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Joelle 00:02
I think what’s clear when you start to think about the future of work and the changing talent landscape is that organizations that survive and thrive over the next, let’s say, decade will inherently have to become more diverse over time.

Susan 00:17
Welcome to The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast, where we help HR and business leaders embrace joy in the workplace. I’m Susan White, owner of Susan Tinder White consulting, an HR consulting practice. Joining me is my dear friend and co-host, JoDee Curtis, owner of Purple Ink, a large scale HR firm that I’m an executive collaborator with.

Susan 00:38
Today we’re going to talk about DEI in today’s world. One of our listeners wrote to us in March of 2024 and suggested we talk about how DE&I is becoming controversial in some states and well supported in other states and nationally. We do not have an agreement on much these days. How might HR navigate diversity in organizations, where I believe DE&I is essential to our achieving our mission, vision, and purpose, and where it’s also becoming politicized and/or a polarizing topic. First, let’s get perspective about how DE&I is perceived in the United States workplace today. Julie Kratz, a friend of ours, wrote an article for Forbes on December 31, 2023 entitled “The 2024 DEI Outlook.” Julie noted several things. Number one, job postings for DEI roles are down. You know, that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been reading a lot of things like that, JoDee. There was a huge spike in 2020 after the George Floyd tragedy. Businesses kind of woke up to the fact that we’ve got to, if we’re going to make a difference in the world, we’ve got to be actually moving forward in that world of diversity. And I think now here we are, four years later. I think companies, when they start to cut funding, when they’re starting to shrink, when they’re having rising credit costs, things like that, that DEI jobs are not nearly as plentiful as they were.

JoDee 02:10
Yeah, you know, actually at one point in 2020, a DEI chief officer, director, what, you know, whatever some of those titles, were one of the most popular job positions open at that time.

Susan 02:29
Yes.

JoDee 02:29
And, you know, I’d like to say that I think they’ve gone down – or I wish that they had gone down because the, they created programs that were effective, right? Like, if…

Susan 02:42
Yeah.

JoDee 02:42
…we’re really good at this, we wouldn’t need Chief Diversity Officers, because we should all be taking responsibility for these efforts and having good policies in place and good programs and all of that. But I’m not sure that’s the case.

Susan 03:01
Yes, I agree with you.

JoDee 03:04
The hotness of the topic has sort of faded, and it’s gone away a bit, unfortunately. Number two, Julie’s article also was linked to another one that shared some recent Pew Research Data. Pew Research found 56% of US adults say focusing on increasing DEI at work is a good thing.

Susan 03:28
I like that. But it does vary greatly by demographic and political allegiances. Some interesting points in the research included that 78% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning workers say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing.

JoDee 03:45
Whereas only 30% of Republicans and Republican-leaning workers agree.

Susan 03:53
Workers under the age of 30 are the most likely, at 68% of them, to say focusing on DEI at work is a good thing, compared to just 46% of workers that are aged 50 to 64.

JoDee 04:06
Wow. Workers under the age of 50 are more likely, at 35%, than those over 50, at 26%, to say racial and ethnic diversity in the workplace is important to them.

Susan 04:23
And then the higher the education level of the employee, the more likely they are to see DE&I efforts at work being a good thing.

JoDee 04:31
DEI investment is steady and projected to double by 2026. Well, that, that is good news. Although job postings for those diversity roles is still declining, organizations are investing in ways to support employees with diverse needs, providing resources, and making structural changes.

Susan 04:55
That is good news.

JoDee 04:57
I think one of the other reasons, maybe, why that role is, is decreased – and this, I’m not suggesting this is a good thing, but honestly, I think some organizations hired people in those roles and then didn’t know what to do with them. They didn’t know, really, how to be effective at it, or even if the, those Chief Diversity Officers were really good in their role, that maybe that leadership still hadn’t totally bought into it or didn’t support them, or how much to invest in them as well, too.

