Speaker 1: Do corporate diversity training programs work? Harvard professor Frank Dobbin
Speaker 1: said no in a Harvard Business Review article last year,
Speaker 1: writing that most diversity programs have failed because they alienate managers.
Speaker 1: Dobbin instead endorsed a voluntary consciousness raising program that includes
Speaker 1: rank and file staff along with supervisors. One bank is
Speaker 1: willing to give the alternative a try. As part of
Speaker 1: a thirty five and a half million dollar settlement with
Speaker 1: black financial advisors, Wells Fargo has agreed to take some
Speaker 1: measures to create a fairer workplace, borrowing some ideas from Dobbin,
Speaker 1: including focus groups with senior business leaders and black brokers.
Speaker 1: Will it work here to discuss? That is? Valerie Purdy Greenaway.
Speaker 1: She's a professor at Columbia University and also the director
Speaker 1: of the Laboratory of Intergroup Relations and the Social Mind
Speaker 1: at Columbia. Valerie MetLife agreed to pay more than thirty
Speaker 1: two million dollars to settle a racial discrimination employment case
Speaker 1: this year, and four years ago Mary Lynch set a
Speaker 1: similar case for a record sixty million dollars. Do these
Speaker 1: kinds of settlements lead to changes in the diversity of
Speaker 1: the workforce? That's a great question. In general, they tend
Speaker 1: not to and the reason why is because there is
Speaker 1: so much um uh animosity that goes along with the
Speaker 1: legal cases. Oftentimes the settlements UM the benefits go directly
Speaker 1: to the plaintiffs, and it doesn't address the broader cultural
Speaker 1: systemic issues that have been hurting and derailing people's careers.
Speaker 1: And in this case, the target where African American financial advisors.
Speaker 1: But research shows that when there is a settlement like
Speaker 1: this many many other groups are subtly affected as well,
Speaker 1: um individuals with disabilities, women in leadership positions, other ethnic groups,
Speaker 1: other religious groups. So um and in short, they attends
Speaker 1: the settlement is a financial corrective, but more is needed. Well,
Speaker 1: it almost feels like the the traditional way of doing
Speaker 1: it is something of a compliance model. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a top down thing that what we're talking about. Well,
Speaker 1: as Fargo, it seems like it's more bottom up in
Speaker 1: a way. Is that right? Yes? Absolutely, And Frank's work
Speaker 1: is so crystal clear. Compliance models tend not to work. UM.
Speaker 1: Managers are highly intelligent, highly motivated, and oftentimes they want
Speaker 1: to do good. UM. Compliance models are inconsistent with what
Speaker 1: we know about how the brain works. Uh much of
Speaker 1: bias is unconscious. We're unaware of it, and it's baked
Speaker 1: into many of our um corporate practices. So by having
Speaker 1: a voluntary bottom up approach, you can start a really
Speaker 1: targeting where the bias might be, having people feel ownership
Speaker 1: and agency around, you know, trying to make the workplace,
Speaker 1: culture and leadership UM better. UM you can log roll
Speaker 1: or enhance the whatever programs are already working, and then
Speaker 1: you can target unconscious unconscious bias and and work on
Speaker 1: strategies to mitigate bias. So a bottom up approach is
Speaker 1: much more effective than than compliance. Unfortunately, compliance is oftentimes necessary,
Speaker 1: but it tends not to be effective. Valarie tell us
Speaker 1: more about these suggested focus groups and how they differ
Speaker 1: from workshops in diversity training programs. So part of what
Speaker 1: needs to happen is leaders need to be really comfortable
Speaker 1: just being able to talk about identity. In financial institutions,
Speaker 1: most financial institutions have a color blind approach that they
Speaker 1: don't really talk about identity and and and because of that,
Speaker 1: there really is no language event to talk about sponsorship, mentoring,
Speaker 1: mitigating unconscious bias. When you have focus groups where you
Speaker 1: just get people who want to you know, um, just
Speaker 1: make the workplace better. They're in a room, they have
Speaker 1: a variety of different identities, experiences, UM, intellectual diversity in
