Inclusion@work: From Grassroots to Game Plan, Scaling Belonging Through Employee-Led Movements

All right, well, let's keep it rolling y'all. Are you all ready to keep this going? Keep learning. We're gonna have our next impact accelerator here. This is where we start to move into some more of like the grassroots efforts and the actual programmings that leaders are using to scale this within their organization. And as I kinda even just shared in that last conversation, or at least build off of that, we learned from that last, that open panel that we just heard, like co-creation at the center is so important, and also sharing responsibility and accountability within other people within the organization is really, really important. So that's what we're gonna be talking about in this Impact accelerator. We're gonna have three leaders do our final presentations for today to really talk about how this isn't just owned by one department, it's shaped by everyone, and what are the frameworks and ways and kind of tactics you can do that so that that part of it comes to life. So I am really excited to welcome a, uh, a friend mentor to the Achieve Engagement community. Uh, trailblazer in the space has been leading all sorts of employee owned initiatives within their own organization, like employee resource groups, advisory boards, building culture ambassadors, right? Like how do we share that across the company? So can we give a warm welcome to Amy Bayer global director, DEI, engagement and culture at Duck Creek. We are really well, very lucky to have Amy with us. So I'll stop sharing here. Amy, you should be able to join me up here. If you wanna unmute, turn your camera on and join me There. There's Zach. Turn my camera. I got put in time out 'cause I put it on too early. Hi, Zach. Thanks so much for having me. Well, Amy, uh, really grateful for you to take more time outta your busy schedule to share your wisdom and your perspective, and more importantly, like your tactics with our network and our, our pure community to learn from. So that being said, I'm gonna hand it over to you. The floor is all yours. And, uh, yeah, thanks again for leading this. All right, great. I'm gonna just go ahead and start sharing my screen, and so everybody can just let me know if they're seeing Zach, you're seeing my, Yep, I see. If you want to go in the full presentation. Yep, Absolutely. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you Zach, so much. Um, I'm here today to talk about everyone owns culture building belonging through grassroots movements. We've heard and been inspired today, but now as Zach said, we're gonna get a little bit more tactical. Um, I wish I had longer, so I'm gonna still keep it high level. And if you want more specifics so we can always talk, um, I have my contact information at the end. And so, um, just diving right in, I just wanna tell you a tiny bit about me because I think this is important as Zach says, um, the things that I've been leading, but just a little bit about me. I've been in the HR space over years. Um, I call myself an HR nerd because I knew I was gonna major in HR my senior year in high school. And I've had a career, um, in hr, but I've also worked at a couple different companies, um, which at first I used to think like, oh, that's not so great. I've kind of, you know, worked at a couple different places. And I actually now know that that was probably one of the best things that I ever did because I got to see a lot of different leadership styles, um, how people handle diversity, equity, inclusion, and culture. So I'm gonna share all those learnings with all of you. And I wanna just tell you a little bit about Duck Creek, where I work at right now. So we are a tech company. We are the leading provider of core systems solutions for insurance carriers. So think property and casualty. Um, we have about employees at Duck Creek. We've been around for years. We're global. So you're gonna hear a lot of what I have to say today is gonna be very focused on globally because we have a large presence of employees in India. We have employees in Australia, we have them in Europe, and then we have another really large presence in the United States. So that was one of the the things I really had to learn. And the role that I'm in today, um, we're also flexible first. So think about remote first, but we call it flexible first. So we do have offices, but we empower our employees to find the spot that's right for them. If they wanna work at home, work at home, if they wanna work in an office, work in an office. We just want them to do their best work. And then we also call ourselves ducks. So you're gonna hear me possibly talk about some duck puns, bring up ducks, refer to us as ducks. It's really fun. And then if you see in the left, we have our core values. I wanted to share that with you all. And then we also have our culture code, which is flock. So you know, just a little bit about us. We're fun, we're learners, we're open, we're customer focused, and we're kind. And if I could add on another letter, it would be that they love to give feedback because I always hear a lot from our employees. Um, so that's just a little bit about us. And I'm just gonna dive right in. I wanna talk about what does really owning culture mean? Like what am I even meaning about that? Um, and then how do we build that grass movement? How do you engage those employees? How do you find those culture champions? How do you empower them to lead employee resource groups, councils, and programs? And then I'm also gonna share what I've learned. And I have to say, being in this space and being in this role for the last five years, um, it's been humbling. Uh, you know, and it's also been probably the most gratifying work that I've ever done in my life. And so energizing. But we've had some missteps, we've had some challenges. I want to share those with you. But I think one of the biggest things we've learned is we've gotta celebrate success. And I wanna dive into that. And I have a video at the end to show that I'm hoping we have time. So let's dive in. Um, you know, I, I saw this, I've heard this from people 'cause I really talk a lot about everybody owns culture. When everybody's responsible, you know, then no one's responsible, right? Then if we just say, well, everybody owns culture, then it kind of goes nowhere. And I'm gonna really push back on that because that's not what we're trying to say. Um, of course it's still a strategy and there still ultimately is an owner. But what we're really saying is that everybody has a role in this within the organization. It doesn't matter what your title is, it doesn't matter what your job is. It doesn't matter how long you've been with the organization. We all play an active role in shaping and maintaining the company culture. You know, it's not just hr. Um, it's not just the CEO. Uh, I've found too throughout my career, when it is just kind of put that, that that's who owns it, it falls flat. It really doesn't activate the change. It doesn't empower the employees. You know, you need everybody, um, influencing, you know, culture by their daily actions, by their attitudes and their by their behaviors. And I also wanna just say too, you wanna make your culture so polarizing that when you have people who aren't living into that flock or that culture code, that it really stands out and really shows. And so, you know, I think of everybody owned in culture is a shared responsibility at the organization. It's a collective, um, effort. Um, it's a way to empower and engage your employees. It's a way also to get collaboration, um, working because you've gotta have that mutual respect. And then it's something that has to consistently happen everybody own. And culture, you know, it, it's not when it's convenient, it's not when all of a sudden there's lots of headwinds and different things going on in the, um, the world that are pushing back on some of your values. It's something that you live into and that you show up every day. And so, bottom line, just this is a way and an approach that we have found at Duck Creek that really drives engagement, leads to higher sets of belonging, um, and really aligns everybody within Duck Creek with our mission and our goals. So that's what I mean about everyone owns culture. And, uh, just wanna kind of talk about now a little bit more specifically about Duck Creek's journey. So, as I said, or I don't know if I mentioned, um, my career has always been in hr. I actually started off as an HR business partner. That's where I, the space that I came from. And when I joined Duck Creek in March of , so on March 9th, we all know what was going on at that time. Duck Creek had no real programs, um, about culture, um, rewards and recognition, employee resource groups, de and I, we didn't have anything. And, and about May of , we had two employees that rose their hand and said, Hey, we wanna have an employee resource group. We need more. We wanna build a community. We are really passionate about this. And they went ahead and formed, um, our first employee resource group. Then about nine months later, we had some employees, again raising their hand and formed our black employer resource group. There wasn't any governance, there wasn't any playbooks. They were already living into this, um, culture that we had where it's like, Hey, I can affect change, I can impact things. I'm not seeing what we need to be having and I'm gonna go ahead and