Diverse perspectives on hiring: Race | Torin Ellis

Foreign. Hello, you're very welcome to episode 71 of the Shortest. My name is Johnny Campbell. I am your host for today's episode. I'm also the CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And if you're listening, last week my fantastic colleague Holly Fawcett jumped in and took a show. And we're hoping Holly will jump in and take a few more shows in the future. So really hope you enjoyed her chat with Rupesh in if you didn't catch it, you can catch up on our podcast, available on Apple and Spotify wherever you find your podcasts. Or you can find more in terms of the recording on LinkedIn, YouTube, or any of those links. Or all of those links can be found@socialtalent.com the shortlist so today for episode 71, we're going to be discussing diverse perspectives on hiring, and we're particularly going to cover the perspective of race. Let me just roll back and talk a little bit more about the broader issue here, because this is something that we are very passionate about here at Social Talent, and if you're in hiring, you are no doubt very passionate about it as well as to what are those diverse perspectives when you look at hiring and the different communities that we hire from and the challenges in being more diverse and being more inclusive in our hiring processes. And this drive for diversity, more equity, more inclusion in the workplace, has become so much more important for every organization over the last 18 months. While progress has of course been made since the summer of 2020, the death and murder of George Floyd, since that ignited more conversations about inequality and race, particularly in the US we haven't made enough progress. We'll probably never make enough progress, certainly not in the next couple of years. But the fight to make progress is what we're here to discuss. And racism isn't just about the U.S. it isn't just about black and white or brown. It is a global concern, one that every company should consistently look to address. And the recruiters as the kind of vanguards of talent in organization, they're arguably at the cold face of this. They're at the front door deciding who gets in, who doesn't get in, who's on the shortlist not. It's imperative that they in particular understand the importance of lived experience, really get a perspective from the communities that they're looking to hire from as to make a kind of dent in removing bias and prejudice and discrimination. So joining us on today's show to discuss this is no better person than torinos. It's his third time joining us on the show in 71 episodes. He's a longtime collaborator, mentor, and friend of social talent. He's gonna be sharing with us his insightful perspective on race in the hiring process. But some of you will hopefully, for your sake, perhaps be listening to him for the first time. Because to listen to Torren for the first time is a joy. So just in case it's your first time meeting or listening to Torrin. Torrin, perhaps you'd introduce yourself or reintroduce yourself to our audience.

Mic check. Can you hear me?

I can hear you. Great.

Awesome. So for those of you who are not familiar with who I am, diversity strategist, risk mitigator, I have been dedicated to the space of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for the better part of the last 12 years. I share that with you because there were times where, Johnny, I would go to the gas station and I couldn't fill up my vehicle. I could only put in $3 or $7 or $10. And you, you've been here in D.C. you know, I drive an SUV, so you're not going to get too far on $5 worth of gasoline. There have been times where I didn't have money to purchase groceries for my family. Times where my lights were cut off in my home because I hadn't made enough money because clients said that you were too forthcoming, you were too direct. They didn't like my style of delivery. They didn't like the truth that I was telling. And now here we are, 18 months or so, you know, into this pandemic and post George Floyd, and every single thing that I've been saying for the last 23 years have come to pass. And so I'm happy that you have allowed me to come back a third time so that we can have a more fruitful and, you know, aggressive conversation. Thank you ever so much, Torn.

