Joseph Ifiegbu is the co-founder and CEO of eqtble. He has an impressive history of leading HR technology and people analytics teams at Snap, WeWork, Toys “R” Us, and Arsenal FC. These days, his passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion drives him to help companies answer questions like “why are top performers leaving” and “why are qualified candidates declining offers”.
In this episode, Joseph talks about how Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) affects the employee experience.
[0:00 – 7:04] Introduction
- Welcome, Joseph!
- Today’s Topic: The employee lifecycle through the lens of DEI
[7:05 – 14:31] How to Define (DEI)
- It all comes down to access
- How Joseph’s college soccer team won nationals (and how it relates better recruiting)
[14:32 – 22:03] Who Responsibility is it to Champion DEI Changes
- Why company leadership must drive the changes
- Letting company culture grow from the employees
[22:04 – 31:27] Ensuring a Good Employee Experience Surrounding DEI
- Where do you start? The hiring process
- Diversity issues are business issues
[31:36 – 34:29] Final Thoughts & Closing
- Organizations must continue to pay attention to what their employees are saying
- Thanks for listening!
Connect with Joseph:
Connect with Dwight:
Connect with David:
Resources:
-
“The thing is: a lot of times when it comes to people issues, people always think HR. People issues are company issues, not just HR issues, and company issues come from the top.”
-
“The issue of diversity isn’t divorced from the issue of business. It’s the same. It’s one. It goes hand in hand. Because the issue of diversity is the issue of innovation, is the issue of change, is the issue of progress. And those things all contribute to positive culture which contribute to positive business, which contributes to more growth.”
Announcer:
Here’s an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what’s happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record, pour their discussions into a beaker, mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here’s your host, David Turetsky.
David Turetsky:
Hello, and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I’m your host, David Turetsky. Like always, we try and find fascinating people to talk to you about the world of HR data analytics and technology. Today, we have Joseph Ifiegbu, who’s the CEO and co founder of eqtble. Joseph, you’ve had a really fascinating career. We’re gonna get into that one second, but I’d like to also welcome Dwight, how’re you doing, Dwight?
Dwight Brown:
Great. Good to be here. Thanks for being with us, Joseph.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
David Turetsky:
So Joseph, you got to tell us because you’ve had a really cool career you are in the people analytics team at WeWork and you started eqtble. Give us a journey. Tell us how
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah. So thanks for having me again, you know, you got there. for my journey to HR Analytics was actually actually it was a fluke, I’d say, you know, like, my background is in statistics and data science. And I worked in different sectors right. I worked in health analytics. I worked in sports analytics research, ecommerce retail before landing and people analytics, right. So my last role actually, before going into people analytics at WeWork was actually Toys R Us and my role there was, I was a little like hypothesis and A/B tests. And so one of the interesting things that more than massive projects that I worked on was actually like this market basket analysis where, you know, you’re looking at like the behaviors of shoppers. So for example, if someone bought a pacifier, for example, what are the chances that they will buy the bottle, the feed in the bottle for the kid? And so you saw that well, people that bought pacifiers also bought the bottles, right? And so we basically said, well put the bottles next to the pacifiers on the shelf. That way increases like sales, right? So you’re looking at those patterns of behaviors. And so it was during that role I, I just really got fascinated about people and decision making, right? And so when I was leaving the role, and I was looking for something new, I came across this role at WeWork. So I didn’t even know the company at the time, like WeWork, what is a WeWork? And then I saw people on the list, I’m like, people analytics, what is that? And so I said, reading about the role, I was like, wow, this is actually interesting. And I went on this, I just went on this research trail, I just like looking at reading all this stuff. I’m like, this is really cool. It’s this is like a newer field in analytics. And, and I was like, absolutely. And so I applied for the role. And luckily, I got the role. And it was because I was the first person they brought in to help build a team at the time that WeWork and, and it was fascinating, because obviously, I had a data science skill, but to learn the domain of HR, and I never thought in my life, like oh, I mean, I’m going to grow up to be a HR person, like there’s no way. But you know, like, ends up just being like just such an incredible journey. Enjoy. I really enjoyed my time just building analytic solutions for the HR domain to the point that after doing that. And I went to Snap, I did the same thing as head of as the head of HR tech as well. And it wasn’t working that Snap, and WeWork especially WeWork was where the idea came that the idea of eqtble came along. So that’s a bit of that journey.
