Jason R. Thompson - Move from Theoretical DE&I to Practical DE&I by Using HR Data

[00:00:02] 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.

[00:00:21] 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

[00:00:39] used to solve real-world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky. Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, and like always we try and find people inside and outside the world of human resources to

[00:00:53] bring you whatever's happening, the latest on what's going on in the world of business and how it affects you. Today we have with us a brilliant man who's going to tell us his journey as well

[00:01:04] as kind of the ins and outs of what's going on in data-driven DE&I. Jason R. Thompson, Jason, how are you? Hey, it's good to be here. I'm doing well. Thank you. Jason, tell us a little

[00:01:15] bit about you yourself and how you've gotten to where you are today. Yeah, you know, I'm one of the weird people who've only done diversity, almost my entire career. My first job out of college, actually in college even, I worked in what was called at that time

[00:01:30] a multicultural resource center. That was in August 1987, 1988, and then I graduated, and they hired me to run the multicultural resource center. Then I went to grad school, and then I bumped around and did some fundraising and things, and then ended up working at

[00:01:47] University of Colorado doing diversity. Then I went to healthcare, a US Olympic committee, tech stars, and now Western governor. So pretty much my whole career. And what's fascinating is if you haven't seen Jason's book, it's called Diversity and Inclusion

[00:02:05] Matters, Tactics and Tools to Inspire Equity and Game Changing Performance. It's actually a pretty brilliant book with a lot of really amazing examples of what to do in different, I guess you could say life cycles of DE and I at organizations.

[00:02:20] Yeah, I think you'll find them very practical. The book's not theoretical and I don't do theory. Everyone knows diversity is important. The current challenge is what do you want me to do?

[00:02:30] And so that's the question I've been trying to answer with my book and my work on a daily basis is what do you want me to do? I know it's important, but what do we do? And I think

[00:02:38] some of the pushback we're getting now is indicative that, okay, you've given me theory for the last 10 years, I still don't know what you want me to do. I know it's important,

[00:02:47] what are the practical pieces? And so I really try to focus on that as a diversity leader. And so we're going to actually have a link to your book in the show notes so that if someone hasn't seen it, that they should actually pick it up. I really

[00:02:59] believe it's a phenomenal read, fascinating read with again, lots of very practical examples of wherever you are in your journey on DE and I, and it is a journey that we deal with every

[00:03:10] day that you should definitely read this book. So Jason, one of the things that we do with all of our guests though is we ask what's one fun thing that no one knows about you?

[00:03:20] You know, I always wanted to be a songwriter. I know it sounds weird. I don't play any instruments. I don't sing or anything. I just, I love music obviously, but I just would like to be a

[00:03:31] songwriter. I don't know why and I don't have any talent in that space, but it's just something I would like to do. So why not? I don't know, you know, it's one of those things where

[00:03:42] it just seems like it's so far out of my ability. Like I don't actually know how to read music. I don't know how to sing. I don't actually understand. I love music in the sense of

[00:03:51] it's complicated because everybody has a little piece in it. I don't actually understand how it works, but I've always found it super fascinating. Like and I love lyrics. A lot of times with songs, I'll just read the lyrics. I really enjoy that piece of it

[00:04:03] actually. So Jason, I didn't actually start running until I was 50 because I didn't think I could do it. So I did and now I've been running and typically when it's nice weather outside,

[00:04:14] I'm running at least two miles a day. So my advice to you, start running. Try it. That's pretty fascinating. And you know, when you actually write a song, you know, just let me know. I'd love to hear it.

[00:04:31] Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah. So our topic for today is how to use HR data to actually build a working DENI program that leads to change. We're going to talk about getting from theory to actual

[00:04:43] practice. Jason, our first question is how have you done DENI differently from the people you've seen around you? Yeah, there's probably two things that we can get deeper into. But one is data.

[00:05:03] So over the last probably 10 or 15 years, I have really focused on using data to create a diversity program. And I always tell people diversity is a noun. It's the outcome of actually managing some data.

[00:05:14] And the data you should be managing is who gets hired, how long do they stay, and who gets promoted. And every manager actually has some control over that. And if you help people manage that and they use the right data, what I've found is becomes

[00:05:27] very empowering. And one of the examples I give, and this is why I say I'm super practical, is people don't realize in order to make an organization more diverse, people have to leave.

