Alex takes a look at how investing in businesses who are investing in diversifying their talent may soon be winners in the marketplace – and building a better future at the same time. He is joined by Macquarie's regional head of talent & diversity, equity, and inclusion, Chris Michel for this informative conversation on diversity in today's workforce.
For more from Alex and his team, visit Investing in Disruptions.
Have a question or comment for our podcast? Contact us at MAMpodcasts@macquarie.com
Relevant disclaimers and other information can be found here.
Alex takes a look at how investing in businesses who are investing in diversifying their talent may soon be winners in the marketplace – and building a better future at the same time. He is joined by Macquarie's regional head of talent & diversity, equity, and inclusion, Chris Michel for this informative conversation on diversity in today's workforce.
For more from Alex and his team, visit Investing in Disruptions.
Have a question or comment for our podcast? Contact us at MAMpodcasts@macquarie.com
Relevant disclaimers and other information can be found here.
Alex Ely: Hello and welcome to another addition of the Be Bullish Podcast. I'm Alex Ely, CIO of the US growth equity team here at Macquarie and today we have a very special podcast. I'm welcoming on Chris Michel. He's our head of talent and D&I for the Americas here at Macquarie. Here to talk about D&I in the workplace. What it means, where we are today. What's happening in the future. So, very exciting for us here. Welcome to the podcast Chris, thanks very much for coming on.
Chris Michel: Alex, thanks so much for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Alex: Well this is great. So, you're the head of all talent and D&I. What does that mean? What do you do here at Macquarie?
Chris: Yeah, so, it's interesting. I have sort of a unique role here. My job is really kind of looking at both the talent management side of our work in HR, but also our DEI, diversity equity and inclusion.
It's unique in that there is really nobody else in the organization who has the merged talent and DEI function. What all of that means is I look at all of our talent processes around the employee lifecycle and make sure they are underpinned by the notion of diversity, equity and inclusion. So, making sure that we have inclusive talent practices from the point at which we bring folks into the organization. So, engaging them through our onboarding practices as they are evaluated, talent evaluation processes, development processes. A number of different initiatives that impact the employee lifecycle, and again making sure all of those are inclusive.
Alex: That's great. What is the reaction then? I don't even know when you exactly started Chris. When did you come aboard by the way?
Chris: So, it's funny, it's almost a year. It'll be a year on April 5th, and it's gone by actually pretty quickly, but the reaction quite frankly has been really super positive. I have found that the organization is very clear on its mission regarding our DEI work.
Our senior executives have been very engaged in conversations I've had with them in helping to push this out their respective scope of responsibility, or scopes of responsibility.
Employees further down in the organization have engaged with me very deliberately about how they could make our initiatives work better. What they could do to drive diversity, equity, and inclusion in the organization.
And, so, overall, I would say it's been very positive. What has been interesting is, you know, obviously we are an Australian company and as Australia has begun to do a lot of this work before I arrived there had been a big focus on gender equity, right?
Alex: Right.
Chris: But here in the states, obviously, it's a little bit different. We have focus obviously on gender equity, but we also have focus on ethnic diversity. We have a focus on LGBT, veterans, people with different abilities. So, there are a number of different ways in which we here in the States are able to look at this work a little bit differently. And so that kind of play back and forth with Australia has been also interesting in that our board and our senior leadership in Australia has begun to start a push on broader definitions of diversity on which to execute.
Alex: Wow, it's very exciting. What we're seeing is that more and more people want their employers to have a purpose. They want to feel connected. DEI is just a huge part of that so the fact that you're onboard and helping to steer us in that direction is really great.
Just as I think about it, certainly the pandemic must have had an effect in general on DEI here in the US as well as abroad. Can you comment on that at all?
Chris: Yeah, I think, you know what's interesting as we go back now two years, there was a confluence of things I think that came together to have a big impact on this work from a corporate perspective.
Globally, obviously, the pandemic had a number of impacts on different people of different dimensions of diversity. So, women, people of color. The health impacts in particular were more noticeable and heavier on people of color here in the United States and really around the world.
We saw women losing their jobs faster than men. So, there's a lot of different impacts in terms of employment, in terms of health outcomes. But here in the United States right around that time we had some very significant incidents of what we call racial reckoning that also had an impact on corporal efforts in this space and really had corporations rethinking about how they engage with their clients and with their employees.
So, you know, we are still coming back out of this, everybody knows the pandemic. Sure! Where we're thinking about how we get people back into the office. Care givers, oftentimes that means women but many times it means men just as well.
You know, one of the things that we did a lot of study on was as people are in the office, that is where the sort of organic sponsorship and mentorship that is needed for career growth is developed.
But when you saw more women leaving the office than men. When you saw that people of color were having these impacts on health that prevented them from getting back into the workforce at the same rates as others, what did that mean for the growth and development of certain dimensions of diversity back in the office, right?
