From Hollywood to hiring: The importance of embedding diversity | with Suzan Vulaj

You're very welcome to episode 76 of the Shortlist. My name is Johnny Campbell. I'm your host for the next 40, 45 minutes. I'm also the CEO co founder of Social Talent. And we're going to be discussing today, from Hollywood to hiring, the importance of embedding diversity. I'm going to just tell a story first before we kick off as I found this profoundly interesting when I heard this many years ago, but I wasn't aware of it at the time. But I was a kid and you should probably know about me. I worked in a video store from when I was 11 till 18 and I was obsessed with movies, still am today, was in the cinema last night till 11:30 at night, my popcorn away. But I love movies, I love tv, I love entertainment. And I became obsessed with movies particular over that seven, eight year period of my teenage years working in a video store, watching all these movies over and over and over again. And so I love the impact that Hollywood and the movie industry can have. Bollywood as well or anywhere that you're making great media and entertainment and many years ago I heard the story of the origin of the concept of the designated driver. And the designated driver, which we all probably know today, is one where somebody designates themselves the driver. So that if you're in a setting where people are drinking alcohol, someone says, I'm the designated driver, I'll drive folks home. That wasn't always the way. I know my parents generation, everybody just went to the pub and drunk and everyone drove home. And it wasn't terribly good. And there were lots of initiatives to try and drive that influence, drive this idea of somebody not drinking and driving everyone home. And it wasn't catching on very well. And back in the late 80s, early 90s, a bunch of folks representing lobbying groups trying to, you know, reduce the amount of deaths through dangerous driving and alcohol related deaths went to some of the big studio heads to try and see how could they use Hollywood to influence this. And the concept was introduced on a few shows like I Believe, Law and Order and Friends eventually as well, and other shows, the Cosby show as well, where a character was introduced in these settings who's going to be the designated driver. And its influence was unbelievable. It became something that people just use. They knew this concept of the designated driver because hey, it's in the movies and TV shows and how we normalize things can really go a long way to people accepting something is just the way it is. And Hollywood can be a really important, can play a really important role in normalizing things. And in advancing the DEI movement today, you know, visual mainstream representations of diversity can really help massively normalize conversations and promote a lot of inclusion. But it's also never been more important for companies to truly embed this same tactic in their own organizations to kind of learn from Hollywood and how they push for greater diversity and inclusion in the organizations. So TV shows, movie shows are evolving. We see it all around us to authentically represent kind of broader spectrum of humanity. And we're hoping organizations will follow suit. So today we've invited on the show our very special guest to to discuss the impressive way that NBCUniversal, a massive media giant, you may recognize them from the producers of this poster that sits behind me. For those of you who watch the video feed of the podcast do the Right Thing, a Spike Lee joint from the late 80s, our Jurassic park from the 90s, our friends from the 90s as well, behind so many big movies and TV shows and entertainment vehicles that many of us may know have enjoyed over the years. But joining today is Susan Village, and Susan is the VP of Global Talent Acquisition with NBCUniversal, and she's going to be chatting with us about NBC Universal's Meet the Moment initiative. And we'll get to this later in the show, which is a kind of series of internal sessions that promotes education on various topics like implicit bias, social identity, belonging, creating, access, and also how important L and D has been for people, managers and hiring teams in the company to help consistently further the diversity and inclusion cause. Susan, you're very welcome to the show. It's wonderful to have you. I wonder if you wouldn't mind giving us a bit of introduction to you. Where are you joining us in the world today? You know, bit of background as to your career and why this topic is particularly of importance to you.

Sure, sure. Thank you, Johnny, so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm Susan Bulai. I am currently the vice president of Global Talent Acquisition at NBC Universal. I'm dialing in from New York out in Rockland county, which is we're headquartered in in New York City. And for me, this topic, and I'm again excited to be here to talk about this, the DEI and what we're doing because it's so embedded in what we do with regards to talent acquisition. Right. We as recruiters, and I believe I'm a recruiter at heart, help guide people into and within the organization. And we of course, want, you know, our organization to represent the community that we live in. So happy to chat more about this.

And I've already made a faux pas mispronouncing your sue name, Susan, so my apologies for that. That's not that's not a good start, but I'm going to make up for that. SUSAN I want to jump into some news articles and I want to start with something that made the news earlier this year from NBCUniversal and it was in Forbes and it was how NBC Universal are making what is a bold stand in a pledge to audition more disabled actors. So we'll share the article for those of you listening live on LinkedIn and YouTube and welcome your comments and thoughts. We'll put it also put into the show notes and in this article, Forbes reported on a foundation place called the Ruderman Family Foundation, I believe it's called, which was a pledge or more like a call to action, to hold the industry, the TV and movie industry accountable for making more change. And if I understand correctly, what this meant was providing more opportunity at the level of auditioning for roles within the studio system, within the TV shows and movies out there. Wonderful. Can you walk me through what exactly this means, what's happening and what it's trying to achieve as well?