[00:05:38] My job as a good manager is keep good people. If you're really good at that, I can't make the organization more diverse, right? Like people have to leave, though you have to open those seats up.

[00:05:45] Right. And so there's actually a limit on how diverse a company can get. Most people don't understand that because they don't understand the data and how it works. But people should still get promoted regardless, right? That's just still be happening.

[00:05:56] And people should still get raises. That's still be happening. People should still stay at a relative rate that's relative to the peer. So for instance, the length of stay for African Americans should be equivalent to their white peers. And women should be equivalent, right?

[00:06:11] And a manager manages that piece. And so that's why I would say my work is different is, I would say most companies I work with usually go, wow, I didn't think of it that way. This is liberating because they get frustrated with their diversity work because they look

[00:06:24] the same two years around. People think, well, that must be value. And in fact, it could be, you know, you have good, you have low turnover. That's what would happen, right? Jason, let me ask you a practical question about the data because

[00:06:36] everybody who's listened to me knows I'm not a fan of HR data because I think HR data sucks. I think HR data is actually fundamentally flawed. How do we use the data that we have

[00:06:48] given the fact that I think you can agree HR data typically is either old or it's dirty or it's just not there. Yeah, exactly. So I'm not trying to sell anything, but I think

[00:07:01] you should work with consultants in general who can help you clean your data as a general recommendation for the reasons you said because HR data can't check itself. Like if someone makes a mistake and their promotion doesn't get in or whatever, there really isn't any...

[00:07:15] So you kind of need a third party in many cases to help with that situation and find people that can help you. And so that's one of the challenges I would agree with data is...

[00:07:24] And then a lot of times people think, well, I can do it myself, which is the other mistake is you probably can, but it's going to take you forever and you're not a data scientist. So why

[00:07:32] are you doing like, hair and the pros that help you or hire somebody or a org? And so the data pieces you're going to need are internal and external. The external is who's in the market,

[00:07:43] right? How do you compare yourself to the market? Internally, it can be clumsy as you know, and I think we agree on this piece that like most HR data is kind of clumsy. And I feel like

[00:07:53] people are a little stubborn about that, like, we can do it all ourselves and they're afraid if they share their data somehow, that's going to get them in trouble. And like, no, actually, it's going to keep you out of trouble because you can do things more preventative

[00:08:05] rather than reactive. And that's the mentality sometimes too, data, people think data is reactive when in fact it helps you be proactive. And that's a challenge I think to get people overcome many times their fear of that. Well, it's also a cost issue, right? I mean,

[00:08:20] everything costs money and especially hiring people like us, the consultants to come in and do this work. And that's a lot of times probably one of the bigger reasons why they actually do have to

[00:08:32] do it themselves. Is there anything practical that if you were working with a company that said, you know, I need to do some of this stuff myself, is there anything practical that they

[00:08:41] could do to do it themselves? Yeah, I would say this. Think of it in context of equity. You should be looking at we're doing annual reviews every company want to do a lot of companies annual reviews.

[00:08:52] You should just pause and look at it. Do we have equity on our annual reviews? Are women getting the same rating or relative to their male peers are people of color getting the same

[00:09:00] like you have access to that data very simple promotions. Do we see equity in our promotions? Hiring is tougher. A lot of people do hiring, but they do it the wrong way. They think,

[00:09:09] oh, women make up 50% of the world. So 50% of our hires and it doesn't work like that. So that part's harder even though everybody thinks that's the easiest piece I can tell you from a practical sense.

[00:09:18] Most people the way to collect it is wrong because you need external data to do that piece. Internal data will help you with promotions. It will help you with terminations, how long people stay because most of that data is relatively accessible and you

[00:09:31] have it. But there are some things you can do like that that are relatively simple and you have access to. Yeah, I would actually tell you that some of those calculations on who leaves

[00:09:40] aren't as easy because people think they know how to actually create the turnover metric, for example. And I found looking at company to company that there's a lot of aptitude in certain companies,

[00:09:53] but not in others. And so if I were going to point anybody for something like that, like what's a retention calculation versus a turnover calculation, I'd actually look at something like SHIRM who actually publishes standards

[00:10:04] on what those HR metrics look like. But it's really hard for some companies to actually do those fundamental queries underneath that. So that's where I'd say hire a consultant. No, I hear you. I think you're right. Turnover is one of the actually kind of complicated.

