Retailers and brands know that attracting a diverse workforce and consumer base is critical to their future. Yet, casting a wider net without phoning it in has never been more challenging.
As chief consulting officer and executive producer for The Equity Project, Monica Williams is a powerful voice and a true thought leader in the equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) space. Throughout her career, she has spearheaded assessment, strategic planning, and implementation projects that drive equitable outcomes and quantifiable results. She is passionate about creating a culture of equity and inclusion within workplaces and communities through leadership, action, and advocacy. In this episode of Carol’s People Powered Retail series, Monica outlines new standards for EDI activation and the significant rewards for getting it right.
Episode highlights:
· Why EDI isn’t a zero-sum game.
· How performative plays can derail best intentions.
· Why positional power matters most.
· How caving to pushback compromises consumer confidence.
Information and resources:
Want to be a guest on Spieckerman Speaks Retail?
Contact team@spieckermanretail.com
Check out more of Carol's retail insights and updates
Follow Carol on LinkedIn
Follow Carol on Twitter
Retailers and brands know that attracting a diverse workforce and consumer base is critical to their future. Yet, casting a wider net without phoning it in has never been more challenging.
As chief consulting officer and executive producer for The Equity Project, Monica Williams is a powerful voice and a true thought leader in the equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) space. Throughout her career, she has spearheaded assessment, strategic planning, and implementation projects that drive equitable outcomes and quantifiable results. She is passionate about creating a culture of equity and inclusion within workplaces and communities through leadership, action, and advocacy. In this episode of Carol’s People Powered Retail series, Monica outlines new standards for EDI activation and the significant rewards for getting it right.
Episode highlights:
· Why EDI isn’t a zero-sum game.
· How performative plays can derail best intentions.
· Why positional power matters most.
· How caving to pushback compromises consumer confidence.
Information and resources:
Want to be a guest on Spieckerman Speaks Retail?
Contact team@spieckermanretail.com
Check out more of Carol's retail insights and updates
Follow Carol on LinkedIn
Follow Carol on Twitter
CAROL SPIECKERMAN
Hey everyone, welcome to Spieckerman Speaks Retail with me, Carol Spieckerman. I help companies get credit for the great stuff they already do and land bigger deals in their retail B2B businesses. That's what this podcast is all about. Bringing real retail thought leadership across categories, borders, business models, and touchpoints through my latest retail trajectories and interviews with experts who help us chart the course to what's next.
Retailers and brands know that remaining relevant to an increasingly diverse talent pool, workforce and consumer base is critical to their future, but casting a wider net without phoning it in has never been more challenging.
Luckily, there are talented people out there who can help them navigate through, and we're going to talk to one of them in just a minute.
As chief consulting officer and executive producer for the Equity Project, Monica Williams is on the forefront of equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts across multiple industries, including retail.
Throughout her career, Monica spearheaded the development of EDI assessment, strategic planning, consultation, and implementation projects that create equitable outcomes with quantifiable results. Monica's passionate about creating a culture of equity and inclusion within workplaces and communities through leadership, action, and advocacy.
She's a powerful voice and a true thought leader in the EDI space. So you're going to want to take notes on this one.
Hi, Monica. It's so great to have you here. Thank you for joining the show. Hello,
MONICA WILLIAMS
Carol. I appreciate the opportunity.
CAROL
We met one another recently at a conference, and I think a really great place to start is with your awesome definition of diversity.
It really jumped out at me when you said that diversity is “any difference that makes a difference”. Can you tell me what that means to you and how it impacts the work that you do?
MONICA
I like to use that as a definition because it helps to define diversity in the broadest sense possible. When we focus on diversity as being synonymous with race, or gender or LGBTQ status, which is historically how diversity gets defined, we're leaving out a whole lot of other differences that can make a difference in how someone experiences your workplace. That could be someone who is neurodivergent, someone who has a different way of communicating. Those are also differences that can make a difference. How someone grew up, their background, their family structure, family status, all of those differences are making a difference.
And it's up to us as both leaders and colleagues to be able to understand what differences are making a difference in a particular scenario.
CAROL
When you talk about making a difference, what differences are you talking about them making? Are they positive and negative differences?
MONICA
I would say the full spectrum, I do believe that certain groups have advantages because of who they are, and certain groups have disadvantages because of who they are.
But the idea is that we are complex in society and complex in our individuality. I have parts of my identity that are more marginalized than other parts of my identity. It also should bring to your attention specificity about diversity. So we're all included in diversity, but there might be many differences that are making a difference.
