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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Provides guidance on creating a sustainable, inclusive, equitable, and compassionate business model that will thrive in businesses globally
Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are a must for today’s corporations, yet many corporations worldwide have failed to establish real equality in an actionable, measurable way. Corporations Compassion Culture: Leading Your Business toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion takes a new and more effective approach to driving equity and inclusion in the corporate world, focusing on how a culture of compassion can lead to more vibrant, higher performing teams. You’ll learn how many standard corporate activities actually damage employees’ well-being and engagement—and how to dismantle those practices. You’ll also learn how to build a new and better corporate environment that responds to all employees’ needs and meets shareholders’ demands for stability and risk mitigation.
Author Keesa Schreane delivers insight into what it takes for businesses to drive real social and corporate change toward inclusion and equity, while sharing her personal story about the challenges of being a woman of color in today’s corporate environment. Through hard work, talent, and—you guessed it—compassion, she has risen to become one of today’s luminaries in the area of responsible leadership in global corporations. Business executives, HR directors, diversity and inclusion professionals, and sustainability leaders will value her direct, no-nonsense approach. Learn to:
- Identify behaviors, practices, and activities that may be damaging your employees’ well-being, engagement, and productivity
- Measure and continuously evolve culture promoting risk mitigation, reputation preservation, employee retention, customer satisfaction, and profit generation.
- Adopt new approaches to treat employees, customers, and shareholders compassionately and equally, and dismantle the old ways
- Retain the best talent and survive new realities, all while creating tremendous loyalty, innovation, and financial payoff
This book will enable you to create strategies and tactics for integrating racial, cultural and gender equity, inclusion, and compassion into businesses in a way that enriches society, employees, and the corporate entity itself.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1: Inclusion, Equality, and Compassion in Business
Putting People First
What Is Compassion and Why Does It Matter?
How Did We Get Here?
Difference between Externally Facing Philanthropy and Internally Facing Compassion
Compassion: What's in It for Me?
Making Tough Decisions Compassionately
The Old Days: Carnegie and the Homestead Strike
Today's World
Achieving Balance: High-Performing Business and Outstanding Treatment of Employees
Underrepresented and Underestimated Leaders Are Compassionate Leaders Too
References
Chapter 2: Uncomfortable, but Necessary
The Black American Working Experience
Entrepreneurship
People of Color in Leadership Today
Colorism Infiltrates Global Corporate Environments
Corporate America's Workplace Racism, Rooted in Slavery
References
Chapter 3: Women's Corporate Leadership
Women, Work, and Value
The Lessons of History: Maggie Lena Walker and St. Luke Penny Savings Bank
World War II and the Transformation of Work Culture for Women
Housewife as Businesswoman: The 1950s and 1960s
Women and Wages: Growing Disparities
Racial and Gender Discrimination in the Workplace
Intersectionality: The Experience of Women of Color in the Corporate Workplace
Compassion and Empathy: Improving the Workplace for Women
References
Chapter 4: Evolution of Companies Post-COVID-19
Keeping Employees Physically Safe and Healthy
Insensitive Corporate and Government Policies
Financial Fears of Business Leaders and Employees
Prioritizing Employee Mental Health
Redefining Employee Communication and Collaboration
Management at a Distance: Trust Versus Micromanagement
Connecting Compassion with Profitability
References
Chapter 5: Inclusion and the Bottom Line
Employee Discrimination: Not Just an American Corporate Problem
Regulatory Enforcement and Legal Consequences
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: From Hot Trend to Corporate Culture
Lack of Diversity in the C-Suite
Improving Corporate Culture
Talking the Talk, Walking the Walk
Investors and Change
Hiring Bias
Quantifying True Supplier Diversity
Quantifiable Hiring Goals
Promoting Fairness for Agricultural and Domestic Workers
The Corporate DNA of Slavery
References
Chapter 6: Gender Equity and Company Growth
The Pay Gap
Glass Ceiling or Labyrinth?
Intersectionality of Race and Gender
Expanding Diversity Initiatives to Include Women of Color
Women CEOs Building Compassionate Cultures
Pros and Cons of Quotas
Importance of Mentorship and Sponsorship
Impact of #MeToo and #TimesUp Movements
Dangers of Neglecting Allyship
Economic and Reputational Benefits of Compassionate Leadership
References
Chapter 7: Elements of a Compassionate Corporate Culture
Sustainable Management
Doing the Introspective Work
Leadership Styles
Picking Your Team
Getting on Track and Staying There
Cultivating an Equitable Workplace Culture
Employee Resource Groups as Culture Creators and Advocates
Transparency and Employee Leadership
Recognizing and Molding Your Company's Internal Language
Investing in Employee Education, Performance, and Health
Measuring Employee Performance
Making Separations Compassionate
References
Chapter 8: Your Plan for Creating Inclusion through Compassion
Take a Fresh Approach to the Hiring Processes
Strengthen Your Search for Talent
Explore Valuable Recruitment Channels
Achieve Stronger Supply Chain Diversity
Make the Commitment an Executive Team Effort
Avoid the Diversity Revolving Door: Retaining Diverse Talent
Bottom-Line Benefits of Inclusivity
References
Chapter 9: Your Plan for Creating Gender Equity through Compassion
Identifying and Addressing Gender Inequity
Transitioning Employees Back into the Workplace
Meeting the Needs of Child-Free Employees
Supporting Women's Leadership and Advancement and Confronting Saboteurs
Building a Gender-Inclusive Community
Leveraging Data to Measure Future Progress
References
Chapter 10: The Future
Role of Environmental, Social, and Governance on Compassionate Cultures
Identifying Your Company's Social Responsibility
Partnering with External Organizations
Interconnection of Internal Inclusion and External Social Impact
Intersection of DEI and Sustainability
Role of Business in Protecting the Environment
Current Coursing Through Your Business
True Purpose of Business
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 2
Table 2.1 Breakdown of Fortune 500 Total Board Seats by Race/Ethnicity: 2018
Chapter 3
Table 3.1 Gender Pay Gap by Race Relative to White Men: 2019
Table 3.2 Percentage of Inclusion by Race in Executive Positions
Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Labor Force Representation Versus Executive Level Representation
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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CORPORATIONS COMPASSION CULTURE
Leading Your Business toward Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
KEESA C. SCHREANE
Copyright © 2021 by Keesa C. Schreane. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993, or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:
ISBN 9781119780588 (hardback)
ISBN 9781119780601 (ePDF)
ISBN 9781119780595 (epub)
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: ©gmast3r/Getty Images
To Mom: thank you for being an extraordinary woman, exemplifying curiosity, compassion, and kindness coexisting beautifully with self-respect, self-love, and power. I love you beyond words.