Susan 05:38
I bet you’re right. You know listeners, if any of you went into diversity roles and you found that, we’d love – and then you’re not in it today, or you saw the organization change directions, we’d love to hear from you. So please contact us anytime. Number four in Julie’s article, she stated that investors and legislation are continuing to pressure organizations regarding DE&I. Interestingly, some investors and legislators are pushing for prioritizing DE&I, and yet others are suggesting DEI efforts have stymied growth. So there’s activists out there both ways pushing this topic to that point. We have seen technology companies like Google and Meta get a lot of press regarding downsizing their DEI investments within the last year, and there it was people saying, “Why are you doing this?” But we’ve seen other shareholder activists saying that you’re spending too much money on the topic, you’re, you’re keeping us from getting our profits.

JoDee 06:36
Younger employees, as we stated in some of the statistics earlier, see SEI as non-negotiable. The good news is that is our future.

Susan 06:50
Gives us hope, doesn’t it? The Harvard Business Review posted an article on September 14, 2023 by Laura Morgan Roberts entitled, “Where Does DEI Go from Here?”. Here is part of a short summary posted on the site, which we will have a link to in our show notes. And I quote, “Amid economic uncertainty, corporate belt tightening, and efforts to dismantle diversity efforts through both court rulings and legislation, the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion has slowed.” Very provocative. So take a look at that article if you’re interested in learning more from the Harvard Business Review perspective.

JoDee 07:27
Yeah.

Susan 07:28
We thought it made sense to talk through this important topic with an expert. So our guest is Joelle Emerson. As co-founder and CEO of Paradigm, Joelle partners with leaders of some of the world’s most innovative companies on impactful diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, the Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and she’s been on the cover of The Atlantic. Pretty impressive. Before founding Paradigm, Joelle was a civil rights lawyer with a legal background highlighting the consequences that can result from companies failing to consider diversity and inclusion early. Welcome, Joelle. We’re so glad that you’re here.

Joelle 08:13
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Susan 08:15
Our first question for you is, what do you think business leaders should be thinking about right now when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion?

Joelle 08:23
Such a good question, and I wish all the leaders that we work with asked it in that way, because I think what leaders really need to be thinking about is their companies and their success over the next decade. So one thing I think a lot of leaders are surprised to hear is that today, 60% of the workforce on average are millennials and younger, and these generations are actually much more diverse than any before them across a range of dimensions. Globally, we know that these younger generations are more likely to identify as members of the LGBTQ community. In the US, 21% of Gen Z identify as LGBTQ+ versus just 7% of the adult population on average. More likely to identify as neurodivergent in many countries, including the US, far more racially and ethnically diverse. So all of this is creating far more diverse organizations already. Not to mention that the generational diversity itself that we are now experiencing with more generations in the workforce than ever before is also creating this kind of diversity question. And with the changing demographics that we’re seeing are changing mindsets. Right? 75% of millennials and younger say that they actively consider an organization’s diversity when choosing their next job. So I think what’s clear when you start to think about the future of work and the changing talent landscape is that organizations that survive and thrive over the next, let’s say, decade will inherently have to become more diverse over time if they’re going to have a workforce, if they’re going to be attracting, engaging and keeping the best people. So what companies should be thinking about, to your question, is picturing DEI not as a moral imperative or a check the box initiative, but a set of practices that are going to help organizations adapt to the evolving workforce and ultimately be able to attract and engage and keep the best employees. And I’ll just say, kind of related to that, what I think a lot of organizations often don’t recognize is that diversity, equity, inclusion practices are really just effective leadership practices. I think if you think about it in this way, if you think about, you know, our job is to hire great people, create a culture that unlocks everyone’s potential, and keep great people, that’s really what I mean when I talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. And I think that way of thinking about it can maybe help avoid the pendulum swing that many companies have seen around DEI and ground whatever we’re doing in work that just makes smart business sense. So that’s some of how I hope leaders and organizations will start evolving their thinking on this.

Susan 11:05
Yeah, I like that.