There might be gender differences that are making a difference. When I learned this definition, it really resonated with me because I think if we were historically just making diversity synonymous with race, we're leaving a whole lot out.
CAROL
You're obviously an advocate for making diversity a big umbrella, but it sounds like you're also saying there might be hierarchies or priorities that come into play depending on any number of scenarios.
MONICA
I'm not trying to say representation does matter. It's just not the only difference that's going to make a difference.
CAROL
Great point. What do you see as the biggest misconception about Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Initiatives or EDI?
MONICA
Some of the misconceptions that I'll start with is, for instance, there are a lot of acronyms that are floating around…EDI, EDIJ, DEI, JEDI. It seems like over time we keep adding acronyms. But the misconception to me is that I don't believe people always understand what the words are in the acronym. The fact that they all mean very different things. If I have a focus on equity, I'm focused on the systems, the policies, the practices, the ways we are creating outcomes. Just by the way we decide to do something, that's equity. Diversity is the difference. All of the differences that are making a difference, and inclusivity is what are we doing with the differences people who are in your system. Do they feel like they are a part of the system? Do they have voice in making decisions even in the work that they do?
Are they valued respected? Are they able to contribute all of themselves in your work environment?
CAROL
That's interesting because you've just articulated how the three elements of that acronym are actually intertwined. I decided default to “EDI” because I knew that was the acronym that you used and you're the authority.
So I was like, “well, I'm going to use EDI because I know that's what Monica does!
MONICA
And I like to lead with equity. However you put the acronym, the idea is to know what you're doing. A lot of organizations are saying they're doing Jedi work or. EDI work and really they're just doing diversity work or they're just doing inclusivity and they haven't touched equity at all.
So it's important to me and in the work that I do that people are able to define and name the work that they're doing so that it's not conflated in an acronym and no one knows what it means.
CAROL
It sounds like it makes sense to really parse it out and that's maybe some of the preliminary work that needs to be done.
MONICA
Absolutely.
CAROL
What do you think it takes to change the conversation, Monica, to where companies and even individuals start to see EDI as an advantage and a true business asset, or do you already see companies making that shift?
MONICA
People think diversity is synonymous with deficit, meaning I have to somehow lower my standards to have a more diverse workforce or somehow people will have things taken away from them.
And so that deficit, or that scarcity mindset is prevalent. But I do believe that more and more organizations are taking a look at their strategies and really wanting to leverage diversity as a strength and as a competitive advantage. And I've been doing this work for a long time, and we've been making the business case for diversity for a long time, and sometimes it's shocking to me that we still have to convince people that we're in a global workforce. To meet the demands of a global workforce or a global market, we want to be more representative of that market.
CAROL
And the good news is coming from a retail perspective, especially, is there are so many ways now to quantify benefits that maybe didn't exist before. The thinking was always, “Not everything that matters can be measured.”
But more and more, I think these types of initiatives can be measured and money talks and results talk. But I loved your point about the scarcity mindset. And essentially saying it's not a zero-sum game, right?
MONICA
That's absolutely it. I hear so many times where there's pushback on these efforts because somehow the dominant culture believes that if we focus on expanding and bringing in more voices, more identity groups and we're more inclusive of all, that somehow we're taking away from those that have had the dominance to this point.
CAROL
That's a big shift, but obviously a very important one, and especially as you do make that umbrella bigger, how do you approach it with companies when they come to you to sincerely say we want to get this right? And we want to have it be a comprehensive effort?
MONICA
It's such a great question. And at the equity project, one of the premises that we start with is we need to understand where you're starting from. We need to understand your current state as it relates to equity, diversity, and inclusivity. So for instance, if you say “Oh gosh, we really want to have an inclusive culture,” but you don't really have much diversity, we want to be able to understand where you're starting from, how are employees experiencing your workplace?
So we conduct what we call an equity assessment, and within the equity assessment, we're really looking at capturing various sentiments that are happening across your organization, and we even look at different demographic slices to understand based on a statement and asking for a level of agreement on it.
The statement is, “I believe in my organization, I can bring my full self to work or my authentic self to work”. And then we look at the responses and look at the data and we see that not everyone, depending on who they are, have agreement or they have different levels of agreement to that statement. And so that's what we want to know.
Do different people have different experiences depending on who they are? So you have a survey process initially to where you gather that feedback.