[00:10:20] But I guess in the practical sense, in context if you have any kind of metric that you're using, you can at least try to see if it's applied equitably. So equities should be the goal.

[00:10:29] It may not be perfect, but it allows you to at least measure, do we have some sense of equity in how we're treating people in our organization? One other question I want to ask you on that is,

[00:10:38] have you ever asked people to look at things like overtime capability or overtime eligibility? Because and I don't mean from the FLSA perspective. I mean, do our managers providing opportunities for overtime on a diverse basis? And I mean,

[00:10:55] that's specifically gender focused, first of all, people of color second of all, but are the opportunities being given equally across the board to people who get over it? Because overtime is a large percentage for some jobs of their pay. Have you ever looked at that?

[00:11:13] I haven't, but it reminds me of one of this thing. And this is, I think from a diversity perspective, we see this quite a bit and overtime is a good example. But another one is there's always this weird dynamic between who gets which assignments in general,

[00:11:26] right? Like we've looked at that and that usually leads to your next opportunities. What what's being assigned to who and how. And I think the underlying theme of overtime is kind of the same idea. How you assign these types of responsibilities.

[00:11:40] And then the rub here is in many cases though, women people of color disproportionate put in programs that are said, oh, this is a leadership program. You have to do additional uncomfacitated work that has no credit in the organization. So that type of thing actually makes

[00:11:54] it worse because you're asked to do extra work, which doesn't add to anything. It's just, oh, this is a project we think we're developing you when in fact I'd be better off if you gave me

[00:12:04] the assignment that's work related that would expose me and show to the organization what I can do, just like the excitement of overtime and those things that I'm not a big fan of those development programs for that reason, because they just give you extra uncomfacitated work

[00:12:21] that isn't actually seeing as adding to the organization. So as a result, it doesn't actually help your career. Well, we can see why it's being done and there are, you know, at least from the outside, it looks good that you're giving someone the quote unquote

[00:12:36] opportunity to increase their skill set. But I get you what you're saying is, is that sometimes instead of doing something like that, maybe just giving them a stretch assignment or giving them the opportunity to actually show or develop those skills practically

[00:12:51] by doing it, that they'd be getting it better than the quote unquote. Yeah, because and I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there but yeah, I would agree that that's what should be happening is you already have a mechanism for that. And we know that

[00:13:03] mechanism leads to promotions. What I found when I have these development programs, because as a diverse officer, you typically have to create those in some level, is diversity programs have unlimited capacity. Like you could put 40 people through it, but you only have maybe

[00:13:18] two VP hires over a one year period. But you've now developed 40 people who are all ready for who aren't going to 38 of them and never gonna get that job if not 39. And then you're three or four years into it. Now you think about it, you got like 120 participants

[00:13:32] and you've had six openings. They all look at me like Jason, why are you wasting my time with this? Whereas if they had a work assignment, that would have probably led to that job anyway.

[00:13:41] And then they still at least feel like my work is being rewarded because it's directly assigned where these other assignments typically are unconnected to the organization, like not directly anyway. And they turn out to be extra work that's not compensated that for majority of them

[00:13:55] won't lead to a promotion because there are not enough promotions for them. And I think what we could do is I think we're gonna have to schedule a second podcast you and I talk about diversity in the world of succession planning because that's to me,

[00:14:08] that's gets to a whole other can of worms about how do you create the right bench strength and where do you do it? And enabling the bench to become what it needs to be to fulfill on not

[00:14:23] only senior level hires, but also throughout an organization in an extremely well thought out way, which we both know that succession plans sometimes are built on the back of a napkin and sometimes they're not built at all or sometimes are actually built thoroughly very well. And how

[00:14:41] does diversity get into that? So that probably I will park that because I want to potentially have that as another podcast with you for sure. Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never

[00:14:54] miss a show by clicking subscribe. This podcast is made possible by salary.com. Now back to the show. Let's talk about question two though, because let's get back to the purpose of this podcast,

[00:15:07] which is about measurement and being able to be able to see where you are. Because when you were at the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee, you actually had developed a DE and I scorecard.

