The importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace cannot be understated, and on this episode, we have a guest with a vast wealth of knowledge in this area: Stephanie Howlett, the CEO of DiversityNL.

For the full show notes, head on over to https://reflectivemarketing.com/podcast/Stephanie-Howlett-How-to-Attract-and-Retain-a-Diverse-Workforce

Krystal Hobbs 0:04

Welcome to Beyond The Tools, the podcast that helps contractors attract more leads, grow their business, and finally get off the tools. In each episode, you'll discover marketing tactics that work. You'll get actionable insights from other successful contractors, and connect with experts to help you grow. I'm your host, Krystal Hobbs, owner of a social media agency that helps contractors attract and convert more leads. Get ready to take your business to the next level so you can finally enjoy the fruits of your hard labor. Ready, let's go!

Krystal Hobbs 0:47

What I love about this conversation today is that Stephanie isn't afraid to dig into difficult topics, and really answer the questions that a lot of us are afraid to ask. I know that you want to be a welcoming workplace, but I also know that change is hard. And if we want to grow our businesses, we need to open up the pool of potential people that can work for us. So if you're in a position where you really want to be a progressive workplace, you want your employees to feel supported and welcomed, and you can attract all different kinds of people. This is the episode for you.

And I think it's something that everyone can learn from, I certainly learned a lot in this conversation. And Stephanie is an incredible resource to help us all create a place where employees feel like they can belong, and can bring their true authentic selves to work. I love this conversation. I hope you do too. And I'd love to hear what changes you're going to be making in your workplace as a result of this. So let's head on over and chat with Stephanie.

Krystal Hobbs 3:21

Stephanie, welcome to Beyond the tools. I'm super excited to have you here this morning.

Stephanie Howlett 3:26

I'm beyond excited to be here. So thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Krystal Hobbs 3:30

So diversity and inclusion are obviously hot topics these days. But when we talk about diversity inclusion, what exactly does that mean, and why is it important in the workplace?

Stephanie Howlett 3:44

So diversity, equity, and inclusion, I'll put that in there. Because really, we need those three things in order to have to belong in the workplace. So looking at who's in your workplace, really having a look at the metrics, having a look at what your organization is doing some of the Changemaker things, really having a look at what every single person is taking on, because diversity, equity inclusion is every one thing that has to happen in the workplace, everyone has to be involved, everyone's voice has to be heard. And it's not just the HR person, it's really from a CEO to your middle managers, to every single person that's in that work needs to be involved in diversity, equity inclusion making sure that people feel that they're part of the organization people feel included.

Krystal Hobbs 4:28

That makes sense. And I mean, to give a bit of context to, especially in the trades, which is where most of our listeners are working in that industry. We often talk about a labor shortage. So I know in the US, I think it's less than 10% of the workforce and the trades are women and I think it's even less than in Canada. I think it's like 3% and that's obviously just a snapshot that's not even talking about minorities or gender diversity or sexual orientation and, and all the other types of people that there are. So I think what we really have here is an opportunity to expand your workforce essentially.

Stephanie Howlett 5:15

Absolutely. I think every single organization, especially since the pandemic, has been looking at labor market shortages, how do we get folks through our door? Because their businesses are suffering people are leaving. And really how do we get people engaged? And when we look at 50% of our workforce females are those who identify as female. And then we have folks who are part of the equity-seeking groups. So indigenous persons with disabilities women, we have racialized minorities and a 2SLGBTQ+ community. So we look at all these five equity-seeking groups, it really makes a whole lot of sense to look at what we're doing within organizations to create safe places and spaces for people to come and be themselves.

Krystal Hobbs 5:59

That's interesting. So I am curious when the average client comes to you, and they're looking at this in their workplace, what spurs that for them? Why do they start to look at whether we really need to be thinking about this more or making our workplaces more friendly?

Stephanie Howlett 6:17

So I think over the past two, or three years, people's points of view have changed, really, with diversity, equity, and inclusion. And I think a big part of that movement was George Floyd and what happened to him in the US, I think, that really portrayed a big light and shone a big light on organizations, we need to do better. And we need to do more to be inclusive of everyone, not just white, middle-aged men who are CEOs of many of our organizations. So only 2% of CEOs are females are those who identify as female. And when we get into more statistics, it's even less than that for minority groups. So really having a look at how we make this in every one thing. How we make everyone feel included in our organizations is it's really key. We can have diversity, equity, and inclusion without every single one of those things, diversity without equity. And then without them, inclusion comes from these things. And then that sense of belonging, that sense of wanting to stay within an organization, and we look at that a lot of organizations want education, they want training, they want information, they want to know how can we do more? They want to know if we're how we attract employees at different equity, those equity-seeking groups. But it all has to start with really looking at our metrics. So if your CEOs and managers know your metrics, as we know, what gets measured, is what gets done within organizations. And that's huge. So if you're not measuring it, how do you know who's in your organization? How to be supportive of them?