David Turetsky:
That’s awesome. A lot of us fall into it. And it’s fascinating to hear all the pathways. By the way, a lot of us look at Toys R Us and we go you know, I know it died from lots of different cuts, but we drive past a lot of Toys R Us stores when we go I really wish it were still there. I’m still a Toys R Us kid.
Dwight Brown:
I still exactly. I still remember the jingle.
David Turetsky:
Do you want to now toy? Yeah, no,
Dwight Brown:
we don’t want to scare away our listeners.
David Turetsky:
I think a lot of our listeners are going, Wait a minute. I don’t want to grow up… there we go. Alright. The last thing that we’re gonna do on the HR Data Lab, we promise we promise. So Joseph though there’s another really fun thing that we know about you. What is that one fun thing that no one knows about Joseph.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Oh, yeah. So I shouldn’t say this. I’m a big. I’m a big anime fan. Right? And I use this I usually just hide it like
David Turetsky:
Why? There’s nothing wrong with that.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah massive massive I got into it my teenage years and not stopped I you know, read the manga there. Yeah, so like I’m a big I’m a big,
David Turetsky:
there’s nothing wrong with that. Hey, I go to Comic Cons all the time. Me and my family all dress off my kids dress up as anime character so.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, so what’s what’s your what’s your favorite like, oh anime or
David Turetsky:
I don’t have I don’t think kids do they’re trying to get me into it
Joseph Ifiegbu:
But you know which one that they even which one they like watching or no?
David Turetsky:
Oh, I’m a really bad father I don’t know what my kids are watching. That’s my fun thing for the day, I’m a bad dad! So our topic for today is one that really tugs at our heartstrings all the time because Dwight and I are actually doing a series on DE&I but talking about the life cycle, the employee life cycle through the lens of diversity, equity and inclusion. And one of the fun things that we get to do in the HR Data Labs podcast just talk to a lot of thought leaders about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging from lots of different perspectives. So this is going to be a fun one for us. And I think a lot of our audience are looking for ways in which they can measure and understand the impact of the DE&I in their organizations.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, like, DEI is, it’s, to some degree, it’s sad that it’s become like, this like buzzword like everyone’s trying to, everyone just puts into, like, oh, we do DEI. But, and in actuality, it’s like, it’s just beyond the buzz wall word, right? Like DEI, actually, the power of it, is that doing this the action? Right? And so, yeah, I’m excited to really delve in and really, you know, discuss, like, all my thoughts around this, and especially for you know, in terms of like, just the employee lifecycle.
David Turetsky:
So let’s get to the first question, which is, what is it to you how do you define diversity, equity and inclusion? And where, and how is it even achievable inside of these organizations?
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, not to it not to be cliche. I like this one, this one quote, it’s like that diversity, equity inclusion is like, diversity is being invited to the party, right, or something like that. And inclusion is being invited to dance. And this, it’s interesting, I thought, I thought it was really cool quote, but you know, like, but on the on the just, you know, falling off of that definition. Really? I think, for me, it’s about access. Access, as that’s the word. Right? And why why I say access is because you have set in setting groups for lack of a better word, I don’t have access for better for money for for whatever reason, right? There is there’s maybe there’s not access to certain opportunities. And for me, diversity, equity and inclusion is understanding, right and, okay, look, I understand, like, for one reason, or another particular group, typically doesn’t have access to this. And so I’m taking steps to make sure that they have access. And so it’s so important for organizers to understand because access brings about innovation, for better, believe it or not, right, access brings about innovation. I’ll put it this way. Give an example. I played I played I came to the US on our soccer scholarship, played played college soccer. And the coach we had did something quite interesting. In previous year years, they had this team now made up of mostly locals from the areas I went to school in Mississippi. And so they’ll have you know, they’ll bring in, you know, student athletes from from, from this from the south, mostly, you know, from Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas, and, and they and if, you know, they will do well, each season though, you know, win a few games and but the year I came, I transferred in to that into the school at the time. He did something radical he he brought us things like me from from, from Africa, from student athletes from like, Brazil, Colombia, the US, you know, just mix it up, and we had this incredibly UN team and something magical happened that year, we won the Nationals. Why? Because we had different play styles, different techniques. You know, like I was very quick as I’m a wing, I play the wing and I was very quick. But one thing I didn’t have was I didn’t have this ability to basically control the ball in a certain way. And I saw one of my Brazilian teammates he had this ability on the ball like he just knew how to give them a crossing you control. The boy had this vision I just watched him play. And I’ll ask him all these questions. And I learned like this is some this is how he grew up playing, I grew up playing the kind of quick under the wing he grew up playing this, this precision type of football, right. And from learning that my game became better, because he had different style of playing. And we just all made each other better. And so when we came on the pitch and played as a team, it was magic. And we won the nationals that year. So what I’m trying to say is this, like the differences we brought to the table, elevated everyone else. But when they had that this one team, medical, the same people from the same schools, there was a bit of that spark missing. And that’s kind of what if what it means to me, right.