raise my hand and be a part of making this change. And so I then came into my role and, you know, that's when things started to really move because I knew, Hey, this is what I've always seen that's been effective and I'm gonna tap into this. There's only one of me at the time and how am I gonna meet all of these goals and how are I, am I gonna really move change at Duck Creek? And so I needed to tap into our biggest asset, which was our people. And it worked. It really did. And we've had an amazing last five years. Um, as you can see, we then started with our diversity council. We got our Be Well program up and going, our Duck Creek is Back Council, I'm sorry, program. I was able to hire somebody else in my team. And then the ERGs started to come and we had other employee resource groups. And these are all employee, um, led. And then we, you know, have our veterans employee resource group. I have IT to side, I wanna tell you by why later. Um, our A-A-P-I-E-R-G, we launched the Employee Experience Council, other ERGs and it our cultural ambassador program. And it just kept going. And then just recently this year, we finally launched our caregivers, ERG. And so all of these programs really came into place over the last five years. And so now I'm gonna get just a little bit more tactical with you and talk to you about what it looks like to have all these programs led by our employees. So I really wanna dive into that grassroots movement. And so I'm gonna first start with our employee resource groups. I'm sure we've talked a lot about this. We've heard about this today and how powerful these are. And I'm starting here because as you saw, we have eight of them. So we have these groups that are company governed. They're employee powered, they're voluntary. Um, they're, they're trying to foster diverse and inclusive spaces align with our mission and our vision. They're open to everyone. That's how we've always ran our, um, employee resource groups. But what we did do is we created like a toolkit, like a starter toolkit. So we could tell people like, this is how you get them up and going. We made sure that we have, every year we set our celebratory calendar and we hold space. Either it's a month or week, it depends on what they, um, have in place. And then this is their time where they hold company-wide events. We actively added governance and goals over the last five years. We have an allocated budget. We have executive sponsorship. We treat these as leadership development positions. Those leading the ERGs. Um, we wanna invest in them. We require that they put in an annual developmental goal. Um, and then any ERG that comes through at Duck Creek, it gets approval from our executive leadership team. So right away they're getting space right in front of the ELT. And then annually we have all of ours, kinda like a QBR, all of our employee resource groups, um, present to our executive leadership team. And as I mentioned, all of our ERGs are open to everyone. So they're inclusive and they're a way that you can start to work on skills in a brave space. Is that what we like to say? You know, maybe it's budget, maybe it's it's event planning, maybe it's, um, different ways to influence and lead. And so these are a big investment for us at Duck Creek. I wanna talk to you now about the other programs besides our employee resource groups. As you can see, we have a, a couple of them, we have our advisory board, which we evolved from our diversity council. We now have a Duck Creek Gives Back Council, employee experience, council cultural ambassador program. And we just launched this. It's gonna be starting this fall. Our Be Well Champions. So again, these are volunteer employees who are raising their hands and saying, Hey, I wanna be a part of this. They have a whole other job. They're engineers. They're working in finance, they're working in professional services. They have their whole other job, and then they are doing this work as well. And so it's very important. It's very, it's a very dynamic group. We love to call this community our One Duck Creek, um, community. It's really important to us so that we have most locations, departments, um, levels, roles, you know, all sorts of diversity, um, in this community. And then we really use them to help champion and evangelize all the different culture and DI initiatives that we have. So one of the things that we do, and I'm gonna dive into this a little bit more, is we have an application process. I think that's been really important to us. Um, and to make sure that we are getting people who understand the commitment, um, when you are in these roles. So I'm, I I can't go as detailed as I want. I just want you to know we have keep evolving it. We've been doing it for five years. We've really learned how to do it. Um, we hold informational sessions. We've found we gotta be upfront and clear. We always say we love to quote Brene Brown. Clear is kind. Um, we set expectations clear and upfront with time commitments. Um, we are inclusive to all, anybody can apply for these roles. Um, we have behavioral questions within the application. We require leader recommendations. We do interviews, and then we really do spend a good amount of time onboarding, um, the, the different groups. So we got people coming in and out each year. And so we really wanna take the time. And so one of the programs I wish I could get into all of them, um, that I really want to share with all of you is our Employee Experience Council. Um, we're not supposed to have favorites. This one is, is one of my favorites. And this group is, you know, all of these groups, they're a think tank. So when I have new programs coming up, I can use them to bounce ideas and to get feedback. Their eyes and ears, they see what's going on in the organization. They're a feedback channel for me that can actively get input. They help, as I mentioned, to champion and evangelize the different programs at Duck Creek. But then they also take action. And when I mean that they are out there hosting social events, I give each of them a budget. Um, they're holding events. I have about , people on the council. So we have people just out there bringing people together. And it makes such a difference. They get to work on skills, but then they get to have people, you know, meet, have fun network. Um, we are, as I said, flexible first. We need to have those events to bring people together. So that's one of the programs I wanted to highlight. Another one is just our cultural ambassador programs. I'm sure all of you have heard programs like this. Um, we offer culture conversations, what we call them when, when a prospective employee comes in Duck Creek, we have a group that they get to pick who they wanna talk to. So maybe they wanna talk to someone from the black employee resource group or maybe they want to talk to a female leader within, um, engineering. So we have a nice variety of people that they can talk to and ask the questions that they wanna ask. Our cultural ambassadors have also, um, been so great as these new employees come in. We've been holding a quarterly, uh, we call 'em new employee connects, trying to treat it almost like an employee resource group where we're building community sharing information. So we've been really working on that this last year. Couple things, as I said, you know, we, we learned early on we had to have governance and guidelines. I think that's the most important thing I can tell you. Um, just be upfront and then hold people accountable to it. Uh, I've also found, because I've heard this so much, you know, budget, budget, budget, you know, ERGs aren't successful 'cause they don't have money. It's not true. Money does not solve everything. I'll talk about it later. But I truly believe that sometimes cash kills creativity. We make sure that, um, the budget is there. We actually have people sometimes even struggle, um, with that piece of it. So I just wanna say that that just doesn't solve everything. Um, we've also been too us focused and we've learned and we've heard that. And we just keep trying to be more global. Um, we also are trying to keep things, you know, in more simple as we're activating a lot of people that this is not their normal job. Um, or we're trying to get more people involved. We just don't wanna boil the ocean. We wanna keep things simple. We really tried to get a program started as you saw that circle that I showed you, do something really well. This worldly worked well. This, this, everyone owns culture with the diversity council. And then I kept springing it out from there. So, you know, that crawl, walk, run is the approach that we take. Um, we set expectations, accountability, succession planning is, honestly, I'll tell you that's probably our biggest struggle right now with our employee resource groups. Um, we're working really hard on our other councils and programs, but that's the area that we're struggling. And then also employee burnout. We all know this is a challenging time. We're expected a lot in our roles. Everybody's moving at a really fast pace in their own job. And then to add on all of this, we just have to be mindful about the expectations that we ask everybody. 