[00:15:18] How did you use data to actually create that and talk about the impact that that had? Yeah, so the US Olympic Committee is complicated. Every sport you see on TV in the US is an independent

[00:15:31] nonprofit. We're the only country in which our Olympic team is a nonprofit. So then I was tasked with a hard means a lot to our diversity program and the CEO comes to me and says,

[00:15:42] how are we going to measure this thing? And so I started looking at what data is available. And I said, well, it would make sense that if you play the sport and every independent

[00:15:50] nonprofit in the US like USA Volleyball knows generally who their members are and who plays volleyball in the country. And I thought, well, since we already have that data who plays volleyball

[00:15:58] in the country, if you play, you're probably going to be a coach. And if you play, you're probably going to be an official. If you play, you're probably going to work in the industry. So that pipeline should look like the team. It should look like the board.

[00:16:11] And so at a fairness, if you USA hockey, hockey is not historically been very diverse, but at a fairness, shouldn't the board look like the membership? Shouldn't the organization raise? And so that's what I started organizing. And that's

[00:16:22] came with these diversity scorecards. And well, what I quickly found was once you could point that out to people, they could align behind it because it made sense to them. And I'm not trying to throw USA volleyball under the bus, but we looked at USA volleyball and

[00:16:35] their data showed 70, 80% of their athletes are women. It's disproportionately played by women. USA volleyball, the women's team is literally number one, number two in the world all the time. They're just the best. They go to Olympic games and I just did a simple analysis of their

[00:16:51] coaching staff. They went with literally no women on their coaching staff, not even the trainer. Like how is that possible? 70% of the athletes, nobody's not one woman in the country is going to have to be a coach. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't line up just mathematically.

[00:17:04] That outcome would be hard to come to. And so it was able to show that quickly. USA hockey, they had a staff of over 100 people. They didn't have one person of color.

[00:17:13] And you think about it, you can work in USA hockey and be an accountant. It has nothing to do with the understanding of marketing. There's all kinds of things in which you don't have to

[00:17:21] be an expert in hockey to work in that space. So it was able to make change because then they knew exactly what I need to do. Again, that's where I started. Like you got to be able to answer,

[00:17:28] what do I need to do? Well, there's got to be some kind of breakdown. Why aren't women making your coaching staff? Why is nobody in USA hockey to their credit? They actually, and I can't take all credit for it, but they now have a diversity director.

[00:17:39] I mean, they got them. As soon as they started seeing their data, they started seeing like, yeah, you're right. Like if we're not intentional, it's not going to just happen. By the way, I'm a member of USA hockey as a coach. Oh, are you?

[00:17:49] Yeah. So I actually understand what you're talking about because I actually see it happening. And there are actually training programs as part of USA hockey as a coach that we have to go through to basically understand these things. So I'm glad they hired someone based on your

[00:18:04] activities because I like to see, I would love to see more diversity in hockey. And if you look at the places around the US that are actually developing hockey programs, I'm seeing a lot of

[00:18:16] change in who actually is becoming part of the sport, not just in the world of players, but also in coaching staff and in training staff and other things. And I think you can actually see we're starting to introduce a little bit more diversity, although one of the

[00:18:34] worst sports at it of all, but we're starting. But you're making a good point. So and that's the thing I think two people forget is number one, it's incremental. Like you, it's going to take a little while to build the foundation.

[00:18:45] But from a strategic point as an organization, if you looked at the data, you would say, in which demographics do we have the best opportunity to grow? So a lot of times people think of diversity as like, it's not connected, it's directly

[00:18:56] connected. I would think any organization would look, okay, where are our best opportunities to grow, whether it's geographic, whether it's gender, race would be one of those economic like there's a lot of different ways to stratify that. And to me, that's what I was able

[00:19:09] to show through the data is actually this doesn't mean you've done something terrible because a lot of times we see data that way. It's no how do we become proactive? Where can we be more effective? And that's what the data was able to show them.

[00:19:20] I love what you're going with this because when people start thinking about measuring diversity in their organizations, they're thinking that it's going to paint a bad picture. And the answer is no, it's painting a picture. You put the tag of bad or good on it.