David Turetsky:
And I think if you use that analogy in organizations, a lot of times it comes down to where do you typically recruit from, if you recruit from the same sources, every year after year, the same type of people, the same, the same majors with the same backgrounds, you’re not going to get that kind of diversity, you’re not going to get that cross pollination, that you need to be able to get to what you’re talking about, which is a richness in technique, which is a richness in background that you can get when you look a little bit differently instead of looking at the normal places that you have for decades, for centuries, whatever, look elsewhere, and you get that richness.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Absolutely.
Dwight Brown:
And I’m, I’m amazed hearing the story, I think the coach with this and I think of how that translates into diversity in the workplace and whatnot. And that takes that takes guts that takes somebody saying, You know what, I need to make myself uncomfortable by bringing in people with who don’t look like me, who don’t have the same background as me, who don’t fit the norm of what the team looks like, that takes guts. And you know, but it also takes that vision and strategic outlook to say this is what we need to be able to have a stronger team and to be able to advance to where we need to.
David Turetsky:
But Joseph, what you were talking about before, though, and I think to go back to the question, and Dwight, I, I’m going to get to your point on leadership in a little bit. But one of the things I want to get back to in your question is achievability. Because, you know, taking your example, and taking it one step further, it’s interesting to have a conversation with an organization and to be able to ask the recruiters or ask the leaders to change where or how they look. It’s another thing to think about the problem that we have in this in this country and in the world around diversity, equity and inclusion, which is to ask people to put aside any bias that they have, whether it’s an innate bias, which they don’t really understand they have, or if it’s the the way, they’ve always done things, put it aside and look for the right person at the right time for the right job, whether it’s in terms of promotion, whether in terms of a team assignment, giving that person the ability to prove that they can and cannot do something? How is it achievable? That’s the question I have. How can it happen?
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, yeah, no, it’s it again, I keep saying the word access, right. I think we all we all know, we have bias of some sort every I have bias. And can we fully remove it? No, it’s, that’s it’s impossible, fully 100%. But we can do our best to de-bias, whatever process that we have as much as we can, right? And so I think the achievability starts with understanding that the same Hey, look, I have a bias. We all have a bias. We all have biases. Great. Okay, well, but we want to achieve XYZ, right? We want to achieve this diversity goal, this inclusion goal, right. And then not to jump ahead to Dwight’s points, but there has to be an element of leadership, taking that rein and saying, Look, we want to do XYZ and getting everyone to get everyone on board.
Announcer:
Like what you hear so far, make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show.
David Turetsky:
Well, let’s go there. Let’s go to the second question, which is, you know, how do we get who actually has a mantle? I mean, is it leadership of the company? Is it HR that has to take that leadership who has to own that because that’s a critical piece of this.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, absolutely. It can’t, it can’t be HR. Because the thing is like, a lot of times when it comes to people, issues, they always people always think HR people issues are company issue. And not just the HR issue. And company issues come from the top like you have from the top. I wasn’t an organization, which I will say the name whereby they hired a head of the DEI. And the head of the DEI did so much work to try and push out diversity and inclusion initiatives. And it didn’t work. Why because the executives they don’t give a crap. Thank you. Yeah. So the amount of work ahead of the I did, this person killed themselves working doing? I felt so sad for them. At one point, I was like, wow, I was giving them all the data, my kids what is, but I saw that the leadership at the time, right? You know, that was an issue. And so it didn’t matter. And so to to bring those two points together, I think it is achievable. But it requires the leadership of the company of the organization, to say, Hey, this is something that we want to achieve, and get and get other executives, other leaders, which in turn gets everyone to be on board. Right. Our coach ditches that go into that example. Our coach was our leader. He decided this is what they were he was going to do. And he had to convince the rest of his coaching staff that we are going to go to South Africa to recruit, to Nigeria, yeah, and get all this players.
