Diversity and Inclusion with Joanna Abeyie

So welcome, everybody, to this week's the Shortlist. We are live on YouTube and LinkedIn. Please welcome. My name is Johnny Campbell. I am the CEO and co founder of Social Talent and your host for our weekly Shortlist interview series. We have a fantastic guest with us today. I think you're going to really, really enjoy. Before I hand over to her to introduce herself and to get into our conversation, just want to remind everybody that we are keen to hear your comments in the chat. So please jump into the chat, ask us questions, make a comment, we'll call them out. We want to try and address this. We've got some questions we want to start off with. I have some questions I want to ask Joanna, but we want to get to your questions as soon as possible, so feel free to jump in. We'd love to hear from you. So, moving on, my guest today is Joanna Abay, and Joanna is somebody that I got to know about a year ago and Joanna joined us in Barcelona for a private event we ran, and I never heard her speak. My colleague Holly had spoke fantastic things about her. I thought, oh, yeah, she's going to be good, I'm sure. And she got up and spoke in front of 20 of us and had us all in tears, crying at the end. And I can say I was not moved by anyone as much. I heard last year and I heard a lot of people speak last year as I was with Joanna. So, Joanna, I'm going to ask you to introduce yourself because I will not do your background and experience the justice it deserves.

Well, that was really kind, Johnny, and thank you because I had an incredible time with the team and I'm very fond of the social talent family. So thank you. I am Joanna Rebe. I'm the founder and CEO of Blue Moon, which is a diversity, inclusion and equity consultancy practice and an executive search business. So we essentially specialize in helping businesses through diversity metrics and data, but also through culture transformation, transformation, create inclusive environments and advise them on the entire employee lifecycle as to how they can make their attraction, recruitment, retention and promotion all inclusive. And then where needed and where there is some support needed from businesses in order to do that, we also offer the executive search piece, which allows us to go out and find diverse talent for your senior leadership roles.

And I knew you wouldn't say this yourself, so I'm going to make you say it whilst we have you on the short list. You made another short list last year before Christmas. Tell us about that, Joanna.

Yeah, so in the Queen's New Year's Honours list. I was lucky enough to be awarded an MBE for Services to Diversity and Inclusion. Thanks for that.

You are our first MBE on the show and I'm so proud to have you on Joanna. So we're going to start the show, as we always do, by looking at the news again. I'm not 100% sure the news is going to work today. I'm going to see if Niall backstage can bring us up our news articles. Oh, brilliant. We're back in. COVID 19 doesn't stop digital. So, Joanna, Google, apparently it's slashing its marketing budget by about 50% for the second half of 2020, with hiring freezes already underway in some departments. So I thought this was interesting because we see Google as one of these kind of businesses that is just rock solid, the core of digital. And if Google are cutting back, what does that say for the wider economy? What are your thoughts on this?

So when I saw this, it's been interesting because since we've had this lockdown, if you like, and we've. And the, and Covid has gone on as it has, to the point where it's pretty much so out of control and just devastating a lot of people's lives, I realized that the businesses, this isn't going to be something they'll recover from really quickly. I think it's going to be something that for a couple of years we're still going to probably be seeing the effects of. So when I saw this story about Google, I actually thought, and you'll know this too, Johnny, sometimes even if you have got that sexy brand and you know, you've got this reputable, huge brand that seems sort of untouchable, it really is also about cash flow, isn't it? And the bottom line. So if at any point they're, they're not able to see the same kind of projections as they were able to, they were able to prior to this then because you, because it's still the unknown. I'm not shocked that they slashed things that sometimes don't always feel like the most like the priority. And in terms of. Because they've slashed, it looks like they've slashed their marketing department, isn't it their budget, the marketing department. And I think even in my own business, and I'm sure probably with you, sometimes when you're at that point where you've got to think about how to keep the business afloat, sometimes certain things have to be kind of put to the side or shelved if you like, unless you can see that return on the investment happening quite quickly in order to recover. And so I think this is just a sensible decision from a business saying, actually considering we don't know how long it's going to go on for, yes, we may be a hugely successful company with lots of money, but also that means we've got lots of costs. So it's always a balance, isn't it, between actually having the money that comes in enough to keep everything going and then having the profit. And when I saw it, there was a phrase that was said to me some weeks ago, which is, cash is king, revenue is vanity, but profit is sanity. And so I think a lot of businesses in this period, irrespective of how kind of sexy they may sound, how many employees they have, they're just trying to make sure that they can manage and survive in a really uncertain time. And if they don't think they're going to see a direct return on their investment, I think a lot of companies are just trying to be as sensible as possible with that.