You know, if they weren't getting that level of sponsorship and mentorship at home, were they going to be able to advance at the same rate?
So, all of these things played into how we look at this notion of talent and the employee lifecycle, and development and growth. And those factors that impact different dimensions of diversity have to be considered as well as we do this work.
Alex: Well, that's a lot coming from the pandemic. Hopefully it peters out here and we're all able to be together. I certainly think it's a lot easier to drive change when we are all together and we are all working with each other.
I wanted to just pivot a little bit and talk about inclusion and basically the things that happen within the workplace. And there's some terms that I saw you mention on other interviews that I'd love you to review for us. Could you talk to us about unconscious bias and what that is in the workplace?
Chris: Yeah, it's a topic that's been really hot over the last, I'd say, probably seven or eight years as people talk about this DEI work. Unconscious bias is simply the biases that we are born with, we grow up to learn in our own environments that have an effect on how we deal in the world. Now they can be positive or negative. That's something that people generally tend to associate the term bias with negativity. It can also end up being positive, right? But at the end of the day what we try to teach and as we teach about unconscious bias is, as hard as this may sound, right, to be conscious of the fact that you do have unconscious biases.
And they will have an impact on how you engage with people at work. So, really sort of a quick example. You know, again, people think about the term bias and they sort of associate it with discrimination and things of that nature. But I'll give you an example that's even a little bit more simple and probably something that could have happened. So, we are in a zoom environment in the states and you're often on camera with folks, I've actually been on zooms where somebody may have a sweatshirt from a school that is not considered to be, you know, top of the heap. So, it’s not a Harvard it’s not an Ivy League. Guy had a sweatshirt on once it was from Appalachian state. And, you know, somebody came back at me after the meeting, was like, “Wow I didn't know so and so went to Appalachian state. Man, I don't know that I've ever even heard of that school.” And the person was basically displaying their own unconscious bias vis-a-vis the fact that this guy had gone to a school that this person had never heard of.
And so, you're not even aware of it right? And that interaction could disadvantage that guy that went to Appalachian state. Guy could have been the smartest person in the world. He might not have even gone to Appalachian state, he just happened to have that sweatshirt. So, those are the sort of little things that tend to confer unintended advantages, or disadvantages on people.
Alex: Certainly it's important to just be conscious that you have those biases. I'm sure that I have them. I've been in the industry for thirty years, so I've certainly seen a lot of those things over time.
Could you talk to us about micro-aggressions, as well? That was another topic you mentioned.
Chris: Yeah, microaggressions, you know, they go hand in hand with unconscious biases. So, your own unconscious biases, micro-aggressions are the manifestation of unconscious biases, right? So, you're predisposed to think a certain way and, so, your microaggressions tend to be the small, unsaid things that, again, confer unintended advantages and disadvantages. You know, from the perspective of an example, somebody might look at me, I happen to be African American, I happen to be tall and the assumption that a lot of people make is, oh you must have played basketball. Which, in fact, I did but just because I'm tall and happen to be black doesn't mean you should make that association.
In fact, I actually had somebody say to me one time, I happened to go to a private school, pretty prestigious private school, here in New York city for high school. And me and this guy were having this conversation and he said when he finds out, he goes, “Oh you went to Trinity wow you must have gone there on a basketball scholarship, right?” Basically the assumption was that I wasn't intelligent necessarily enough to get into this private school because I was smart but because I played basketball.
And that's the kind of thing that if you hear it over and over again you tend to feel like people are downplaying your level of intelligence, your level of competence, whatever it is. And so those again, it's just a little thing, he probably didn't even mean anything by it. It's just he associates tall black guys with Basketball, which a lot of people do.
And so, they can tend again, to have a negative effect on the people who receive those micro-aggressions on a regular basis.
Alex: Are you right to address them right away or do you let it slide, or what do you do?
Chris: No, you should address them right away. So, I have done a number of facilitation of courses on both unconscious bias, micro-aggressions, and what we teach is that you should address them in the moment.
And you should also realize that the person who has committed them is not doing it out of a place of malice, normally, I mean sometimes there are jerks in the world, we all know that, right? But most often than not they come from a place of these unconscious biases, a place of just not knowing and assumptions that people make. So, in the moment, even though it's hard, you've got to call it out. So, in that instance I mentioned to you, when the guy said to me, "Oh, you must have gone to Trinity because you play basketball", I said to him very polietly, "No, while I actually did play basketball there, I got in there because in the first grade I took an aptitude test, I scored well on it and I got in". There you have it, it had nothing to do with the fact that I played basketball. And he was a bit embarrassed but after we talked about it for a minute, he understood, he apologized, he learned a lesson, we moved on.
Alex: I think that's great, I think we all have lessons that we can learn. I know for sure that I can, so for me it's a great discussion to understand this more. Can you talk to me about covering and what that means.