[00:19:37] What it's going to show you though, is it's going to show you to your point opportunities, right? Look at the world around you and see because I think this is the perfect suggestion you made and very practical as well. Look at your constituencies. Are your constituencies

[00:19:52] matching the opportunities that the people around you have to be a part of either your organization? Are they part of your customer base? Does your customer base are they reflected in

[00:20:03] your staff? And so if you're measuring it appropriately, at least you have a place to go from there, right? Exactly. And I mean, you can see that we see that in different ways, but look at Walmart.

[00:20:14] Walmart realized rule America is underserved and they exploded because of that. It's the same idea. If you look at hockey, African Americans are underserved. Asians are underserved, Latinos are underserved. A great opportunity to grow your sport. Women aren't participating.

[00:20:30] You look at wrestling. All these sports had the same opportunity, but all you had to do is take a moment, look at your data and not look at it like people are off to get me, but look at it

[00:20:38] like this is my strategy going forward. Well because wouldn't they want to grow their customer base? And if their sport reflected the customer base, don't you think that that would bring more people in? I mean, it's all about revenue in a lot of those cases,

[00:20:51] especially in professional hockey, professional basketball, maybe not so much in the amateurs, but I imagine that's there as well, right? Yeah, exactly because I think if you look at who's in your pipeline, that's your future. So the amateur pipeline is immensely important to sports

[00:21:08] because that's where your fan base comes from and always tell people, you look at soccer in the U.S. The reason soccer has grown slowly because it like my dad wasn't a soccer fan and I find this

[00:21:18] in most families, if your dad or your mother isn't a fan, you're probably not. So the only way to grow is that they have to start building in the youngest amateur demographic, right? So that

[00:21:28] and we can see this now in the U.S. where a lot of kids now that, oh, their parents played, where when I was younger, like nobody's parents played so it's very small, but once they kind

[00:21:36] of broke through that, and that's the thing we had to give people too is you got to understand the pace of this, that part of it is I know you want this immediate return, but it's going

[00:21:44] to take a minute and it's going to take that process of building that kind of love for sports that more than likely your parents played. That's why you play. And my mom loved the New York Rangers

[00:21:56] and I used to sit on her lap. We used to watch them play the Los Angeles Kings at 10 o'clock at night. And to me, that was the most fun thing I did as a kid. And that's why I grew

[00:22:06] my love for hockey. And the one thing I want to tell you about this, Jason, that really is important, giving back to the community, like the New York Rangers have the Garden of Dreams Foundation where they actually get underserved groups across the New York City area

[00:22:21] to not only appreciate the sport of hockey, but to get them involved. And they invest a ton of money every year in growing the hockey, not just fan base, but actually the playing base as well. And so that's one of those groups I support financially because I believe

[00:22:37] it's really important to get to your point, not only the people playing, but also to build it into their fandom so that they can grow it from there. Hey, are you listening to this and

[00:22:48] thinking to yourself, man, I wish I could talk to David about this? Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me

[00:22:59] about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com forward slash HRDL consulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. Jason, the next question really focuses on kind of the results of where you go with the scorecard

[00:23:19] and you saw that the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee took the scorecard and you were able to do things because of it. How does that happen or and how do you describe that? Because I

[00:23:32] actually saw that in your book. Where do you go from there? I mean, how does that move forward? How does that scorecard really impact the business? I learned a lot from that process. So one was

[00:23:43] at the USOPC their board was like, we should make this public. That immediately got response from these organizations because number one, they're in sports or they're competitive. They want to be better than their peers. Number two, they don't want to be embarrassed by their scorecard. So

[00:23:56] that got some motivation. But the other thing I was able to do with it and this is I think where the data is important is you don't have to boil the ocean. Just pick a spot and go,

[00:24:06] you know what? We're going to focus on diversity and coaching or you know what? We're going to look at our staff. How do we diversify our staff or its athletes? And that's what I try

[00:24:15] to encourage everybody in that when I work there to do is just pick one thing like is it coaching, is it staff, is it whatever it might be. And I continue to do that now when a consultant

[00:24:24] or I work at Western Governors, we have a leadership guide and I can sit with every leader and say, you know what? Your challenge is actually retention or your challenge is promotion. Don't get distracted with just are you diverse this year versus last year? And that's what most