David Turetsky:
But he didn’t just have to go to his coaching staff, he had to actually go to admissions, he had to go to all the other areas of the leadership inside the college company, inside the college to be able to get that to happen. I love to see, though, that people push the boundaries of leadership to challenge culture, to challenge industries to say, are we doing enough? And are we looking at all the possibilities and the one example that I love to just happen just recently as Deion Sanders went to a historically black college as a football coach, and everybody who knows Deion Sanders, who’s the one of the greatest receivers of all time, actually, is he a receiver or is he a defensive back? Oh, I should, I should know this. I think he’s a defensive back, actually. But But Deion Sanders was he always played professional football with gusto and style. And everybody who knows him had a very either love hate relationship with Deion. But one of the things that that just happened recently is one of the most highly sought after college football recruits, went to Deion’s program, because he was seeing that all of the other people were being recruited to the the other top tier schools, but not the historically black colleges. And he wanted to make a change, because he wanted to raise the profile of those colleges, who had they have phenomenal educational backgrounds, all of them do. It’s great college to go to. But why don’t people go there? Because it because they get a bad rap. Why? Because all the other people who we want to see play football, go to Alabama, and Arkansas, and Penn State, my alma mater, and they don’t go to these historically black colleges. So he made this choice and raised the profile. And everybody’s talking about it in the world of college sports now. And it’s wonderful to see he’s pushing the culture of college football to say, why not go to these schools? And so I think that it’s not just a leadership thing. Of course, leaders have to drive it. But I think it’s also down to employees. Let employees also make the culture happen inside their organizations, by suggesting people come to the company, by working together as teammates, and fostering relationships. And there’s also this thing that we’ve talked about on past conversations, which is employee business groups.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
BRGs?
David Turetsky:
Yes, exactly. Resource groups. They’re phenomenal to get together to understand what other people are going through, whether it’s mental health or diversity or other types of BRGs. Join them and let the company culture grow from the people, not just from the leadership.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it’s, it filters down like like, right, that’s yes, the leadership can say, hey, we want to do this, but everyone has to be on board, right? Because, you know, using that point, right, like, I coach out to go to the admissions and the leadership in the school to say, hey, we want more scholarship money. Yes, you have to give all this players right. And we have to agree to that. Right. Right. Exactly. So it’s the same thing like you have to speak to the team as engineers, everyone said, Look, we are going to this is the goal. We want to get it right. And everyone has to be able to to be inclusive that there should be there should be no room for just people being like, No, we’re not going to be inclusive. No, everyone has to be on board for that to work. So is it achievable? Absolutely. But it takes, it takes a village, it takes everyone, everyone has to be on board to get that to happen.
David Turetsky:
I think HR gets tarnished, because they’re typically the cheerleaders. And they’re the process owners of all these things, including owning the measurement, and the Achieving of the are we being, are we achieving our goals in diversity. And unfortunately, that means they have to become the cops of it, they have to become the police. And tell people you’re not doing enough when instead of that they should be coaching, and doing a better job, getting the leadership to do that work.
Dwight Brown:
You see that play out in so many different arenas, and it, it gets back to the point that you made earlier, Joseph about the DEI person, and how they they worked and worked and worked and work, but didn’t have the leadership buy in. And I’ve seen the past to where, to your point, David, it gets relegated to HR, this was this was when I was working in an HR function. And we had one person whose sole job it was, was to bring together the statistics, be able to report it out to the business units and it was all built around compliance with the law. And you know, so I think we’re going through we we have to and hopefully are starting to go through this shift as well, away from that, where, like you said, it’s not HR function, and we’re not doing it to comply with the law. We need to shift our mindset with that, and say, We’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do. And this is the right thing for the company. And that’s that’s a tough shift to make both, you know, from the leadership perspective. And to your point earlier, David down to all the employees, how do you shift that mindset, but we’re getting there, you know?
David Turetsky:
And I think that brings us to our next question, Dwight, which is what processes what does the organization need to do to actually implement a change so that the employees have a better experience around inclusivity?
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s one of things I always say, I think at polling, every podcast and any conversation, I mean, I think a lot of people are probably tired of hearing it. But things you cannot change what you don’t measure. Right, like you have to measure it. And so I think the measurement starts from the beginning. So so if you think about this, employee lifecycle, obviously starts with even before the hiring for the source, and right. So that’s the source in the hiring pipeline, the process and then once they come to the organization, the pay the promotion, the engagement, all the way to the off board, right, that cycle. And so, from the beginning, you have to measure that you have to understand that what is happening from a diversity equity inclusion perspective, how many for a particular role? How did you even how is the the job description written? As there? Is there even a bias in the way the job description is written all the way to like, Okay, how many people even applied for the job? If you have 100 applications? And 90 of them are men, 10% of them are women? Why is that even happening? And then we’ll go to the final stage of the interview, you have 10 people in the final stage of the interview, and nine of them are men, and one is a woman. Okay, well, what’s happening? Why is that? Is that is that because of the recruiters is that because of the hiring manager? Right?
