would someone already have to know? Like what are the like actual requirements versus what can you teach them on the job? [00:06:00] What are some must haves versus what are some nice to haves? Really going for this exercise and writing down, honestly a lot more longer than you would think, than condensing it down, because what that does is once you have an actually useful job description, you can use that to guide your interviews.

When you are asking very focused interview questions based on, oh, you know, we have a plan to, let's say, open up a new office next year. Therefore we need someone to do X, Y, Z. Ask questions about X, Y, Z. Have you done that before? What does that look like for you? What are some risks that you foresee? So that allows you to ask really relevant job specific questions. When we don't have that, that's when our biases will fill in the gaps. That is when our questions and our judgements go to like, did I like this person? [00:07:00] Because without that anchoring on the actual business need, we then tend to let our biases make our decisions for us.

The second has to be about what do you do to retain, let's say, you know, you're hiring for great diversity, but if people aren't staying, what are we really doing? It feels like a lot of wasted effort. So ways to ensure retention. If there is a imperfection, some kind of bias in your systems, whether it's communication, promotion, performance management processes, maybe you have a really bullying, toxic boss in the workplace, guess who is gonna be the first to feel those effects? It's always the underrepresented people.

So something that I would encourage for all business leaders to consider when someone comes to you with a complaint or a concern, really take it seriously. You know, if someone says like, hey, I'm uncomfortable working with this person, our instinct might be like, well, I'm not uncomfortable with that person. [00:08:00] That person's really nice to me. Like of course they are. But what if that person is not just being sensitive, but they're warning you ahead of time to things that you can't see? Because instead of making it their problem, you could actually go investigate, you know, pay attention, try to gather more data, because often these things really fester.

So overall, you know about retention, it is true that at both organizations there is a discrepancy of retention rates of people from majority groups versus people with marginalized identities. Try to pay really careful attention to why that is. Can you make small improvements? Can you take employee feedback surveys? Are you making yourself available during, whether it's one-on-ones, anonymous surveys with an actually, you know, really competent HR team so that you are receiving that feedback about how to ensure really great culture for particularly marginalized groups because the changes that you make will [00:09:00] end up making things better for once again, everybody.

[00:09:03] Andrea: Jennifer, is there anything else you'd like to say?

[00:09:04] Jennifer Kim: Yeah, this is a really exciting time. It really is. We are really, I think, at a pivotal moment in the diversity, equity, and inclusion space where for a very long time, decades, it was possible to be a great business leader without honestly having to worry about diversity. That is not the world that we live in anymore, if you wanna be a leader, diversity is a part of your job. And I can understand it can be really intimidating. But it's just like any other skill by really taking a, a learner's mindset, doing your research, getting coaching, getting help, trying different things, being honest with your people. I am confident that everyone can really benefit from seeing themselves as a leader that really embraces diversity.

[00:09:50] Host: That was Founder and CEO of Workflow, Jennifer Kim. Diversity is going to help your business succeed -- and this is all backed up by data. So putting in a little extra effort in getting the right people and making sure your business is a [00:10:00] safe and healthy environment for employees is worth it. Here are ways you can ensure diversity in your business that Jennifer mentioned.

• One. When it comes to hiring, write a thorough and detailed job description to avoid any personal biases that could come up later in the interview and make sure to look for employees outside of your circles.
• Two. Ensure retention aka keeping your hires. Underrepresented people are usually the first to face any type of bias or issues in the workplace, so make sure that you listen to your employees when they bring up any issues -- like feeling uncomfortable with a boss or a manager.

That's it for this episode of This is Small Business Minisodes, brought to you by Amazon. On the next episode, we'll be talking about how and when you should offer additional products and how to replicate the successes of what already works.

If you liked what you heard, make sure to subscribe and tell your friends about us by sending them a link to this episode. And we would love to know what you think, so leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It's easier to do it on your phone. [00:11:00] Or send us an email at thisissmallbusiness@amazon.com with your thoughts.

Until next time – This is Small Business, I'm your host Andrea Marquez -- Hasta luego -- and thanks for listening!

CREDITS: This is Small Business is brought to you by Amazon, with technical and story production by JAR Audio. [00:11:20]