SUSAN sure. So in terms of organizations like the Ruderman foundation and ourselves, setting the tone around DEI initiatives like this is extremely important. 15% of the world's population are living with a disability. That's 1.2 billion people. And every step that we take and other organizations take is a step closer to achieving inclusion in the industry. My talent acquisition acquisition team doesn't necessarily recruit for the folks that are in front of the camera. We have a dedicated team of professionals that do so. And I have to say I'm very proud of the work that they're doing. But as the article mentioned, we've partnered with an organization called the Ruderman Family foundation, which is a philanthropic organization that is committed to inclusion of children and adults with disabilities. And organizations like this hold, you know, our company and others in the industry accountable for the work that we still need to do to see systemic change. In the article, we mentioned the pledge that we will increase the number of auditions for actors and actresses with disabilities in TV and film. The pledge represents a group wide commitment across a number of businesses. At NBC Universal, we have our Universal Studio Group, which is our NBC network, our Universal film and entertainment team, and our Peacock streaming service. So we hope in doing so, in taking this pledge and taking the stance that others will join us in striving to create more opportunities for people with Disabilities.

I think it's an important point to make, which is the access to opportunity. I remember a few years ago one of my team reported on something here in Ireland Susan may not be aware of, which was we ran local elections many, many years ago that were being influenced because the funding for the political parties who are putting candidates into the election was going to be curtailed or caught if you didn't have a certain level of representation for female politicians. Because there was whatever the level of female versus male politicians in Irish society was X and Y. And so therefore to get the funding, you had to make sure you had enough female candidates on the ballot. So most of the parties, you know, put more female candidates out that year. And you may have argued before that that you know, what the right amount of people are being voted into politics in Ireland based on, you know, who wants to go and work in politics as a woman and as a man, et cetera. But what was really interesting was that the rate at which women got voted in is exactly the same as the rate at which men got voted in. Overall, the numbers across those local elections the first year it happened and we massively increased the amount of women in politics because we had a mechanism to give more people opportunity to be considered in the first place. So arguments. And you get this in recruiting a lot. I know, Susan, I'm sure you've come across where folks would say, well, you know what, you know, we are hiring what's out there, you know, so it's okay. But actually the real kind of influence you can make is give folks the opportunity to be on the ballot, are at the audition, are on the shortlist. Like, does that translate to you in your recruiting world? Do you see that? You know, once you give opportunity and access, you do see the results pull through over time, for sure, for sure.

And like you said, it's about giving the opportunity, right? And being self aware of what's happening and what's going on. I have to say, you know, I just wanted to share a little plug here that Comcast NBC Universal was rated one of the best places to work for disability inclusion by the Disability Equality Index earlier this year. One thing I'll share is that we at NBCU have an accessibility director. It's a role in our organization. And she also serves as a global advisor to our ERG called MyAbilities. And her role is basically to help create a more accessible environment right at NBC Universal across all of our businesses to educate our product organizations around digital accessibility. So like some examples are like the Olympics Website, our career website, our application process, some of our mobile applications is just making sure that we're taking into account that this is fully accessible. Right. To all. And this sort of creating this inclusion has to be, this, an ongoing training effort. We have to have continuous leadership support. There has to be a continued commitment and an open mindset. Right. That this is something, that this, you know, these initiatives are something that don't happen overnight, Johnny. Right. They take, they take time and this is always a work in progress. And I think understanding that, right. There's no, like one action that we can take today that will fix everything. Right. Or that'll change everything overnight.