You're very welcome. I. I want to start with what we always start with in the show is some news. And I'm going to start with an article that you encourage us to look at it. Not really an article, more of a report. But give me two seconds. We need a jingle for this week's news. So, Tor, this goes back, actually goes back six, seven months. And I want to try and broaden the perspective, as per my intro, beyond the US as do you, and talk about other. Other parts of the world. Because racism is not just something that's unique to the US unfortunately. And, you know, we wanted to discuss or start the discussion today with a report that came out in the UK more than six months ago. And it was, it was initially commissioned by Boris Johnson immediately after the murder of George Floyd. And at the time a commission was set up called the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities in the UK and they published their report, several hundred page report, back in March, I believe of this year, end of March. And we'll put a link out for those of you listening live on LinkedIn or YouTube. We'll put a link out for you and we'll also put in the show notes for those interesting on the podcast. I was wondering perhaps, Torren, because I know you're an individual who's really dug into this and you've analyzed this and looked at this, what are your thoughts on this report? Because it did create some controversy, controversy at the time it was published in the news. But looking back at this six months later, what are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, so before I even hit this particular report, there was one that came out in September of 2020 from Citibank here in the US and what that report said, I'm synthesizing it, but it simply said that we have not addressed racism in four areas we didn't address or we have not as a country addressed racism in education, in housing, in compensation and in health care. Education, housing, compensation and health care. That because we haven't addressed it, we've lost $16 trillion in GDP and that if we continue on the same path, we'll lose an additional $5 trillion by 2025. That was September of last year. And then when this report came out in March of this year, I said to myself, here's the original pandemic racism. It's the original pandemic. It's the one thing that we have not as people been able to shake. And it's amazing to me that some of us would still attach our wagon, as they would say, to hating other individuals because of the color of their skin. Like it's amazing to me the UK.

Report came into a lot of criticism because it felt that the media felt, I should say, that it tried to soften racism in the UK and tried to overplay the the positive defense developments over the last number of years. And in particular the report was attacked for trying to claim that institutional racism no longer exists in the uk. That's certainly not the rhetoric in the US there's certainly an exceptions. It seems to me that in the US there very much still is institutional racism, an absolute fight to remove it for sure. And I think most of the rest of the world accept that there is know, institutional racism still in place, but the UK in this report seem to claim that they're, they're clear now, they're all good. What are your thoughts on, on, on that particular point?

You know, I, I wish I had access to a particular report, even something that was done outside of the commission again earlier in the year. And an incredible person over there in London, John Amechi, actually shared this on Twitter earlier in the year. And so the bottom line for me is I think far too many individuals are trying to divorce themselves from history. They want to live a different or an alternative reality. And we're not willing to face up to the fact that we have just done a poor job of acknowledging that we have been racial, we have been prejudicial, we have been egregious, we have done so many things to so many different people, we don't really want to face that truth. And so I think part of progress for all of us is that we must be willing to face that uncomfortable truth. That doesn't mean that you as an individual did it, but it does suggest that you as individuals are benefiting from it being done and that unless you do something different to change it, to change the trajectory of it, to change how often it happens, it. Listen, Johnny, we have reports right here in 2021 that say that women are, are experiencing heightened levels of aggression in zoom meetings. Why? Because people are doing things. And so I say it often and I'll continue to say it, the reason we are where we are now is because too many of us have been silent in the face of injustice. You have to speak up.

So I totally agree with you. And when you look at the acceptance of institutional racism, it's important to probably dig into what it means and doesn't mean. I know in the uk, again, where this report was commissioned, the Guardian reported back in January that black women in the UK are four times, four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women. And, you know, to, to commission a report and issue it only several months later. To say that there is no institutional racism, no systematic racism in the UK is kind of alarming because then how do you explain 4x increase? Because you mentioned healthcare has been one of those four tenets that was identified in the US where not enough progress has been made. And it seems to be the case in the UK and I suspect many other parts of the world. And I know a good friend of ours, Salma Awardani, friend of yours, Friend of ours reported on recent training that we released on the Silverton Platform. She reported this, this stuff and made the point that probably nobody in the, in the entire chain of health care is racist. You know, there's no, no doctor, no surgeon, no nurse involved in caring for a pregnant woman who is, you know, overtly racist or are likely to perhaps are likely to be happy or even, even agree with this report, although it is true. Yet what happens is that, you know, you have. She put it in her own words. I'm paraphrasing Salma here. Did you have somebody who faced with, you know, a busy room and people shouting for health, for help, and what tends to happen is the white woman gets the help over the black woman. And it's, you know, it might not happen every time, but it would happen more times than not. And it's those small things that happen over the course of a child, you know, nine months of pregnancy, in a childbirth, and not one thing that causes perhaps that 44x mortality rate. But lots of small things that are just, have been institutionalized for hundreds of years. Many, many years are there that cause such an alarming, alarming rate of mortality, which is just unacceptable in the modern world. So when you look at the other areas, because you mentioned education, health care, income, and what was the fourth one? Tornado?