Krystal Hobbs 7:48

That's an interesting point, because I know there's a lot of conversation around, quote us, what's your take on that?

Stephanie Howlett 7:56

So I had a fascinating conversation yesterday with the DEI group and part of Atlantic Canada. And we talked a lot about hiring people based on tension. So intentional hiring, I think intentional hiring is fantastic because you look at who's within your workplace and intentionally hire someone because you need that person within your organization. Because you need their skill set. You need their extra thought process, you need their vantage point and point of view. So you're in essence saying, we don't have this person at our table, and we need them here. Why? Because you're gonna have greater productivity, you're gonna have like, 22% greater productivity, when you have diversity, equity illusion, that's, that's a whole lot. That's a big statistic you have higher customer satisfaction by 39%, right, we all want satisfied customers, right? And if it's 39% more satisfied customers, that's huge. And another piece of the why is higher productivity, if you have 27%, higher productivity, because people feel engaged, and are part of your organization. So and another part is you're having lower turnover rates when you have involved 22% lower turnover rates. The question is, why wouldn't you look at diversity, and equity inclusion?

Krystal Hobbs 9:12

That's interesting. And I know, I was having a conversation with a friend this morning kind of talking about, that I was going to be doing this interview is like, well, what are some of the questions I should ask? And, they said, “Well, for me, I care about skills and nothing else. I'm not really looking at those things.” So while I know that that comes from a place of good intention, my impression is that that's not really enough. What would you say?

Stephanie Howlett 9:42

You're looking at skills. Sure, in trades, but are you looking at like what you're missing from your organization? How can you make your organization stronger, more supportive, and more inclusive? How do you take your organization to the next level? So if you have everyone in your organization that looks at seeing things the same, you have what you call groupthink, you don't have innovation, and you don't have driving factors that are moving your company ahead. So, the pandemic has shown us zoom podcasts has shown us that many different learning tools that we use, now were never used before. So if we continue to see things in the same manner, we are not going to progress ahead as organizations and as industries. And I think this is where we need to be to look at how we do things differently. How do we do things better? How do we do things in a different stream in a different light? And I think by looking at diversity, equity inclusion, we're really progressing and moving your organization ahead. So when you start looking at these things, and why it's good business, using some of these statistics, I think that organizations will see then that you need to start looking at them and creating a bigger impact within society. It's not just about your businesses, how do you create a bigger impact within your ecosystem as well?

Right? So when we look at the benefits of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I mean, numbers don't lie, I think those are some pretty compelling statistics. So where do you start? I know you mentioned looking at measuring, how do you even go about that?

So with organizations, I've worked with, and they've been, some have been small, as low as 1012 people and others have been as high as eight and 10,000 people. So we look at putting surveys in place actually measuring who's in your organization. So instead I always say instead of measuring gender, because not everyone feels they're male or female because there are some folks who are nonbinary, we measure gender identity, for instance, then people get to express who they exactly are, we get to measure it might be person disabilities within your organization because you want to be able to provide support for folks. You might be measuring a person's race or ethnicity who's in our organization. How can we include them? How can we provide support? How can we potentially look at employee resource groups, also called ERGs, in many different locations, so it might be women in leadership, it might be Black Lives Matter support group, it might be a pride support group. And like the persons with disability, there are so many different ways that organizations have created groups that just support one another, and workers within their organizations. So that's a way of looking at metrics is providing it in the support banner, and also looking at the community we serve and clients we serve.

Do they see themselves within our organization? So, if we're doing business to business with organizations, within industries are our clients seeing themselves within us? Right? Do we have the same value set as what our clients do? If we're serving a black population? Do we have workers within our industry who are part of that population? And looking at some of those things? And when you start to measure your metrics, you really know where your gaps are, you really know who's in your organization, and what gaps are missing. What technical gaps, what skills, you get to know what support you need to provide, you need to get to know who's leaving your industry at a faster number. And I always say, “You really should do those poll surveys or benchmarking at least once a year to get to know who's exiting, what's the reason, who's coming into your organization”, because, by numbers and all these sorts of things, we can see trends. And when you start to measure, you'll see trends and how your organization is either progressing or some strategies and things you need to put in place to help it progress further.

So how does that translate then into hiring? So you've identified for example, that you have gaps within certain communities? What do you do with that information?

