Do We Keep DEI?

Foreign. Have you been watching the news of late? You may or may not realize, but marginalized people do. And again, just like in yesterday's video, it's because of the back to back teaching. Because the reality is the people in power, the people making decisions, the people passing legislation, don't tend to be black, indigenous or people of color. They are not marginalized, which means they don't see the world we see. They don't see the effects of the legislation that we see because of that, because they're not listening or understanding us, they make decisions that often hurt us. Now, if you have been watching the news of late, DEI is rapidly losing favor. I believe the first one I saw was Walmart decided to eliminate their DEI initiatives. Then I saw an article on Costco who insisted on keeping them, which made me post that everyone needs to go get a Costco card because we totally need to support this amazing employer. And then this morning I saw that McDonald's has backed away from their DEI initiatives. So obviously I wanted to do a video on this. Is this a good idea for your business or entity? Should you be walking away from your DEI initiatives, Diversity, equity and inclusion? If you weren't sure, I bet you can guess what my answer is. You just may be. You just may be surprised is why that's my answer. Let's talk about it. Hi everybody. My name is Sandy Boucher. I'm Red Thunderbolt, woman of the Loon clan, a proud member of Seine River first nation in Treaty 3 territory in Northern Ontario. And I have dedicated the last 15 years of my life to, to Indigenous reconciliation, Indigenous Canadian reconciliation, which often involves DEI work. So what is DEI work? Diversity, equity and inclusion. Now, let's start with what it isn't. Many people, many non indigenous, non marginalized people think DEI stands for unfair advantage or they believe it's marginalized Black Indigenous people of color. It's those people getting advantages that they read white people don't get. You realized DEI is trying to level the playing field, right? That if there's no black, Indigenous or people of color at your company, it's because there's a problem at the company. It's not because we're not interested. Right. And for the longest time before DEI initiatives, no one noticed. Backto back teaching, right? They non Indigenous, non marginalized people, white people just did things the way they want to do things and didn't even notice or didn't even realize that just because something works for them doesn't mean it works for everyone. And it often doesn't work for marginalized people. Now I know you're going to be totally shocked at me saying this, but you need to keep your DEI initiatives. You need to keep doing this back to back teaching. Here's the biggest reason. Remember the back to back teaching. So imagine. Well, if you're I'm going to assume your company is serving the Canadian population. If you haven't noticed, the Canadian population is a diverse group. I'm also going to guess if you're a for profit entity, the more sales you make, the happier campers your board of directors are or your owner is, whatever the case may be, that is literally the lifeblood of a business. So the better you understand and know your customers, the more sales you're going to have. But let's go back to the back to back teaching. Two people standing together, one white person, non marginalized, non indigenous. For the sake of this example, an indigenous person running an advertisement put out a a post on social media. How the words sound and read and what they apply to the white, non marginalized, non indigenous person. Be totally different from how the indigenous person reads it. It may be problematic to the indigenous person if it sounds paternalistic, like you're trying to take care of us or you're talking down to us or whatever, you're going to save us. All of those things would be problematic. But you're not going to pick that up because that's not your lens. And that's okay. But that's why you need diversity. Your sales team. I'm going out on limb here. Your sales team should reflect the population you're trying to serve. If you have a large South Asian population you're trying to sell to, you need South Asians on your sales team to help with the marketing and promotion and make sure you're not doing things that is going to offend your market base. And yes, of course there are your mainstream European descendant Canadians. They need to be on your sales team too. This is not replacement theory. This is reality. Do you want your business to succeed? I'm in business. I want my business to succeed. It comes from knowing my customers. And it's not an ego trip. If you look at the brand new YouTube channel video, the video you see when you first come to my YouTube channel, I am acknowledging and asking for the help of other people who do the work I do. I'm not sitting here saying I have all the answers. I'm all that in a bag of chips. That would be an ego trip. It would also be a lie and it would mean you're limited to the knowledge you could have on this topic. So I'm doing my best to find other people to help you. That's the power of diversity. Lose the ego. Let's come together and knock this out of the park. So why should you keep up with your DEI initiatives? Well, we already said increase sales, right? What else do I have on my list here? Doing? Learning to understand others better. Us. All right, you get good at understanding the different people you work with, you're going to get better at understanding your children, your friends, the people at your kids school, the people in your neighborhood. The skills are transferable. You need to do it. Oh, here's another one. I don't know if you've ever worked in hr. I don't know if you've ever hired someone or. First you had to advertise, then you had to go through the interview process and that probably involved bringing in some people to help you to interview. Then you had to. Well, first you had to look through all the resumes, then you had to interview them, then you had to decide who to hire and now you got to negotiate what you're going to pay this person and then you're going to bring them on and then you're going to train them. And what if they ghost? What if they quit? Indigenous retention numbers are in the basement because we're just starting to train non indigenous employers how best to support and retain their indigenous employees. That would be diversity, equity and inclusion work. But if you do it, yes, save all that money because when you go through that process, your employee actually stays and you don't have to keep doing it over and over and spending that money because you're constantly looking for staff. Okay, so that's going to help you. You're going to save money on retention. Wouldn't it be nice? I don't know about you, but if there's one thing I've noticed since lockdown ended, is anyone working at full capacity? Is there any company out there that has all of their positions filled? Your full. If your company does, kudos, because that's few and far between. So imagine how we all benefit if all of the companies were working at full capacity, that they had people in the positions, trained properly, supervised properly and all of us benefit. Us customers would super appreciate that you need your diversity, equity and inclusion skills and that work to make sure that happens. Oh, by the way, remember the turnover in indigenous staff? Well, you're going to have a turnover in customers, indigenous or not, if you don't get better at serving an indigenous population Or a South Asian population or a black population. Well, you know, some people out there want to go back to the good old days where everything was done, like everything, everyone was white. Bye, bye. Because your customer is not going to survive if you keep up that mentality. Your choice. You could do this because the marginalized are not going away. We are here. We are rapidly getting to the point where we choose where we work. Toxic work environment, no thank you. And. And we're also choosing where we spend our money. And by the way, in case you didn't know it, in the case of indigenous peoples living within Canadian borders, we still are the fastest growing population. Did you hear me? Businesses out there, if you want your company to grow, it is definitely in your best interest to get really good at serving indigenous peoples. And you don't do that without having indigenous people on your team. You're just. You're the blind leading the blind. You're kidding yourself if you don't. So don't jump on the wrong bandwagon because DEI is a good thing, no matter what the conservatives would like to make you think you're going to pay the price. It is really easy for some leader to shut their mouth off and say, this is not for our good. It's your bottom line that's going to be affected. And blaming them after you go bankruptcy, go into bankruptcy, they're really not going to care. But I'd be willing to bet you do. So to believe in people like Elon Musk, Trump and pov, if you honestly believe that they have your best interest at heart, well, then you need a reminder, and especially in the case of Pollyv, I'm going to end this video by showing you an image that none of us should forget. Not the indigenous and not our Indigenous allies. I want your business to succeed. DEI is going to help that happen. Abandoning it means you will literally pay the price. I hope that made sense. Until tomorrow. I love you. Take care. Bye bye.