Diversity Initiatives are the Solution with Cristina Duke of PowerToFly and James Schneider of PepsiCo

What extra steps are you making to promote diversity in your workplace? Learn how recruiters can level up their game with Cristina Duke Account Manager at PowerToFly and James Schneider of PepsiCo. They discuss the importance of diversity initiatives, with sparks flying as they share tales of triumph and challenges of these programs. Also, keep an eye out for PowerToFly's knowledge-packed services on diversity education. We always can do better to promote equality in the workplace, so this is an episode you won't want to miss.

This is a special mini series recorded with Oleeo at HR Tech 2023 with hosts Ryan Leary, Brian Fink, and Shally Steckerl.

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Transcript

Shally Steckerl: 0:07

And we are back live at the HR Tech Expo on the conference room floor in the Oleeo booth, as Ryan says, powered by Oleeo.

Ryan Leary: 0:18

Powered by Oleeo. Yeah, we're here at the content lounge, been here for two days. We are, we're winding down. We've got two hours left and we've got two people on the show that we've been trying to get on. For probably the last, well, one of them for the last day and a half. Every time she comes back we got someone else on and then and then Jim for the last couple hours at least so Why don't we kick off with some intros? Introduce yourself.

Cristina Duke: 0:45

Hi, I'm Christina Duke. I'm an account manager at Power to Fly.

James Schneider: 0:50

What is Power to Fly?

Cristina Duke: 0:51

We are a diversity recruiting and retention platform.

Ryan Leary: 0:55

And we've got Jim Schneider.

James Schneider: 0:57

We go way back. Oh yeah. Way back. 2009? It's gotta be. 2007? Something like that?

Ryan Leary: 1:03

Yeah. But you've changed. You've changed roles over the last couple of years.

James Schneider: 1:05

Yeah. Yeah. After 17 years at PepsiCo, sourcing, talent acquisition, actually started my own company. So now I have 10 consultants and we specialize in Optimization and implementations of CRMs and ATS systems. So, yeah, having a lot of fun. Got it.

Ryan Leary: 1:25

Alright, so, lots to talk about here. Shally, I know, have you gotten to walk around yet?

Shally Steckerl: 1:30

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've been walking around a lot.

Ryan Leary: 1:32

I don't know what's going on out on the floor. Have you all seen anything interesting? What's, what's the buzz about here?

Cristina Duke: 1:39

I've seen some great swag.

Ryan Leary: 1:41

Um, what swag? Let's talk swag. Because I, the plan is around 2 o'clock to walk around and just Swag.

Shally Steckerl: 1:49

Pick up whatever's left. Yeah, exactly.

Cristina Duke: 1:51

I need the good stuff. Where's the good stuff? Cause you need another, like, bag full of pens and stuffed animals, right? Um, what? Mints. Chapstick.

James Schneider: 1:59

Yeah, exactly.

Shally Steckerl: 2:00

Yeah. Anybody have headphones?

Ryan Leary: 2:03

You know, Bounty, Bounty Jobs had headphones. Yeah? Years ago, and I still have them. Nice. And they're very good. They're Bluetooth, like, right when Bluetooth started. And I still have them. I have three pairs of them.

Shally Steckerl: 2:15

Nice. Wow. Fantastic. But, you know what I want to say though, I've been walking around, I don't see a lot of diversity. Uh, I don't mean like diversity of people in the event, I mean, I don't see a lot of diversity being talked about in these booths. Last year it was all over the place, and this year not so much, what happened?

Cristina Duke: 2:34

Yeah, it's, it's interesting, it's kind of sad, I feel like, you know, diversity was a, a major trend there, especially in 2021, and Especially now when the market has turned, like, what we're finding is, it's actually those roles, um, and those programs that are the first to be cut, and get budget cuts too, which is really sad, because if you think about it, like, you know, aside from just the, Being the right thing, like, diverse teams perform better, and you would think that, you know, a company would want to invest in a workforce that is also representative of, like, their consumer base.