Yeah, I think it's important. And it's also, I know we've been talking about disabilities for the last few minutes and we'll focus on that a little bit as well. We also recognize the range of, of elements by which people are discriminated out there in the employment market. We've got a listener live at the moment, David Brennan in Boston, just commenting on how, you know, from his perspective, discrimination is at an all time high against gay, you know, he's described gay men like him in the Boston area desperately struggling to find a job and also his age. So ageism and potentially his sexuality, you know, coming into play. Really sorry to hear that, David. It is something that we're seeing out there, you know, we addressed a couple of weeks ago on the show around issues around gender, there's issues around age, there's disabilities, you know, so many different pockets and cohorts that are struggling. So keen to kind of understand from your perspective, Susan, when you look at, you know, you know, what's working well and the efforts being made to be more positive, I noticed recently that when you talk about, you know, what the impact of something is, I saw that the MEC is starting to produce and peak up, produce more shows that are proving that the access has been given there. And I noticed there was a new show commissioned. I think it came out this fall in the US that features a young actor who has a disability herself as the lead actress. Unusual. Still, unfortunately, today, despite the fact that, you know, more than 20% of folks out there have a disability of some, some, some, some type. But what if, can you tell me, talk me through the show for those of you, those of us listening in Europe who maybe might not be familiar with, with the show, what the show is and what it's striving to do.

Sure. So like you mentioned, the show, La Brea has a main actress who, who is an amputee and like I said earlier, increasing the auditions for actors and actresses that are disabled is a pledge that we're taking. Right. I think historically organizations have hired actors who have sort of altered their role to sort of fit in versus authentically representing, you know, the role. In addition to La Brea, there were a couple of others I can mention. This Is Us, New Amsterdam, Ordinary Joe, La Brea, and then Peacocks Born for Business. These shows promote authentic representation and inclusive of people with disabilities. And actually just sign back to the Ruderman Family foundation that we mentioned earlier. We actually received a seal of authentic representation from them for our show, this Is Us. The show actually features an actor who has a vision impairment that we casted in the role of a blind musician. So, again, tying that real representation into our shows.

Yeah, one of the articles had mentioned, what I noticed myself watching TV shows and movies in the last few years is that more and more you have folks cast not because of their disability or their gender or their race. The role doesn't require somebody to have a disability. For example, it's not part of the story or that it's not about somebody who is of a certain race, or it's not about somebody who's a certain gender, but they are playing that role that is call it, you know, an independent role that, you know, is just about a person and not about anything else. You know, I think what you saw is diverse actors being, you know, playing only diverse characters where their diversity was central to the plot. I'm loving to see that that's becoming more incidental. You know, it's. You know, you might have somebody, for example, who has a prosthetic and it's. That's not the storyline. They just happen to be playing the role of that character, happens to have a prosthetic or happens to be blind or happens to gay or happens to be whatever, you know, which is fantastic. You know, it's moving beyond that. And when the article referenced that, you know, Marlee Matlin was one of those only exceptions in Hollywood for so long as. As a deaf actor portraying deaf roles. And while she became very successful, there's very few other examples from the past which, which. Which is. I think. I think this is beginning to change. I'm going to push on to a third article I wanted to reference, which was reported in increasingly, and it's actually, you know, looking at what companies are doing. So I think it's awesome what Hollywood's doing. I want to bring it to the company level and talk about in their hiring and workplaces what organizations are doing to make the workplace more diverse and more broadly looking at other industries. And this is a report by Lever, the ATS CRM tool, which reveals really big misalignment, I would argue, between employers and employees. And the one that really slayed to me, Susan, was 97% of employers, 97%, nearly every employer said they've introduced new inclusion measures, but 24% said no, no, our companies haven't. Is a big disconnect. What do you think explains that disconnect that's out there?

Right. I think there's this, you know, disconnect because we have this larger employee population that feels certain ways or want to share their opinions and then other parts of the organization that are just moving forward. Right. Like you said, like 90% of employers are sharing that they're introduced new inclusion measures. And I think that there's a lot of work that still needs to be done and that alignment is critical, you know, throughout the organization. I think we need to devote more attention and resources to advancing diversity equity inclusion. Companies need to, I think before acting, need to take a step back and become a bit more self aware and conscious about diversity. It has to be front and center. It has to be embedded in our day to day and how we show up and how we act and how we talk. We need to go beyond just merely calling attention to it. And I feel like maybe some folks in the article feel like there's just attention on it with sort of no action behind it. Just jumping into NBC a bit. Some of the actions that we took as of late were around sharing, right. A leadership accountability. We do a survey, a company wide survey almost every two years. And earlier this year in May, we put an additional focus on inclusive culture and these surveys, whether they're twice a year, once a year, Pulse surveys are an absolute, absolute great opportunity for employers to listen to the collective voice of the employees. Right. Like people will share how they, how they feel. We also encouraged company wide into our leaders around erg participation, our employee resource groups. Right. Learn about them, what are they, get involved, become an active member, become a panelist, be a member, be a mentor, become an executive sponsor. Just again a lot around the sort of education and awareness of what we have already in place and have had for decades. And there were two other sort of specific anti bias trainings that we did. One was specifically for the hiring process and around, you know, identifying the bias, learning what it is because quite often we have these biases and we actually don't even know that it's there. Right. And then the other was the anti bias training for performance management training. So those are two sort of initiatives that we took. And you know, I know we'll talk about Meet the Moment a little bit later, but that was a very large platform for us to share with our employee population around what's going on and the conversations that are happening in our organization.