But it does, I think it's kind of comforting as well. Like Google are probably the biggest sponge for ad spend and they've no doubt seen that everybody stops spending with them and cut back is, as you say, it's prudent. Right. You know, hang on a second. We're, we're the biggest provider of advertising digitally and everyone's going to cut their spend with us by 50%. Maybe we should cut our own spend by 50. Kind of makes sense.

And it's not a brand that we obviously, when there's new products and things, but it's not a brand that we're not familiar with. It's not, you know, desperate for profile raising. So as you can. I just think, yeah, if they're not getting the spend, they're not gonna, they're not gonna be able to commit to that sort of spend either. And I maybe. Sorry, I was just gonna say, I also think it doesn't matter on the size of your, your business. I think this has proven that none of us from a business perspective are above this virus. Like, none of us are so untouchable. Whether you're a bedroom entrepreneur or someone with a team of 20 or someone with a team or a workforce of 20,000, this is happening and it's uncertain and it's having an impact on us throughout the entire supply chain. And therefore, I'm not shocked. I've seen Fisher Price have had to do similar, similar cuts in, in their recruitment and in their own workforce. I've seen it with things like we've seen in the paper Stella McCartney, Victoria Beckham's brands and they're slightly different topic, but they are still businesses that would seemingly feel like they'd be untouchable in this moment and it would just be small businesses that are suffering. But actually I think, I think the economy is uncertain about it and therefore businesses are really uncertain about it.

Well, that brings me on to maybe new story number two, nail if we can get it on screen, which is maybe the opposite of this. Right. And you mentioned supply chain being something there. Instacart, which maybe not everyone knows. Instacart are essentially the Uber of groceries. Right. They will, they will bring your groceries to your home, etc. Do your shopping for you. And they apparently hired 300,000 workers in the month, plan to hire another quarter of a million. And there's other companies like this, Amazon as well have done crazy amount of hiring recently. Right. So on the other side, so maybe it's more around there's just going to be, you know, the digital giants of pre Covid maybe won't be the digital giants of post Covid. Maybe there's been such a shock that there's just going to be a whole. There's going to be winners and losers, but there's going to be winners like Instacart, like Amazon, like Zoom, who come out on top going all of a sudden we're going to shoot to the top.

Yeah.

So this is, and this is what I like about this is this is an Instacart hiring, you know, a quarter of a million, you know, AI engineers who get their own jobs anyway and earn loads of money. It's probably, you know, a quarter of many people who are probably stuck for roles, maybe they're doing manual labor, unskilled labor, who have been most hard hit. Maybe it's, maybe it's those people getting the jobs. Now what do you think about hiring peaks like this?

Yeah, so I'm really sorry just then I was distracted because the cat came into shot. It might distract you, Tommy. So I'm sorry because headbutted my arm out the way. This was really interesting, but I wasn't surprised because I think that we've seen it with, we've seen it, as you say, with Amazon. All of the, all of the businesses, their way of surviving in this period has been through being able to do these deliveries. So I wasn't at all shocked by that. And actually I thought, I think that in a way they're kind of the winners. The only kind of like commercial winners really in that we can't do without our groceries and we can't do about the things that you know, we might need within our homes for whatever reason and therefore the fact that they've got these, I'm happy that it's provided as well so many jobs to people who at the moment there's so many people that have been let off of jobs and actually have turned to the Amazons and, and places like that to actually continue to have an income. So I wasn't surprised that there would be that, that higher demand and actually I thought, well if, I mean even my local Tesco was saying we would, we were literally hired the, the amount of support we need, you know, bring a CV in and we're pretty much going to hire you to just help us help as many people as possible. So actually I wasn't surprised by that story at all.

Yeah, I heard like, I know I was Texas Tesco, certainly local Tesco to me I think they start at 2am and that's the people come in to start picking for the online deliveries at 2 and 4am so they're almost running 24 hours just trying to get stuff out there. I was on a call, a webinar this morning with an Irish founder, a guy who founded a chain of fast food, high end fast food Thai restaurants in Ireland called Camille. He used to be a former founder of o' Brien sandwich bars in Ireland which, which we kind of went bust and he lost it in the last recession but he's built this business back up. But he said thankfully and pure look, they're, they're focused on takeaway and he said they're out the door literally. And they're, they're, they're keep, they've kept all their employees, they're, they're still looking at growth. So because that restaurant sector has been devastated, you know, and this employ so many people, so many people that we will be unskilled in the traditional sense to find other related jobs. So it is, it's good to see these stories, good to see there's probably not enough, right. There's not enough of those amounted companies hiring to offset all the losses. But not everyone's a loser organizationally, which means not every employee is going to lose out. You've got to find the opportunity.