Ryan Leary: 3:13

You would think so. And, and this is, that's what they said last year. Yeah. Well, and I, I, I agree. I I don't see much of it here. I think they're sticking to the buzzwords of 23. Yeah. Which is playing buzzword bingo. Don't say it. ai. Oh God.

James Schneider: 3:27

Yeah.

Ryan Leary: 3:28

There you go. But question on diversity. We were talking about this yesterday. The, I'm not sure if you were on this, on this show, Shalley, but is, so recruiters are, are responsible to submit diverse slates to Canada.

Shally Steckerl: 3:42

Right. You're supposed to diverse, you're supposed to submit the best possible talent.

Ryan Leary: 3:48

The best possible, we're supposed to, right. But, in reality, the, the, the directive down from the manager is you submit five people, three diverse, two not, whatever, right? Yep. Is that the role of the recruiter?

Shally Steckerl: 4:03

I don't think so. Is

James Schneider: 4:04

that the responsibility of the recruiter? I... You guys know my background being with PepsiCo, it was in the DNA of the organization and the company, so it's something I just always did naturally, but you know, I mean over the years, you guys all saw that it became more of how can you pull in more sourcing, how can you pull in more talent at the top of the pipeline, pull that down into your funnel. I think Christina, you guys with Power to Fly, Definitely you're doing some great stuff on that front. Um, you know, if there's other tools that are redacted and reducing bias in the process that, you know, you're seeing some of those tools that have been, uh, merging or purchased or, or within other, other groups now, but yeah, man, I would, to answer your question, I would definitely say that it's, it's all in the strength of your pipeline that you're building, right?

Ryan Leary: 4:53

Right. Well, and, and you, you, I think you said it perfectly. It's in the DNA. Yeah. And, and that's what I'm getting at. I feel like it's gotta be, Top down, coming from the company, the recruiters, like Shaly said, get the best possible

Shally Steckerl: 5:06

talent. It shouldn't be our job to just

Ryan Leary: 5:08

get the best. The pool of talent should already

James Schneider: 5:10

be represented. Correct. Agree.

Cristina Duke: 5:13

The recruiter wants to fill the role, like, and to Shaly's point, they want the best talent. But here's the thing, like, what if the best talent, what if you don't know about the best talent? That's the problem. And, or, the best talent... Isn't even considering a job at your company because, guess what, if they're good at what they do, they're probably gainfully employed. And so, there's this great quote that talks about how, you know, talent is distributed equally, but opportunity is not. They liked what

Ryan Leary: 5:43

you said.

Cristina Duke: 5:45

You know, a lot of companies, like, yes, there are some that are putting in, like, the Rooney Rule or, you know, they're trying to, okay, by the hiring manager interview, there has to be at least one quote unquote, like, underrepresented candidate, but at the end of the day, I wonder, like, what is the incentive? Because we all say, yeah, you know, diverse companies perform better, but you have companies, too, that are also putting in, like, bonus plans or performance metrics around, like, actually hiring from underrepresented groups. Yeah. Um, to that point, even if a recruiter, let's say, brings a diverse candidate slate, we have to think about the hiring managers, you know, they're the executive decision makers in many ways, and not in a bad way, but, you know, everyone has bias, and a lot of hiring managers are turning to their own networks and, you know, their own alumni associations and the people that are like them, um. And, you know, that's where you find teams that really start to be lacking in things like gender parity, racial and ethnic parity, but, you know, diversity goes beyond just that, too. It's sexual orientation, it's gender identity, it's veteran status, it's ability status.

Ryan Leary: 6:57

Yeah. So how, how's Power to Fly, so, okay, let me back up a minute. Today, multiple shows have talked about retention being the new recruiting. And that's kind of been the theme for today for whatever reason and I'm looking over at your booth and I see you've retained. What are you all doing for retention?

Cristina Duke: 7:16

Yeah, so we do, um, part of our software is an LMS that is a DEIV, diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, database, knowledge base, if you will, and there's a lot of training in there that is actually for people leaders and The, the ones that are in that hiring manager position and talking about, like, what are they doing to elevate a culture of inclusion? Like, what are they doing to make sure that they're promoting allyship and advocacy amongst their teams? Uh, what are they doing to develop their, their middle management, for example? So,

Shally Steckerl: 7:54

it's education. Absolutely. Yeah, educating, building awareness, right? Yeah.