[00:24:40] people have focused on. And they get frustrated. I always give the example of there's a CEO who once said, you know, our board will be gender diverse in three years. Well, it didn't happen because

[00:24:50] there aren't board terms. If your every term is five years, you set a three-year horizon, there's not enough turnover in that period of time. And it's funny how people don't understand that simple math. And that's why it didn't work. But we see that in leadership too,

[00:25:02] where people say, well, if you're committed to diversity, your leadership team will be diverse. Well, of course it would be, but no leaders are turning over at high rate at companies that are successful. If you want 30% diversity year at 10, you almost have to have 50% turnover

[00:25:17] of your leadership team. That's failure. Any company that is turning over leaders at that rate, something's wrong. And so they've set a horizon and they don't use the data in a way that they can actually execute and achieve. So that's what the scorecard really helped me do.

[00:25:30] And I would say that's been the basis of my work for the last 10 or 15 years, helping companies operationalize this. And today, do you have access to? How do you make that work in a way that makes sense? Hold leaders accountable,

[00:25:41] things that they can actually do. Don't boil the ocean. Right. A lot of times people put in hiring plans across the board for diversity. And like, yeah, but you don't usually have a diversity problem in entry-level jobs. Why are you adding some more things that you don't need

[00:25:53] to? Like be very targeted. Know where you need to make change. And that typically gets success in return that people want. You know, we talked a little bit about this before about succession. And yes, I definitely want to have another podcast with you about that. But doesn't

[00:26:07] it really talk about and we talked a little bit about training and maybe getting opportunities before creating the bench to be able to fill in gaps as they appear. You don't have to have perfection in creating that bench, nor are you going just populate it with diversity hires

[00:26:25] or diversity candidates. It has to mirror your organization. Right. I mean, it would be good to have a series of people that could fit into roles when they become available. But that's not

[00:26:36] the solution, right? It's just part of the solution. Yeah. I think if you look at your organization generally, you're right. The first step is like our leadership teams at least look like our organization. That would be the entry level. And then realize,

[00:26:49] if we want diversity long term, then it really actually starts at entry level jobs and our people progressing to our organization. Right. And also think about some of the biases because a lot

[00:26:58] of times what we see too is are you willing to have an open conversation about typically HR directors don't become CEOs? Now, there could be some bias, but that's typically, disproportionately, that's where we find women and minorities.

[00:27:11] Right. And so what does that say too? Like, are you comfortable as an organization saying the people who we think can help us find the best people are not the people we trust with our company?

[00:27:19] What does that say about our company? And we see this across the board in most organizations. You rarely see HR people get any other position outside of it, but they'll quickly take the CFO and make them CEO. And people think that's the normal progression. It makes sense.

[00:27:33] And so we have to be able to have that transparent conversation too about what does that say? What are their inherent biases and how we see positions? That has to be coupled with what's

[00:27:42] our bend strength because you're, you are going to perpetuate if your bend straight is always accounting and that's where we bring our CEOs from. Right. Exactly. And there's no diversity there. We shouldn't be surprised that you don't ever get any

[00:27:53] diversity in your leadership. We have to have that conversation too. Absolutely. Jason, this has been an amazing conversation. I think I can keep talking about this for hours, but what we're going to do is I'm definitely inviting you back

[00:28:13] because I definitely want to have that other conversation. Is there anything else that you might want to leave the listeners with? Well, yeah. I just want to say thanks. I appreciate

[00:28:21] you having me on the show. It's been a lot of fun and I'm hoping we can come back and we can do this again. Oh no, you're definitely coming back. Well, I'll be sick to it.

[00:28:27] I'm inviting you back to come back and have another go. Cool. Everybody, please go out and buy diversity and inclusion matters. It's a really cool resource. And as we talked about before, it's got a lot of practical and very helpful advice at all of the levels.

[00:28:45] And you talk about when to bring the CEO in and how to have a plan and how to execute. And I think those are really good practical tips for people no matter what life cycle you are

[00:28:57] in your DEIB journey. Thank you so much. Take care. Appreciate you being here. All right, thanks. Enjoy being here. And thank you all for listening. Take care and stay safe. That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe.

[00:29:12] 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.