Preface
I'm a Black girl from Tennessee who secured the title of vice president before age 30. How'd I do it? I worked hard. I got my NYU master's degree and earned Series 7 and Series 63 banking certifications.
But make no mistake: even with all my accomplishments, I learned that for people like me, a VP title is still considered a privilege, not a right.
Here's my story.
The postrecession job market in 2008 was challenging for marketing professionals. But after acing three interview rounds, I landed a role at a global banking firm.
After several months, the firm asked me to serve on their Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Roundtable. This was a responsibility on top of my day job, but it was worth it. It was an exclusive opportunity afforded to top talent leaders to influence the firm's D&I direction. We would be able to open doors for quality, prospective job candidates, as well as provide inclusion opportunities for existing professionals who had the desire and passion to become managing directors and C-suite members.
The prospect of this new role perked me up, especially considering the fact that I was seeing a lot of management turnover at my firm. In the short time I was with the company, I had four different immediate managers and two different managing directors. Still, I was being recognized. That made me feel valued as a person and secure in my prospects.
When I was about one year in, the person who hired me left. She had been a mentor and her departure left me with no one who knew my work well enough to advocate for me. A colleague ominously advised me that things would likely get tougher for our team.
What I didn't know at the time was that by “our team” she really meant “me.”
I asked for a meeting with the managing director to get a better feel for her and her expectations. This woman recounted how much my previous managing director liked me. “The cat's meow” was how she described her perception of me. At the same time, she made equivocal comments, like how she was disappointed not to have been present in my initial interviews. What did it matter? I was here, wasn't I?
It all felt a little off, but I figured I'd be fine. My internal clients and my D&I Roundtable colleagues spoke well of me, and my work spoke for itself.
Then, a few weeks later, I had lunch with a colleague. She said she expected to be gone soon. We weren't particularly close, but she was the only other Black woman in our division. I think this is why she confided in me.
“I'm having a hard time getting required sign-offs, budget, and even information I need to do my job,” she said. “I've been telling my old manager about this, just to gut check it with him. He agrees it sounds like something's going on, but he said his hands are tied.”
I sympathized with her. I let her know I was having my own challenges with the new management. Honestly, though, I brushed off her reported experiences. A lot of turmoil always follows big management turnover. Maybe I was just in denial. Because every shred of my instinct screamed my own career was in trouble.
Things ground along for several more months in an uncomfortable status quo.
I was over two years into the job, when the managing director told me I'd be moving to a different manager and covering a different product. I had neither the background nor the education to market this product. However, she described the move as a better fit for me. I was advised there would be no training on the product, and I was discouraged from reaching out to the businesspeople who managed the product so I could learn from them.
Googling, asking ad hoc questions, browsing websites, and studying brochures was all I had to get up to speed.
I also had new teammates. With them, a palpable frostiness chilled the air. I sensed no enthusiasm for me or my work. But, ever determined to make a good impression, I decided to come in earlier, stay late, and speak up more, coming up with as many solutions as possible in meetings.
If I expected a thaw in the atmosphere, my efforts produced the opposite.
I always participated in non-work-related chats, happy hours, and office banter. But now, one colleague started making a big deal out of the fact that I didn't drink alcohol. Then ribbing got more persistent—at times continuing from happy hour until dinner and beyond. I heard declarations about my presumed lack of social life and lack of friends because I didn't drink.
I endured it, assuming it was only good-natured—if a bit misdirected—fun.
Then the incidents started to pile up.
Once, between meetings, four women from the team were discussing their struggles with weight loss right outside my office. When I got up and walked past them, they pointed out that, since I was thin, I shouldn't have a body complex. Except, of course, for my big butt.
More ribbing. A little indelicate. But nothing to get upset about.
It soon became clear my colleagues were making a proactive effort to avoid me. No one initiated a conversation with me unless it was absolutely necessary for a work-related purpose. To be included at all, I had to insert myself into other people's conversational circles or attempt to kick off a discussion on my own. Which was as arduous as kindling a fire with a flint and some dry leaves.
Then, I went to a holiday house party thrown by one of my team members. Here, the exclusion I'd been sensing, kicked into the highest gear yet. As usual, I walked over to a group, trying to find an opening. When I joined the circle, my colleagues stopped talking—dead cold. They regarded me for a bit and melted away.