That's probably a good time to dig into that because I, you know, I was really intrigued to hear about this initiative, Meet the Moment. So what, could you walk us through what it was? Maybe the background as to why it was created, what it was and what the results were from that? What was the reaction from employees? The results that you saw as well through the initiative?

Sure. So Meet the Moment is a company wide specific DEI initiative that we designed to challenge, inspire and unite our organization in ways that would create lasting and meaningful change. We launched it back in October 2020. Like I said, it's a year long awareness and education effort. We had four distinct learning events. We brought in external experts and scholars and authors and leaders and writers, and we had folks internally. We had employees and our internal population as well. And it was, or it is, I should say. Meet the Moment is dedicated to educating our employee population to be able to have honest conversations and creating an environment where everyone is treated with respect and our differences are embraced and celebrated. You know what I will say, what I've learned myself personally throughout all of this with Meet the Moment is that everyone approaches it differently. There's diversity in ourselves and in how we show up and how we approach the topic and the conversation. So, you know, I think we all have to keep an open mind about folks coming into conversations or coming into learnings or coming into trainings, all at different levels, all at different understandings. Right. So Meet the Moment was sort of created to form this foundation for employee population. And our goal in creating the initiative was really simple. We wanted to engage our employee population, we wanted to educate them and we wanted to empower them. And I had mentioned earlier that we had a mix of people that were involved in this program that we showed. We did have our leaders come in and talk about our ongoing, our own ongoing efforts around diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility across the company. So again, tying back to educating our population. So this misalignment that we heard about, you know, bringing awareness to what we are doing and the action that we are taking and how we're feeling, our stance, our philosophy, etc. You know, the external experts that we brought in focused on addressing and Learning sort of micro behaviors. Right. And then sharing or underscoring the importance of creating that allyship right. In the workplace. Because we all have a role in it, whether or not we feel like we're, you know, diverse. Right. So again, that the program is absolutely fantastic, amazing. I think everyone, again, regardless, regardless of where they're coming from, has taken something from it. Right. And it's a program that was designed to be intentional, current and future focus. Right. It wasn't something that we wanted to just roll out and that was it sort of as action. We wanted it to be engaging and smart and challenging and again, really go back to that being a shared experience for everyone across our organization.

Remind me, Susan, how many, how many people did this reach in the organization? How many people got involved or participated in this?

Sure. So we have a population of about 35,000 employees globally.

So it's, it's real scale. And to your point, it wasn't a once off. It's been a continuation through the year. Four core events to drive it. And you mentioned obviously that it's been, you know, it's not been one sided, that the dialogue is there, that it's, it its participation rather than just pushing information at the audience. How important is that, that two way involvement with the teams? If you're running an inclusivity initiative to try and bridge that gap between the perception of what we're doing and what we're actually doing, how important is it, do you think, in your experience to have that, that involvement from the team, not just kind of one way message, right?

Oh, it's, it's so important. Like you said, you can't just teach, right. Or share and expect people to learn. You have to put it into action. And I think that having listening sessions and you know, I said to you, we have to listen, right? And having focus groups part of the beat the moment we created sort of resource guides after and conversation starters for people to use after watching these sessions. You know, employees want to, want to share how they feel and they want to know that they're being heard and that their opinion matters and that, you know, what they're sharing will lead to real change. So it cannot be a one way, right. It has to be a constant dialogue and sort of reassessing. Right. And moving forward.

And so going back to the kind of talent acquisition and recruiting side of things, Susan, like we are in an incredibly unusual market at the moment, right. It's so difficult to find talent. How important do you think it is from an employer brand perspective? Let's say that NBC Universal is seen to be really active in this space doing stuff consistently across the business for attracting great talent to the organization. Like, do you see that day to day, do you see that correlation between, you know, perhaps some of the peers you would hire from. Sure.

