Keynote presentation (Beth Ridley) introduced by Jason Modest (Millipore Sigma) at the Wisconsin BioHealth Summit about how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) create a culture of belonging. Ridley frames belonging as psychological safety: when people feel valued, respected, and able to be themselves they engage more, contribute more ideas, and take risks—leading to better decisions, greater creativity/innovation, improved business outcomes, and stronger recruitment and retention. She emphasizes that belonging benefits everyone (not only specific groups) and cites a verbal statistic that ~60% of employees feel they cannot fully be themselves at work. The talk promises practical, actionable steps for leaders to put DEI principles into practice.
Chapters
Good afternoon. Welcome back from lunch. Good day so far. How are the sessions? Everybody enjoying them? Excellent. My name is Jason Modest. I'm the head of the manufacturing and science and technology team at Millipore Sigma. Milliport Sigma is a sponsor for today's diversity, equity and inclusion presentation with Beth Ridley. As part of the Wisconsin biohealth industry and with more than 25 years of experience with a wide range of high quality chemical and biochemical products, Millepor is proud to be a member of BioForward and support the Wisconsin Biohealth Summit. In the position of our position in the industry and within the region. I'm excited to introduce the session on behalf of Millipor Sigma. A little bit about our presenter. Beth Ridley is a former corporate executive turned entrepreneur, speaker and leadership Inspire. She combines 25 years of corporate leadership and management consulting, experience in diversity and inclusion and positive psychology to partner with leaders to transform workplace cultures and to better achieve the vision and goals of those organizations. She's the owner and founder of A Brimful Life and will talk to us about building a culture of belonging and putting DEI principles into practice. You're welcome to read more about her bio through the Wisconsin Biohealth Summit website and certainly by scanning the QR session code with that. Enjoy the session. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody. All right, thumbs up if you are loving this summit. Yeah, okay. I don't even work in biohealth and I gotta tell you, I've been so inspired. I took so many notes of things that I took away from the sessions this morning and to me there's like some themes that really came across and what I heard is that there's been so many advances in technology and research, it's really opening up so many opportunities for you to have tremendous impact in your companies and in the industry and I think even more importantly in the community, especially in medically vulnerable communities and ultimately to impact individual human lives. Like, kind of a big deal. I didn't know what I was getting into, but I was really inspired. And what I also loved is every session that I went to this morning, they weaved in and talked about the importance of diversity and inclusion as being enablers for you to achieve all the things that you want to achieve. So I was really pleased about that. So what I want to do in this session is just help you connect those dots even a little bit more. Right. And really see how diversity, equity, inclusion will enable you to think, think big and act big so you can rise to the occasion of the opportunities that are in front of you. And it really all comes down to embracing and thinking about diversity as an asset and just being more intentional about approaching your daily interactions with others and your daily decision making with more of an inclusive mindset. And when you can do that, you're going to be in a position to uncover and harness new ideas, to really lay the foundation for creativity and innovation, which you need to think big and also to develop new relationships and partnerships, maybe strengthen existing relationships, and certainly recruit and retain the talent that everyone needs in order to act big. So I really want to just kind of reintroduce you to diversity, equity, inclusion, maybe help you see it in a little bit of a different light, and that these principles are not just things that are good to do, they're really smart to do from a business standpoint. And I also want to just simplify and demystify diversity, equity, inclusion. We throw these words out a lot, like, what do they actually mean? How do they come together to add value? And then lastly, in my opinion, the ability to be someone to not just manage or deal with differences and the diversity that's all around us, but to really harness it and to be able to bridge across differences to bring out the best in everyone. That's leadership. That is just basic, fundamental leadership. And the fact that we have so much diversity all around us, everywhere, every day. To me, being able to do that and bring diversity equity, inclusion principles to life is a number one leadership competency for 20, 21 and beyond. So I want to make sure that you leave this session with some really easy, practical things that you can do right away when you get back to your workplaces tomorrow to put into practice to be more of that leader that can again, bring out the best in everyone and lay that foundation to think big and act big. So that's what we're going to talk about. Also, I am sprinkling in some discussion questions so that we keep it interactive. I'll save time for questions at the end. And I'm going to do all that in 50 minutes, so pray for me. All right, so let's jump to it. So I just like to start with the end in mind. Right? So diversity, equity, inclusion. I'll get to exactly what I mean by those words. But at the end of the day, those three words combine to create a culture of belonging. And a culture of belonging means that everyone in the workplace feels valued and respected for who they are. They feel safe and supported being who they are. So you might have heard terms like psychological safety. So psychological safety, feeling valued and respected, that's all belonging. And that matters because when people feel feel more comfortable being who they are, they engage more in work. They're less worried about how to fit in. And that means that they're going to contribute more honestly, authentically tap into all of their life experiences and their skill set. And it also means that they're not afraid of standing out and maybe speaking up and taking risks out of fear of retribution. So when people are more comfortable being themselves at work, they're simply going to contribute and engage more authentically. And when they do that, you're going to get more ideas on the table. You're going to be able to look at challenges and opportunities from multiple perspectives. And that's going to lead to more thoughtful decision making. More thoughtful decision making usually leads to better business outcomes. And then when you're an organization that is achieving what you've set out to achieve, but the manner in which you're doing it, how you're achieving the results, people feel good. They feel like they have fully contributed. That definitely enables you to recruit talent from broad and diverse candidate pools and retain them. So a culture of belonging really does create this virtuous cycle that's good for business. The other thing that's really important to understand is that belonging benefits everyone at work. So I think a lot of times when people hear diversity, equity, inclusion, they think, oh, that's addressing certain people at work, maybe around gender or people of color. But everyone benefits from belonging. Because when we think about diversity, we're talking about all the dimensions of diversity that make anyone human unique. And the research shows that 60% of employees at work do not feel that they can fully be themselves at work, that they have to work a little extra hard to fit in, or they have to edit some part of themselves because they don't feel comfortable bringing that forward at work. And so what ends up happening is that they're more worried about that, more, more worried about not standing out, that they're not fully engaged or fully contributing. And that's not 60% of women or 60% of people of color. That's 60% of humans. So think about that untapped opportunity at work that is already not being maximized. And out of that 60%, depending on the degree that someone is holding back, that can lead to a lot of stress and anxiety. And then once it gets really bad, it also leads to people leaving the organization. So belonging matters very much at an individual level, but collectively, right. If you think about all the individuals that make up the culture and to what degree are they experiencing belonging or not? When individuals in an organization really do feel a sense of belonging collectively, it adds up to tangible business results. So there's been enough data collected now over about a decade or so of organizations that have diversity, but also a culture of belonging really do outperform those organizations that do not. So like I said, this has been quantified. So diverse and inclusive cultures lead to better decisions. More creativity, more innovation that's been quantified. Better decisions lead to better business outcomes, whether that be financial success or reputational success that's been quantified. And then certainly all of that gives you a better return on your investment when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent, which is like a big deal these days. So a lot of people ask me.