CAROL
Boy, I bet that surprises a lot of companies. I would think that would be the rule rather than the exception.
MONICA
I do believe most organizations believe they have a long way to go or they haven't cracked the nut, so to speak. But yes, we start with a survey and then we follow that survey up with focus groups or affinity caucuses to see where you might have hotspots. And then we take the focus groups as a way to dig deeper, to further understand how these sentiments are playing out within your workforces.
CAROL
In the retail space, companies know that it's really important to message inclusion and to mirror the diversity of their customers and potential customers. And particularly, as they know, they have to fill the pipeline with those new generations of shoppers that really care about it to protect the longevity of their brands. So, what does it look like for companies to really walk the talk, maybe after you've done the work that you just talked about? How does that manifest?
MONICA
So that's really great – acknowledging that it's both happening and it's a need that organizations understand. Because you know what? Shoppers and consumers are well-informed about who they want to do business with.
I think there's room to grow there, but people care about who they're doing business with. I would say is important for organizations, not just to have representation on their website or in their marketing campaigns, but really be able to have that similar representation on their leadership team in the ways that decisions get made.
Are we taking into account the various components that we are espousing on our brand campaign? Or is that being realized or operationalized in the way that we operate and do business? That to me becomes more than just, “We did a really great campaign that was representative of a lot of diversity,” but how are we providing shelf space for black-owned brands or Latina-owned brands?
How are we placing priorities? There are a lot of retailers that have done that. They have said, “We're going to reserve X amount of shelf space for Black-owned brands.” And it's not because we're taking away from other brands. It actually elevates how other brands are experienced. So if I can attract more racial diversity to my retail space, whether it's online or in person, if I can attract more, Then I'm actually bringing more attention to all the brands, right?
I might be in there to shop for a particular brand that is black-owned, but then I'm being exposed to other brands that I may not have otherwise been exposed to. And I do think that's something that can be tracked. I do think that that is data that we should be able to see.
CAROL
Consumers do care about it, and they won't just take lip service anymore, they do the research. So, retailers really have to keep the promises that they make. But it does go back to that scarcity mindset, and it really is a proposition that the rising tide lifts all the boats. In retail, you would have to look at that as an opportunity because there are so many stakeholders. You can either say this is impossibly complex, “There's no way we can execute this across our entire enterprise,” or you can look at the complexity of retail and all the stakeholders, consumers, store associates, the supplier base, the retailers themselves, the brands, and say, “Wow, look at all the opportunities that we have to parlay this across our entire platform.”
MONICA
I think that's the way that you move something from being performative to something that is authentic and strategic. It's the difference between only having your Black-owned brands or putting focus on Black history during Black History Month, right? Why not have those brands spotlight it throughout the year? Why is it just that one month?
CAROL
And going to what you just mentioned, and also your previous point a little while ago about pushback. It’s not all upside. Like the big blow ups that happened at Target and Bud Light, there were shareholder repercussions. Are those avoidable in the first place? Or if they're not, what's the crisis management end of it?
MONICA
I do think that brands have to be more representative and more inclusive in defining their strategies AND where you might have gaps or you might have blinders on in terms of what you may not notice because that's not your experience. And so I do think we have to be more informed, but also be even before that, take a stand on what's important in your brand or what's important for your employees, what's important for you to put a stake in the ground on. If you're being clear about what your priorities are, and your desire to be representative. We want to be representative of the world, right? Or we don't. That's the, that's the challenge. Do we have brands that we only want certain consumers to consume? Or do we want to open it up? When organizations make decisions about that and stick to it, then the pushback or the resistance or whatever happens, it can still happen but it's like knowing yourself, knowing who you are as a brand, having your identity, that's not going to sway you even when you get pushback on it.
CAROL
That's the ideal situation, but sometimes we've got brands caving into the pressure, and in some ways that can make things worse.
MONICA
I will 100 percent agree with you, that is the risk, that you cave into it, but I do think that speaks to either you stepped in it in the first place, and you've got to somehow recover because the impact of something you did didn't match your intention. So if organizations or brands do something that is offensive to a particular group or a particular audience, it's important for them to check that with who they are, who they intend to be. And if they stepped in it, then we should offer an opportunity to recover.
CAROL
I love what you said about impact matching intention. I think that's a great guideline and a filter. One thing that's been a problem in a lot of industries, but definitely in retail, is labor shortages. Retailers have to cast a really big net, not just to have enough people to run the business, particularly in stores, but also to just make sure that their workforce mirrors the diversity of their customers, which you talked about just a minute ago.