Candidates are asking, right? And I don't think that, you know, I, I've been in recruiting for about 17 years and I, you know, now more than ever we have candidates asking about what we're doing in the space and how we feel about this and some of the initiatives that we're taking. So we're certainly hearing it a lot more from a TA perspective, what we're doing internally to ensure that, you know, we're keeping this top of mind. There are a number of things that we're working on. One I mentioned earlier, anti bias hiring manager training. Right. So this took a look at the sort of end to end recruiting process. We created and designed this program in partnership with our talent development team, HR Legal Talent Acquisition. And we started out with training about bias and how it creeps up, you know, in the interview process. We started out with our direct hiring managers of open, open roles. And then we started out with another group of hiring managers just in general whether or not they had jobs open currently. And then we spanned across every single people leader. You know, we offered these, these trainings and we didn't stop there. Then we went to folks that were part of the interview process, our interviewers. So it wasn't just people managers. We have other folks that are part of our interview process as well. So I thought that was a fantastic initiative that we did because again like I mentioned is sometimes we have bias and we don't even know it's there. Right. So we need to be made aware that these things are real, that these biases are real and that we should identify them and then address them and correct them. Right. Another initiative that we took, the Global Talent Acquisition Team, created a hiring manager toolkit. Right. It's a SharePoint site filled with a ton of resources for our hiring managers and HR professionals that, you know, through the, that touch on all the sort of inflection points in a recruitment process. We have an entire DEI section there. So we, we've trained our hiring managers on how to create inclusive job descriptions. Right. And it doesn't stop there. Right. So it's not just an action like hey, we've created this, it's hey, we have this resource and every time we have a kickoff with one of our hiring managers, you know, we're embedding this link in our, in our Outlook invitations. We're embedding it in our conversations that we have with our businesses to say, hey, we have this toolkit. Hey, there are these resources there. So we're like constantly sharing it with our businesses. One other thing that I'll mention about, you know, again, just tying it back to the talent acquisition team. We have a dedicated DEI operations role that sits in ta and this person, and this is a relatively new role, I think it's, we just sort of created it less than two years ago. But this person is a centralized sort of role and function that helps us in TA create partnerships and strategies with not only our internal ergs, but with external organizations and events. Right. And so this person acts as a liaison between all things dni, DEI and TA and sort of like constantly brings it back to TA and constantly brings it externally and internally and connecting all the dots. And it's been great to have that person and have a centralized sort of focus area and just sort of top of mind with, you know, with everything that we're doing.

I, I love you sharing these initiatives because for those, those listeners out there live and on the podcast, it's important to understand, you know, I, I, I believe, I'm sure you do, Susan. These are becoming table stakes, right? To do TA in a competitive environment like we're at the moment. I go back to the Lever survey that was reported in Ink recently. They listed a bunch of steps on their survey. They surveyed a thousand leaders and 500 leaders. 1000 folks around what they're doing and 43% said they're making sure job postings are worded to eliminate bias. That's where everyone starts. Write better job specs, you know, posting jobs in non traditional outlets. 37%. Raising education requirements, sorry, replacing educational requirements with skills or competencies. 36%. It's great. Standardizing interview questions and rubrics, which is really important, but isn't going as far as what you've discussed, which is really working to try and change the behaviors and the awareness, the knowledge of every interviewer, hiring manager, etc. And using data and insights to uncover and address potential biases in the process is 31%. Right. So, so there's, there's, there's, there's a whole bunch of stuff that folks are doing. And that article from inc. Which we'll share, lists what I would consider the basics. Right. But it is, to your point, going beyond that because I read, I read, I read. Last week I actually got an email from Indeed and They commissioned a piece of research, I think it was in the UK for, for 16 to 20 year olds. Right. So you're kind of Gen Z's coming into the workplace, etc. And I think 46% of the respondents in this age group, which is the next generation of our workforce that we'll all be hiring for, if not hiring for today, already said that they would not work for an, or would not work for an organization that had a gender pay gap. Like not, not that they wouldn't prefer to, but wouldn't work. It's half that population. Right. Coming into the workforce in the next few years. So you know those out there running recruiting teams, influencer recruiting teams, you know, you look at what we have to do to compete in the great Resignation and everything else that's out there, whatever way you want to call it, you know, this is, this is coming even, you know, in bigger waves. And I do believe it's driven by what in a really positive way. It's driven by what? Largely by what's happening in mainstream media in the roles that people are seeing on the big screen, on their small screens as well through their streaming services in a very positive way. That's the effect. Just to connect the dots for a second, what NBCU is able to do on a big scale, influence what's on your phone or on your cinema screen right down to what you can do on a micro level in terms of the day to day hires. The organization makes they connect because the candidates who you turn up for, all of our jobs are influenced by what NBCU and others are doing in mainstream media, which changes the requirements when they turn up for an interview with all of us because they expect more. It's wonderful to see that connection that the organization is making, Susan, across the board. So when you look at measurement, because I want to move to that for a second, it was brought up as one of the challenges in the Ink articles. I think only something like 30 something percent of organizations said they measured the outcomes, which is kind of astonishing to me. Right. How you get a budget for something without measuring it. It isn't always easy to measure these outcomes. And we talked about time before we went on air, but wonder, could you walk me through your thoughts on measurements? You know what perhaps NBC, you have been doing to measure what's working, what's not, what's not. Maybe the hard and soft metrics that you think could work.

