BOULDER CITY, Nev.–While there are plenty of successes and internal and external payoffs to be found when it comes to DEI initiatives and the creation of employee resource groups (ERGs), those don’t happen without some challenges, beginning at the top of the organization, according to two veterans of the process.
But get it right and it can be as “natural as breathing,” says one person.
Laura Sehres, VP-talent acquisition and DEI at PSCU in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Joe Hankey, senior diversity and inclusion manager with CUNA Mutual in Madison, Wis., recently shared their perspectives during an Underground Xchange hosted by Mitchell, Stankovic Associates that was dedicated the growing presence of ERGs in the credit union community.
Sehres and Hankey offered their experiences and insights in a separate story here in CUToday.info, but also participated in a follow-up Q&A that was moderated by Sue Mitchell, president of Mitchell, Stankovic Associates.
Their comments appear here as part of a week-long series in CUToday.info offering a broader look at employee resource groups.
Below is a look at the questions posed and the responses provided.
Mitchell: Talk about the successes you’ve seen? How has commitment grown and evolved? Do people raise their hands to volunteer?
Sehres: “We originally started with just a small group of impassioned individuals and that was our old steering committee. Then, in 2019 when we revamped our steering committee, we actually posted all of our positions. We wanted to really have a strong, equitable process in selecting our new steering committee and I will tell you I was so surprised to see the number of people who applied for positions and who raised their hand.”
Indeed, Sehres said she went through the interviews just to hear the passion around DEI and wanting to make a difference.
Sehres said another area where she has also watched enthusiasm and interest bloom has been in PSCU’s business resource groups (BRG), as well as in the launch of two more ERGs, one to service the Hispanic/LatinX community, and the other for young professionals.”
“I've seen just the work that each business resource group has done and it has really elevated quite significantly through industry partnerships,” she said. “Every single one of our BRGs has both an internal focus and an external focus and we actually have a connection with a specific industry group depending on the business resource group…I guess the short answer is yes, a lot of people do take their own passion and just elevate it. It's that passion that has really taken the DEI journey and advanced it so much in these last three years.”
Mitchell: When people volunteer and raise their hands it’s typically because they are trailblazers. But it’s tough to take these positions at times. When we talk about senior leadership, we often don’t mention boards. Did you include all executives and board members in these decisions?
Hankey: Senior leadership is right there to help us do this work on a daily basis. While we maybe don't formally engage every senior leader in this work or every board member in this work, there are certainly pockets of that work (being done).
More formally, all of our ERGs have at least two executive sponsors who really play that role of how do you represent your particular ERG in rooms that maybe some of those leaders aren't in?
For example, when we're making a benefits decision in HR, we ask have we talked to X,Y and Z ERG to make sure that this is going to work for everyone? That kind of broker/advocate is incredibly important from an executive sponsorship perspective.
Informally, I think what we've seen over time is that senior leaders are now, rather than kind of going on their own and making decisions about, again, a marketing campaign, they might go to the ERGs themselves to just engage them. It’s, ‘Help me understand this data, help me understand and respond to this particular communication.’ I think it's been incredibly important to think about both from an executive sponsorship perspective and as leaders in the organization where you sit in on these types of decisions. How can you engage people from across the organization to make better decisions? We see the business case for diversity and equity in that we make better decisions when we engage (people).
Mitchell: When you talk about executive commitment, it has to be authentic. People feel it. If you’re not all in and willing to be vulnerable, people feel it. I think that is part of that conversation. So, where are the roadblocks and how do we keep this going?
Sehres: The first thing that comes to mind is we just have to keep talking. We know that whatever is front of mind is what gets the attention. I know for me I'm always having a conversation, looking at something through the lens of diversity, through equity and inclusion.
Once you keep it kind of front and center you start to almost train people to get accustomed to bringing that eye to their own decision-making process. But we need to do more than just talk about it.
You have to figure out how do I operationalize DEI and not only that, but how do I operationalize accountability for DEI? I don’t want to say there aren’t roadblocks; it's just a matter again of chipping away at it and continuing to raise the awareness. In order to make the real kind of change that we're all looking for it's so important that we do operationalize with an eye towards sustainability. Really, at the end of the day that's your role. How do you embed DEI in your organization? I made this comment maybe three years ago that I want DEI to be as natural as breathing and that's kind of what our north star is at PSCU. We’re trying to make it as natural as breathing for all of our leaders and all of our employees.
Another kind of piece of success for DEI is that you have employee-wide ownership. We talked about the board and our executive sponsors and that is super-important, but it's also equally important that you have employee-wide ownership DEI.
Mitchell: Roadblocks are also realities. If we stay in our lane and don’t expect the roadblocks, we’re not going to hear the realities. What have you run into that potentially are the realities?
Hankey: I think the folks who are at the table for your DEI councils, your ERGs, they are doing that work. But to steal Laura's word, how do you make that sustainable and acknowledged in the organization as valued? I worry about the burnout of the ERG leader community. I do not want to run 13 ERGs. I don't think I can.
We rely so heavily on our folks who come to do this work from a passion perspective and they should be getting credit for that work from a career development perspective. There are opportunities to stretch into things that maybe you don't get to do in your day-to-day and to have that acknowledged, to have managers who are able to kind of pull those things out and help recognize and reward the ERG leader community.
I champion community because, to an earlier point, it takes all of us and some of us are or lifting more than others right now and, unfortunately, that tends to move to our underrepresented employees more than are over-represented employees.