By this time, no one was talking with me or engaging with me at work. No one addressed me in meetings or bantered with me outside of meetings. If I asked why I was being ignored, I got a pat answer. “I can't really understand your comments during meetings.” Other times a colleague would act as if I needed an interpreter, turning to another with, “What I believe she is trying to say is . . .”
If you've ever had this kind of experience, you know it can be an elusive one to describe and pin down. Because how do you depict a lack? A something-that-is-not-there? The encouragement that's ABSENT. The nods of interest that DON'T EXIST. The inquiries about your comments and thoughts that NEVER HAPPEN. It's not until these things build up into unmistakable avoidance and silence that you understand SOMETHING is going on.
Like this incident:
A colleague and I bumped into each other when turning a sharp corner near the ladies' room.
“Excuse me,” I said.
She gave me a good, slow look up and down. Then she walked off without a word.
This woman was a terrific conversationalist, always ready with a quip or a punch line. She was not the sort to be caught short by a stumble near the bathroom.
My colleagues seemed to be following some secret rule book with regard to me. And they were following it to the letter.
I decided I needed to do something. I would meet with my immediate manager. I had no job description, no training, and was excluded from the team. But, dwelling on that wasn't going to get me anywhere. I reasoned there must be a way I could support the success of the team and engage professionally (at least until I found another job). Maybe my manager could help.
I approached her with a simple question: What could I do to better serve the team?
“To be honest, Keesa, I really feel your brain synapses don't connect with each other.”
Wow. I sucked in breath to steady myself. Lack of synapses? It was astonishing. I was ready for her denials. For the I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about comeback. Even for severe criticism of my work. But this woman was saying the problem was with my actual brain.
Of course, I pressed for her to explain what this meant. She went on to clarify that, in her opinion, I didn't understand certain concepts intellectually. This rendered me incapable of producing outstanding, or even adequate, work products. My brain and my neural connections were simply not up to the task.
To my best knowledge, this woman, who held an entire conversation with me focusing on brains and synapses, held neither a neurosurgeon's nor a neuroscientist's degree. What she did hold was my future at that firm—in the palm of her hand. I left her office.
A short time later, it arrived: failure.
I was called into HR. The managing director was there as was the manager with the opinions on my gray matter. They told me my services were no longer needed, effective immediately. They wished me the best, then the managers embraced each other—as if they were the ones who'd gone through an ordeal—and left the room. I departed the building with my possessions.
Nothing had protected me. Not my NYU degree. Not my Series 7 and Series 63 certifications. Not my previous accomplishments at that very firm.
I thought about warnings that elders and friends gave for years that I just hadn't wanted to believe.
“This is just how corporate America is when it comes to people of color.”
“They've been treating Black people like this for years.”
“Folks in charge could care less about people who work for them, especially when they're Black. They only care about making money and looking out for their own.”
Maybe it was all true.
But maybe, I could do something different with the situation. Something different than accepting how things were and just give up.
I took a little while, but I was able to find a way.
I realized I could choose to have compassion for a manager who insulted my mind instead of inspiring my work. So I chose compassion for her. I came to understand that I could choose to forgive my misguided colleagues who had bullied me instead of supporting me. So I forgave them. It dawned on me that I could find a different path, one that would change such realities in the workplace. I could dedicate my future work to improving others' corporate experiences and demonstrate kindness and equality in leadership. So I chose all of that, too.
I made these choices because if I and people like me don't speak about the need for greater compassion and equality in business, those words may never get spoken. If we don't do something about it, those deeds will never get done.
This is why I've written this book.
Sure, there are cruel, cocky leaders who build and operate the world's largest institutions. But kind, committed, and compassionate leaders are also at the helm. Those voices need to be amplified. What those leaders are doing and how they are doing it needs to be documented and understood.
Why? Leaders who choose kindness, commitment, and compassion as their leadership style see improved corporate performance and greater financial return as the result.
Yes, you read that right. Increasing compassion and empathy in C-suites is not just good for workers—it is good for the bottom line.
How can we learn from and be the leaders who choose kindness, commitment, and compassion as their leadership style and who see greater corporate performance and return—as well as greater humanity in the workplace—as the result?
This book answers that question.
Because many of us have experienced a work environment like the one I have described:
Being shut down or talked over on a conference call, repeatedly.
Seeing internal job offers that went from a sure thing to being rescinded under dubious circumstances or after the interviewer sees your complexion
Learning about the “meeting before the meeting,” where a decision was made before you entered the room, rendering the meeting to a mere formality.
It's disappointing—even outrageous—these situations still happen especially knowing the generation after us will have their own similar stories. I hope that people like me sharing our stories, will, at a minimum, let them know they're not alone.
During COVID-19, cruelty to workers reached a new extreme. Employers previously overlooked mental and emotional workplace hazards, especially “micro”-level activities that are hard to legislate and impossible to prove. Now, employers have shifted to actions that are more brazen: inflexible paid sick leave policies for workers who engage the public (largely marginalized populations), deficient work-from-home procedures, and insufficient platforms embracing employee innovation that could bring companies out of difficult business environments.
Confronted with these realities, employees are refusing to give up basic dignities and professionalism in exchange for a paycheck. Employers' ethical breaches and responses to employee well-being risks point to the need to commit to one overarching goal: employers should build cultures that nurture employees' purpose and talents and inspire them to create solutions that enrich employees, serve customers, and increase revenue. This can only be done in environments where every employee feels just as important as the shareholder. Each of us at every level of leadership—managers, directors, associates, and assistants—arrive at work with a choice: choose actions and words that affirm productivity, inclusivity, creativity, and profitability.