James Schneider: 8:01

Yes. Also, the other thing is ERG. Right? ERG. ERG. ERG. Uh, assistance also internally, right?

Cristina Duke: 8:06

Yeah, so a lot of content too around DEIB programming and building out employee resource groups, you know, those are great for people to find community and connection within an organization and you think about how are we um, you know, fostering collaboration like cross functionally and the ERGs are a great way to do that.

James Schneider: 8:28

Yeah, but what I would say is that from a, from a standpoint of You know, a number of years ago when you saw everybody, you know, moving into more of a focus around DEI and, and everything that, they did a, they did a okay job of finding and sourcing and bringing in the talent. We won't say they did a great job, but the thing is, is about the retention because when people would join the organization, they would find that, okay, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't supported. There's not a lot of folks that are like, or look like me. And then, a lot of the ERGs, that's why I think what you guys do with helping to, how to foster and stand up those programs that are so strong and help with, you know, the retention, I think is so important. So, I wanted to call that out. I, I was, I love that concept that you guys do. Thank you,

Shally Steckerl: 9:16

Jim. Yeah, because it's a whole, it's a whole, it's a whole ecosystem, right? You can, you can make the recruiter responsible for, hey, you gotta increase the, the top of the funnel. But then... What if your hiring managers aren't responding to that? And well, okay, so now you make the hiring managers responsible. You've got to hire diversity. Okay. So now you have the diversity and what if the organization doesn't support it? Now they don't stay. So you've got to work on that retention. And then the last piece, I think that's, that's missing there. Developing the talent. Yeah. So now you're developed. Now you, you know, your gap is developing that talent so that they're available for the next.

James Schneider: 9:57

Yeah. Browne, you know? So... One thing that I would definitely say is from, uh, kind of a, my time at PepsiCo, that one of the, the parts of the secret sauce I think that really helped was... The strength of the ERGs that we had, and let me just say for anybody that doesn't know ERG, Employee Resource Group, right? And so we had so many of those that the leadership was incredible. It was well funded from our organization, and it was every senior leader within the organization had an organization that they were the sponsor of. And it was, and it was, but it was not Being an organization that you would be a part of as well, so. But the thing is, is why that helped from a recruiting standpoint is that I could, if I wanted anybody who was a candidate to be able to learn more about the organization, I could just set up an informal call or any type of thing with any of the, any of the folks that were with any of the ERGs. Or even, we had some situation where we did interview days, we would actually have the ERG. So, if it was like from one of our conferences and we're bringing in a number of folks, we would have an ERG event at the hotel the night before they would do, you know, do the interview day.

Cristina Duke: 11:10

And that's a brilliant way to engage the employee resource groups in a way that can also, you know, give back to the business. Um, I saw this stat recently, it was, it was from Glassdoor, but it talked about that the vast majority of job seekers trust. Just another employee when it comes to diversity and inclusion, much significantly higher than they trust a recruiter, a senior leader at the company even, or even like the company's website. Um, but going back to something that you were saying about just, um, the recruiting and retention space, it's, it's highly fragmented. And so really what Power to Fly is here to be is that end to end solution. All the way through the talent engagement journey, because when you think about something from a, you know, with diversity and inclusion, it has to be a holistic strategy. To the point you were making, you can't just do part of it, or it won't work. And so we're really here to help have that, like, seamless process.

Shally Steckerl: 12:10

What do you, what are you finding has been the downside of the, the increased interest in Diversity as a result of some of the tragic events that happened in the last few years. In other words, um, there's the upside with, you know, the things that happened shouldn't have happened, they're horrible, but there's been a benefit in that it gave more attention to the fact that we needed to do something about it, right? But what has been the negative impact? Has there been any class or any protected group that has suffered as a result of the... Extra attention? Has it had a negative impact as well?