JoDee 11:06
I like that too. And you know, it really, as you were talking, made me think of something that seems so obvious now, but I hadn’t specifically thought about before, is I grew up in very rural Indiana, and my own kids, who are now, I have three 20-somethings, which they grew up closer to the Indianapolis area, which certainly is not the hotbed of diversity like the east or west coast would be, but you know, they really have still never known anything different. I mean, all those categories you just mentioned about neurodiversity and ethnic and cultural and skin color, and I mean, they just have not been in a world where they didn’t have that as a part of their lives and part of their college experience. And so anyway, just kind of makes me about how much better they are and their expectations about that happening. So.

Joelle 12:11
It’s really incredible. My oldest son is in elementary school, and his public school sends out both to parents and to students every month something to celebrate the various cultural heritage and identity months that are happening. And so at a very young age, students are just learning about different identities that they don’t hold, different perspectives, different religions, different cultures. Last month the students got to learn about Passover, which we celebrate, and Eid, and just the fact that in public school there are these conversations and this desire to learn about more people and more sets of identities, I think it’s just such a wonderful thing. And I do think that younger generations are just going to have a totally different worldview and perspective. And that’s what’s so great about generational diversity. We can all learn from each other.

Susan 13:02
Absolutely.

JoDee 13:03
Joelle, what do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about DEI?

Joelle 13:09
There are so many. I’ll pick a couple. I think one really big misconception about DEI that I see circulating right now is the idea that it’s zero sum, right? That when an organization invests in DEI, they are doing that to benefit some people or groups to the detriment of others. We’re going to make things easier or better for women, for example, but that means we care less about men or we’re going to be deprioritizing how men feel here or hiring fewer men, whatever it might be. And that just isn’t true. When I think about what DEI looks like when done well is it’s a question of how do we make sure that everybody has opportunities, everybody feels included, everybody can come to work and do their best work. So I think the better analogy is, like, a rising tide lifts all boats. And it’s really true, and we see this in the data, and there are so many examples of this, but I’ll give you a couple just to highlight what I mean. So one of the things that we work on a lot with organizations is creating cultures of belonging, creating cultures where people can feel like they can be their true selves, their authentic selves at work, not just because that’s a nice to have, but it turns out that’s actually very important for performance, for engagement, for retention. So what a lot of our clients do as a starting point to figure out, are we doing this full belonging thing well or not, is they survey their employees. Engagement survey type, type initiative. And they ask, and then what we encourage them to do is look at those results by demographic group. So it’s one thing to just say we have 80% favorability on belonging. It’s another thing to say, well, Group A feels a very strong sense of belonging, but Group B does not. And so when we see those gaps, we try to work with organizations to close them. And what we’ve seen, and we’ve seen this now a handful of times, is that when organizations successfully close gaps in who feels a sense of belonging, it doesn’t just help those groups who were feeling worse initially. It actually uplifts everyone’s sentiment. So we worked with an organization in 2022 that had one of these belonging gaps between white and Black employees, as well as between non-LGBTQ+ and LGBTQ+ employees, and we helped this company, over the course of a year, close those gaps. How do we help Black employees and LGBTQ+ employees feel a better sense of belonging here? And when we came back and surveyed the company a year later, we found that not only had those gaps closed quite a bit, everyone’s sentiment went up. Everyone in the workforce, of all identities, felt a stronger sense of belonging. So there are so many examples like this where we can see that if we try to address the barriers for people that are having the worst experiences in our organization, we actually help everyone. And I’ll just give one more example of how to think about this. A lot of the DEI work that we do and that organizations do is about making processes more fair, so making hiring processes more fair, promotion processes, and one of the reasons we care so much about that is when processes are unfair, when they’re rife with bias, the people that tends to impact most are from underrepresented groups, but it actually impacts everyone negatively. If you care about having meritocratic outcomes, if you want to hire the best people, promote the best people, you actually want processes that are rigorous, that are holding people to consistent standards. And so when we go into organizations and we make those processes better, yeah, people from underrepresented backgrounds have a better shot at success, but so do people who just weren’t as well networked in the organization, come from different schools or educational backgrounds than the managers that they report to, all of these things that we find lead to disparities of all sorts in organizations we can address when we think about things with kind of a diversity, equity and inclusion mindset. So I think maybe that is the biggest misconception, is that it’s zero sum when really it’s, how do we make things better for everyone?