And if you and your company don't know how to achieve inclusion, equality, productivity, compassion, and increased revenue in the workplace, you can learn.
Let's get started!
Acknowledgments
Gratitude. This best describes what I'd like to give to the generous people who supported me in creating this book.
To my outstanding Wiley family: executive editor Sheck Cho, your kindness and enthusiasm is just what I needed for my first book. You are so gracious. Managing editor Susan Cerra, our Friday afternoon jam sessions kept me on the right path. Jean-Karl Martin, your organization and ideal sharing helped me go to market in a way that was more efficient than I could have envisioned.
I'm thankful to be part of a community of authors and publishing professionals who embraced and encouraged my ideas. Anna Murray, thank you for seeing the vision. Your faith in my ability and my ideas were instrumental in each stage of this book. I'll do my best to pay it forward.
Seth Godin and Shawn Askinosie thanks for our Zooms, chats, emails, and sharing brilliant resources.
Sheila Levine, thanks for your dedication to this project and answering all my many questions.
Stacy Grossman, thanks for jumping in so quickly. Kelly Spors, your business insights were thoughtful and engaging. Tiffany Dufu, I appreciate your inspirational kindness.
Hilary Poole, you are fun, smart, and working with you is such a joy.
Conny S. Kazungu, PhD, your energy, and consistent readiness for the next adventure I rolled out, was invaluable.
Edna Varner, EdD, I am grateful for you being my first writing coach in eighth grade—and still the best decades later!
Erika Winston, JD, MPP, your brilliant clear-headedness is priceless and exactly what I needed.
Thanks to all my interviewees: Shawn Askinosie, Doug Bristol, Marcia Chatelain, Mark Cuban, Laura Freebairn-Smith, Shennette Garrett-Scott, Seth Godin, Rebecca Henderson, Trevon Logan, Juliette Menga, Anna Murray, Daniel Pink, Caitlin Rosenthal, Susanne Smith, and Debra Walton. Also thank you to my anonymous interviewees. I'm inspired by your generosity and business acumen. Thanks for sharing your vision that there is a better way of doing business.
A special round of thanks to my Refinitiv and Thomson Reuters management team, mentors, and sponsors—Karen Ashley, Brennan Carley, Tamara Dews, Emma Miller, Deirdre Stanley, and Debra Walton—and all my wonderful colleagues who supported this endeavor.
To my phenomenal family: I'm grateful that you're supportive while demanding I act with the highest intentions—Mom, Dad, Uncle Al, Aunt Bobbie, Uncle Phearthur, Aunt Ingrid, Aunt Henrietta, Aunt Anderine, Uncle Greg, Uncle Paul, Gram, Nanny, Bimp, Dominique Banks, Daryl Alexander, Reverend Grant Harris, my “parent friends” Wanda Starke and Ron Fisher, and Tiffany K. Schreane, my sister and best friend whose brilliance, candor, humor, and love helped me bring this book to life.
To the Spirit in which I live, move, and have my being.
About the Author
Keesa C. Schreane is an environmental, social, governance, and supply chain risk business leader and host of Refinitiv Sustainability Perspectives Podcast, engaging investors and business and sustainability communities on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data and technology, regulations, corporate risk, global financial markets, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
She's also a broadcast television and livestream contributor and writer with numerous outlets and publications:
Black Enterprise
Essence
Facebook Live
Latina
NASDAQ
Refinitiv Perspectives LIVE
WDEF TV
Her expertise includes business development, sales and marketing, and employee resource group leadership, building successful strategies for operational enhancement and relationship management. She is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).
As founder of the You've Been Served Podcast™, she interviewed top industry leaders such as Seth Godin, Carla Harris, and Leena Nair, uncovering insights on increasing revenue, improving communities, and affecting lives through social impact, innovation, and service.
Keesa has served on numerous boards and committees aligning with her equity, inclusion, and compassion in business focus, including Business Resource and Investment Center, Girl Scout Council of Greater New York, Thomson Reuters Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Ambassador, and Refinitiv Women's Business Resource Group.
Her work is recognized by the following industry groups and thought leaders:
Featured guest on Reid Hoffman's Masters of Scale alongside LinkedIn CEO, Jeff Weiner
HubSpot as “Top Female Marketing and Growth Expert”
Masonry's 18 Content Marketing Bloggers to follow on Twitter
Connect with Keesa at https://www.keesaschreane.com/.
Chapter 1Inclusion, Equality, and Compassion in BusinessAn Overview
Changing the course of a culture can be like changing the course of a ship. You turn the wheel slowly. The ship moves in two- or three-degree increments at a time. The degrees of movement are imperceptible, especially relative to the ship's size. Those onboard may not perceive a change from one minute to the next. But after a certain length of time they start seeing small changes in direction. Finally, those slow, steady, and careful minor turns yield a complete change in the direction of the ship. Ironically, it may feel to those onboard that the change happened all of a sudden, but in fact the ship had been turning for a long time.
This is a good analogy for what is happening with traditional corporate culture. Decades of lack of equity, lack of inclusion, and inequality are slowly shifting the course of business toward a culture of fairness and ethics in employee treatment. Changing the way we do business and how we interact with employees has been a slow process. Yet, it remains an imperative one.
As we enter the post-COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter (BLM) era, the move toward a new compassionate culture, with equality and inclusion as a foundation, is even more urgent. A compassionate culture empowers people to develop new ways to solve business problems and deliver solutions. For employees to tap into these higher levels of learning, creating, and working, they must feel valued, included, and treated ethically.