Housing.

Housing. So basically it's life, right? Because you need to live somewhere, you need to be healthy, you need to have income and education to prosper. Like you couldn't get four more important elements of society. Like they're at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I'm not mistaken. This isn't about self actuation or your, your access to the nice things in life. These are the most basic things. And what you're saying is the report issued in 2020 in the US said that there are challenges still in those four blocks. I would seem it's not just the US yeah.

And when you talk about it being institutionalized, I can't, I just can't ignore history. I think back to, you know, early, I mean, hundreds of years. Well, not even hundred, but tens of years ago. You know, in the early 19th century, they were performing hysterectomies on black women with no anesthesia, with no drugs. And why were they performing that? Because they felt like black women were able to absorb more pain that comes from slavery, you know, where they are knocking slaves teeth out and forcing them to eat and doing all types of incredibly atrocious things to this, just treating them like animals. And so that has been passed down. So it has entered into our medical system where Even today we have Alex Hoanian, co founder of Reddit, who, who, who really didn't recognize the disparity that black women were going through until his wife Serena Williams, had to give birth and almost died in the process of giving birth. Because the doctors didn't listen to Serena Williams, Serena Williams. They didn't listen to a person with all sorts of access and means and stardom and fame and recognition. They were willing to discount her complaints while having a birth. While, while, while giving birth. And so this, this history, this relationship with black people and healthcare is not something that is new. This demonstration of discount is not something that is new. And we have a problem. I slightly disagree with you, Johnny, in the sense of we don't have people that are racist in the healthcare system. We do. We have people that are racist in healthcare, we have people that are racist in finance, we have people that are racist in philanthropy. We have people that are racist in politics and legal and government and farming. I mean, every single industry, every single institution, it has been systematized. One book that I want your listeners to and viewers to take in the Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I want your listeners to take in a book by Richard Rothstein because it gives you a different relationship with that phrase, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And so we just gotta, in simple terms, we have to do what Mark Benioff did. Mark Benioff was willing to go through a salesforce organization not once, twice, three times, and look at compensation for people in his organization. And it cost him about $3 million. But he brought people up to parody. Folks, for the most part are earning the same as their colleagues across the entire franchise. We just have to be intentional about what it is we do and where we are doing it.

Speaking of being intentional, another element that the report in the UK brought up was the use of different initialisms and acronyms. And the one that they pointed out, which those of us on this side of the Atlantic might be familiar with, is bame B A M E. Perhaps you can share with our audience what the report said about the use of the term bame, what it means, and then what your thoughts are on its appropriateness.

Yeah, absolutely. BAME for those in Europe is very much so similar to BIPOC as is used here in the us Black Indigenous People of Color. Black Indigenous People of color, bipoc B, I P O, C. And basically inside of the report, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, that report that we mentioned, they said, nah, we really don't need to be using that. In short, they said it's really demeaning to categorize and to group people together. Because for me, Johnny, the simpler term is we're just being lazy. Like, if a person is black, call them black. If they're Afro Caribbean, call them Afro Caribbean. If they are Parisian or are Dalit, call them by or who they are, if you will. Don't be lazy about it. And so, Bame, I'm sorry, what the report categorizes is why it's so dangerous and lazy for us to do that. But here's what's interesting. They also said that it's lazy to use white as a standalone. You can do it. It's on page 32. They said using white as a standalone term is also unhelpful because it masks the diversity even within that color group. You have white Irish, you have gypsy, you have Roma, you have travelers, and you have Eastern Europeans and more. And so I think what the report is attempting to do is keep all of us honest, once again, keep all of us human. I want people to recognize me for who I am. I want you to be genuinely and authentically concerned and curious about who I am, because that's what I'm going and that's how I'm going to show up when I'm engaging with you. So I appreciate the recommendation of the report for us to get rid of, you know, catchphrases, lazy phrases like Bame and bipoc and some of the others that exist.