Cristina Duke: 12:55

You mean all the, the cis white men that are suddenly? No, no,

Shally Steckerl: 12:59

no. No, I'm talking about, you know, so we're, we're, we're paying attention to, we're, we're giving more attention to something that deserved attention anyway, but now this has been brought, like it's been highlighted. And that's the, that's the good side. Has there been any negative impact in other areas? So what, you know, if a company only has a certain amount of money, only has a certain amount of employees, what have they traded for?

Cristina Duke: 13:28

Yeah, that, that's so funny, because it's usually like the cis white men that, that say, like, I'm, you know, we're losing opportunity because somebody else is getting opportunity. I think, like... I'm not saying

Shally Steckerl: 13:38

that, I'm wondering what is, what was traded. Something had to, right, your company has a certain amount of funds, a certain amount of people. Something, what was it that gave way to create that opportunity? Not, not specifically what gender or what, but like, what, where did the funding come from?

Cristina Duke: 14:00

That's a great question. And that's what we're actually finding, you know, with like the economic downturn that like these diversity rolls are being cut, talent acquisition, like budgets are being cut. But I think like where the real. Funding, and this goes back to education and where power lies in organizations, is with like the functional hiring leaders. You know, you look at like a VP of sales or a sales team or an engineering team or a technology organization, you know, those are the ones that are actually like having to find the talent to fill the roles and I think that's truly like where the budget should come from. Um, another way to answer your question around, like, what is some of, like, the negative impact, I think, you know, suddenly there was all this scrutiny on diversity and inclusion, and I, I think, like, the pendulum sort of swung in the other way, it actually became quite divisive in some circumstances. So

Shally Steckerl: 14:56

you had to almost, like, spend on the proving that you were doing it. Right.

Cristina Duke: 15:01

Rather than spend on the doing it. But then you have all these groups, right, and you think about it, like, You know, it's not, um, it's not the onus of the person from the underrepresented group to come and educate the rest of us. It should not be. And so I think a lot of these companies, you know, and you know, I think everybody we work with has their heart in the right place. But it became like, okay, now we suddenly care about diversity and inclusion. We're standing up our employee resource groups, Hey, you know. Black employee resource groups like please come do a presentation for our company and talk about what your experience is well in reality It's not their responsibility to do that and that's where you know Companies like power to fly really come in because it's part of the services that we do around education as we do these fireside chats We bring in external subject matter experts. We bring in people that are totally outside of the company level the playing field everyone comes in and is as an observer and You know, through that particular offering, it's really facilitating education through sharing lived experience. And it's, like, removes a bit of the personal aspect because it's not necessarily your co worker there. Right, you're not putting somebody on the onus,

Shally Steckerl: 16:13

yeah. Yeah. Like, hey, you're not an expert in this, but can you please, yeah. Well, wait, can I, let me back up a little and explain. So, I'm responsible for the P& L. And I have the spend, and we had a decision to make at budget time where to spend the money to include diversity programs intentionally. So, the company's always been diverse, and we, we did not have, uh, we did not have a punitive or, um, reactive reason to do it. We just wanted to increase our efforts. Not that we had a problem, we wanted to increase them. And so, it comes down to what Ryan was saying, is it really up to the recruiter? I'm saying, no, it shouldn't be up to just the recruiter, but I'm also saying, as the person in charge of the P& L for recruiting, I also have to come up with the money. And I can't go back to my CFO and say, you know how I had that 3 million last year? This year I need, uh, 4 million, because I'm adding this other thing. My CFO's gonna say, no, you got 3 million, you gotta do whatever you can do with those 3 million, so I'm gonna have to rob Peter to pay Paul. This is a really tired old cliche, which means I've gotta reduce my spend somewhere else. In order to, you know, hire a company like Power to Fly. See what I mean? And so, I know what I did, I know where I made the cut. I'm wondering what you're seeing is where are the other cuts coming from. Jim, you can take that. Yeah,