Speaker 1: there in the room, just talking to each other, um,
Speaker 1: and not focusing on you know, what are the settlement pieces,
Speaker 1: but just talking about solutions. This has so many psychological
Speaker 1: benefits and sort of humanizes diversity. You can localize problem solving,
Speaker 1: you can pick things that are going to really accelerate change,
Speaker 1: and it creates a different psychology of psychology around openness
Speaker 1: and authenticity and genuineness. Um, that's really needed. Are there
Speaker 1: metrics fallorie that you know a company like Wells Fargo
Speaker 1: could use to measure whether this different approaches working. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: so you know, focus groups do not mean that they
Speaker 1: can't be rigorous. You can have randomly assigned focus groups
Speaker 1: where where within a particular division you would have a
Speaker 1: group of leaders that would be involved in a focus group,
Speaker 1: you would have another group of leaders maybe you know,
Speaker 1: compare compare them to a compliance strategy. You can also
Speaker 1: use what's called a lag design where you have certain
Speaker 1: focus groups happening in September and then you have another
Speaker 1: set of focus groups happening in November. These kind of
Speaker 1: strategies integrate the rigorous experimental methods UM, which can tell
Speaker 1: us what works and why, along with the openness and
Speaker 1: fluidity of of the focus groups. Valerie, does mentoring fit
Speaker 1: in somewhere here, absolutely, But not just mentoring. Mentoring is
Speaker 1: UM sort of telling people, oftentimes members of underrepresented groups,
Speaker 1: you know large, you know how to make it through
Speaker 1: the company. Where it's really at is sponsorship. Sponsorship means
Speaker 1: who am I pushing without them in the room, without
Speaker 1: them knowing it, moving around their careers, giving them stretch assignments.
Speaker 1: This happens oftentimes unconsciously and as a function of homofely.
Speaker 1: We like to push people that are like us or
Speaker 1: that remind us who we were a long time ago.
Speaker 1: That process really drives promotion, and that is an implicit,
Speaker 1: oftentimes secretive process that people don't even know that they're
Speaker 1: engaged in that needs to be brought to light. So
Speaker 1: not just mentorship, but sponsorship and equitable sponsorship across groups. Valerie,
Speaker 1: would you expect that you're going to see more settlements
Speaker 1: in discrimination cases, you know, get companies involved with this
Speaker 1: sort of bottom up approach and focus groups approach. It's
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to to predict that. UM, I
Speaker 1: believe that companies are motivated to find solutions about what works.
Speaker 1: I mean, millennials are looking for scores. They want to
Speaker 1: know if this is a place where where they where
Speaker 1: they fit in, and diversity and inclusion is a central
Speaker 1: part of what millennials are looking for. So having strategies
Speaker 1: that move beyond compliance, that engage leaders, that are bottom up,
Speaker 1: that include psychology and behavioral analysis, they work. So um My,
Speaker 1: My hope and my expectation is that more and more
Speaker 1: companies would be um moving towards that, and also that
Speaker 1: that judges would be recommending these strategies because they're consistent
Speaker 1: with what we know about psychology and science and how
Speaker 1: the brain works. Thank you so much, it's been a
Speaker 1: fascinating discussion. That's Valerie pretty Greenaway. She is a professor
Speaker 1: at Columbia University. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law.
Speaker 1: Will be back Monday at one pm Wall Street time.
Speaker 1: Please join us then, thanks to our producer David Sacherman
Speaker 1: and our technical director Chris try Comey. Coming up next
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Markets with guest host Lisa Abramowitz. Lisa, give us
Speaker 1: one idea of a thing you're gonna be talking about.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking about the new path of Irma. That's
Speaker 1: something that's on all our minds. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us. I'm June Brasso. This is Bloomberg