It's really important point because language informs our behavior. And it's often said it's one of the first things, the easy things you can do to make progress and change is be intentional about the language you use. Be more inclusive with the language which starts with education, starts understanding what is acceptable is not being open to ask others what are they comfortable with, what they're not comfortable with. I want to move on to a second article because I think it's pretty important in terms of in the context of racism today and how it affects organizations. And it's an article that was reported about a lawsuit against Tesla. And this is particular link we have here is from Fast Company and it highlights why the verdict in this lawsuit is a big deal in the fight against forced arbitration and also racism. Wonder perhaps if you wouldn't mind summarizing the lawsuit for our audience who perhaps don't know about it. As one of the tweets mentioned in the article says, unfortunately people will know more about space. SpaceX launches, launches, then this landmark lawsuit. And that's unfortunate, but perhaps you could share with our audience what this lawsuit was all about.

Yeah, absolutely. So this lawsuit here was in reference to a gentleman. His last name was Diaz. I can't remember his first name, but he was an elevator operator at one of the manufacturing plants in Fremont, California. Now, first of all, I smiled when I saw the article, Johnny, because I got to tell you, how large is the building where we have an elevator operator inside of, of the facility? But nonetheless, this person is an elevator operator and in, in short, had to deal with racial epitats being scribbled on walls in various places inside of the facility. He had to deal with racial language, uh, inside of the facility. Demeaning, degrading, racial language in the facility. So much so to the point in over time that Tesla was fined and he won a lawsuit of 130 million. And so here's what's amazing to me. What's amazing to me is that to your, to the comment that you said, we'll know more about SpaceX than we'll know about this, I have a friend, personal friend, who was asked to go in and speak for free in Tesla around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And the disappointing thing is that you could have paid my friend a couple of thousands of dollars, maybe tens of thousands of dollars, and it could have put you on a path towards doing better that would have saved you a whole lot of money in the long run. And so I think this is an educational example for organizations to understand if we don't attack and address the individuals that are toxic in our workplaces, that they are going to, in effect, impact our bottom lines negatively.

Yeah, it's hard to believe in this day and age that this type of behavior happened. And, you know, stunned me. Was that on Diaz, who was the gentleman who won the case? And by the way, he didn't ask for $137 million. He would ask for a lot less than that. But he was awarded much more than he expected and he was awarded it fast. It didn't take long for the judge to make that decision because, you know, in the judge's opinion, the treatment of this individual wasn't isolated. It was, it happened before in that factory. It was two bosses who were engaged in this. And it wasn't until Diaz's son came to work in the same factory and became subject to the same racism that he actually did something about it. He wasn't, wasn't going to allow another generation to go through this, this is in the modern day, in one of the most modern tech companies in the world, one of the most established brands, and not to pick on Tesla, because unfortunately, it probably happens in many other companies. But one of the things that the article pointed out, which is perhaps not familiar to those listeners outside the US Is this concept of forced arbitration, which has snuck in a lot of tech companies and big companies around the world, where on issues such as racism or sexual discrimination, you cannot take a court case. You're bound by a concept called forced arbitration, which is a private process where an arbitrator is brought in and makes a decision, and you are stuck with that decision. You cannot go public with any of the details of the case. And companies are being massively put under pressure, I think quite rightly so, to end forced arbitration, by the way, which Tesla has not done yet. But other companies like Microsoft and others have begun to end this practice because it's claimed it hides what happens to the benefit of the organization, but not the benefit of the people. So what is your sense of, you know, issues like forced arbitration and how, how much damage are they doing or how much are they holding us back from really kind of making progress on issues like racism and sexism?