Compassion in business means creating a culture in which equality, inclusion, and kindness are foundational principles, integrated at every level. Through a compassionate culture, employees have the agency to bring creativity, innovation, intelligence, and imagination to their jobs.
A business can't be compassionate if it's not willing to practice equality and inclusion. Equality and inclusion are not the same as compassion, but they do go hand-in-hand. They complement each other. Practically speaking, companies that embrace decent pay, diverse hiring, inclusive language, and ethical behaviors likely have compassionate cultures.
Just how seriously have corporate leaders taken their responsibility to be compassionate, just, and equality-focused up until now? The data speaks for itself:
2014
:
Facebook admits it has “more work to do” in recruiting after reporting 74% of their US senior workforce is White and 77% is male.
2019
:
Five years later, Facebook has a US senior workforce that is 65% White, 25% Asian, and 67% male; all other ethnicities
still
report single digits.
2019
:
Uber expects a near $90 billion initial public offering (IPO), even as their drivers strike over low pay.
2019:
Hundreds of McDonald's workers in US and UK cities staged walkouts over low wages, as well as made accusations that the fast-food giant had an unsafe work environment and allowed sexual harassment to take place.
1
2020:
Black workers at Adidas protested outside the sportswear company's US headquarters in Portland, Oregon, saying they had experienced racial discrimination in the workplace—this despite the company brandishing a public image of being antidiscrimination.
2
Organizations that represent the global corporate world (such as the World Economic Forum and Business Roundtable) have given us hope that the old ways of doing business are changing, based on statements they've made. For example, in 2019, the Business Roundtable's updated commitment noted the following:
Investing in our employees. This starts with compensating them fairly and providing important benefits. It also includes supporting them through training and education that help develop new skills for a rapidly changing world. We foster diversity and inclusion, dignity and respect.3
Employees, suppliers, communities where businesses are located, and even organizations and governments are all invested in the business world. Whether they realize it or not, they all have a stake in corporate diversity, equity, inclusion, and commitments to dignified, respectful treatment of others.
Diversity is a term used to describe a workplace composed of employees with varying characteristics, such as sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability.4
Inclusion refers to a workplace environment where the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of individual workers are embraced and respected, which promotes equivalent access to opportunities and the full contribution of employees to the organization's success.
Workplace equality involves providing the same level of opportunity and assistance to all employees, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and so on. This includes pay equality when women and men are paid at the same rate for performing the same job.
Equity, involves providing people what they need to make things fair, and it naturally evolves from a workplace that promotes and maintains diversity, inclusion, and equality.5
Employees and suppliers are invested because they work at the companies. Communities are invested because they share natural resources with the companies. Organizations and governments depend on companies' partnerships to support societal change.
People invested in positive, forward-thinking movements in the business world hope that words like those just defined would be followed by deliberate action. But just when employees, suppliers, and communities thought companies would do better, many actually got worse.
Putting People First
In recent years, employees have become emboldened and louder about fighting infractions and inequities in the corporate world. Walkouts have become more orchestrated. Workers have protested unfair pay in an almost synchronistic style across regions. Demands for racial justice have grown more sophisticated. Brands have been persuaded to show solidarity as racial justice activists leveraged the power of advertising to hit the digital economy in a new way. Factory workers unapologetically raised their voices at feeling coerced to work in environments they felt were unsafe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather than fearing potential retaliation, these workers demonstrated their faith that the wider society would support their demands for greater protections.
For example, Shipt, a same-day delivery service owned by Target Corporation, came under fire for lowering its delivery drivers' pay amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—a time when home delivery of groceries and consumer goods was surging. Workers protested the pay cuts with walkouts and work stoppages, arguing that it was wrong to reduce their pay when making deliveries posed a health risk. Earlier in the year, Shipt workers had also staged walkouts over the company not providing its drivers with the protective gear they needed to make deliveries safely.6
Walkouts and other strategic actions grew out of the need to implore corporations to change unethical behaviors, pay people fairly, and stop discriminatory practices. Put simply, these actions were laying the groundwork for compassionate activism in the workplace.
This activism was embraced and supported by some in the corporate world, but others refused to commit to the cause. At Tyson Foods, for instance, over 4,500 workers were diagnosed with COVID-19 and 18 died from the illness. Despite this, the company still refused to offer paid sick leave, instead opting to “relax attendance policies and update disability policy.”7 However, there were bright lights that penetrated the dark times.
Many corporations broadened health care access to include mental health and well-being services. In spring 2020, Starbucks started offering 222,000 of its US employees up to 20 free counseling sessions with a mental health therapist.8 The insurance company AIA uses a digital screening program to check its employees for depression, stress, and anxiety and offers them a quarterly “recharge day.” As Damien Mu, AIA's CEO for Australia and New Zealand, told Financial Review, “The unintended consequence of being high energy and working hard is the team thinks that is what is required to succeed. What they don't see is the down time we all need and that you are not always up.”9
During the 2020 economic downturn, some firms made commitments to retain employees and did so with creativity. Instead of laying off employees during the pandemic, Verizon made the commitment to retrain 20,000 workers for different careers within the company.10 During the Great Recession that started in 2008 and the 2020 pandemic, many companies furloughed employees rather than laying them off—a strategy that assists with a company's short-term cash crunch, while still providing employees with benefits.
These positive, compassionate examples are a start. But unless corporations and their leaders change how they do business and how they treat their most valuable resource—people—they will fail fast. They will not survive among the next generation of business leaders, who have an inherent leaning toward creativity that only happens when employees feel comfortable and supported. Creativity—instead of old-school, destructive competition—delivers innovation that not only leads to revenue generation but also supports a firm's longevity.