'cause we don't wanna, uh, burnout employees. And so I just wanna talk about the celebrate our success. And you know, one of the things I knew that I needed was like a carrot to dangle, um, with everybody to be a part of these programs, right? If they're doing their other job and they're doing all this other work, what could I do? How could I thank them? And what started in is I brought everybody together. It was just our diversity council and our ERGs, and we brought them into the, the Boston office. And we, you know, brought in speakers. We had fun together. Um, we really connected, we really celebrated all that we accomplished. And, you know, we have been doing this, it'll be our fifth year this spring. This has turned into like our flagship global event. Um, we have global, you know, invitees, everybody. They come from around the world. Um, our executive leadership team is with us. From that. We got feedback about wanting us to do this more often. So we do a V summit. Um, we also do a town hall with this group. We call this, you know, our One Duck Creek group. We also do impact awards. We wanna really celebrate, uh, workplace culture collaboration, community allyship, mentorship and inclusion. And so all of these things have really helped us, um, to do this. Zach, I don't believe I have time for the video, so I'm gonna pass over it. Um, I feel really bad about that just because I'm, I'm running a little short of time. So, but I just wanna say again, what we've learned is we wanna keep it simple as much as possible. If I could really impart anything to you, you know, think long game, um, get some early wins, build slowly, all that you saw took about five years. Um, you know, tap into your stakeholders from your board members to your CEO. Um, they have helped me to get speakers. They have helped me to be a part of this community. Um, they have, you know, so many recommendations. So don't ever discount those. Um, as I said, money doesn't solve everything. Uh, consistent communication. You really gotta be best friends with your internal communication, um, department, you know, over and over and, um, have fun. Lean into your employee's. Creativity. I have to tell you, I don't know if it's just our employees. They have some of the best ideas and they are so passionate and, you know, they, they tell me things that I can't even think of sometimes. Um, but focus on impact. Be strategic. You know, I, i, I really, we, we, we gotta pull people in a lot. We gotta reign people in because sometimes more events is just more, think about the impact that you wanna make. You don't have to just be doing nonstop events. There's other ways also to get engagement and other ways and, you know, activate your allies. Allyship is so important. Um, having them involved in everything that you do is important. I heard we talked about this, you know, we wanna, we wanna call in that out and we wanna bring people along for the journey and, you know, tap into those natural culture carriers, empower them. You would be surprised what happens. Um, use ai. I'm, I'm sure everybody is at this point, but this has been a game changer for me in terms of agenda and programming. And then, um, as always, celebrate that success. Don't, don't, that's what leads to burnout. Don't take, always take the time to acknowledge where you came from and really what you accomplish within the year. And we really make a point to do that. And so I just wanna thank everybody, um, and just kind of open it up. I know we only have a couple minutes for q and a. Um, and if anybody had any questions and please, uh, you know, find me on LinkedIn. I have a lot more to share, but I know the time is short. Zach, is there any questions that have been coming up? Zach, No questions yet here. Um, but thank you so much, Amy, that was so inspiring and it was so wonderful just to see the growth and evolution of what you've built. Um, just so powerful. I wanna know more about this hackathon and the great quack off. I know we've skimmed over that, but the cleverness with the naming, um, from your culture code and the flock, I love it all. And I'll, and I didn't get a time to get into those and I really wish I could have shown you all the video because it, it shows you what our summits like where we bring everybody together. But like the great quack off, we, um, we had a got a new recognition platform and we right away were like, how do we engage our employees? And we let them name it, we got over submissions and we called it the Great Quack Off. And that's how we got our name of our recognition program recognized. And employees just love. That's how our employees are. They love that. They love being engaged. S nice. That is amazing. You need to train Mark all of this. Um, no, truly, it's beautiful. And I loved how you encompass this idea that culture truly is owned by everyone. And ID think that through embedding that into things like your culture code and your onboarding, it felt like everywhere in the employee life cycle, you could feel that. And it really just became a part of the heart of your organization. So thank you so much for sharing all of those little nuggets with us, um, and certainly inspiring us all on our journey. Definitely connect with Amy if you haven't already. Um, we're so grateful to have you here. Uh, I love that call out in the chat, Zach. Yes, if you have any other great names or branded employee programs, um, please throw them into the chat. I think we can make an entire session just on this, um, for some inspiration. Yes, I wish I could get into it. You know, like, I, like you said, I mean, we have employees that come in from day one 'cause they have the culture conversation and they hit the ground running. And I, and I just have like three emails over this last week of employees who are in areas that don't have like an employee experience, council member who they want to set up social events. And so it's like, it just is happening. We're just empowering our employees. So don't think that you can't do that. It, I I couldn't have done all I did without all our employees. So thank you so much. Thank you. Truly, it was a masterclass in building systems from a spark. Um, so I'm grateful to continue this conversation. Next up, we're actually gonna be welcoming Carol Smith, who is the global marketing director at quance. Um, Carol co-founded their award-winning DEI program and serves on the DEI advisory board for the American Staffing Association. Carol, welcome. We're so excited to have you. Hi everybody. I have to put on my glasses so I can see. Lovely Sue. I am, uh, super excited to be here today. I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. Um, I'm gonna talk, I'm, I think it's a great dovetail. I'm going to build on what Amy was just talking about in terms of employee resource groups and really get into, uh, some of the tactics, um, and actual ways that you can get started with building an employee resource group. And so, here we go. Let me see. Um, if you, if you can't see Clara, let me know if, if you're not able to see it Looks Great. Okay, perfect. Perfect. So, uh, just a quick little thing about me bonus, uh, picture of my very mischievous puppy. Um, but I work for Aquin, which is one of the largest, uh, work, work solutions company, but most people know us for staffing and recruiting in a marketing creative and design space. Um, I lived in LA for many, many years, but I recently moved back home to Maryland about two years ago to be with my family. And, um, similar to Duck Creek, we are virtual first. So that was really what allowed me to do that. And so it's wonderful to be able to be home with my loved ones. Um, my family is so important to me. And, you know, really as we talk about, um, equity and inclusion, you're going to hear me call it DEI today, DEIB, um, because that is my act of resistance. Um, in terms of, you know, I just believe toes down and certainly understand that we have to in some ta some cases in sometimes modify the language. But in this group among friends, I'm, I'm definitely gonna call it, uh, D-E-I-D-I-B. So I spent a lot of time in this work, um, in a lot of different capacities with educational equity, volunteering for different nonprofits. Um, as Clara mentioned, I serve on a advisory board with the American Staffing Association, helping other staffing, um, organizations, you know, really be able to expand and enhance their DEI programs and practices. And so I wanna give a shout out to Dan, who I lovingly call. We lovingly call each other our partners in change at, uh, so see Jerry, um, on here. And he and I are colleagues on the American Staffing Association board. So today we're gonna talk about defining DIB. I know a lot of you already know what it is, but I, I just wanna touch on that real quick. So I think it sets an important foundation what the business case is for that. How do we gain stakeholder buy-in the power of ERGs and then taking action. Um, I have in part of my life, I have been a professor, um, at Loyola Marymount and I teach on social media and pr. So you all have a homework assignment at the end that is my inner professor that never leaves. So as we talk about defining DIB, I mean, as we all know, it's diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. And, and as we've talked about today, it in many cases might need to be called culture, um, equality engagement. But at the end of the day, it is helping each and every employee feel like there is a place for them in the organization. And when we say that it truly is each and every employee, and I, um, I think it was Tijuana that that said, you know, someone came up to her and said, I identify as a white male and I don't know if I'm welcome in some of these spaces. And so, you know, one