Yeah, my sense is the. The poster that's over your shoulder like, like just simply do the right thing and then we can avoid these situations altogether, or certainly we can mitigate them in a major, major way. I think about, you know, Tim Cook from Apple, although he's not on the docket. I'll put him on the docket. I think about a comment that he made a couple of weeks ago, and he said, whistleblowers have no place here inside of Apple. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And he made that comment because of the young lady that was a former Facebook employee testifying in front of Congress. Yes, whistleblowers do have a place. And what this story right here with Tesla underscores for me is that this generation is going to do more in terms of exercising their voice. They're not going to put up with what we put up with in the 60s and what we may have put up with in the 80s and what we may have put up with in the late 90s. This generation is going to be a bit more vocal about the egregious activity that is taking place inside of workplaces. I think of stories in 2019 where FedEx in Ohio had nooses hanging in the facility and, and people, instead of turning those images and pictures over to hr, they turned it over to security no, that's not the way we, we are showing you now as a result of George Floyd. And by the way Johnny, I wanna, I don't know we made progress when we are not referring to the event of George Floyd. I'll know that organizations have made progress when they can start referring to the great work that they are doing in 2022 and 2023 and not looking back to something that happened 20 the death of an individual that happened in 2020. So my, my, my issue with forced arbitration is that we absolutely need to get away with it because what it does is hampers or dismisses the account of women and others inside of organizations. And we cannot afford that if we want true. Let me use one of the phrases people like if we want true employee engagement, just be good people.

I want to bring up on this point something that is a bit controversial at the moment. Torrent. It's very much in the news, it's been discussed a lot in the US I want to cover the US but I also want to talk about other parts of the world over here in Europe and others. And it's the issue over vaccinations. And you know, I talk to a lot of clients of ours who are in very senior roles, CPO, CHROs, VPs of talent and they're sharing with me their challenges that being kind of put to them by their boards, the executive committee, their organizations around. Forced vaccinations in the US are policies that would perhaps lead to the dismissal of employees who aren't vaccinated in the US And I'm a very much a pro vaccination person. All my family who are eligible, who vaccinate, I've got vaccinated. I absolutely believe in the efficacy of the vaccination but I understand the perspective of individuals who don't want to get a vaccine. And what I was talking to a customer of ours recently, the global head of DEI and he pointed out to me, particularly in the US he said what people forget is that there are decades been a decades long distrust in the black and brown communities in the U.S. of the health system for very good reasons. There's been a lot of stuff in the past where to your point around women 100 years ago not being given anesthetics while giving birth. That's, you know, that's, that didn't end 100 years ago. Other things happened that would make I suspect an individual who's from that community a bit distrustful of the medical system perhaps in the US and when people look at individuals, for example in the black and brown community who have a lower vaccination rate, I think too often they are flippant and say, well, don't they understand the merits of the vaccination? And they make the argument on the basis of the COVID vaccination without perhaps understanding some of the nuances which could include a distrust of the health system. And again, you see black and brown communities being marginalized, not being treated with the same standard, being potentially pushed out of their jobs over these things. I wanted to get your thoughts on that as you see it on the ground in the US and you're talking about companies around the same issues.

Yeah. So first and foremost, I with you, am fully vaccinated. But I also have an issue here in the US with our vaccine mandates. I feel like you should give individuals, this is outside of the black community. I feel like you should give individuals time to, to get to some degree of comfort around the data, their research process, whatever it is that would make them feel comfortable. That's just my opinion. What I think we should have done was a stronger job of lockdowns and absolutely make it mandatory that individuals wear their mask. Like if you don't wear a mask, you get a fine. If we go in your business and you allow people in without a mask, you are fine and shut down. I think we didn't go hard enough on just simply doing the easiest thing, which was mandating that people wear a mask. That aside, I think that it's also understood black people in the black community's hesitation around health care. I can look at the 1619 project, groundbreaking reporting done by Nicole Hannah Jones a couple of years ago. And inside of that reporting, she talks about 200 or so medical school students. This is recent, Johnny. 200 or so of them in medical school, they were being taught and nurtured to think that black people could withstand more pain. Now, I don't know how true that is. I. I just know that if you step on my toe and it hurts, I'm going to say ouch, you might be able to step a little bit harder. But the point is we all experience pain. And so when you think about the distrust that the black community has with the medical community, when you think about what we are experiencing inside of workplaces as a layer on top of that, it is natural for us to have some reservation around do we want to do this? And if we do, what's going to be the ramification? If we don't, how much further are we going to slip in terms of one of the social Stratas, economic stratas that we are experiencing. It is a real dichotomy of a decision that people are in. Black people, white people, all people. But I'm, I'm not a fan of it and I really, really wish that we would have done better on the front side and now we're paying the cost here on the back and current side.