The first step toward building a compassionate culture, with equality and inclusion at its core, is making a commitment to putting people first. Here is what a people-first focus looks like:
Communicating how employees' jobs make a difference in society
Embracing diverse talent while exploring new markets
Creating a work culture in which employees exude enthusiasm, excite customers to patronize their firms, and advocate for their brands in their communities
Committing to doing their best to protect employees day-to-day and also in the event of a catastrophe
Offering employee incentives that drive company loyalty and real payoffs
What Is Compassion and Why Does It Matter?
Compassion in business means inspiring people to aim as high as they can in their conduct and their innovation each day. That can include basic kindness and cordial daily interaction between colleagues, but it goes a lot further than that. Compassion empowers people to be open—to replace fear of failure with faith in their abilities, learn from challenges, and construct creative approaches to business problems. A compassionate culture supports the mental, physical, and economic well-being of employees, as well as their professional growth, by governing with integrity and care that comes with positions of power.
Believe it or not, compassionate leadership is practical. When there is compassion in business, a culture of equality, inclusion, and kindness follows. People feel better about the work they do, leading to higher levels of productivity. They increase their sales and are more committed to their work.
Research finds compassion triggers brain activity associated with learning and reward in decision-making, as well as creating positivity and “kinder and more eager to help” attitudes.11 Additionally, compassion is seeing a problem (or suffering) and responding to that problem in a way that includes “courage, tolerance, equanimity.”12
This is exactly the type of activity successful businesses want to govern relationships with customers. They express a desire to help customers and serve them by solving customers' problems through products and services. They become obsessed with fulfilling the customer's specific need, while engaging with kindness to support customer retention.
This is also how successful corporations seek to engage with shareholders. They exhibit strong, thoughtful decision-making skills with the aim of serving (helping) their interests by providing solutions to increase profitability in business.
Seeing compassion through the lens of serving others and solving problems clarifies how compassion relates to a company's relationships with customers and shareholders.
Seeing compassion through this same lens can also offer insight into how corporate leaders should aspire to serve their employees. This aspiration to serve employees should exist for all management levels, from frontline supervisors to CEOs. Learning, decision-making, equanimity, and tolerance are all ways companies can express their focus on people through compassion toward their employees.
Inclusiveness and equality reflect a leader's courage to think differently from society or even from the old business culture that has conditioned that person. Inclusiveness and equality require less focus on self and more focus on understanding others; less emphasis on the type of competition that has destructive qualities and more emphasis on cooperation that creates a legitimate partnership with everyone in the business ecosystem, including employees.
This may sound theoretical, but there are practical ways this plays out in real, day-to-day corporate leadership. Each employee and stakeholder, regardless of their title, has agency to choose how to act toward colleagues. Compassionate business leaders know that decisions they make in the boardroom, including decisions they make on behalf of the organization, can significantly affect not only individual employees and customers but also families and wider communities. Leaders who understand compassion will support their employees' mental and physical well-being with fair pay, equal treatment, and ensuring that the company's behaviors and language foster innovation to support the enterprise and each employee in it.
Compassionate business leadership includes making thoughtful, courageous decisions in especially challenging environments. This is done by looking for creative solutions, seeking counsel and expertise from others, and seeing beyond traditional answers. When corporate heads lead with compassion, their employees, suppliers, and communities willingly support that leadership. Employees and others bring higher degrees of creativity to support business growth. This perspective also gives insight into why some businesses don't see this type of commitment from employees. It is because in inequitable environments, where behaviors such as microaggression and destructive competition flourish, the culture isn't conducive to employee comfort and the creativity needed to innovate. Resisting the courageous, compassionate form of leadership is why the old corporate culture is steadily self-destructing.
Old corporate culture has presented an especially difficult situation for many members of historically underrepresented—not to mention underestimated—demographics. Alleged “pipeline” issues—claims that it is not possible to find enough qualified people of color and women for certain positions—perpetuate underrepresentation in the workplace. Abysmal underrepresentation in C-suite positions, especially for Black women, shows corporate leadership continues to underestimate the leadership abilities of this demographic. As of the second quarter of 2020, only two Black women have ever led Fortune 500 companies, Ursula Burns of Xerox and Mary Winston of Bed, Bath & Beyond.
The demands for racial justice, employee equality, and improvements to the post-COVID-19 workplace are driving change in how business is done and whom business is done with. Yet, too many executives are still clinging to outdated ways to govern and lead. This is demonstrated by the numbers of unhappy employees and purpose-starved corporate cultures.
How Did We Get Here?
Business has always been the driver of innovation and economy in the world. So what happened? Looking at the big picture, most working adults with a bit of historical perspective agree things are better than they were a hundred years ago. Working conditions are safer and better regulated on the whole. Violence and discrimination toward people of color in places of work and exclusionary practices based on gender and ethnicity are no longer legal (albeit at times acceptable).
Given all that progress, how did we get to a place where strikes, walkouts, inequality, low wages, discriminatory practices, debilitating stress, and lack of pay parity became all too familiar? Part of it has to do with the nature of the actions against employees. Some would say that microaggressions have now replaced deliberate discriminatory and violent behaviors. And all microaggressions are not illegal, so they have not been regulated out of business. (More about this specific behavior in Chapter 2.)