Sure. Like you said, they're hard and soft metrics. Right. They're things that we can easily measure. Quantifiable and then others, not so much are softer measurements. I mentioned we did we do a survey, right. Every two years. And earlier this year we did a additional focus on the inclusion sort of aspect of it. And we asked our employees to rate the statement of. I believe NBC Universal is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion as a company. And nearly 90% of the population participants agreed to that statement in a favorable manner. So we think, you know, that's fantastic. When we talk about measurements, when we measure the things that we can. Right. And we have this demographic information, I think companies are trying to figure out, like, what's the benchmark, Right. What does good look like? What does. What does great look like in terms of representation? I had been working on about two years ago a big recruiting strategy around bringing diversity into our technology positions. And, you know, we have these conversations around percentages and benchmarks and what we would like to see achieve or sort of the direction we want to go in. And I started to do some research externally about, well, what are other companies doing, right? What are they saying and what are they doing? Where are they at? And then I realized that, you know, some of these large tech companies didn't start measuring their diversity data until about six years ago. Right. So. So times are changing and these companies are adapting and they're flexing with the times, which is absolutely the right, you know, right thing to do. But once you get those numbers and you understand the demographics, both internally, we have to look externally and understand what does the marketplace look like? Are there gaps there? You know, do we need more. More promotion of education around roles in news and journalism? Right. From these underrepresented communities? Right. Is that population there? If it's not, why? And what can we do to sort of, you know, bridge that gap? So it's not just about folks that are graduating and ready to work. I think we need to take it even further back.

Right.

And understand, like our. Yeah, exactly.

And we got. So just read a comment from Kathy Iverson. Great to have you listening again, Kathy. It's a great conversation, needs to be talked about. More awareness and understanding is key to changing the way we approach diversity inclusion. It needs to be become a normal part of our culture. Can't agree with you more than that, Kathy. And, you know, your point around the initiatives, Susan, is really well made. You know, when I talk to organizations about how do you get there, you know, what I've seen it work best is when you operationalize this stuff and you actually, rather than just saying general, we want to achieve this Target that targets like, well, that target has to be broken down. And my head works that way. You know, I've always worked that way, whether it's a sales target or recruiting target. It's like you gotta hire a thousand people. Okay, let me. I wanna, I wanna, I wanna know where every one of them's coming from. I wanna not just go generally, but work harder. Work harder is not a strategy. Right. I will do better. It's not a strategy. But, you know, you have to break it down to, well, this particular department. How are we going to solve it here? We might have a department where we're actually fine for whatever lens of diversity we're trying to focus on. We're doing great. Pardon me. And then you might ask yourself, well, can we retrain some of those folks that are interested to move over in this department that pays more money? It's hard to find that level of diversity for that skill. So great opportunity for them. And you know, it becomes, I think, a bigger issue than ta. Right. So, you know, and this is when I talk to leaders about, you know, how are they doing other DEI strategies in ta. You reach a point, Susan, I'm sure you've reached it yourself, where you start to realize maybe from day one you always knew this. It's not just about what TA can do. So a lot of focus is put on recruiting to fix the diversity issues. Let's hire more diverse talent and it'll all be fine. Those of us who've been working hard to try and do this realize you can't do it alone. I'm interested to hear your story in terms of how you work with others, other peers in the business. You know, what does that look like? And how is there a kind of connected thread between all the different aspects of hiring, retention, career development, turn of mobility, all of that. How does that all connect? What's your experience of how does it. When it works? Well, what does it look like?