What are some strategies that you found to be effective for promoting diversity in a way that benefits the recruitment and hiring process?
MONICA
I do believe it has to do with the culture that you are creating within your organization. If you have representation, you don't have equitable policies or practices, or people who are part of your organization don't feel like they can be their authentic selves, they're being harmed in your system in some way or another, you've got to ensure that the culture is there to support the diversity that you want to attract.
You can attract diversity, but if you're hemorrhaging diversity out the other end, that's not what we want either. You want to be able to retain the diversity that you bring in. Building cultures that have the capacity to be inclusive, and have belonging, and accept differences and respect. Expect differences as a strength would be an important part of that equation.
CAROL
And it really is a, “you know it when you see it” type of thing I think where it's probably not mysterious, whether the company does walk the talk, it tends to be evident how companies articulate their values and their culture. I would think that at least packaging that and having a way of articulating it would go a long way to improving those experiences and onboarding folks.
MONICA
That has to be the start how you attract talent. That's how you bring people in the door, but you have to live those same values and have that be a part of your culture in order to keep people in order to retain that talent you just attracted.
When you join a new organization, or you join a company or brand, you start to see in the way that things get done and you teach people how to do things when they join your culture. So whether or not you define a culture, you're still going to be creating one.
CAROL
By default, but you don't want to be doing it by default. You want it to be intentional.
MONICA
That's absolute.
CAROL
Over the years, retailers and brands have taken great pains to dedicate teams to EDI. Before, they would just kind of slap it on somebody's responsibility and say, “You do that EDI thing.” As they become more intentional, they are creating dedicated roles and teams. So I'd love to get your thoughts on those structural best practices, but also how these roles are evolving to be more all-encompassing.
Going back to what we talked about originally, that big umbrella that keeps getting bigger, and that's a positive thing. But now I'm starting to see new roles being created, like “chief belonging officers,” for example. So what do you think about these organizational shifts, and what's the ideal structure, and do titles really matter?
MONICA
I guess I would pose that back to you. Do titles matter in any other part of the organization?
CAROL
Yes. They matter or tend to. They matter to the individuals who hold those titles.
MONICA
They matter also to people who are within an organization. That's one of the things that people look at, right? There's power. Positional power comes with your place in the organization, where you're sitting, or just structurally in an organization, but it's dependent on how I'm positioned and who I'm connected to. So when you have a chief diversity officer who reports directly to the CEO, your proximity to power is likely going to have a greater impact on how EDI or diversity and inclusion gets embedded throughout the organization. You're probably going to have a greater role or influence on those strategies if the organization is committed to that.
In the last couple of years we saw a lot of these roles being raised up on the heels of the murder of George Floyd and the racial reckoning time that happened. In 2020 and 2021, you saw all these roles being raised up. And then recently you saw all of them being rolled back. What that says to me, and it was pretty predictable…We were hopeful that that was authentic, but then we started to realize that maybe it was performative to begin with. And maybe I leaned on these roles but didn't have the structure in place for them to be successful.
CAROL
That's a great point. I love the point that proximity matters. Proximity to power. So, with that, are you saying that you generally advocate for those roles to be closer to power to be effective?
MONICA
Closer to leadership. Because when those roles are hidden when they're packed under a lot of layers, it’s really difficult to get things done. You become someone who's at the grassroots level or become window dressing, or you're trying to work your way up and down in the organization to make this important or make this a priority as opposed to being a part of the executive leadership team where decisions get made and where priorities are defined. When this work becomes just a part of how we do business as opposed to, “Oh, we have that diversity person over there in that office and it's their job.” This has to be everybody's job, not just one person's job.
CAROL
So there's an integration aspect to it, and it was interesting to hear about the ripple effects because I would imagine that could be very disempowering for the person who holds the role, not to mention the fact that, back to your earlier point, that it would impact culture overall and the cascading effect that could be really negative.
MONICA
I honestly don't suggest organizations hire that role unless there is already a strong commitment and a plan that is understood by the whole executive team. You can hire this role to shepherd it, but it can't just be their job.
CAROL
You can't make it a dare-to-succeed proposition.
MONICA
Right, exactly, because that's what sometimes happens.
I have this role, I don't have a budget, I don't have a team that's helping and to execute it. You have to question those things, and you have to question how different your EDI strategy looks from other strategies. And how those get prioritized or how those get rolled out.