The best firms continually expend resources, intelligence, and time listening to others to understand how to create a fairer, more just culture. The best leaders root out potential threats to employee well-being. These leaders recognize threatening behaviors, including exclusion, inappropriate language, and unequal treatment, may sometimes be legal but are still unacceptable. These leaders have a choice between adjusting the existing culture and building a new foundation from the ground up. This choice is daunting.
For some, this situation all started in the early 1970s. Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize–winning American economist, famously asserted his view in a 1970 New York Times Magazine piece called “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits.” This excerpt speaks directly to his thoughts about corporations' role in creating a just, fair culture:
The businessmen believe that they are defending free enterprise when they declaim that business is not concerned “merely” with profit but also with promoting desirable “social” ends; that business has a “social conscience” and takes seriously its responsibilities for providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers. In fact they are—or would be if they or anyone else took them seriously—preaching pure and unadulterated socialism. Businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades.13
Friedman's essay helped fuel a mindset, influencing how many corporate leaders across the United States and around the world viewed their role for the next 40 years. Instead of balancing the needs of shareholders with other stakeholders—including their commitment to caring for employees' well-being—this so-called Friedman Doctrine spurred many leaders to see their sole objective as maximizing shareholder value.
In 2017, former World Bank director Steve Denning wrote this:
Friedman's article was a godsend. Executives no longer had to worry about balancing the claims of employees, customers, the firm, and society. They could concentrate on making money for the shareholders. Adam Smith's “invisible hand” would make everything else come out right.14
Of course, Friedman's article wasn't the only reason for this shift toward putting profits before people. Other trends in the 1970s, such as slow economic growth, corporate leaders' friction with labor unions, and increased foreign competition, certainly contributed to this emerging mentality. But Friedman's article was used by many leaders to justify their brash pursuit of profitability and share price gains. It helped propel the shareholder value movement that took off in the 1980s and 1990s with eponymous cutthroat CEOs such as Sunbeam's Al Dunlap (nicknamed “Chainsaw” and “Rambo in Pinstripes”) and General Electric's “Neutron” Jack Welch.15
This movement led to a spate of corporate mergers and takeovers with profit-driven leaders viewing employees as dispensable, using mass layoffs and overall downsizing as a way to slash expenses and, in turn, rev up stock prices. GE, for example, laid off more than 100,000 workers during Welch's time as CEO. He promoted management practices such as ranking employees by performance and brazenly firing those deemed as underperformers. He unabashedly championed a non-equality philosophy when it came to managing employees—even decades after he left the helm. In 2017, Welch told the site Freakanomics:
Look, differentiation is part of my whole belief in management. And treating everybody the same is ludicrous. And I don't buy it. I don't buy what people write about it. It's not cruel and Darwinian and things like that, that people like to call it. A baseball team publishes every day the batting averages. And you don't see the .180 hitter getting all the money, or all the raises.
Welch's tough management style paid off handsomely for GE shareholders at the time, as GE's stock price grew 4,000% during his tenure.16
But the shareholder-first practices of Welch and many other like-minded corporate leaders had the ultimate effect of eroding employee trust. In the 1980s and 1990s, the “corporate social contract” was officially broken. For instance, many companies during this period suspended their employee retirement pensions—replacing them with a stock market–dependent plan called the 401(k). Many also slashed health benefits. Labor union membership plummeted from 25% to 15% between 1978 and 1988, in part because unionized jobs were often the target of layoffs.17
This fraying of the corporation-employee relationship created other problems. The purchasing power of most US workers' wages has stagnated since the 1970s and hasn't been buoyed even in times of historically low unemployment.18 This has widened the rift between top executives and typical workers. And because executives usually receive stock as a big part of their compensation, they are strongly motivated to drive up their company's share prices, often at the expense of the people working for them.
Here's the irony: for many companies, all this emphasis on maximizing shareholder value didn't even produce the sought-after outcome. Several studies have shown that mergers and layoffs in the 1980s and 1990s actually had minimal or even detrimental effects on the share prices of many of the companies that engaged in them. One just needs to crunch the long-term returns on the S&P 500 to see that the era of shareholder primacy did not create outsized returns for regular investors. In fact, it seems to have had little effect at all. The markets returned an average of 9.63% between 1956 and 1986 and 9.99% between 1986 and 2016. Both those periods lagged the 10.77% return seen between 1926 and 1956.19 What's more, the overall longevity of corporations seems to be on the decline. The life expectancy of companies in the S&P 500 declined from 61 years in 1958 to less than 18 years today.
The shift toward focusing on shareholder value wasn't just a US phenomenon. Similar to Friedman, many other economists and business leaders across the globe defended and championed similar “free-market” capitalist ideals over the past century—encouraging companies to focus on profits above all else. Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, another Nobel Prize winner, concluded that seeking social justice was a waste of time and that no outcome to market activity could be considered just or unjust.20
The 1980s and 1990s is considered a heyday in modern times for profit-only-driven cultures. Yet, this philosophy of putting profits ahead of people has been deeply ingrained in corporate culture since the early industrial days. Corporate language itself has always been brutal, leaving room for neither equality nor compassion. It's standard to talk about “annihilating” another company, “running competition out of business,” “dominating” a market, or “beating” individuals, and so on.
There is also a lingering notion that some people are divinely chosen to be leaders instead of others. This corresponds quite conveniently with the belief that some have been ordained by higher powers as more capable, intelligent, and privileged, just because of their sex or race. (These notions lay foundations for racial and gender inequities that will be discussed in later chapters.)