Yeah, I'm totally in agreement with you around generally how countries can approach this and could have done a better job. And I'd be in agreement that mandates are, are not the right way to go. You know, anything that when you force society to do something, even if it's, you know, generally considered to be the right thing, I'm somebody who pushes against things I'm forced to do, even if I want to do them, I start resisting going, well, hang on a second. You're not giving me a choice now. Now I'm annoyed. I'm not going to do something that you're not giving me a choice in. Give me a choice. I'll probably do it. Persuade me. I'll probably go for it. I joke about in Ireland we have probably this. I think it's the second highest vaccination rate in Europe behind Portugal. I've been asked by friends overseas, how do we do it? And I joke, but it's only a half joke. We introduced a rule that said if you weren't vaccinated, you couldn't go into a pub. Kind of works in Ireland, right, As a way to incentivize people to get a vaccination. And I half joke, but it kind of isn't a bad thing. And we are, to your point, been enforcing that you can't enter a restaurant or a pub with a proof of vaccination or proof of a recent test to prove you don't have Covid again. And I like that option that it's inconvenient to keep getting tests, but at least you're not excluding folks who aren't vaccinated. You're giving them an option that is difficult. So hopefully we persuade people on the fence to go get a vaccination, but still allows people to make a choice. It's not something in Europe, you know, you can't go and fire somebody in Ireland because they didn't get a vaccination. That's, that's. You can't do that. Right. In a lot of, a lot of parts of Europe. It's just not a thing you can do. Yeah, and let me jump in there, Tor.

Yeah, jump in real quick, you know, and Again, I, I think, you know, part of the reason why we have to absolutely do a better job of navigating this decision, where we are and how we go forward with our plans is because we can't have it both ways. We can't on one side be facing this great resignation that we're talking about this incredible need for talent and then on the other side, but we're pushing people out. And the pushing of people out is causing disruption in our policing in cities across the United States, is causing issue with our flight and flight patterns across the United States. And I'm assuming that these issues are going to, eventually, if not already, they're going to start to affect people globally as well. And so I just think that we, we should. And when I say we, our governments, the people that are making these decisions, they have to do a better job of coming together and saying what are we really going to stand on? And can we get some sort of a uniform 1, 2, 3 policy that we can subscribe to, if you will, that would make life, I guess I don't want to say easier, but palatable, working life, palatable for all of us. I just think that we are smarter than this. We can do a far better job than what we are doing.

Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, we see this challenge in the black and brown communities in the US that are typically not vaccinated as quite the same rate as the white community. If you have an organization saying we have to let go people who aren't vaccinated, and they're probably on their website saying they're massively up for diversity, equity and inclusion, I just don't see how you can say you're a diverse, equitable organization and to say in the same breath, introduce any policy that could marginalize individuals that you're trying to protect. And doing it in an economy, to your point, Torin, where you cannot keep talent, you cannot find talent. It just doesn't make business sense. Right? Ignore the ethics for just a second. It doesn't make any business sense to go anywhere there. We need more talent. We need more people. We need to be more inclusive because it keeps more people. We need to be more inclusive because it gives us more opportunity to hire more folks into these jobs. It allows us to make better products, make more profits, grow faster. Again, I'm not going to go to the business case of diversity again because we all know it. Right, but it's never been more apparent. Therefore, you still see organizations that have, you know, such racist behavior as the example in the Tesla lawsuit or have are contemplating, you know, letting go staff because they're not vaccinated, whilst they cannot hire new staff and whilst they are trying to, you know, push loads of efforts into inclusivity and diversity. It's just madness.