of the thing that we have done at Aquin as we have rolled out our employee resource groups is really, it is that group and allies, you know, um, some of our most consistent attenders are people that are not, you know, defining themselves as part of the community, but are being allies. And we have found that more than % of our employees on employee engagement surveys cite employee resource groups as part of their satisfaction. And so, as we'll talk about later, that contributes to, uh, in retention satisfaction and ultimately productivity. Productivity. So as we talk about DIB, so often we think about it as race and gender, right? I lovingly say, um, when I walk through the door, you, you kind of have a perception and I'll say perception of who I am based off of what you perceive as my race, what you perceive as my gender, what you perceive as my age . Um, so, you know, but it is many, many di dimensions of diversity. It could be military status, it could be religion, it could be neurodiversity. And, and those are many things that are invisible. And so I think as we talk about how do we build communities and spaces for everyone to feel that they belong, it is also looking at these other dimensions beyond what you just see when you walk in the door or what you perceive. You might perceive someone to be as a certain race or as a certain gender, but that may not be the case. And so it really is building, you know, a community for people to feel welcome and to feel like they can show up as who they are. We have all seen the headlines, right? Um, I think many people have, um, stopped looking at the news, and if you have stopped looking at the news or the headlines, you find them distressing, just throw an emoji in the chat. I think there are many of us who feel that in, in many, many ways. But there was a recent executive order earlier this year. You know, we've seen a lot in the news about companies moving away from DEI programs, but then just this article was just posted, um, just yesterday by ESG dive. And you know, as we've talked about on the, the, the different sessions today, many companies are reframing, not necessarily abandoning DEI, and that is also, uh, Dan and I, we lead, uh, round tables with DEI leaders nationwide every single month. And that is what we're seeing as well, is many companies are reframing it, not necessarily abandoning it. So I have a quick poll. I just wanna ask, you know, how is your organization approaching DEI? And I also put in parentheses inclusion. I'm gonna stop sharing just for a moment so that we can go ahead and launch the poll. And I just am interested to see, you know, is your company moving away from it? Are they reframing or is it full steam ahead? The poll is anonymous, so we are not going to call anybody out or mention your organization, but just take a moment and go ahead and vote and let us see where you are and what's happening. And so I see in the chat reframing not abandoning, I see others saying full steam ahead. Um, I see a couple that say, you know, moving away from it. So I'm just gonna give it another like ish seconds and then we will, we'll just kinda take a moment and see where people are. Okay. I see re reframing, reframing, a lot of reframing, and sometimes I think you have to do that, right? And let's be honest, that's hard sometimes because sometimes there are gonna be people in your organization that feel that reframing means abandoning, and it doesn't, it just means you have to make it look a little bit different. Like we said, you may not call it equity, you may call it equality. You might need to remind everyone that there is space for them in here. And I'm gonna talk it a little bit about how when we launched our DEI programs, some of the things that we did in order to get that buy-in. Okay? So it looks like % of the people that have voted are reframing the language or the programs, or evolving, which was another word that I saw. Um, % are full steam ahead, and then % are, are moving away from it. So thank you for taking a moment to vote. I think that's super helpful. And, um, we'll just share the results in the chat so everybody can see. And then I'm gonna go back to sharing my presentation just so that we can keep, keep going. Um, hold on one second. Gimme one sec to share again. Okay, so I'm gonna go back share. Okay. And, all right, so let me know if you are able to now see my presentation. Clara, are you able to see that? Yes, it looks great. Thank you so much. Okay, so let's talk about, uh, the poll keeps wanting to pop up. Let's talk about the business case for DEIB. Like why does it even matter? And at the end of the day, whether you are, um, a nonprofit or for-profit business, you are there to satisfy your stakeholders, which could be shareholders. You are there to, um, satisfy your constituents, your clients, you know, whoever that might be. Um, you are there to create and to attract and retain your employees. And building a diverse workforce helps you do that. It helps with attracting and retaining employees with employee satisfaction. As I mentioned at Aquin, over % of our employees that participated in the employee satisfaction survey mentioned employee resource groups. As part of that, they mentioned that, that particularly I think in a virtual, first, a virtual and even, um, a hybrid environment. And even in person, people felt that it gave them an opportunity to connect with others. It gave them an opportunity to form friendships outside of, Hey, when are you gonna have that spreadsheet for me? When are you gonna have that thing for me? It also creates more innovative solutions. You know, I think there are a lot of times when we all can think of ads and think of things that have, you know, been put to the market and we're like, I know who wasn't at the table when that was created, because it doesn't work for many communities. And a big thing to think about is, um, ability slash disability. More than % of our population will experience a disability, even if it is temporary. Meaning you stubbed your toe, you have COD, you have flu, you can't get up and, you know, do your life as you normally would. You got your eyes dilated at the eye doctor, you can't read as you normally would. You need a screen reader or something to read to you. And so when you think about expanding your product, solution or service to serve a broader audience, it a, helps you have more innovative solutions, and b helps you have ultimately better business outcomes because you're able to reach a broader target audience. Okay, why isn't my slide moving? Okay, hold on one second. Let's keep going here. Um, so here are some stats to back, back that up. This is not just Carol making up stuff, but you know, McKinsey talks about % of increased likelihood of outperformance for those that have, that are in the top quartile of ethnic representation. Aquin did a report about two years ago, and one of the things that we saw was high performing teams or those that bought together diverse point of views. Um, Forbes did a survey recently that said, more than half US executives say their organizations have expanded their diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies over the last year. So as you think about how do you expand, how do you build an ERG, how do you create this infrastructure to support it? There are three key people or three key organizations or parts of your organization that you need to engage. First is your leadership team, um, and how do you engage them? You really talk about how this program, this initiative, is going to impact business income outcomes, right? It's going to help us have an incubator to test business ideas or pilot business ideas that might be something that appeals to them. Hr, um, it helps you attract and retain employees and employees. It gives them a sense of belonging. So these things that you see running across the bottom, those are just a few, just a short example of something that might resonate with this audience to help you gain their support in terms of getting buy-in for employee resource groups or some of the ways that you're trying to, uh, implement these programs. First, align the strategy with the business goals. So I'm making this up. Let's say your business goal is to expand internationally or expand into new markets. You might want to do an ERG of your international employees that helps your company think about things that they may not be considering as they go into an international market. Like for example, I, I'm making something up, but let's say that you use something with your left hand, right? That, that is, you know, what the product is. Well, there in certain markets that is not gonna be viable or feasible, or maybe it's the language that's used, right? We need to think about that. You wanna identify an executive sponsor. Amy talked about that before. You know how their ERGs have, um, an application process. But having an executive sponsor is key. That is the person who helps you navigate the obstacles, who helps get the other stakeholders to buy in that says, this is important. You wanna understand what the stakeholder priorities are, and you're gonna have different priorities perhaps from hr, from you know, employees, from your, um, your executives. One of the things that we did, which was super effective, was we did a survey. So your organization might have employee surveys that they implement every year for employee satisfaction, employee engagement. That's a