Right. I think you said it earlier that I. We tend to look at ta, right? Like what are we bringing into the organization? And then sort of like all eyes are on ta. But I think it's a multi pronged approach. Right. It's our, it's our group in partnership with the business and our HR business partners, our DEI folks, our ERGs, ETC. I'll share with you one of. One of the programs that we launched a few years ago, we did it as a pilot, was around, we call it act two, was, was really focused on women, but we were open to men in the program too. Hiring folks who have taken two plus year sabbatical in their work career and helping them get back into the workforce, especially in the field of technology. Right. And it was, it wasn't a TA initiative. Right. We had our partners in organizational development, we had our L and D folks, we had HR folks and we had the business. Right. We had to have everyone on board to say we are committed to this effort and we are going to be open minded and we are going to consider folks that have taken this bridge in their career and now want to get back in. So. And we started small, right, with just a handful of people and sort of. It gained traction then across the, the enterprise and it's still growing and we're still working on it, but we're learning as we go and we're assessing as we go. One of the other things I'll mention and that we've seen sort of a shift lately, these past two years is that we have a dedicated centralized DEI corporate team. Right. They're absolutely fantastic. And I think we've had sort of a chief Diversity officer, I think now for over 16 years. Right. So that role in that team is not new to us. But what is new is that in all of our businesses across NBCUniversal, you know, I might have mentioned we have a, Bravo E, Telemundo, Golf, we have the news division, we have sports, we have Olympics, et cetera. We have embedded senior diversity, equity and inclusion leads into these businesses that we've never had before, like in sports and in ad sales and in TV and in our stations. Historically, we had these, these DEI leaders in some of our other groups like film and TV and streaming and news. But now it's sort of like, like I said, normalized. Like now we have it across all of our businesses and these folks are all talking to each other, but they themselves and their particular businesses are responsible for driving that progress in the content and the talent development, in the engagement, in the retention and the recruitment. So we have sort of the right people in the, in the right conversations. Right.

I love that and I, you know, I love that it's, it's being normalized, that it's being extended everywhere. It's just what. It's not something that we're trying out or doing as an initiative. It's just what we do. It's how we work and how we, how we hire. It's how we promote, it's how we collaborate. And I think that comes back to the, you know, our opening point around the power of a story and the Power of influence of you know, whether it's mass media or it can be just this is how we do it. And you know, maybe from a recruiter's perspective, if you always produce diverse shortlists, the diversity fades away and it becomes people. And the more diverse talent you keep putting in front of hiring managers, the more normalized it is. You know, I was reflecting on Joe Lockwood who joined us on the show a couple of weeks ago. Actually, I'm completing my training for, at Social Talent. We have to do our social training as a leadership team every week and discuss it on Thursday morning. And this, we're working our way through a DEI program this, this quarter. We're watching stories from folks from different backgrounds sharing their, their, their, their hardships and you know, listening to Joe Lockwood and some of the, the, the kind of resistance she met and this is as a, a trans woman that, you know, it's quite visible and you know, it can be shocking to a hiring manager or experience expects somebody who is, you know, in a more binary type, you know, role and how she knows she can prove, but knows she's marginalized. But you know, if it's the 25th trans candidate you've interviewed this year, right. Thankfully it's a candidate, you know, you, no matter who you are, you're. That's going to normalize things for you. But you have, you can educate, you can inform, but to your point around experience, you kind of have to just make it part of the experience. And you know, I think what NBCU is doing is fantastic with some of the other media companies around, normalizing it in mass media. But how a recruiting team can normalize it as well. But getting involved in activities, driving these, working with colleagues in organization development, talent management, etc. To make it just a normal thing. It's just what we do. We have a diverse bunch of folks, a diverse bunch of candidates. It's always going to be this way. Let's just move on. I think it's fantastic. I want to just get your last thoughts on this. What do you think is next? When you look at initiatives that you're looking at thinking of for the team, for the business, or even what the wider business and your peers are doing, what's next for NBCU on this journey? When Meet the Moment wraps up on its final session, what's next for the organization? What are you seeing or hoping for?

Sure it has to be continuous, right? So I know Meet the Moment was a year long initiative and we've just sort of hit that one year Mark, we, we hope that it's embedded in our day to day in our conversations moving forward. Right. I think that the DEI teams in our individual businesses are fantastic. I'd love to see what's, what's going to come out of them and then if we can join forces. Right. Because NBCU is made up of so many different companies in our portfolio. Portfolio. We can sometimes get stuck in our own silos supporting just sports or just TV and film. Right. Talent acquisition is centralized across all of our businesses. So I think there's going to be a lot of opportunity for us and TA to support our businesses at a much larger scale that we've not been able to do so before. One of the other things I'll share is as of last week, you know, there are, there are tools and technologies that are coming out right. That are helping sort of debias job descriptions and job postings and applications and resumes and profiles, which is pretty interesting. You know, we haven't really signed up for anything yet but, but are looking, you know and we're open to exploring. So I'm really excited about what's to come in 2022.