Susan 17:05
Yeah, that’s terrific. So Joelle, what are you seeing regarding pushback against organizations’ DEI efforts, and what’s the risk of not dealing with some of that pushback or backlash?

Joelle 17:19
Well, I think it’s really important to contextualize where some of this backlash is coming from, right? So, you know, anti-diversity activists have been – this is their mission, and has been for decades, right? How do we confuse people about what diversity and inclusion are all about? Really weaponizing this concept. And we’ve seen that in blaming DEI for everything from a bank collapse to antisemitism on college campuses to the Baltimore bridge collapse more recently. And I think the goal here is, how do we confuse people about this so that people think it’s got these insidious underpinnings? And so I think recently, that backlash has gone much more mainstream, and I think the activists behind it have been very effective with their messaging, and people are confused about what DEI is all about and certainly, you know, have a different understanding of it than I do, and than my company does, and than our clients do. And so I think, you know, organizations, some organizations might want to avoid sort of addressing that or contending with it, but I do think we need to grapple with, why is this confusion existing? And if it exists within your, within the world, probably exists within your organization, right? Organizations are just microcosms of the world that they’re a part of. And how do we address it? By telling people what we mean. Right? At our company, we know that you may be hearing these other things on social media or out there in the world. Here’s what we mean when we talk about diversity, when we talk about equity, when we talk about inclusion. Rather than kind of vague proclamations, let’s be specific. What is it that we’re trying to achieve in our organization, and how are we going to be achieving that? Because if we don’t do that, I find people have a lot of different kind of understandings, and people will make a lot of assumptions about the how based on what they’re hearing from those activists that are saying, “Well, you’re just going to increase gender diversity by refusing to hire men,” or “You’re just going to make sure that you have more people of color in leadership by firing white people,” which is, of course, not in any organization’s best interest to do, not only because it’s illegal, it’s also just, like, bad business practice. But we need to fill that void in information with other information. Here’s actually what we are doing, and here’s how we’re going to do it. And I think a lot of organizations have maybe made a bad assumption over the past few years that, oh, everyone gets this, we all understand it. I think what we’re seeing now is we didn’t all understand and there’s some very effective campaigning to villainize this work, and so we need to have a more effective counter message and be clear and specific about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.

JoDee 19:49
I think that’s so important. I will tell you that I think probably 80% of the time I’ve said the word diversity in the past four years, that people jump to Black versus white. Like, and I just feel like in so many people’s minds, that is the only issue in, regarding diversity, so really important that we understand what does it mean. What does it mean for our companies? So what do you recommend that organizations or HR professionals do to combat this?

Joelle 20:28
So, I think there’s a lot we can do. I think first, we can turn to metrics that help us measure the state of our employment practices in a meaningful way. So let’s look at how people are moving through our hiring process. Let’s look at performance ratings, promotions, attrition, compensation. Let’s understand if there are differences in any of these outcomes by demographic, right? Because if there are, we see that people from certain identity groups get promoted at a far higher rate than others. That tells us there’s something going on that we probably need to take a look at. Let’s look at how people feel. Let’s look at employee sentiment and if there are any differences by group. Let’s even look at our maturity of our diversity and inclusion practices and how those benchmark to our industry, to companies of our size, and ask if that’s where we want to be. So I think using data, I think this work tends to be so anecdotal very often, and stories are important, and qualitative data is important, but I think real metrics can help us understand things so much better. Last year at Paradigm, you know, we have a software tool, we call it Blueprint, and we use it to track how organization – you know, organizational practices around DEI are evolving. And the companies that are in our data set are mostly companies that are quite committed to this work, and last year, we found that of those companies, only 26% tracked hiring rate by race and ethnicity, tracked promotions by race and ethnicity, tracked attrition by race and ethnicity, between 26 and 36% for each of those data points. And now race and ethnicity is only one metric, but we ask about that one because it’s the one that, along with gender, companies do tend to look at. And so we found, even among this kind of data point that organizations tend to have access to in their HR system, tend to ask about, they’re not looking at these inputs to their organization. Usually, organizations are very often, are only looking at representation. Who’s here, not how did we get there, and where do those problems exist? So being more data-driven at a more sort of granular level, I think, is so helpful. And then I think, you know, the other thing that I really think HR professionals, leaders need to be doing is zooming out and looking at how DEI impacts the future of their workforce. And you know, as I shared earlier, the future workforce will just factually be more diverse. And in a new report that our company Paradigm just published, actually last week, we explored data from over 100 organizations and over around 2 million employees and job seekers and found that most organizations are actually really underprepared for this talent evolution. You know, when it comes to hiring, when it comes to culture, all of these things. So I think companies need to be thinking about, are we using our data to understand our workforce and make smart decisions? And are we really forward-looking and thinking about how our how our business, people, talent practices should be evolving to keep pace with the evolving talent landscape?