great way to get some insights into what matters to your employees. And then again, try to look at aligning your, um, programs or initiatives with those insights or with those areas that are pain points for your employee organization. One of the things that we did when we launched ours was it was peak COVID. Um, as one of our, one of my friends calls it vintage COVID, when we were all home parents trying to, um, teach and work and manage homework. And, you know, we lovingly had what I call a lot of little coworkers as part of our meetings, whether it was parents, pets, kids, and our very first, we sent out a survey to our te our employees and ask them basically, how can we support you right now? What ERG would you find to really be the most effective for you? And the first one that came back was working parents was a space for other parents to get together to talk about some of the challenges they were facing, trying to, um, navigate being at home, having their kids home, finding play dates, et cetera. And so that was our very first one. It is still in existence today. It is one of my favorite ones to pop into, especially at the beginning of the year. I love to see like the back to school pictures, but it has been a thriving employee resource group for us. And it was one where the other thing that we liked about everyone felt that there was space there. So it was whether you were a parent, whether you were a caregiver, um, auntie, uncle, whatever it might be, you know, or if you are like me, you just love seeing pictures of other people's kids. There was a space for really everyone, and it helped us get company-wide buy-in. Another tactic is to truly expand upon existing programs, whether they're formal or informal, that gives you a way to kind of keep the ball rolling. And we found that employee resource groups, they help create that sense of belonging. It empowers employees to be able to share what's on their mind, whether it's, you know, dealing with the economy, dealing with layoffs, dealing with feeling that they're burnt out. It helps build community. And as I mentioned, employee satisfaction. There are a lot of different ERGs that you could launch, whether it's interests, ethnicity, gender, identity. Here are some examples, you know, that we've talked about. Um, again, very, very common in gender identity, but we've also done, you know, working parents. We also have one focused on sustainability. We have one focused on neurodiversity. And about a year ago I launched a company wide one that is focused on allyship, where we come together every single month to talk about how we can be allies. We talk about the intersectionality that we all deal with, um, as part of showing up at work. So we have one coming up next month. It's going to be talking about change. How do you manage change? How do you, um, create space to talk about change as a people leader? You know, how do you navigate that as an individual contributor? What's within your control? We've talked about Roe v Wade, we've talked about gun violence. Um, we've talked about, you know, the, the Israel, what's happening with Israel and, and Palestine, all very sensitive issues. Um, but we've found space to talk about that and create allyship and figure out how do we be allies for each other? How do we understand that we show up as, um, there are different dimensions of our personality that come to work. And it's important to have all of those be there some successful, uh, initiatives that we found have just been informational webinars, right? Just, you know, again, like this allyship or even as a caregiver, you know, how do you, how do you deal with, um, how do you find resources as a caregiver, whether you're caring for young children or whether you're caring for your aging parents. We've bought in guest speakers, uh, both internal and external. And we've tapped into, you know, I lovingly call it our friends and family network. You know, Hey, my sister is this, my friend is that, you know, and bought those different, uh, guest speakers in, we have break rooms, um, which is just a chance to drop in and chat, you know, no necessary topic or a specific topic, but, you know, just cake pop in. Let's talk about what's happening. And those we find to be particularly effective when something, you know, unfortunately traumatic happens, right? There is a new ruling. There is, uh, an outbreak, a war that has happened, or there has been, unfortunately a racist incident. The break rooms provide the space and we empower the ERGs to call a break room so that they can meet with their teams and have that opportunity to have conversation. We have regular meetings, uh, typically once a month. One of the things that we've been doing during the summer months is we lovingly call 'em collabs, you know, where there's like a bipoc and, and women's group ERG meeting that's taking space together. And that provides an opportunity to bring two groups together, lunch and happy hours, volunteer events, whether you're volunteering for Earth Day, but you know, bringing everybody together to volunteer for something in common, even if it's virtual. We found that to be really cool. We did a virtual, um, commitment for Earth Day. Whether it was you wanted to do meatless Mondays, you were gonna bike, you know, take a bike ride in your neighborhood, you are gonna plant some flowers. So there, there are lots of different ways to do it. And then every, um, every year, but we're trying to do it twice a year. We do A ERG fair. So similar to your club fairs back in the day in high school or college, we have each ERG have a breakout room where people can go and learn more about that organization. Okay, let me keep going 'cause I wanna make sure I have a, a little bit of time for questions. I'm getting started, you know, I repeated this before, but I'm just gonna hit on it again. Align with business goals. That is your number one go-to way to help ensure success, align what you're doing with business goals, and then conduct employee surveys and doing those two things, oh, will help you gain, um, stakeholder buy-in. And as part of that, you wanna make sure you have an executive sponsor, you wanna invite employees is not just that community. I encourage you to expand it to allies. Um, that tends to, again, make it company wide and not make it exclusive, but make it inclusive. Do, uh, regular meeting times. And we found it really helpful to define what the group norms are. You know, just for example, we do oops and ouch in that we, and we announced this at every single meeting, where we're gonna assume good intentions. And, um, if you say something that, you know, accidentally offends somebody, we're gonna call that a oops. Um, but you know, we also, um, you know, use ouch. So determine budget, plan activities, shared successes, um, overcoming obstacles. I lovingly say DEI and this kind of stuff is like broccoli, right? You, you kind of gotta serve it a bunch of different times, a bunch of different ways to get everybody to, um, participate and want to, um, use it. Whether it's broccoli salad, broccoli casserole, broccoli, you know, whatever it might be. You're gonna have to keep, um, serving it up to your team, use your executive sponsor, you know, try to identify the root issue that you're dealing with and brainstorm additional solutions. Um, do I have time for questions? Clara, do I have time for questions or am I short? Oh, Zach, Hey Carol. Uh, we are coming up on time, but I would love okay, to this one question that came in the chat from John and a few others, especially for those organizations that have a yes. Of a smaller footprint. Yes, yes, yes. What are your thoughts on ERGs and these type of groups when yeah, you have a smaller footprint like that? So in those, I would, I think, um, one of the ways you could kind of get started is rallying around perhaps a certain topic. So maybe it's like Earth Day or maybe it is something like an allyship ERG for a smaller community, because that is something where everybody participates and you could use that allyship umbrella to help you talk about the different topics as they come up. Whether it's a heritage month, whether it's something that, you know, has happened, et cetera. We also used, um, lena.org, we took the allyship at work training. We've also done the Anti-Defamation League training. And, and those were a couple of things that we found helpful. So for the smaller organizations, I, I still would do a survey and see if you can find some, um, commonality in terms of the group, but think about things that might appeal to a broader group of people. Well, thank you so much for that, Carol. And something I would just add to that as well, right? And I think something I've learned in my own employee resource group experiences, like they don't necessarily have to be a full on commitment forever, right? Right. Like sometimes they serve certain seasons or chapters that the organization is going through. So build this community if there's a certain focus and that happens to be inclusion because that's a key employee like initiative that's critical right now, make that the focus of the employee resource group, right? And that as you build and evolve the culture, it will have new focus areas. So yeah. Um, and the allyship one was critical for us in being able to do that. And that was a space that we created where we said everyone in the company is automatically a member. You know what I mean? Because we want to create