Yeah. I mean, again, just think about it, Johnny. If you as an organization were struggling, like right now, case in point. Case in point. Right now in the us, in across the country, in industries of all sorts, we have a supply chain issue now. You don't hear CEOs or you don't hear people in HR or you don't hear others saying, well, let's set up having some uncomfortable conversations. That's not what they're doing. What they're doing is they're getting in that boardroom and they're strategizing. What's the alternative? What's the plan B? How do we, at the very highest level of politics, meeting with captains of industry. How are we going to get these ships into port so we can get that material, those products off of those boats and onto freight, you know, what do you call them, freight trucks, so they can move across? How are we going to fix this? Nobody is playing around with, let's have uncomfortable conversations. We are holding people accountable and that is what I want to see us do as it relates to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. We have, we have said for far too long the business case. We've pointed to way too many white papers and academic readings and blog posts and everything else. Do something. Be serious about holding people in your organization accountable and be considerate around the fact that the vaccine mandate may negatively interrupt or impact your representation. Numbers. What's the alternative, but make some decisions that make sense for the business.

I've always believed. Torn, I think you're in agreement here that it's hard to hate people you know and get to get to know and get to understand and therefore hearing and learning from firsthand, kind of a lived experience of discrimination. Our bias can be really, really powerful. So I was hoping you could perhaps explain why your new content on the Social Talent platform released this month is so vitally important and share a little bit about the project and what it's trying to achieve.

Yeah, I think it's vitally important and not more important than anyone else's content or the other content, just equally as important. Not content that you should shy away from or ignore because you think you've heard it before because you're tired of hearing it. It's extremely important for you to get proximate. I say often for the Tenants that we need inside of diversity and inclusion work or deib work, are empathy, intentionality, proximity, and transparency. And you get all of that inside of this new content. You hear from people, their personal stories, like those personal stories around gender, are extremely important. Those personal stories around being dismissed because of your socioeconomic status, they add a different dimension to the whole anonymization of resumes or discounting people because of the university they went to. When you get to hear it from an individual that has actually experienced it, it should land differently for you. It should hit you spiritually a little bit differently. It should touch you emotionally. When you hear from a person who went to jail for 23 years for a crime that he did not commit, entire life stripped from him, and now he's got to rebuild, giving absolutely nothing. Nothing. You got to understand, in many states here in the u. S, when you are released from prison for serving your full term, the state will normally give you a little something when you get out of prison. I don't know, it's a hundred dollars, 200, a bus ticket, train ticket. I don't know what it is. Johnny. Whatever they give you, they give you a little something. When you've served your full term, if you are exonerated in many states, meaning you are found to have not committed the crime, they commute your sentence and let you out early or they let you out. You're giving nothing. You're not giving housing, you're not giving money, you're not giving clothing. Nothing very reminiscent to slavery. So I just want people to understand. What we did was we explored the stories of individuals to kind of sit in the middle of what we thought was actionable information. So we have great individuals on the platform that'll talk about techniques and new tools, and we got that. I wanted to make sure that we brought that emotional, that real, that raw story. And I even shared my own.