That's a great question. So if you feel you have a gap, you can certainly look at your hiring processes, you can look at your wording, your language that you're using, there's a great program that's free on the internet is just called the gender decoder, you can certainly put your advertisements, your job posts in there to see if you have inclusive language, is it more oriented towards males towards females? Is it gender-neutral? Like, like gender neutral? Like, where's that too? So by changing language, you can make it different persons apply in your job posts, or you could look at going to communities, if you're trying to hire someone from an indigenous community, going to that community and saying, This is the job posts that we have? Do we have anyone interested in this or not? We need to make a realization that not everyone uses LinkedIn. Not everyone uses a career beacon or a format, that's more professional format. So some people within communities may not have access to these things. So really going to those communities or organizations and saying these are some posts that we have, but you have folks that are interested in applying on some of these because we really want to get certain folks involved that may not have been like could be gender diverse. It could be indigenous persons with disabilities, getting folks involved in more organizations and more things that we're doing, because I think we all have microaggressions. Under stereotypes of where certain people should be certain groups should be. I had a great conversation yesterday about persons with disabilities. And when you see a person with a disability, one of the perceptions is that they should be behind a desk doing work, right? It shouldn't be, for instance, in an industrial site, you shouldn't be because someone always thinks wheelchair, they think disability, but there are many different types of disabilities that people can have, and they can easily work in any different workplaces. They may need a couple of accommodations, or they may not you may not even know the person has a disability, just from looking at them.

Hmm, that's a really great point. And I am curious, Stephanie, in your experience, what are some of the questions that business owners are afraid to ask when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion?

So I think they're afraid of actually asking questions to begin with for fear of making a mistake, or, but like this is one of those learnings and own learnings that we have to do it from my background, being a part of today's LGBTQ+ community, I talk a lot about pronouns and using your pronouns. So in some of the conversations I have, people sometimes are afraid to ask questions not knowing what is a pronoun, and that the pronoun is the way that you perceive yourself. So I'll use the pronouns she, her, and hers. Other folks may use different pronouns. So not asking a question for fear of it being a silly question or making mistake or just coming off the wrong light or offending someone. I always say to people, “I think if your question is asked with respect, it's never going to be offensive.”

That's a great point.

I love that. So I think just being vulnerable, being able to ask questions, and being open for someone to correct us, I make mistakes all the time and some of the language because language really does matter, the language that we're using, and getting to know what language in the equity-seeking groups is appropriate and not appropriate.

So going back to looking at your workforce, and measuring the different groups that are comprised there, how do you go about making your workplace more friendly? I know you touched on support groups as one way, but are there other ways that you can then use that information to transform your workplace?

I think if you start everything if you start looking through, I think a really diverse lens, who's in your organization, what you offer as you said in the form of support and training if you start looking at Who's your supplier diversity? Who are you as a business, whether that's a small business or a bigger business? Who are you supporting? Who do you volunteer with? Who do you give to as a charity? Who do you support? Because we spend our monies on those who are in line or in values and have the same value set as we have as people as organizations? So like, what does that look like? Because there are many different ways that you can look at diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's not just within our workplace, it's really within our communities, is it within those people that we engage with?

That's a really great point. I think even for me, I'm like, interesting, I could probably learn some things there.

Right? So like, for instance, on a Friday, if your organization's eating out, or you're giving gifts with upcoming holiday seasons, or different things, where do you buy those things too? Where do you buy the gifts to? Do you buy it in big box stores? Do you buy it locally from the shops, you buy it from ethnic groups that are trying to make a living really hard within our communities, small businesses that sometimes are struggling, like, Who do you support as a person and as a business, because these are important to look at supplier diversity, it's all around us.

So especially in the trades, and I know, we've touched on this already, but it's primarily male-dominated, and I know our listeners are primarily men. So what do you think about the average straight white man who's perhaps tuning in here? How do you think that they can make a difference?

I think they can make a number of different differences. The first thing I think is if they see a microaggression in the workplace if they can speak out and speak up, someone makes, for instance, that racist joke or homophobic joke, a joke about someone who's a female on the worksite, to really have a voice and have that person's back to really say that language is not appropriate. We don't use that here to say I didn't like using what we call interrupters, so can you explain that to me, I didn't understand the meaning behind what you just said, just really speaking out for people, I think, using their privilege white males have a lot of privilege within our society more than what they even know. So I think for them just to be able to know the privilege that they have and be able to use that within workplaces. It's huge. Another thing you can do is within worksites make sure that women and other minority groups have the support that they need, whether that's through overalls or coveralls. Those are training or work gloves, making sure just the basic needs washroom. Just basic safety needs are covered. Because imagine a man that has to get into a woman's overalls who are it's slim, its body fitting is the same thing. When a woman has to get into overall coveralls or overalls that don't fit their body type and have to wear gloves that are too big, it creates safety risks, it creates, these are just are, these are things that they need within a workplace the same as what any man needs, and workplaces what that looks like, right? Because all of our body shapes are different. All of the things that we need are different. So just looking at some of the very basics, I think would be fantastic.