Absolutely. And also I think that in times like this, I know we're going to come onto this topic slightly later on, but the diversity of those people also I've seen such a diverse range of people that have been able to get involved in the delivery and joining these businesses. And I actually think that's because finally we're just looking at what's actually needed and the skills as opposed to maybe whether we get along with someone or whether they're like us or actually it's like what we need to get the job done and do these individuals have those skills and absolutely just going to have to get that done. And yeah, so I take my hat off really, because when you think about the word key workers, you do often think about social services and the nhs, but actually there's so many and like the care system, but there are so many key workers that are the lorry drivers driving through the night, the people that are kind enough to drop sort of food, food parcels to families from low income homes. And I think that, I think I'm glad that we've got lots of people going. I'm not, you know, I'm not too, I don't think so much of myself that if I lose a job I can't contribute in this way because it's actually saving lives and it's still keeping the economy afloat. And I think if we can keep some businesses up afloat, let's do that and if we can keep as many people in jobs as the Chancellor said, then that's even better.

Well, let's bring us on to that third news article. I think that's highly relevant to what we're talking about, which is why there's still work to do to make recruitment diverse. And this article in real business. The main thrust of it that I got out of it, Joanna, was it was two parts. The first part maybe was around a concern for diversity inclusion, which was that diversity inclusion became hot as the availability of labor shrunk. And the question that it raised, and I've always raised this question over the last few years, I've said to anyone working in this space who wants to make strides is do it now. Because, you know, not to be cynical, but some diversity inclusion efforts may not be driven, but certainly might be funded by the fact that there just weren't any people available to do jobs. So it opens up the opportunity to get more funding for critical areas that may have been underfunded in the past. So then you ask the question, going into a massive recession, will people not focus on diversity inclusion anymore? Because, hey, we've so many people, you know, we don't need to do this anymore. Like, I'll take that first part of the article. What are your thoughts on that? The risks of that?

Yeah, so this was an interesting, really Interesting article for me, because I could agree with some of it, but I disagreed with a large proportion. So I think that until we move away from this diversity actually being the nice to have diversity, inclusion as a nice to have then, because the article kind of referred to the fact that, you know, we'll come back to that because at the moment we just need people in jobs getting on with what it is and we've got recruitment freezes, etc. But I actually think, well, if we look at it, that we've not been recruiting in the right way because we haven't been doing that inclusively. Actually, for those companies that have recruitment freezes, there is hopefully some time then has been freed up to allow those people to look for diverse talent pools and to go further in finding pools of talent and thinking about how they would engage them throughout the year so that when roles come up, that they do have access to a broader range and they're making sure that as wide ranges of people as possible are having a look at it. But also that actually diversity is about people, isn't it? And so long as you have people in your organization, diversity and inclusion is something you need to think about. It's not like this thing you can kind of pick up, put down. It's actually, it's important every day that you have a business with people within it. And so I think this idea that, you know, we'll come back to it is probably not the right approach to have, because at the moment, mental health and wellbeing is probably being challenged more than ever for our. For our staff. Accessibility is probably going to be another challenge. Lots of things are being done by Zoom. But what if you have a disability? It's not. Zoom may not be the equaliser, actually, in that aspect. So it is. All I think it means is that now we need to think about inclusion of our people outside of the office, if you like, as opposed to inclusion when we're inside the office. So I don't think it's one of those things that you can kind of put to one side. And it just takes me back to that argument where you've got kind of talent and then diverse talent. And it's actually, no, we just need to look at it all as talent. And what are we doing? Inclusive, to be inclusive, to get all of that talent in. And I think another thing to be careful of is that article also implies that, you know, at the end of this, because we've been so socially isolated for so long, it's going to mean that maybe there is this need for human connection again. And I agree that there probably will be some of that. I also think that we've got a lot longer. I don't think we're going to like Covid is going to go and then everything's going to be fine. I think businesses and society will be responding to this for some time to come. I also think if we think about some of the rhetoric that's been in the news around Covid, which is, you know, we've had some people within the U.S. really influential people referring to it as the China flu, as Kung flu, that is going to exclude certain people. And it's. And actually we're not creating an inclusive rhetoric when we're labeling things in that way. And so I think actually it has highlighted that it's almost given in the same way that Brexit did to some degree. It gave people that confidence to say things out loud that perhaps they wouldn't have had the courage to say before because now they think they've got some sort of validation through the sort of viewpoint that they've got because this particular virus started in a particular location. So I think there's that. And I also don't agree really that we've equalized. I agree that Covid will infect whoever. So that's.

That.

That is obviously true. But in terms of how that then impact the impact of that on different people from different backgrounds, it's absolutely not going to be equal. I mean, even isolation isn't equal. John, you and I are probably fortunate enough to be in homes where it's relatively healthy and comfortable, whereas there's probably someone in a home at the moment that could have an abusive partner who would have, you know, both people have lost their jobs. They're not, they're not. The house is being repossessed because there's no way to have a three month loan because there's no money at the end of it. So I wouldn't say it's an equalizer in that respect, but certainly in the fact that it can infect anyone. So I wasn't much agreement.