David Turetsky:
Could be the job description, by the way.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Could be the job description. So you have to cut you have to be you have to be, you know, very intentional from the beginning and all the way and then once you hire the person, okay, well, are they being promoted at similar rates as their peers, right? Like, oh, this is a black woman in the same role, as she been promoted at the same rate. Oh, this person, this black woman that was promoted once every three years but what I have here is that the peers that are men are promoted once every year and a half. Well, like what’s happening here, right? Or in terms of pay? Is that like, it’s the pay the same for the same exact role? Like these are these are things all across the way that companies have to pay attention to a measure. And that’s one of the ways I would say,
David Turetsky:
And I totally agree with you. And I think the problem is, you’re talking about a Rubik’s Cube. There are so many ways of looking at it, and so many different things, and so many differences between people. It’s not just ethnicity. It’s not just gender. It’s not just mental health status. It’s not just veteran status. It’s it’s, there’s so much that you could be measuring that in a lot of cases. It becomes a paralysis of, you know, where do I begin? And I like your idea of starting with a process and looking at who made up our process? How did the slate get from x to y from requisition all the way through to hire and then take the employee lifecycle? You know, once they were hired, how many do we turn? How many turnover of new hires do we have? And what was their ethnicity? What was their background? You know, and why. And then let’s, let’s dive in. Yeah, but but the problem is, and you should know this as a data scientist, I’m sure that you have had an opportunity to look at these things. What becomes the problem is, is that people then they get really worried about what is the most critical thing to measure first, where’s the first step? What do I do first? What’s my jumping off point here, Joseph?
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, I mean, you can go different ways. To be honest, I’ve seen companies start in different ways. But you know, one of the things I will always say is, there’s a lot of things you can measure, like you mentioned, don’t let that stop you from starting. Right. Yeah. And so a lot of times what I’ve seen from my own experiences, and what I’ve just said to me, people asked me, okay, what is the one place? I’m like, well start at the hiring, start at the hiring. Right, you can always measure in terms of like, the promotion, the pay, the engagement, right, all of that stuff. But, again, usually all companies are usually hiring on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, right? So maybe start with that, and then go from there. Right? See, what is our hiring process look like? I mean, once you’re in, you have to do stuff. But let’s see, we’ll start with just understanding from the, at that top of the funnel, right? What is happening there. So a lot of companies when they start looking at the people analytics journey, and trying to understand what’s happening from a DEI perspective, what I’ve seen is the easiest place to start from is actually the hiring. So if anyone’s just started today, just know what you’re hiring your talent metrics, just try to understand okay, in the pipeline, what’s happening. All right, and then go from there, again, you see what, what, what I’ve seen is, in organizations is, employees don’t want don’t necessarily want you to have all the answers tomorrow. No, but they want to see that you’re doing something and they want to see a path. Say, Okay, look, here’s, here’s what we’re doing right now, here’s what we want to get to. So we know we’re not able, we’re doing this actively, and you’re communicating that the issue where the issue lies is whereby you’re not actually communicating that to organizations, they don’t know what’s happening. And they’re seeing all these issues. And that’s kind of why you start seeing all these issues pop up. Otherwise, like if you can communicate and say, here’s what we’re doing, we know, we are not where we need to be. But here’s the things we started with. And here’s what we want to do in the future.
David Turetsky:
Absolutely. But that has to go back to the thing, the point you made in the second question about leadership, right? Because that can’t come from HR. And it can’t come from the from the diversity group either. That has to come from the head of HR, the CEO, the president, because that mean, as a leader yourself, you know, that if it doesn’t come from you, the where are we and what are we doing about it, then it’s not happening. And there is no transparency in those analyses.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, absolutely. It has to. I mean, like, it’s the same way. Like when it says it’s the same way we think about like the revenue goals, or sales go, right, like it’s like, you know, like they want to see what leash from leadership, what’s happened, like, the issue of diversity isn’t divorced from the issue of business. And this is this is this is the same, it’s what it goes hand in hand. Right? Right. Because again, it’s this issue of diversity is the issue of innovation is the issue of change is the issue of progress, right. And those things all have contributes to positive culture, which contributes to positive business, which contributes to more growth, right. And so, so, so what, so that’s kind of why it has to the same way that the CEO, the CFO has to stand in front of the company to talk about the revenue goals. And all the vision of the company is the same, it’s need to talk about diversity and inclusion to the employees.
