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00:00I am delighted to speak for Willis Towers Watson and to set the stage for what I know is going to be an engaging dialogue between came at the rally and Rick Goings now to do that. I'd like to share with you a number of headlines I've seen over the last 18 months or so that I found striking companies trying to deal with discrimination face backlash . Another one survey confirms people think that inclusion in the workplace hurts white men. Another one scientific conference included included only women on stage. And then came the backlash. And finally another side of me too. Male managers fearful of mentoring women backlash hurt fear concerning words concerning enough when you're reading about them as from another organization or an event you didn't attend in the headlines. Even more so when they're sounding inside your organization. And I know because I've had colleagues approach me with concerns and questions that reflected similar sentiments I'm worried that our DNI efforts are tipping the scales a little bit too far. I'm afraid that we're introducing a new kind of inequity into the company. Are we losing hearts and minds because we're pushing so hard on our DNI efforts. No none of these colleagues came to me questioning motive but they were expressing real genuine concerns and potential for unintended consequences. So my immediate knee jerk reaction let me tell you why you're wrong. And forget about this. We have important work to do. Let's just get on with it. Luckily those were split second reactions that stayed inside my head and I realized they were wrong and quickly got to better conclusions because of course DNI diversity and inclusion is not about creating new groups of haves and have nots. It's not about blaming and shaming. It's about generating better results. Accomplishing things that we couldn't have if we were working with homogenous groups creating more for everyone . Also DNI requires change and change requires management without effective change management. We risk leaving groups big groups of people behind and potentially having people rowing in different directions. Think if you will about the potential backlash if we don't have everyone on board. Here's an example for you. An African-American woman promoted to a new team. She gets in on the surface warm welcome from her new peers. But the majority of them actually think she's in her new role because of her solely because of her race and her gender. So confirmation bias takes over her ideas and perspectives are discounted she's spoken over. People take credit for her ideas her participation wanes really reinforcing the assumptions of others that she wasn't fit for the job. She decides she can't thrive here she moves on here's another example. A truly diverse team of people working on important and important project for your company. Amidst which the company announces some new efforts to significantly increase diversity in the company the white men on the team look around and say we're diverse. What is this all about. And without getting any other input they conclude we don't matter anymore. It's going to be unlikely that we get a promotion. So one of them leaves disengagement occurs for others. The project stalls neither of these are good situations. So what could we do differently to avoid them. While we continue our important progress on diversity and inclusion a few things for you to consider think about your language if your messages around diversity and inclusion sound compulsory or preachy. You might have some innate resistance forming because we as humans favor autonomy and choice. That is we don't like to be told what to think. We want to buy in next think about the business case that you're making for diversity and inclusion. Does it focus sufficiently on the fact that DNI is not a zero sum sum game that it actually increases results. Makes things better for everyone. And then finally think about who's involved in the conversation. A number of experts have said even those organizations that have great DNI programs oftentimes leave majority groups out of the conversation. I know counterintuitive DNI excluding voices but I can see how it happens. So there are organizations expanding their inclusion networks men invited to women's networks straight people invited to LBJ geeky Q networks and so on just to expand the conversation and gain that buy in. Just some ideas. None of them suggest apologizing watering down or slowing down the progress that we need to make on DNA. We have important work to do and it needs to continue apace. But we can and should stop and heed the questions and concerns that we're getting so that we can ensure that we get by and accelerate our progress. So I am really eager to hear the discussion between Kim asa rally and Rick Goings and engage in conversations about equality all day. Thank you .

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Willis Towers Watson on Creating an Inclusive Environment

Willis Towers Watson Global Head of Human Capital & Benefits Julie Gebauer talks about creating an inclusive environment during the Bloomberg Equality Summit in New York. (Source: Bloomberg)

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