Chris: Yeah, so covering is a term that really has more recently come into vogue. Covering basically means that while you are not necessarily hiding the fact that you may be a certain dimension of diversity you tend to downplay it, right? Right! So a person who happens to be gay might in fact, instead of -- when we used to have our own desks -- instead of having a picture of his husband on the desk, he might chose not to put any pictures like that up. He might choose not to wear a rainbow flag, or you know, he won't say that he's not gay but he won't also just walk around being out about it, right?
That's the notion of covering. We see that also with people of color, often they will do something called coat-switching. Where in your home life you have a way in which you talk and engage with people. But then when you come into the office there's a way that you carry and comport yourself that is not threatening, not aggressive or you think it's not, and that is knows as coat-switching. And in some sense you are sort of covering your ethnicity and the way that you might otherwise engage.
Alex: Right! Well it certainly feels like people are celebrating people’s differences more and more. You know, certainly I am seeing that in my lifetime, over the last few decades that we are seeing more and more of that. Just one other term that I wanted you to talk about is ‘allyship’ and what that meant.
Chris: Yeah, so allyship is quite simply the notion of providing advocacy for people who need it, right? So, people from underrepresented groups, people who are from what we call out-groups, so again, those folks who are in the dimension of diversity that are not represented in the majority. Providing advocacy but using your own power to provide advocacy for those folks.
Now, you know, you don't necessarily have to be a senior super executive to be an ally. You can be a peer; you can be a subordinate to be an ally to somebody. It is simply advocating for somebody who needs your advocacy, who you recognize needs your advocacy, in any sort of situation.
Alex: Right, wow! Now, as all of these things happen this is great for business as well, right, having different points of view in terms of creating better outcomes because you are in essence listening to all kinds of different ways of thinking.
Chris: Yeah, absolutely. Look there have been a million studies, right, that very clearly show that diverse perspectives bring a greater innovation to any sort of organization, to any sort of initiative, right? We are, here at Macquarie very clear about the notion that diversity of thought drives innovation. Inclusion ensures that people are empowered to innovate. It's literally part of the statement that Shemara, our CEO, has made. It allows us to innovate and invest for a better future. We know that and there is plenty of that out there that proves that the lack of group-think or taking away group-think brings more creative solutions to a problem that you are trying to solve.
So, this is not necessarily just a morally correct thing to do. Obviously, you want to do the right thing, you want to be a corporate citizen, but this is good business at the end of the day this makes us better.
Alex: That's what excites me, as you have probably noticed from the title of the podcast 'Be Bullish' we are an optimistic bunch on the US growth equity team. We look to the future, We're very excited about where we are in history. I think that as everyone gets connected, of course, that crystallizes some negatives out there. But overwhelmingly, I think it drives forward positives like the movement against racism and sexism. I feel like society is accelerating in that area, that's it's improving dramatically right now. So, it really makes me optimistic and excited about where we are headed for the future. Do you feel that? Are we at that point in history where things are moving quicker in this direction?
Chris: Yeah, look I do. I think that, as you said before, I think that people recognize that diversity is important for us to drive in our organization, and it does provide for better outcomes.
Yeah, I do think though, if I am being honest, that there is probably a faction of people who believe that the status quo, or their place in the hierarchy of things is challenged by diversity. And I think we have seen some of that in certain laws that have been passed recently and in other engagements that we have seen in the political sphere. But I think most people believe that, you know, more diversity is beneficial to organizations, it is beneficial to outcomes. It really does provide for, just like I said, innovation and creativity that otherwise wouldn't occur if everybody thinks the same way.
There's a really interesting study I looked at one time that shows two different teams, one that was homogenous and one that was diverse. When the teams started out, it was like a project they put them on, so when the teams started out the homogenous team started out from the outset performing very highly. And that's because they all were comfortable with each other, they were all familiar with each other, right. And the diverse team, it took them a minute. But as they went on in time the two teams sort of crossed and the diverse team outperformed highest level of the homogeneous team when after their paths crossed over time.
So at the end of the day there is a period at which we all got to get comfortable with one another and understand, hey, Alex is different from Chris and we may do it a little bit differently from John, but once we get all of that stuff out of the way, Alex is bringing his experience and perspective, Chris is being his, John is bringing his, Mary is bringing hers, and we are able to really create something powerful based on those diverse perspectives that we are bringing to the table.
Alex: Well, you know, it is really important work that you are doing here for us Chris. We didn't have a head of talent and DNI before here in the Americas, so I thinks it's fantastic that we do and I appreciate all the efforts that you are doing. And I look forward to talking to you more in the future about it. This is just it's great for Macquarie but it just makes me feel good for the industry and society overall. So, I really appreciate you coming on and talking to us about it.
Chris: Alex it has been my pleasure and really any time I am happy to come back and have these discussions in any forum that we have.
Alex: Great, well with that thank you everyone for listening in. I appreciate you hearing another podcast or Be Bullish podcast. Thanks again to Chris Michel and all the efforts that you do. Have a great day everyone. Thank you.
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