David Turetsky:
And I think we’ve seen consumers vote with their feet and vote with their dollars where they want to work with companies they want to buy from companies that are doing the right thing, not just from a hiring perspective, not just from a organizational design perspective, but they want to know that the employees are being treated well. And that the end result is that they’re going to get better service. They’re going to get more innovative products. And they want to put their money against the company or with the company or they want to invest in the company that is actually doing the right things for their employees.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Absolutely. I mean, diversity, equity inclusion is not a sort of nice to have, right. It’s like a need to have.
Dwight Brown:
Yeah, exactly.
David Turetsky:
And the good news is because we’re having these conversations now on podcasts and the government is having them, or the government is instituting laws like the SEC put in Regulation SK, which, you know, says that any of the HR metrics that are material in nature need to be mandated to be disclosed in SEC filings. So for public companies, we’re learning about things like this, maybe in some companies for the first time, which is wonderful. So that hopefully, the conversations not going to stop, it’s going to keep going, and that’s going to lead to better behaviors.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, transparency helps. I mean, everyone, right? Especially like, disenfranchised groups talk more by like, you know, when when things are opaque, it’s always a disadvantage. And so having those things, those those kinds of metrics being open to them, is this is gonna push organizations to say, Okay, well, we need to get some of these things, right. Again, like change is painful. Oh, my gosh, it is right, it, you know, a certain way of doing things setting norms. That has been the same way for a long time. It’s always it’s always, it’s always a weird feeling. There’s always some living system executives are like, Oh, my gosh, I don’t want to talk about it.
Dwight Brown:
Oh, yeah. Right. Scary, scary thing.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, it is scary. But But like, you know, I think in the long run, it’s gonna be good for everyone as a whole, when, as we move towards that future, whereby we have more diverse teams and organizations.
David Turetsky:
That’s great. So Joseph, we’ve had a conversation today around DE&I and it’s been a fascinating conversation about talking about it through the lens of how we measure it, and how we understand how the processes need to change in organizations, in order to make them more diverse. We’ve talked a little bit about who’s the owner of those processes or who should be the owner. And we’ve also talked about how, how does it actually happen? And where to start. Any other thoughts that you have before we wrap?
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, I mean, I think I think we’re in we’re in a time where the way we work is changed. I mean, if you told me that I’ll get used to working from home like, two years ago, like Yeah, right. You know, this thing’s, and it’s going to continue to change. And I feel like organizations need to change along with it. Because I’ve heard I’ve seen some, some executives are just like, No, no, like, we need to come back, like everyone has to come back. Because we’re not doing the you know, like, and like, Who is it really hurting? Who are you really hurting in the long run? Right. And so I feel like, you know, one of the things is like, in talking to just even a lot of other people of color, like, for them, this has been a big huge blessing for them, like they work from home, right? And for for various reasons. But I’m feel My thing is organization’s executives, leaders, HR teams, we need to, we need to adapt and pay attention to what what our employees are saying, right, what, you know, the change that’s currently happening, and you know, and the more we can do that, then I think I think the more the employee experience for winning organization is going to be even more better. Right. And so yeah, that’s one of the big, big things. I’m seeing that I want to just kind of add to that as well.
David Turetsky:
Perfect. Joseph, thank you so much. We appreciate you joining.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate you for having me.
David Turetsky:
Yeah, Dwight. Thank you.
Dwight Brown:
Thank you. And Joseph, thank you so much for spending the time with us. This was a fascinating conversation.
Joseph Ifiegbu:
Thank you.
David Turetsky:
And next time, we’re gonna have to geek out a little bit on your FC on your arsenal background and a little bit of sports analytics too. And thank you guys for listening. We really appreciate it. And if you think that you know, somebody who might enjoy this, please forward the podcast to them. And if you have any comments, please send them our way. Thank you very much. Take care and stay safe.
Announcer:
That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week, and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe
This show is brought to you by Turetsky Consulting LLC. Our company providing business consulting on Analytics, HR Processes, and Rewards with a focus on getting answers that organizations need by demystifying People Analytics.
Did you love the value that we are putting out in the show? Leave a review on your podcast streaming service or in a comment below!
Support the show or follow our podcast on Twitter!