I want to bring up your point, one of the points you made in the middle of that which was attacked by Simon Yuan here. We saw it on screen a second ago. You talk about the tech industry. He's saying, you know, is the sexiest area to be in because DNI must be embedded with the true culture. You can't fake it. And your point around, there's not just talent and diverse talent, just like I think there's not just honest and dishonest talent. We only employ honest people because it's a pillar of our organization. Yeah, you're right. It's like diversity works. It's the right thing for our organization in boom or bust. It's just the right thing. We don't start all of a sudden hiring people who we think are going to be dishonest because, hey, we can or something, or we're running out of honest people to hire. You have to have your fundamental pillars, and that's the whole point about those fundamental pillars. What do you stand for as an organization? You have to stand for things like diversity and inclusive activities. Or you don't. You don't just do it as a project. You don't just do it while the market is tight. You don't just do it because everyone else is doing it. It has to be just something you just believe is right. That stands to your organization, I think.

Absolutely. And Simon's right because he said, and branded. I think the tech industry is the sexiest area to be in and branded really well. And I think it is deemed sexy, that industry, and it is branded in that way. But actually the culture within those, within the actual sector and within organizations, we still haven't got to a place where everyone feels included, where recruitment processes are fair. And so unless we're going right back to the basics and saying, okay, well, when we attract, how do we do that inclusively? When we recruit, how do we do that inclusively? Who are we excluding? How do we understand that exclusion and challenge it, we're not actually going to take anything any further. It's just always going to be that we've got all of these sort of campaigns for diversity or branding around it, or the right language or the right communication that, you know, we want to have this many women in our roles or this many people in from ethnic minorities, for example, but until actually we've got a culture where they stay and they can thrive. And it's embedded in Simon's absolutely right. You can't fake how sexy and great the industry is if when you arrive, you're really excluded.

I heard this afternoon, and I haven't been able to verify this, but a friend of mine told me that the Chinese word for crisis is also the same word as opportunity. They use the same word. And I'd like to start with that piece around opportunity. What do you think is the opportunity for inclusion and diversity that comes from the crazy world that we're in right now, the crazy scenario. Tell me about the positives you think you see the potential you see in this?

I think that now is as good a time as any, especially with business that have furloughed staff, to ask them how they feel about the organization. Because quite often you're not getting that opinion. You're not, you're not understanding actually, you know, what a focus group might bring you, which might be if you ask a group of people how they actually feel about being in the workplace, some businesses just don't have the time to do that. Whereas actually now that you've so many people that you may have had to furlough, one activity to actually get them doing is filling out surveys and capturing how they're feeling. Because one thing that's really important is it's about learning. You're not going to know. You need to capture that information now so that later on you can know how you dealt with that and how it was received from your employees so that there's something that prepares you for this. Again, because this came out of nowhere. None of us were prepared for this. So I think there's a huge opportunity for business to really get to know their people and what it is that really matters. And the values have actually still driven their commercial success. And that will probably have a lot to do with diversity and inclusion and people pulling together and people feeling like they belong to something and that they want to work together for something. So it's a really good time actually to start collecting that and using that to inform how you behave going forward. I also think that if you haven't done anything or you haven't been as proactive as you could have been around the well being of your people, now's a really good time to do that because there's things like, you know, buddying that you could be doing so you know, you could have. So that nobody's left in isolation. You've got to think there could be some people whose socialization is coming to work that is the main source of socializing with other people, and in which case now that's been taken away. So it is also about what could we be doing as organizations to still keep our inclusion processes going that aren't costing us lots of money? But actually you could just get someone senior to buddy up with someone in their early careers. You could get each person on a team to buddy up with each other, just to check in every two weeks, see how they're doing, if they need anything, if there's any support, what could be done better for them in terms of the way that they're Being managed, I think that's important. I think training people, I might have.

An example of that one. I spoke to a group of people today who were telling me that their organizations are planning ahead with internships this year. But on scale of thousands of interns in each of these companies around the world, but for the first time, they're going to be virtual. And the responsibility now falls much more on the manager of the team, more than it ever did. She now has to actually take an active role and meet these typically younger generation individuals who don't necessarily think like her, act like her, look like her. And she's having to interact because you can kind of hide behind the organization helping you bring in the new interns and go, oh yeah, yeah, they're part of my, my team. But whatever. But when you work virtually, it's like you have to get hands on, like you have to be on the call, you have to join in, you have to coach them, teach them. And I think there is that, that the remote working part of this for let's say the professional working world is shining a light on management and you know the role of the management to actually own the human who in your team and joining your team like we've never had before.