That's a great point. I know, we've had a previous guest on the show talking about speaking to women, specifically, that were working as technicians in the trades, especially in heating and cooling, and they're going to customer's houses, and they're like I can't pull off on the side of the road.

Exactly, so just providing some of the basic essentials that you would for anyone else, washrooms. As I said, overalls, gloves, like different things, whatever your industry is ensure that that person has what they need to make it safe. Just carry on with that thought crystal, like, creating safety and safe places are important. And the biggest conversation I have is how you look at safety. What does that look like to create safe spaces overall, so that people who are different than you come in and are able to stay unable to see themselves as adding and being a part of your organization, your industry? So the thing is, you can start by doing that by having just education sessions just by talking about, we're looking at intentional hiring of females in our industry, for instance, and some of the languages we use here may not be acceptable, some of the terms that we use, some of the ways that we conduct ourselves may not be professional for, for instance, some of the posters we have up on our walls may not be appropriate, just looking at overall workspaces, what's acceptable and what's not because I think we've progressed ahead in society, and ensuring that workplaces and workspaces do the exact same thing.

That brings up an interesting point because change is hard. So we may have listeners on here who are like, okay, I get it, I know, I need to make some changes. But how do you roll that out to your team? How do you get if your team primarily is other men, for example, other straight white men, for example, how do you get them on board with those changes? How do you change that culture?

And really, it's a slow change. Like, I'll be honest, because it's really having conversations with people, and they're tough conversations. So I suggest at your manager's executive levels, start talking about measures first, then start talking about what's come back on your benchmark and start looking at what small pieces of change you can make. And that those start with your tough, awkward conversations. This is where we score too, and then start diving into some information we want to bring in could be someone, we'll just go with women, we want to bring women into our organization. And I think sometimes you have to bring that to the personal level to say to a male in the organization, how would your daughter feel coming into our industry coming into our locker room? If your wife came into our locker room if your daughter came in if whoever came in your mother came in? What would they think about the language we're using? What would you think about the posters we have on the walls? What would you think about the setup of over-organization or office space? I think sometimes we got to make it to that personal level, in order for some people to really genuinely understand and see. Right? So if you put yourself in someone else's shoes, you can do that, which is not always easy for some of us, because a lot of us have a lot of privilege. But if we can put ourselves in someone else's shoes, I think it really creates a big impact.

I'm going off-script for a second. I'm just trying to think like, I'm putting myself in the shoes of most contractors, then they are very uncomfortable with this sort of thing. And I believe a lot of them are progressive thinking and they see the value, but it's just they don't really know what to do. And I'm thinking about scripts. Having these are things that I can say in certain scenarios, but I'm trying to think about what those might be because I think those practical pieces can have an impact. But I don't know where to.

The part I talked about speaking out and speaking up they're called racism interrupters, or interrupters in general. If there's a language that you hear in the workplace that you're not on board with and that you don't agree with. Truly, it's about the microaggressions to cooler talk peace.

I got a question about it. So Stephanie, when we talk about microaggressions and interrupting that, that's obviously uncomfortable for anybody. And I even know myself, sometimes I hear things and I'm like, “This is not right.” But I don't know how to respond to this situation. Can you give us some examples of what kind of scenarios might unfold and what you can say to deal with that? Or to interrupt that commentary?

For sure. That's another great question that happens in every single workplace, not just male workplaces, many times that create toxic work environments, which are very uncomfortable for people. So I think there are conversations that are very uncomfortable. They're ones that everyone tries to shy away from, and they're ones that they're tough. Let's just say they're difficult and tough. It's really tough, right? So by gently challenging the person, you're really giving them an opportunity to think about what they said. And most times people will take back what they just said because I think they just do it in a caring on just joking sort of manner. But then that becomes a really passive-aggressive or an aggressive statement.