And they're powerful stories. I've watched them torn. And, you know, to be able to hear from somebody then to tell their deeply personal story of how they have been marginalized for whatever reason, it's hard to go back to work and ignore the other equally important knowledge and training you'll find on our platform and others that teach you how to change things. And I think for me, it's really important to make it human. You said it already a few minutes ago, Torren. Humanizing all of this is so important. Stats, data, reports, they're all great and they're all very well. But when you look someone in the eye and hear their story and it makes you cry. It's hard to go back, right? It's hard to go back and say, you know, I, I don't have to change. I don't have to do anything else. By the way, a couple of comments just to read out. Torn, Aaron Dillard says hi. Good to have you on the show again. Aaron. We. My apologies. Ne. Ima Kumari. My apologies for mispronouncing your name. Nema. I'm sure I have. Trudy said it is imperative to understand the importance of inclusion in the hiring process. I want to take us back to the starting point, which is that if you're a recruiter, if you're involved in talent, talent acquisition, you run a company, you have a really important role to play. You are the person at the front door. You can make decisions that have an oversized impact on the organization. I think, you know, maybe own Diaz as the. The elevator operator had limited influence on the overall diversity of Tesla. But a recruiter at Tesla, she can make a difference, right? She can change the way she looks at talent, the shortlist she produces, the way she writes ads, the way she influences hiring managers. We all kind of all the companies we work at. So I think there is a really important role to play for those of us who work in the hiring and talent space because I think we can have an oversized impact, which is brilliant. You should be excited about that. The power to change. You have a greater power, I think, to change. But we could go on Torn and we'll have to back it. Have to have you back a fourth time. The topic is deep. It keeps evolving with more stories of progress and unfortunately, setbacks. And we'll dig into it again on an episode soon. But as we come to a close, I was wondering if for the third time, I know you have a lot of wisdom to share. If you wouldn't mind leaving your wisdom, your tip, your piece of advice for our shortlist, your third piece of advice to share with our audience here today in October 2021.

Yeah, I'm going to keep it really simple because of my technical difficulty. P minus I equals R. Potential minus interference equals results. P minus I equals R. Johnny, you are absolutely right. We are the vanguard of building high performing teams. We all have the potential of doing an incredible job of recruiting high performing talent. We have an incredible responsibility of extending the boundary of where we find that talent. We have an absolute responsibility to advocate for that talent when we are dealing with HR managers and our HR business partners. And so P minus I equals R. Together we can do a far better job around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. But we will only do that together.

When I think about that formula as a powerful, simple formula torn, it makes me think about all the challenges we have in society and in the world that need to be solved. I have an unbelievable faith in the human potential to fix problems. We have always done it. And if you think about all the individuals who aren't living and working at their full potential, imagine if we could give them their full potential. Imagine if we can make that change. What we as a society can do and the problems we can solve, I think they're endless. Torren, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks a million for joining us from Baltimore this morning. Your time this afternoon. Ours apologies for the the Internet going up and down, but we got to listen more hard to what you had to share and say today and hopefully for those who managed to listen through that and got to hear that wisdom, it gives you some inspiration to change, to go seek out more stories, more ideas, more tactics to try and push forward the conversation to drive a more inclusive workplace, drive more diversity in our shortlists, our interviews and hopefully our hiring processes. Us Torren thanks so many for joining us.

Thank you Johnny and thank you for.

Joining us on Today's show, episode 71. I hope you can join us again next week. Next week I'll be excited to welcome Joanne Lockwood. Joe is going to be joining us to talk about trans inclusion and belonging in the TA space. So Joanne's an inclusion and belonging specialist and founder of See Change Happen. I got to know Joe over the last few years as I've traveled around events in the uk. Jo has become an amazing prominent speaker on the topic of trans inclusion and she's going to share her own perspective and what she's seeing in the workplace today again to shine a spotlight on another area of diversity. Perhaps that isn't getting the right amount of spotlight in the last while, but to show us what's working, what's not working, how we can make changes. And again to give a human perspective on the trans community. Please join us next week. It's Wednesday 27th of October. That's going to be 4pm UK Irish time and that is going to be 11am the east coast of the US, 8am the west coast. Or you can google to find out what time it is to join us live on LinkedIn or YouTube in your time zone. Or check out the podcast which will be up on Wednesday evening@socialtalent.com the shortlist. Or of course if you're subscribing on Apple and Spotify. You'll get it on your homepage as soon as you log in. Thanks for joining us this week. We'll be back next week and take care.

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