It is great to see. I saw an email on Monday Carrot, which has become a really popular tool used by organizations around tech talent for interviewing around driving more diversity has reached a billion dollar valuation as an organization because they're scaling so much. So it's one of see one of the not just talent technology, but talent technology focus on diversity being really popular. Susan, thanks so much for sharing. I say a little bit but it seems a lot of what NBC you are doing around diversity and inclusion, both terms of mainstream media and also the talent acquisition team. I'm going to pose one final question to you if you don't mind. Susan.

Sure.

Having seen probably some previous episodes, you know what's coming. I'd love for episode 76 for you to share with us one last piece of wisdom advice with our audience that can be either something that, you know, you have developed yourself through your own experience or perhaps was passed on to you by somebody else that you think would be appropriate to leave with our audience here today.

Sure. I, that's a, that's a good question. I feel like I have so much to share and so much advice to give. I have never seen a market like this. Right. That, that we're in today in this hyper competitive market and in ta. I'm sure, you know, all TA professionals are feeling this across the globe is this pressure to produce and to move faster and you know, My advice is for TA professionals is to keep pushing forward.

Right.

Be persistent, don't give up. It can be a grind sometimes, but I encourage people to be flexible and to be creative. Right. I feel oftentimes we get stuck in doing things certain ways because we've always done it that way. Right. So be open minded, learn from others. And sometimes we have to step back from the daily grind to really take a look at our desk and our, our work and see if we can do something differently or smarter or more efficient, especially to operate and be competitive in this environment.

So I think that there's nothing better than a crisis, call it a time crisis out there to force innovation and change when your back is against the wall and working harder isn't a solution anymore. You got to try and change things. I think you get great innovation from that. And if you don't mind me plugging just those for those of you in the markets that Susan has recruiters in, Susan's hiring in her team, your team expanding. I believe you're growing. And you know NBCU is on fire and growing at the moment as well with Peacock and everything else that recently launched. So I'm sure if you're a talented talent acquisition professional looking for a role in exciting industry, I'm sure Susan's team would appreciate you checking out their career site and checking out some of those vacancies as well. Susan, thanks so much for joining us. We look forward to having you back again to seeing how the journey continue and thanks for sharing everything today.

Great. Thank you so much, Johnny.

You're welcome. And thank you for joining us live and for joining us on the podcast as well. We're going to be back next week, same time. That's the 24th of November, Wednesday, 24th of November. The live show will be out 4pm UK Irish time. That's 11am in the east coast, 8am on the west coast of the US. I'm going to be talking with a good friend of mine, Colin Donnery, about an untapped talent pool of diverse talent, the unemployed. Yes, they're still out there. We've just talked about how there's a great resignation and it's never been hard to recruit, but interestingly, unemployment rates haven't gone down to record lows. There still are a lot of folks out there unemployed and Colin's got a unique perspective. I've known Colin for many years. He's worked as the chair of the National Recruitment Federation here in Ireland. But Day to Day runs both one of our biggest recruitment agencies in the Country FRS network. He's also the founder and director of Turras Nua, which provides on behalf of the government, opportunity opportunities for unemployed folks to get back to work and works with more than half, I think, of the Irish population of unemployed individuals to get them back to work. So unique perspective, running a recruitment agency and working with tens of thousands of folks to get them back to work. Colin's going to be talking about this potential pool of diverse talent that really is untapped and perhaps not considered enough. The unemployed. That's going to be next week on Wednesday 24th of November. But if you can spare 90 minutes this week more, we have a very special event coming up tomorrow for those of you listening. You may have missed it, but if you're getting the podcast just as it drops or listening Live, it's Thursday 18th November is Social Talent Live. We run STLive every two months and tomorrow we're going to be joined by some fantastic guests to talk about hiring at scale during the Great Resignation. So Barbara Lee from Nielsen, Kim Pope from Wilson hcg, Kevin Blair from Salonis, Daniel Monash from Uber are all going to be joining us tomorrow. That's at the same time as our shortlist. That's 4pm UK time, 11am New York time, 8am LA time. And it's going to be a live event for 90 minutes with two panels and a fireside chat interview hosted by my good friends Jason Lawrence and Bev K and others as well as myself. You can register now still@socialtown.com forward slive for that great show going out live tomorrow. If you don't catch it. If you're listening to the podcast after we've already broadcast, don't worry, we'll be back in January and you can register for January's event at the same site, socialtalent.com live. Until then, thanks so many for joining us. Hope you've enjoyed 76. We'll be back next week with 77.