So I think there are lots of languages that have changed over time. So I think if they knew what that meant to the person, so for instance, if you're making a homophobic joke, not knowing there's someone in the room, that's part of that community. And I think if you do an everyday practice of talking about your someone's gender diversity in a room, or talking like your mother's in the room, would you respect that language? What would she think of you, I think if we talk that way, in a workplace, things would be much more respectful, they'd be much more inclusive. And I think people would, to be honest, really enjoy their jobs each and every day, as opposed to being fearful of some comments that might be made, or a joke that might be made against a different race or religion, or disability. Let's do a couple of examples. So the word guys in organizations, so most people use the word guys, or ladies, so I had a conversation with a big group and did an education session. And in the education session, I said, let's talk about some language that you feel uncomfortable with when it's used. And someone said the word “guys”, and I said, “Absolutely”, I said this because when you say guys to a roomful of people, and if you're female, it may not feel comfortable or may not feel that you're included. And another person said, is the same as same ladies. And you have a group of mixed males and females and nonbinary folks in the room. And you say, Hey, ladies, how does that person who identifies as male feel? It's a different feeling, isn't it? So just looking at different words, you can use like, “Hey, everyone, folks, there's so many different language and wordings that we can use to make everyone feel inclusive.” There's, we've changed over time, the language that we used in, in, in industry and also in professions, right? So language has evolved and changed. And I think that we've all been changed in the industry and as a profession as we go on as well.

So it sounds to me like the really the starting point is being aware and thinking about the language that you use, and listening to what your team is saying. And if you do nothing else, I think being aware and then starting to look at ways that you can shift your language or the environment in which you work, that alone can make an impact.

it's huge. I mean, the impact that we can all make each and every day, just by looking at language alone. So how many times a day do you use a word now that you probably won't use the word, guys, right? So there are different words within organizations that people find offensive, and when we look back at a time, we would never use them anymore. So just by looking at creating awareness around language, creating awareness around processes, and policies that we have in place within our work, places, do you have a diversity equity inclusion statement? What do you have on your job posts? So that everyone is welcome to apply? What does that look like? So if I'm not an employee of yours, and I want to come, and I see your job ad, and I want to check it out. So how does that resonate with me when I read the words on your job ad, we know that males will apply for positions where they have little of the requirements, and I'm not sure if that's really them having more self-confidence than what females or women do those identifies women. And then females will only apply if we have 90 to 100% of the qualification. So I think we really need to work harder at what our job posts look at, really looking at the words that are in there, and looking at how we go about hiring folks do we send our job posts to all the equity-seeking groups, or do we just post it on one or two job sites so if you're looking within your organization, you should not do interviews unless you have a healthy representation of people within their within that group that you get, you can look at blind resume reviews because we all have biases and unconscious biases. So when you get a resume, okay, taking the person's name, often taking off any identifying information so that you don't see a name, and you have something come to your head that says, I can't hire this person because it can't enunciate their name, or they're from a certain place, so I can't hire them making all these judgments, which we all do, and I think just becoming aware of some of those biases that we might have will be really healthy in the hiring practices.

I like that. So for any of our listeners who are really hearing this opening their minds, what do you think are some of the key things that they can take away from this conversation?

I think opening your mind and being a listener, being available to have tough conversations, leading, being an inclusive leader, being that CEO that looks at all perspectives, that measures or metrics that provide support, that listens to your employees that have that open door that wants to learn genuinely, that wants to be inclusive of people and support people, all people from all different walks of life, no matter whether in construction, whether in industry, or whether you have a small business, I think people really want to create impact and do more. And I think that's what this is all about creating impact. Because I think small changes and small things we do create a huge impact on the people we work with and the workplaces that we're in.

Stephanie, we've covered so much here. And I think this has been such an important conversation, especially given there, there's work to be done here. I think we can all improve our workforces and our workplaces. And not only that, it's obviously a huge benefit to our businesses, especially when we're looking at labor shortages in this industry. So for anybody listening, who wants to learn more about you and the work that you do, what's the best way that they can connect with you?

They could reach out to stephanie@diversitynl.com They can certainly see me on LinkedIn, on Facebook. I suggest organizations no matter where you are to the DEI spectrum, and you want to create belonging within your organization, you want to look at metrics, you want to look at training policies, any of these things like please reach out no matter where you're too. And certainly, we can connect and have a further conversation.

Amazing. And we'll put all those links and details in the show notes as well. So if you're listening, you can go to beyondthetoolspodcast.com to grab all of that, Stephanie, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Absolutely. It's my pleasure. Take care and have a great day.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Beyond The Tools. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you get your podcast. I'd love it if you could also share this episode with a fellow contractor who is ready to get off the tools and grow their business. And if you want more leads, sign up for our email list at [reflectivemarketing.com](http://reflectivemarketing.com/) where we share weekly marketing insights that you can't get anywhere else. I'm Krystal Hobbs and I hope you'll join me on the next episode of Beyond The Tools. See you next time!