James Schneider: 17:35

I know, I know that one of the things that's, you know, I speak a lot about PepsiCo days because, you know, hey, hell, we're known a lot for, uh, you know, all of our DEI efforts and all the other stuff, but one of the things that we did that we, that I actually had a lot of, I had the opportunity to name the program, had a lot of blood, sweat, tears, everything in this one, which was, uh, the Ready to Return Program. So what we did is instead of putting it at a, at AOP, Annual Operating Plan, for budgeting time, instead of putting it at a functional level, we actually had leadership that was like, from the top down, that was talking about, okay, we're going to have a new program and this is something that we're going to do. We're going to have a big bet on women in leadership. And one of the things that, that we did was we put together an internship program for women that were returning to the workforce and really put together a whole program around that with funding and with everything else that was from the leadership, not so much at a functional level, but coming at it as a strategy for the corporation. And so what that was, was that was a program to where what you're trying to do is upskill workers that, uh, women that had left and that are wanting to come back in and all they need is that little bridge of, of expertise to get back. Up to that, you know, that, you know, they may have left at a certain point in their career and now they're coming back and they can pop right into almost a management or senior management position. And so that's one of the things that, uh, we did. And the ready, ready to return program with a two in the middle, that's something

Shally Steckerl: 19:03

that's a huge investment, right?'cause there are people that had. Lots of institutional knowledge knew how things worked. Yeah, man. So bringing them back absolutely is like they got a head start Absolutely, you don't have to learn everything

James Schneider: 19:14

about the company But and the thing that's that's crazy is every single recruiter that would look at their resume would be like no Because they got no experience. No big they've got that big gap and you're just like no you don't realize this So we're making sure that we bridge that gap and then bring them right back in and no really cool program So just figured I'd tell you about that one and it was a little bit different in the way that was funded And it was innovative from the funding standpoint, too. Now,

Ryan Leary: 19:38

alright, so I know we're coming up on time. So before we head out, we went through what you're seeing on the floor, what's innovative, what's new, what's missing. What is missing this year from the floor in product that you were hoping to see? 24?

James Schneider: 20:00

I mean, what, you know, on the other, on the opposite side, you know, what is, what's the flavor of the month that everybody is seeing and what we're all talking about? Yeah. And what everybody is seeing is, I know Shally, you don't wanna hear it, but Yeah, ai, general ai, you know, how it's working, how it Mm-Hmm. How it's doing that. Um, you know, the, the thing that I'm not seeing as much, and I don't know why. Not, it's there, but you're not seeing a lot of, I don't know, I don't know if I want to say this, but the top of the funnel, but the hardcore sourcing, everything is more about, because AI is primarily more about once somebody hits the funnel or something like that, um, I'm not seeing, I don't know, maybe I'm just not walking around as much, but as much as, Very, very, very top of the funnel for building communities and everything else. Now, I know that's what some of the stuff that you guys are doing, but, um, you know, that's just for me. I haven't seen as much. There should be

Shally Steckerl: 20:53

more of it, is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, okay.

James Schneider: 20:55

Fair enough. I mean, me being a sourcing guy, you know, I'm always looking around for some of those things. You're always gonna go back to your roots. Yeah. Yeah, I

Cristina Duke: 21:02

would have to agree, I mean, I'm seeing a lot, yes, AI, that's the buzzword, but also a lot of things around, like, employee engagement, retention, wellness seems to be, like, a really hot topic right now. But you wish you

Shally Steckerl: 21:16

saw more?

Cristina Duke: 21:19

You know, something that I... I'm wondering about or you know hasn't really jumped out to me. I've seen like training platforms upskilling, right? Like that's a major issue right now is like this aging workforce and this skills gap But one of the things and this is like the diversity spin on it Is that a lot of these trainings are really made for like neurotypical people and so I am you know Like what is the evolution in? Keep the training so like people that identify as neurodivergent and that is a whole spectrum that goes from everything to like ADD to dyslexia to you know being on the autism spectrum. Learning styles. Exactly and so I really wonder like what are these products doing in terms of being able to to reach people that you know don't learn in a typical way which is a lot of

James Schneider: 22:11

people. A lot of people

Ryan Leary: 22:12

yeah. Well guys this has been fantastic. Appreciate the time. Glad y'all came on. Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Enjoy the rest of your show. Thank you very much. Good to meet

Shally Steckerl: 22:20

y'all.

Cristina Duke: 22:21

Thank you.