Absolutely. And keeping people motivated at a distance is also another thing. So one of my clients was saying she finds it, she's been finding it most challenging. And so she's got this inclusive leadership coaching that she's going on because now more than ever she's had to try and find lots in common with some of her employees in order to build this rapport. So they actually do tell them how they're really doing. Whereas in the, in the more like work based office setting, you can kind of have sort of professional pleasantries that.

Stop all of them, how are you good.

That from happening. But suddenly when you're in someone's living room and their kids are in the other room and you're actually getting a real insight into who they are outside of the workplace. And therefore that requires different coaching, different guidance, different leading and leadership styles.

You mentioned the surveying bit, right? A friend of mine was just telling me today that in her organization, her team, that they're serving like you said, but they added a question, how do you, how are you feeling? And then a second question, how's your family feeling? And their sense is that that second question is the real truth. Some might say, I'm good, I'm fine. How's your family feeling? Not good. Well, that really is a proxy for that person. It's kind of look at that question because that's probably more indicative of how the person really feels, which is, you know, I think it's a good measure. It's like really understanding is someone okay or not is really important right now. Like if you don't have that base sense of comfort and security, you can't do the other stuff, right? If you're not feeling, you know, okay and okay up here, like how can you perform right now? It's kind of impossible.

And it's also really important to sort of one of the companies I was doing some work for, the leaders were saying, you know, we would love to empower our staff to be more confident about diversity and inclusion, but in order to do that we need to understand it first because actually in order to lead inclusively, I need to understand inclusion. So a lot of the leaders who maybe haven't gone through some of that inclusive leadership and haven't had to maybe typically worked with a similar profile. If you like of candidate, then it's an employee. It's quite difficult then to try and adapt and adopt different skills for different people. And I think one of the things I think has always happened, especially within the recruitment world is you kind of get promoted into management roles off the back of like high sales as opposed to leadership skills or demonstrating like your leadership capabilities. And I think there is a big gap now where suddenly because you're having to lead in these very different times, there's more focus on it, there's more focus needed. And I think people, they're kind of, if you like, their vulnerability in leading in that way is being exposed a lot more very much.

Peter Hoggs. Peter Hoggs commenting there. Diversity is the right thing for sure. But in tech where the talent market as a whole is not gender balanced, companies balance the value of diversity with the value of experience. But taking bold risks and talent gets harder when every headcount is hard fought. So another question, I know Peter's done a lot of work with his organizations over the year to drive a really inclusive agenda in the businesses he's worked with. And it's great to hear your comments on the stream, Peter. Joanna, your comment around the challenges for leadership when people who maybe are leaders because they did well in their jobs as individual contributors. I totally agree with you. But what advice do you have to leaders out there who are, who believe in inclusive leadership are maybe struggling to understand how to do it and are particularly challenged now that the spotlight is on them in this virtual world. What would be your, what would Your advice be, what would you say to individuals who are in a leadership role about leading inclusively in these times?

I would say you have to ask everyone about their equity. So you have to ask every person that's in your team, what is it that they need to be successful? And once you've been able to understand that, what they need, then I think when leading them, you have to try and adapt the way you're leading to speak to some of those skills. So learning the way that someone. That someone works, the processes that they use, the way that they do things, how they would like things to be done, because that helps them in their role is really, really important. And what works for one of your staff members won't work for another, which is why you need to ask each individual, what do you need to be successful? And with that, for example, a lady was talking to me just the other day and she said, on a particular day, I have my children. So she's sharing her children with her partner because they're separated. And she was saying, on a particular day, I have my. But there was a big meeting and we all had to be at it, and she was borderline shaking to say, is there any way that we could move that meeting to a day when I don't have the kids here because I don't have a house that's big enough that I can get anywhere quiet to be able to have this bar if I sit in the bathroom, which, of course they're going to interrupt me. And she was in such a state to ask that question. But I think if, as a leader, you're able to have a conversation that's really open about what you need in order to be successful, a carer or a parent is able to say, these are some times that make it really, really tricky for me at the moment, because I'm trying to homeschool at the moment, or, you know, I don't have a quiet space, so I'm not. It's not ideal for me to be on zoom, or it's sometimes just asking people, what is it that they need? I think I couldn't hammer that home enough. What do asking people on an individual, confidential basis, what do they need to be successful?