CAROL
You don't want it to be an anomaly. If it stands out like a sore thumb, then that's a red flag.
MONICA
Very true.
CAROL
How can organizations ensure that their EDI initiatives aren't just a one off thing or a temporary fad within the organization? How can they ensure that they’re sustained and not seen as a short-term trend? In the retail space that would be by consumers, associates in the stores by leadership, and so on.
MONICA
it has to do with how deeply ingrained it is in all of your decision-making, not just in that office as we just talked about, but throughout how deeply threaded or ingrained is it?
Do we have an EDI lens across our decisions where I can see that approach happening in marketing, in the way that we're budgeting, in the way that we are allocating funds, how we prioritize funding, in the way that we live our strategy or execute on our strategy and our culture? EDI touches all of the things that we do in an organization.
How we connect with the communities that we serve, how we connect with consumers. You must have that lens throughout everything you do. That's how it can become something that's not just a one-off or that special program that we celebrate different months throughout the year. That's not the strategy.
CAROL
I would think that once that's accomplished, then it does become “lather, rinse, repeat.” It probably becomes a lot easier, and it does become part of the culture. And then ideally, it takes on a life of its own. And I would think the positive results and the empowerment that people feel would just continue to fuel it from there. But maybe I'm being a little Pollyanna there!
MONICA
Well, there has to be an investment in it, an investment from individuals to understand what their why is, and in an organization to understand what it's why is. Why are we doing this in the first place? Are we doing it just because other organizations are doing it and we feel pressured to do it?
Or can we truly connect it to the way we execute our business strategy, the way we live our mission and our vision and our values, the way that we performance manage, by doing it? How do we expect inclusive behaviors from our staff? How do we measure that? How do we recognize when people are exhibiting inclusive behaviors?
How do we performance manage? That also has a lens of equity, diversity, and inclusivity. How do we pay? Do we have equitable pay strategies and outcomes? How do we promote? How do we decide who gets let go?
CAROL
That's a tough one. It's been such an illuminating conversation because it's an expanding and expansive proposition rather than something that's limiting and tightly held. So I really appreciate you bringing that perspective.
I end every interview with one question that I'll post to you. What's next?
MONICA
I think about how am I going to address the opposition, the social political climate that exists and how we're coming up on another election year. And DEI is not political, but it's being made to be political.
So what's next is how do we get more people who understand that this is not a political issue, this is a humanity issue? We're dividing on a lot of things that we don't need to divide on, that we don't need to separate on. What I spend a lot of my time thinking about is how do we continue to create a conversation that is not polarizing for people, that doesn't cause harm for people, and that acknowledges that we have further to go?
There are still people who are being harmed in our systems. We have systems of oppression that people don't want to talk about, but if we start talking to people who are the most marginalized, we'll find out we're not there yet. I really have a lot of hope. I hope you hear hope. Some of the systems that have been designed, I think they can be redesigned or undesigned.
I believe that people can unlearn some of the behaviors that we have exhibited, but we've got to listen to each other and we've got to care about each other. And that's what's next for me.
CAROL
That's just awesome. And I do hear hope from you, but I also hear that we don't need to be complacent, and that there's always more opportunity to do better. And I love that. Companies really are on the front line because regardless of the political climate, a lot of these companies have the latitude to do things their own way which can make a very big difference and that goes back to the work that you do. So thank you so much for being on the show, Monica. This has been so illuminating, and I know it will be really helpful in the retail space for the folks who listen to my podcast. So thank you so much, Monica. I appreciate it.
MONICA
You're so welcome. It's been a pleasure. And I hope we'll stay in touch.
CAROL
You bet. Absolutely. To learn more about Monica and her work at The Equity Project, visit TheEquityProjectLLC.com, where you'll also find their latest impact report highlighting the awesome work that they're doing in the EDI space. Monica is also an amazing speaker by the way, she really connects with audiences and builds bridges to understanding that are so needed right now in equity, diversity, and inclusion.
You can find Monica on LinkedIn, “Monica Williams.” Stay tuned for the next episode in my People Powered Retail series. And in the meantime, you can follow me on LinkedIn for updates on upcoming events and other happenings. Ping me anytime at carol at spieckermanretail.com or hit my site. Spieckermanretail.com to check out more insights and subscribe to my updates. And if you like what you're hearing, please do like share and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
See you next time.