a company and a community where we are all allies, um, to each other. So that allyship or inclusion, I think those are great ways to start to say, Hey, we're all part of this. I think to Ana's point, um, or maybe it was msba, but you know, a culture and building that culture is everybody's responsibility. Well, let's give a round of applause for Carol for joining us and really bringing that perspective to our network. Carol, thank you so much. That was incredible. I encourage all of you to also connect with her as she shared her and den lead these round tables on a monthly basis with other leaders like you. So connect with her, join some Of this. Yeah, connect with me, ask me questions. Yeah, happy to chat. Thank you so much, Carol. Bye. All right everyone, we are coming up on our last and final session. You gotta save the best for last. Uh, I'm really excited for this song. We also had Alexandra, who is up next, global manager learning and development for Hedrick and Struggles. Uh, they actually just presented on a masterclass aligned with this topic in the ex leadership network that I talked about before. So we're really lucky to have her back in action with our network. And I'm really excited about this too, because this is gonna be a little bit more specific to a topic we haven't really hit on much today, which is the generational differences that we're navigating in the workplace, right? We have one of the most diverse workforces generationally we've ever had, and people are staying in the workforce longer than ever, and we have new waves of generation entering the workforce. So this is very relevant for a lot of us. So I'm excited to hear more of how they've been navigating that. So let me add, Alexandra, here's wonderful to see you again and, uh, thanks for doing this with us and sharing your wisdom and I'll uh, pass it over to you. Thanks, Zach. Yeah, it's my pleasure to connect with you all and I, I don't know if I'm best for less 'cause Wow. You know, it's tough to follow both Amy and Carol, thank you for sharing your, your wisdom with the group here. As Zach said, my name is Alexandra. I am the global Manager of learning development for He and Struggles. If you're not familiar with us, he and Struggles is a public employee global leadership advisory firm. We're known for our executive search, our leadership consulting, and our on-demand services. So our conversation today has been about employee led programming and how inclusion and belonging work is more than just one team or one department's role. And, and how, you know, de and I, as Carol was just saying, is more than just those visible identifying factors. So I wish I had time to brag about all of you haing inclusion and belonging work that we do, you know, internally for the firm and externally with our clients. We have an e interfaith ERG that just launched and is incredibly impactful. And we have a, our first ever, you know, first generation in the workplace mentoring program. But today, like Zach said, I'm gonna focus in on an employee driven initiative based around age and the multi-generational workforce. So I'm gonna kind of focus in on, on that initiative that we've done earlier this year. I had the pleasure of partnering with Dom from our inclusion and belonging team. She was with me on the other ex learn learning program that we did with Z. Um, and so we got to create this multi-generational, multi-generational workforce initiative. So I'll share how we came to that project, showcase some of the specific implementation details so you have some tangible tools to bring back to your organization. Um, and I'll be curious, you know, to hear how you all are doing this work. So with that mind, with that in mind, I'd love to see in the chat, you know, just a simple yes or no, um, yes or no to the statement. Our company is addressing multicultural collaboration and I'm just curious what we have in the room today. All right. Anyone else with me? Not really. I'm seeing some nos. That's fine. We were in the same boat. Great. So hopefully this will be an opportunity for you to take away. Um, maybe love that. Love that. So he, like I said, global employees. We do have all five generations on staff. And when we did a employee commentary, we noticed that a lot of our comments responding to the statement, I believe Heidrick is a diverse workplace. We got lots of positive glowing remarks on that. And then we saw in the comments section a lot of, yes, we're inclusive, but what about age? Or sometimes I worry that I'm perceived as too junior or I see very little being said about age diversity and respect to the value of seasoned professionals. So with these comments, our DEI team, which has been renamed formally to the Inclusion Belonging Team, um, they've created a day of understanding. We've got lots of different topics. It's a webinar that goes out to every single, um, employee opt-in, come if you can. And they did a webinar on generations. We had great speakers come to that. And it created a lot of buzz and we got a lot out of that topic. And so employees started raising their hands and saying, this was great, I want more. This is great, I want more. So with that overwhelming response and interest, we decided to come together and launch the generations at he. And we were able to move some of these comments to some feedback from the program that really wowed us. We got this message that said, never before have I ever had the space to work to, to at work to reflect on or discuss ages identifying factor. So how do we do that? In just six months, the project centers on bringing together small multi-generational groups of colleagues. We called them pods and we wanted 'em to foster honest dialogue around the generational experiences in the workplace and beyond. So I wanna highlight that participation here was completely voluntary. Employees were opting in based on their interest level and availability. They met once a month for six months. And along these regular meetings, we organized a guest speaker series. We had a regional mixer to encourage more networking and to deepen the learning of all of the, by the end of the journey, you know, participants left feeling stronger with their cross generational connections. They felt a renewed commitment to our, our firm's core val value around respecting and valuing each individual for who they are. And we look at the benefits of this design. It's all about leveraging diversity of mindsets and career expectations and the life stages that exist across the generations. The program is providing a space for reflection, um, and really helps 'em kind of talk about in a, in a safe environment, you know, conscious and unconscious biases that we may not even know we have about different generations. And it really let people kind of learn from those different perspectives. Like everything, any program that anyone launches, it's got limitations. So we noticed that the voluntary participation, you know, naturally meant that some of our employees may be hesitant, you know, perhaps it's too vulnerable of a space for them. Maybe there was confusion over how is this program relevant to me? And we have a very, very high, um, demand on our workload. And so, you know, how do you balance taking on this monthly work, uh, or this monthly meeting in addition to all of the other work that you do. So that's why it was really critical for the program to have oversight from our IMB team and then from myself and the learning development team. So we really managed the pod assignments, we generated the conversational prompts, we orchestrated all the events that we tried to take the heavy lift off the participants so that they could really just show up and be present. We also did expect them to manage their own time and commitment. So both they had to, you know, agree to sign up for the larger pod meetings and commit to coming to the larger events. And they, you know, really got a lot out of that experience. So to, I wanted to show a little bit about how we made this happen. So we sent out a global email and announcing the program. This went to every single person. The, the subject line says, introducing generations at hy a new program to foster age inclusion. And this outlined the, the program and what was expected of them. And then we asked them to complete an application. And it wasn't an application to, you know, say you're in, you're out. It was really to collect interest and the main reason of why do you wanna join? You know, what, what is exciting to you about this opportunity. Like I said, people work really, really hard and so we expected maybe , total employees to sign up for this, and we were thrilled to get over . So with over , we had to divide them up into pods. We did four people in each pod, and then we have them all come to their first session. So I'll pause the story here to see if there's any initial questions, and then I'm gonna dive into the specifics of the program. So I'll go through what our first orientation call looked like, the key topics that we covered, um, any learning resources that we used, and then I'll showcase some of the special events, any questions that people have right now, it's totally fine. If not, Hey, Alexandra, I'll ask a quick question. Uh, Zoe or so asked this, um, can you talk more about like the speakers or the people you brought in that you used on the generation's topics? Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm also staying in the chat that my slides weren't showing Up. I was also just gonna know that as well. No worries. Um, so you didn't miss much. Here's a pretty picture of a, of a email and the application slides and then here's with some of the project details. So I'm happy to showcase that around later if you'd like. Um, yes, I will definitely be covering our special events and our speakers. We worked with, um, a Harvard Business Review editor, a PhD who is actually writing his thesis on the multi-generational workforce. And then we even brought in a, uh, social media content creator. You might have seen him before. He does funny videos about the multi-generation, how people respond to different workplace scenarios. Um, he was really fantastic. So we wanted to make sure we had a bit of humor, a bit of academia, um, and a bit of business review work. So we had a very, and the participants themselves were multicultural or multi-generationally diverse as well. It would've been silly if they all came from the same generations. And we're talking about the multi-generations. What other questions can I answer? All right, so I'll dive then into the specifics. So at our very first orientation, we kicked off with what the expectations were. We wanted to make it clear to our participants that you get out what you put into this experience. You know, ownership is super key. So this slide, you can see that we articulated, um, our cohort members needed to attend the orientation call, see these expectations, create those pod groups. We provided some group norms and we asked them to make their own group norms as well. And then we wanted them to, you know, notify their manager about their involvement, attend and schedule the events, check in on emails, communicate in a slack channel that we had for every participant, and then attend those, those, uh, special events and speaking series. Each month the participants received a discussion theme. So the topics have included everything from ageism and generational stereotypes to communication styles, mentoring and the, the role of reverse mentoring. That was a really hot topic. And then cultural and historical sensitivities. Being a global firm, you know, what happened in the US as a, as a major historical moment for a generation may or may not apply to folks in other parts of the world. So we had the opportunity to make it a really holistic experience. Talking about culture and historical lenses, I wanted to show this sample pod meeting. So this is really what they would've received. They would've gotten a pre-learning, uh, links. One was a book summary that came from our partner with Get Abstract, and then they had self self-paced courses, um, with our partner with LinkedIn learning. So we hand curated those around each of those topics for the month. And then we prompted them with discussion groups. They only met for about minutes, so they maybe got through one, two and three of these questions didn't get through all five, maybe they decided to jump straight to five that was on the, the pods to decide and to really engage with the questions that were most interesting for them. We also then had additional resources for our further curious lifelong learners. So there was more resources provided they wanted to go deeper. This next is a sample of our special virtual events. So here you can see our speakers who came in to kind of have that interaction and hands-on and they gave us those hands-on strategies for how to cultivate an age inclusive culture and actionable insights around bridging those generational divides. So those were all the different touch points, you know, through the monthly meetings, the one-off events, keeping this feedback loop open, capturing, you know, really what worked for the pods and what needed to be refined, we were able to really strengthen those cross-generational inclusion in the workplace. This is some of our fabulous feedback. So again, my favorite piece of feedback was the statement of, you know, never before have I had the space at work to reflect on and discuss age as an identity factor. We were really pleased to see that everyone gained a new appreciation for how ageism can operate in both directions. Um, both towards more senior and towards more junior. There are stereotypes and biases in both directions. They all said that, you know, gosh, I've read about this before. I've seen the videos, I've seen the statistics, but talking to someone at my company and hearing their experiences really made me realize these stereotypes are overgeneralized. It doesn't apply to everybody. You know, what my kid is up to is not what my colleague is up to. They had an opportunity to really use that human to human storytelling experience to bring all of those insights to life at their own company. So as with every cohort, like I said, there are some key learnings. So we got feedback from our groups that four in a pod wasn't large enough. Um, if one person missed or two people had to go to a client meeting, then you had a really small, you know, discussion. So we're probably gonna double that or maybe increase it to about six or eight. We also learned that they needed a pod captain, someone to raise their hand and say, I'm in charge of scheduling, I'm in charge of reminding people to do the homework. I'm the pod person to kind of keep the train on the tracks. And then they also gave us feedback that while the reading material was excellent, it could have been even more global, which makes sense. LinkedIn learning is mainly based in the us. A lot of their content does come from a US perspective, so we were gonna make that a little bit stronger as we move forward. So that brings me to the end of my slides that you may or may not have been able to see. Um, I'm really happy to take some additional questions and showcase more, but I hope it's a good case study of how, you know, folks are really able to bring it to us from the employee. They were the ones saying, this is something that we care about. This is something that we really wanna focus in on. Um, it, it was in alignment with a lot of our ERGs, but it was a, a cross-functional collaboration where we were able to bring this to life and it's been really successful. We got great feedback from the board and we're looking forward to, um, going on to our second cohort and making those adjustments. So Zach, that's all I've got. Hope it's a a good story for you all. Hey Clara. Hey, thank you so much Alexandra. It was such a refreshing look at age inclusion, um, and I really just love the co-creation behind everything that you've done. So thank you so much for sharing. Um, we'd love to hear from the audience what stood out from you from the session. Any questions that you have? Oh, it looks like we have one coming in here. Okay, so we have a multi-generational workforce and are in the midst of a cultural shift focusing on psychological safety, employee engagement and DEIB. However, we've got a lot of pushback from our boomer generation workforce members. How do we ensure that they understand the importance of that shift while also respecting their concerns and opinions? What a great question. Really great question. And of course I wish I had like my own little zoom breakout group to kind of cos consult with you and see what we can come up with. And I'm sure everyone on this call could provide some great problem solving here. Um, like anything, when there's pushback, there's an underlying problem. So is it a vulnerability issue? Is it a trust issue? Is it a confidentiality issue? You know, what is the concern about bringing this topic to light? Um, where, where is the worry? And, and once you can kind of get to the core of that, then you can start shifting. But it's difficult, like anything in life to change someone's mind if they're already coming from a place of insecurity and and concern. So you can try to frame it as a positive. There's also opportunities where ours was a volunteer opt-in, right? If you don't wanna come, that's fine, you don't have to come, you're gonna get out of this program once you get into it. Um, happy to talk more if you'd like. No, I think that's a really great point and just remembering that everyone's coming from a different place in this conversation. Um, like we said earlier, learning about the the brain chemistry and and really trying to understand where is this fear coming from. Sometimes it starts with just asking those difficult and maybe a little bit uncomfortable questions. Yeah. Um, so that is a great response here. The other thing I'm not sure if you mentioned, but what allyship program or training um, did you do or is this from a different session here? That was For Carol. Um, I think she mentioned a couple. Um, I think one was the bystander program that came out during . 