It's. It's such a simple but relevant point. I think we all try and just go, it's all. It's, well, fine, let's come together, let's do X, let's do Y. And you can see it from your world. You know, you mentioned me and you. Maybe you're lucky enough I've got a, I've got a, I've got four kids downstairs, but I don't have to hear them because I've got space up here to do my work and be on a call and do this. But that's not everybody's reality. And all of us fall into this trap of thinking that the reality we live in is the reality of everybody else and you forget to take the time to say maybe it's not. I got a great comment. Dan Richards from ey. Just saying we just put our inclusive leadership training all in a virtual online learning module and really accelerated take up at the same time as a refresh of EY's BELONG. DNI internal campaign has to be authentic. That's brilliant. We talked before about EY's position and they seem to be leading, trying to lead in the kind of diversity inclusion space around how they authentically do this across their business. I think that's putting that at the front. To say we're going to remind people of the importance of inclusive leadership at the start of this is getting it right. The ordering is right. It's great to hear that from ey. So what other challenge, what opportunities do you think exist, Joanna, in terms of, you know, for people to think differently? Think about recruiters for a second because obviously they sometimes are the gatekeepers to diversity in an organization. Part the inclusion piece, just for a second. Because I think that's, that's very much a leadership thing and a colleague thing. But the recruiters can be a gatekeeper to diversity and sometimes we have to, we have to work on that. In a world where we're, you know, going to be doing most likely virtual interviewing like this and perhaps even maybe we're opening up roles to people in locations that we didn't consider before because, hey, we're all doing this. Do you think there's opportunity and then do you think there's risk in that kind of new way of hiring?

I think there's opportunity because if we think about the recruitment process, especially from a recruiter's perspective, you know, the sort of pre screening calls and the interviews that you do, I think now because you're not being able to kind of sit face to face with someone, you know, check out what they're wearing and get this kind of, oh, they feel a bit like me, like hopefully now we can start to remove a little bit of bias because it's just here are my questions which are sort of recorded and can be sent ahead of time and give someone some time to think about it. And here are my answers and hopefully that means that we have a little bit more. Well, what actually did they say? Because this interview is about me getting the right person for the skill set and I'm not going to have the chance to build that skill. Same rapport that, oh, they're like me. Yeah, let's. We're buddy, we can. You know, they seem like they fit in the team and hopefully we're going to see a little bit more hiring based on the skill set. I also think that there's going to probably be more choice of candidate because obviously, unfortunately there's so many losses in jobs and we may start to see more and more people available in the market when we are getting jobs in. So I think actually there's an opportunity to look really far and wide for our talent now and to not have the excuses for that. One of my colleagues who runs his own disability training program, he mentioned that for many, many years he has a disability. And he was saying that for many years those with disabilities have asked for alternative ways to conduct interviews. Whether that's because travel can be a bit tough for them or certain times of the day aren't great for travel or just lots of different accessibility reasons. And often it's like, no, no, it has to be done in person. You know, they'd have to have you in face to face that interview. And now all of a sudden we. It's not, that's not, that's not the priority anymore. And he kind of made the point that during a conversation that we had, when the less able bodied say, can we have this alternative? It's kind of no, that's, that's an extra effort for us. But when the able bodied suddenly, like the majority suddenly can no longer work in that way, it becomes something that all of us, you know, becomes really possible. And so I think that I know by, by no means would any. Would businesses want to do this full time because otherwise perhaps they would have done. But I'm hoping that what this has shown is that actually they don't need to rush back to the way things were because business has been able to still continue. And hopefully it will show recruiters that actually you can be slightly more flexible when looking for talent and hiring them and the process in which you put them on. So they can still have to compete and be assessed on their skill set, but maybe they can have an alternative approach. And I also think that there are opportunities for us to spend this time. And I'm so pleased that the person you referred to from Ey mentioned it to upskill. So while we've got our staff be upskilling them hopefully, although it's not looking like this, but it's been back to back meetings for some individuals even though these meetings are over zoom but would be hopeful that this time has freed up a little bit of time to allow people to do some of this online training and upskill themselves if they're, if they're, if they're needing, if they're needing to in order to, when they do come back again, it's back to that equity piece. Those experienced ties could be using this time to get something more that they need out of, out of work so that when they come back they're actually in a position to be developed and promoted into something else.