Difference between Externally Facing Philanthropy and Internally Facing Compassion
Clearly, corporate leadership is a complex construct. This is amplified when values and beliefs don't seem to align with bottom-line growth. The notion of “compassion” in business often gets reduced to the simple concept of corporate philanthropy. In the 21st century, progress in corporate philanthropy and benevolence kicked into high gear. Philanthropy benefits a firm's reputation and enhances sales prospects who appreciate the charitable work. But, although philanthropy may be lauded externally, inside corporations it's often perceived as a drain on profits and an unnecessary operating expense, especially in market downturns. Further, just because a company is philanthropic doesn't mean it treats employees well.
Philanthropy communicated through corporate websites and annual reports tout externally focused “corporate social responsibility” programs. There is nothing wrong with this: doling out resources and funding to communities and causes should continue to be highly regarded. But charity alone will not help corporate culture survive the coming decades. Valuing people, not just valuing profits, is the long-term solution. Investing in the people inside our enterprises—in their education, growth, and well-being—strengthens the communities and marketplaces where businesses operate. It's also the way to strengthen the employee-employer relationships needed to innovate and drive businesses forward.
True corporate compassion can't be a separate subsidiary or a spin-off of the primary enterprise. It's not something that can be tacked on as an afterthought. Compassion begins with leadership that integrates the values of courage, inclusion, purpose, and equality into business practices as foundational to the internal business culture.
Compassion: What's in It for Me?
A business culture with compassionate characteristics as the foundation is linked directly to improved employee performance, according to 2013 research by UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center:
Happy employees also make for a more congenial workplace and improved customer service. Employees in positive moods are more willing to help peers and to provide customer service on their own accord. What's more, compassionate, friendly, and supportive co-workers tend to build higher-quality relationships with others at work. In doing so, they boost coworkers' productivity levels and increase coworkers' feeling of social connection, as well as their commitment to the workplace and their levels of engagement with their job.21
Some researchers chide organizations for measuring empathy in a corporation (which many people equate to compassion on a broad level). They believe measuring it “takes the heart out of it.” Rather, they say, compassion should simply be a key value at the corporate level, not treated as a quantifiable metric.22
The point of agreement is when employees feel engaged at their company, the company sees a quantifiable difference in employee performance. For example, according to a Gallup Survey:
Engaged employees and teams experience 17% greater productivity.
Engaged employees experience a 20% increase in sales.
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Feeling appreciated opens the door to feeling comfortable and becoming more creative at work. Employees who feel valued will share more ideas and, as a result, offer more value. In the end, this cultivates innovation, which improves both the culture and the corporation's bottom line.
Making Tough Decisions Compassionately
But what happens when business pressures increase and, in the heat of the moment, a company's needs outweigh employee well-being and creativity? For example, there may be business expansion opportunities calling for employees to work for a period of time in a hazardous environment, with no health protection. Or a market downturn may occur when management foresees the need for employees to work longer hours to get a product to the market, but the company won't have the income to pay them right away.
Look at it this way: when business is booming, the economy is solid, and customers are buying in large numbers, it's easy to put employees first. Managers may even seek to share power, giving employees a say on how the organization's culture is governed. However, when revenue is on the line, the economy is tanking, and customers are unable or unwilling to buy products, typical corporate culture reverts to a hard-line approach. Managers are inflexible to the needs of employees and exclude them from decision-making.
In tough times, corporate culture can get even tougher on employees. What happens when an action that might inconvenience employees could nonetheless improve the company's long-term growth? Even for the most fair-minded business leader, profits will likely weigh more than compassionate treatment of employees in those examples. The scary thing is, in our super-competitive market environment, these scenarios have become more commonplace. C-suite leaders are making decisions about the health, well-being, and personal economies of thousands of people. These leaders see before them a limited number of alternatives to business problems. Each alternative has “casualties.” Consequences for those casualties can be debilitating.
Even in these situations, leaders should be tethered to their guiding principles dictating the type of leaders they are and the type of culture they uphold. Compassionate leaders are creative, engage a variety of stakeholders for feedback, and use their intelligence and imagination to deliver the best results. They see people as their most valuable resource. Their guiding principles include cultivating people.
The root of the problem is that business leaders resort to thinking of employees as expendable, instead of viewing them as the lifeblood of the business and should be treated with compassion and dignity, even in arduous circumstances when there are no “good” options to choose from. Commoditizing people in the workforce, and not adhering to a people-first business mentality, has steadily eroded corporate culture. Today, corporate culture is slowly shifting toward more of a people orientation. But, to return to our ship-turning analogy: this change won't happen overnight. There are still plenty of corporate leaders who instinctively view shareholders as the primary (if not sole) concern in decision-making.
There is always room for grace here. Making poor decisions does not equate to intentionally desiring to harm employees. In fact, it's possible the majority of leaders feel they have no choice when making decisions that negatively affect employees. They may not have the resources and information needed to expand their view of business solutions in challenging environments.
The Old Days: Carnegie and the Homestead Strike
Andrew Carnegie is a great example of philanthropy and the ideal of leading with compassion and integrity. Leadership is complex, with many variables. Looking critically at key decisions Carnegie made that affected employees provides a teachable moment as well. Giving grace to leaders and moments where they falter is important. Learning lessons from poor decisions to prevent repeating them is critical in turning toward a new corporate culture built on compassion, equality, and inclusion.
Carnegie is arguably the most celebrated philanthropist of his ilk from the 20th century, and for good reason. His philanthropic contributions remain unmatched. He gave away over $350 million during his lifetime—by one estimate, that would be about $65 billion today.
I first became familiar with Andrew Carnegie through Napoleon Hill's book