'cause I remember when she said it I was like, I definitely took that. If she's still with us, she could put that in the chat. Yeah Carol, I'll definitely throw it in the chat. Um, anything else for Alexandra here? If not, we will bring back Zach here and close us off. But thank you again for all of these amazing insights and for really ending us here. On a high note, certainly if you haven't already connect with Alexandra, her LinkedIn is in the chat here. Um, and if you do have any questions left over from any of our sessions of today, feel free to also throw those in the chat and into our q and a. Zach, are you back? I'm back. Well everyone first can we give another round applause for Alexandra and those last three speakers, Amy Carroll and Alexandra for leading our final sessions around some of these grassroots efforts And yeah, Clara, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I love some of the things that stood out for me and I'd love to hear in the chat even some of the things that stood out to all of you. But I mean, true co-creation, employee driven movements. I think a lot of times as HR leaders, people leaders or DEI leaders, if you're in that, you know this people function, you can often feel like you're, you're kind of on this island, you're trying to improve the entire workforce and the employee experience and you're pouring all this energy into designing these solutions and then you kind of come in and try to implement 'em but they're met with resistance, right? And goes to that even question, right? You're getting pushback from the boomer generation in that scenario. And I think that's why we need to keep co-creation so front and center at the beginning of the process so that when you get to implementation you should already have like the buy-in and the engagement and the alignment because people are actually part of creating what you implemented. And I think those three leaders did an incredible job showcasing the roadmap of how they actually did that. But yeah, what about you? Were there certain things that kind of stood out? Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I think feedback is a gift. Um, and certainly when people feel like co-owners they show up a little bit differently. So bring them on that journey. I loved hearing that reflect throughout the entire um, session here. And I'd love to hear from the audience as well. What's one idea that you're taking back to skill belonging from the inside out? Um, how are you empowering this co-creation? Within a hundred percent Felipe inclusion among generations can be a win-win. I see a question that came in that Felipe kind of answered in a way is that someone asked here, you know, do you think soft skill guidance is something that is necessary or that younger generations need? It seems there's been some challenges like communications conversations. Just wondering what your thoughts are about that. Uh, so one, I would say like younger generations, I think in general when you're a younger person entering in the workforce, you need a lot of development on a lot of these social skills and things like communication, navigating difficult conversations. In many cases this is the first time someone is experiencing those type of things outside of like their school or family environment. So, um, I sometimes like try not to put like Gen Z in a certain box that needs help with communication and really just anyone that's younger in their experience will need development work on a lot of these skill sets. And I think that's where something like age inclusion and tapping on baby boomers and older generations to serve as mentors and coaches and support systems to help share knowledge across the workforce and across generations can provide some untapped value and especially can help provide a ton of development support without really tapping into any l and d budget. Right? Like mentorship and peer-to-peer support is completely free other than the time investment between those two parties. So, um, Yeah. Can I add? Yeah, please do. Okay. Um, I'm super passionate about this. I do think everyone can benefit from communication and conversation skills. Absolutely. It has been such a topic and it's been seen as executive presence. Um, our analysts who are recent grads are calling CEOs for executive search work, right? So executive presence is critical and we're actually gonna, instead of doing breakout sessions at our global conference, we are bringing in an executive presence speaker to give every single person in the room that standard training. Um, regardless of where they are within their time at the firm, everyone's getting a refresher 'cause it's no matter where you are, it's, I even still need it. It's good for everybody. The only other thing I'll add, 'cause I come from higher ed, our recent grads are trained in college and they do a really great job preparing you for the real world when a lot of things happen. But then we have our interns come in, they get assigned a project and the manager's like, I haven't heard back from Alexandra, it's been three weeks since I gave her that project. And we talked to our interns about this and they said, oh, I'm so sorry. When I work with my professor on a paper, I don't check in with them along the way. I just make sure I hand it in by the due date. Like, I don't ever have to go back and give them the status update of how I've been doing. So that, that standard of habit of communicating along the way, it wasn't a generational issue. They just weren't trained that way. Yeah. And so their internship is a place where we get to say, these are the workplace habits, this is how we do things here. Yeah. This, This is the standard that you get to learn now. I love that. I appreciate you reaffirming kind of the piece that everyone needs this development as well. It's not just younger generations. I mean, how many of you in the room have leaders who struggle with providing critical feedback to their team, right? Like that is a communication skillset that many people further in their career older generations still struggle with. So this is not a necessarily a younger generation problem or challenge. It's a, it's a human challenge, it's a people problem. And that's something that as I, I love that you're scaling that type of, uh, development across the company. Alright, cool. Well I got a couple closing remarks and then, uh, uh, we will start to give our thank yous here, but I wanted to share some things for all of you as we wrap up today's program. First off, um, thank you so much for spending the day with us. Uh, we had a, a lot of fun learning alongside with you and kind of sharing some of the insights if you haven't already share in what is one thing you are gonna take from today and take action on after this. Whether that's a conversation with your team, whether that's something you're gonna bring up to the C-suite, a certain training you're hoping to implement, maybe the formation of a employee resource group. Put that in the chat for you. Like what is one of the tactical things you want to do and turn this into a very action oriented learning experience. But on top of that, one of the things I would love to really invite you all to as well is to join our ex leadership network. It is really tough to do this work alone and on your own as a maybe a one person HR department or solo inclusion leader. And it really makes a difference to have a supportive peer community around you. Uh, I mean, just look at the power of having employee resource groups in these employee kind of oriented groups internally at companies. You need that as well as an HR executive and an HR people leader. So that's what we've created within the EX Leadership Network. We're constantly connecting over critical topics like this to unpack these things, share ideas, share frameworks, peer group, coach each other and mentor each other so that you don't have to navigate that alone. So, uh, join today, at the very least, start with a day trial. It costs as much as like one Starbucks coffee a week to, to invest in your own growth and development in this space. So join that. We have some master classes coming up, up in the next two weeks. Um, and a follow up some peer exchanges around these topics as well. So check that out with us afterwards. Otherwise, today is also approved for Sherman HRCI credits. So if you wanna take advantage of those, now's your time to write them down. We'll send a follow up email with some of the resources, some of the things with links, people's contact information. We'll be posting most of the slides and recordings in our resource library as well, as well as some additional resources in the Ex Leadership network specifically for that community. So, okay, that is all I got for now. Uh, Clara closing thoughts, closing ideas, words for the community as we start to bring this home. I am just so grateful. I have so much gratitude for all of the presenters, everyone here that has shown up, that has added to this conversation. Um, I think overall this was just a huge and powerful reminder that inclusion isn't something that just happens. It's something that is built. It's something that's created, co-created, um, together. And just by being here, you all have taken a great step in continuing to make the world better. So thank you. Yes, thank you. It is as, as we are all very much very passionate about this space. It, it warms our heart to have people who are dedicating literally like four hours out of their day to sharpen their, their craft and develop themselves. And I've been looking at the chat and looking at the, the attendees and I saw some of you, you were here the entire day. So thank you so much for dedicating to your development and your growth to kind of serve these cultures and, and serve the people around you. It's really what, uh, makes this community so meaningful and why we do the work that we do. So that being said, that is all we have for you today. I hope to see you again in the future and the Ex Leadership Network. Thank you so much to all of you and enjoy the rest of your evenings. Thank you everyone. Thanks everyone.

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