But I think you mentioned this is a critical time which hopefully will affect entire generation in organizations maybe the next 20 years where just like the moon landing, right where people kind of said well if you can put a man on the moon, you can. I think hopefully I'm really hoping that we'll look back and go we were able to do this in Covid. So yeah, why not? Because it is that point where you have to just rush this, change things that you know, I spoke to somebody recently, said an 18 month digital transformation project in place and accelerated to seven days. I had another friend of mine who runs the part of the blood clinic here in Ireland and he was saying that he had to change the rosters at the start of this to make sure they didn't have overlapping teams that could get infected that would bring down the whole system. And it normally takes 18 months to make roster changes in the public service, unions and negotiation. It took 24 hours. And I really hope that people look back and go, you know, when, when three years time people go, oh, it's going to take a while. It's like, hang on a second. You remember what we did in Covid took 24 hours. We can do this. Don't, don't. You know, again look back going, you remember that time in Covid, we did this for everybody. Why is it an obstacle? It can be done for once we have evidence the world did it, we did it once. And to your point, I think I'd hate to see us go backwards. Maybe the, maybe we'll use it as an opportunity to go, there was a time when we did this. There is so one point before I want to move to one of our, one of our listeners questions in a second but there's a downside potentially of that virtual Interview world. Right. And I wonder if you considered the risk of a recruiter or a hiring manager who, when they're interviewing virtually they're now looking in someone's home. And that's. That shouldn't be part of the interview. And isn't when the person goes into the office. But isn't there a risk of a bias coming into play because they're seeing things that aren't relevant to the job, but they're going to influence the person's decision?

You know, I never thought of that because I'm just. I'm assuming that it's like me, whenever I do any of these calls, I've just got a wall behind me. But you're right, you know, depending on the location that you're in. Yeah, they can start to make judgments and. Yeah, that's a really good point. Hope that there's enough training going on and bias training in the usual recruitment processes that we overcome that now. But that's actually throwing me. That's a good point.

So it was at the very start of this, my colleague Holly, who you know really well, who is very passionate about our D and I curriculum, she raised an issue when we were pulling out our first tip on virtual interviewing. And she. She. She got me thinking of this because she put a tip in there which I thought was brilliant. So simple. Which was, don't ask people how they're getting on in Covid. Because it's. It's a human nature to start going, hey, how are you? How are you coping with this? Because it's gonna bring in personal information that's not relevant to the interview, and you're not doing it to try and, you know, find this stuff out. But the natural human questions are, do you have kids in the house? How are you finding it? You have to do that kind of stuff, which just seems so natural, and you just want to try and empathize. But it's to remember this is still a professional interview, and there are questions that are just not appropriate for you to ask. And it hasn't. It hasn't changed. This doesn't change that. And to remember those things and to be getting people, especially fall down where they're trying to be nice and empathetic and they realize in some of that are things that you shouldn't, you know, places you shouldn't go, just to remember that.

No, absolutely. Holly's spot on with that. Because I think another thing that can also intimidate in those situations is I've two people who have very wealthy, done very well and through this Covid, I've spoken to them and they've managed to go away to homes which are in much more like, not very crowded areas, basically in parts of England where they've just got their house and lots of green. And they keep saying, I'm so lucky. I'm so lucky that I have that, because that's not what everybody has. And interestingly, the other day I just made the link. I was on a call with several people like this and the video went on and I was looking and out the back there was great big gardens. It looked incredible. And actually the council estate kid in me kind of remembered, like, oh, yeah, I forgot that I'm actually, I'm from a complete. I felt like I was from a completely different place. So you're absolutely right. Actually, there could be even on the flip side of, you know, making a judgment on your applicant. But if the applicant feels intimidated by the environment in which their interviewer is in, it could also. You could get so nervous about it all. And yeah, you're right. Whereas I guess the workplace does provide that safe space. But I think one thing that people are really finding interesting, I keep hearing, is can we not have the videos on? Can we just turn the videos off and have a telephone conversation and get to know. And of course, for accessibility issues, there are some considerations there. But I wonder if actually that's kind of a bit like that blind CV element where actually I'm just hearing the skills, I'm not making a judgment on what they look like, what they sound like. So I guess now that I reflect on that question around those biases, perhaps in those instances where you're doing those interviews, question whether it does need the video interview, because actually using that video interview to find likeability or similarity as opposed to just finding out the answers.

And there are. I never thought about the phone thing. That's really good. Maybe it's a justification for phone only, not video. There's also some of those applications like Zoom and Teams allow you to put virtual backgrounds. So maybe it's good for both people for the interviewer to go put a virtual background on so you're not trying to intimidate somebody. And for the interviewee, good advice. Turn on your virtual background if you know how to do it, or you can in the software. So you have that other site. I got one last question from audience before I ask you for your. Your top tip. We've. We've flown through this. Wow, it's been so fast, Joanna. It's amazing how fast it Goes, I think it's a great question to end on and it's from Peter Hogg and it's for you, Joanna. What advice do you have to businesses that see the long term benefits and pushing for diversity? But for now we're focusing on short term priorities of maintaining revenue and therefore recruiting like, for, like, what's your advice to people who believe, like you and I do in the value of this, but the business is maybe pushing the other direction.

So I think that's a really, really good question. I think it's a question I'm asked a lot. And so I think whether I'm going to come on to the sort of advice for that. But I think where the problem lies and where we need to challenge more is that if we're asking our recruiters and our talent managers and our hiring managers to be inclusive, they should be constantly looking out for and forming relationships with new groups, new talent pools, all of the time. And we need to do that. It's so important that we do that because actually most of our recruitment a lot of the time is reactive. We've got to respond to something really quickly. So unless we're proactive in our search consistently throughout the, you know, the business year, we're going to constantly keep going like, for, like, because it's the easiest thing to do. So that's why it's so, so important to start building those pipelines as soon as you can, so that when that does happen, you do that. So I would say that when businesses do that, that's actually an indication that your model in how you're recruiting and attracting and sourcing isn't inclusive enough. It's not the right model. So it's actually a real signifier that, that we need to push and challenge people within our teams to look further afield and to constantly be doing that. And it doesn't have to be boring. It doesn't have to be sort of scrolling through LinkedIn and trying to find profiles or look at pictures of people that, oh, that's an ethnic monarchy. Oh, that's a woman. It's about actually going to what your business is about and what your values are as a business and what you need your staff to be enthusiastic about and then trying to find where those people might be, what hobbies might they have, what clubs might they have joined, what membership groups may they be a part of, what events would they go to, you know, what LinkedIn groups may they join and trying to connect with them and get to know them, and holding things like virtual coffees every couple of months or roundtable discussions to keep them engaged. So they've actually got these relationships with people so that they're not doing like, for like, actually they've got this pool of, even if it was 20 candidates that they were only managed to get, you know, but least then they're actually starting to be able to react to that without, without just going back to the normal places that they would usually go to.

I'm going to close by asking you your one tip. We are trying to collate a short list of tips from brilliant people we know in the industry, like yourself, that we can share with our audience over time. I'd love to get your one piece of advice. One tip. Whether it's for now or just something you've always given to people that you'd like to share with our audience from your insights that you think will be helpful.

The one that comes to mind immediately was one that was said to me by my mentor some time ago and he said, try your best, but once you know better, you should always do better. And so I thought, I thought that was actually really good because you can only do what you know and that's your best. But as soon as you're told there's like a better way for something to be done or you know better, you know, like if you do something wrong, someone will say to you, you should know better than that. Well, when, when they say that, that's probably because you have the right resources around you, information around you, to know that that's probably not a clever decision that you made. So once you know better, you should do better. And I think with the inclusion piece, I think when you've been to a talk and you've heard that someone's giving you some advice now you know better, so you should be doing, doing better. And you know, anyone that listens to social talent, it's the same thing. Once we've given you some advice, you know a bit more now, so you should do a bit more now.

I love that you know now it's not acceptable to go back to what you used to do because you now know it wasn't good enough or there's a better way, it's incumbent on you to do something with that information.

It'll be, you know, to be better. It's not, you know, if you don't agree, don't do it, of course, but if you, if you know better and you read it and you hear it and you go, actually, there's no reason why I shouldn't be Doing that or I couldn't do that, then probably do it.

I love that. I love. That's brilliant. Joanna, how can people find you, reach out to you? How can you help organizations or individuals out there?

Thank you. Yeah, I'm Joanna Rebe on LinkedIn and Twitter and everything like that. It's just my first name and last name, Joanna Bay, as it is on the screen. And the website is www.www.yeah, createbluemoon.com. so you can go on there and see lots of stuff that we're doing.

And if people really get stuck, they could probably ring the Queen and she can find you as well.

Put you through. Thank you, Joni, it's been lovely speaking to you.

Such a pleasure having you. We'd love to have you on again and keep fighting the good fight. You're doing a wonderful job, Joanna, and I know you're helping so many amazing people. We didn't get to touch on some of those things. So I'd encourage any of your audience who are passionate about this to reach out to Joanna, even just to connect, because she's an awesome person who can.

Help your organization and vice versa.

We're going to be back next week. We're going back on the shortlist next week at UK time, 4pm next Wednesday. We've got two fantastic guests, Brian Adams from PH Creative and Graham Johnson from gvc. GVC is the company behind Labrox and and Carl and other gaming companies. Sharing what's happening in his world with Brian Adams, who's part of PH Creative at Liverpool, one of the biggest employer branding digital businesses in our space, who help organizations like Apple and others on employer branding. Talking about, you know, in the midst of chaos, how do you be flexible with your talent strategy, how do you change course when something like this hits you? But also talking about why employer brand should be focusing on your current employees is more important than ever. So join us next week on the shortlist. That's Wednesday, May 6th at 4pm UK time. That's at 11am East coast in the US, which is, I believe 8am on the. On the West Coast. And it'll be 11pm in Singapore. So do join us. We hope to see you then. Thanks the team to Niall, to Kat and Shannon in the back room on social talent and most of all. Thank you, Joanna.

Thank you to everyone. Thank you.

Bye, everyone. Have a good day.

Bye.