JoDee 23:24
Makes sense.

Susan 23:25
It does make good sense. So you’d mentioned belonging a little bit ago. What is your advice to clients on belonging as a strategy? Are there trainings or other tools out there that you recommend to help that belonging really get rooted?

Joelle 23:40
Yeah. So there are so many factors that impact people’s sense of belonging, from how they interact with their manager to company policies and benefits. So I think first, to understand where you’re going to focus, companies should gather some data. I’ll be a broken record on this in this conversation than any other I have on DEI. Like, we need to get data to understand what’s going on. So, you know, I referred to surveys already, the tool that we use with our clients, our software platform Blueprint, how do you evaluate your maturity, how do you understand you know who’s staying and who’s leaving. So all of those things are a good starting point to understand who may be facing barriers to belonging today and what are the consequences of those gaps. Then we need to start to think about, how do we close these gaps? So if we’re seeing that, you know, certain groups are feeling a lower sense of belonging, and we have a hypothesis, or we’re hearing from our data that maybe it has to do with our benefits, our parental leave, or do we – we don’t have, you know, mental health policies or transgender inclusive healthcare benefits, we can often look at benefits and policies. Most often, though – not most often, but equally important, if not more, is enabling people’s managers to create cultures of belonging within their own team. I think that DEI efforts have really underprioritized middle managers up to senior leaders as sort of the core predictors of whether people will feel a sense of belonging in their organization. It’s like the well-known trope of people don’t leave a company, they leave their manager. I think belonging is such a big piece of why that is. So one of the things that we’ve seen a lot of organizations doing, or that I predict is going to be just a growing trend, is more enablement for managers on how to create cultures of belonging, which, by the way, tends to be a lot of just, like, basic management practices like giving feedback, getting to know a little bit about what’s going on in people’s life outside of work, practicing what we call micro-inclusion, like making sure you pronounce people’s names correctly, understanding of someone out celebrating a holiday on a given day of a religion that, you know, you’re not as familiar with and asking them about it, checking in with people when things are going on outside of work that may impact them or communities that they’re a part of, you know. And so I think educating managers on all of those things, making sure that people are upskilled to do things like make more objective and data-driven people decisions, manage bias, give good feedback. So what I’m seeing a lot of this year is, like, manager-focused training on inclusive leadership skills. We also, at the beginning of this year, formally launched something that we had been doing, which is an inclusive leadership assessment. The managers can actually evaluate themselves and their behaviors to see what are the things I’m doing today, what are the things, where are my areas of strength, where are areas I need to grow, and then what are the specific behaviors that I can use to close those gaps? Because often I feel like inclusion feels very esoteric to people. They think it sounds like this nice, fluffy, fuzzy nice-to-have, and we want to make it very tangible, like, here’s literally what you can do differently in the way you run meetings. Here’s three things you can think about to do differently in the way you give feedback, or the way you talk about failure, whatever it might be. And so I think organizations will, will continue to invest in managers as this almost, like, unlock or this huge lever to creating more positive experiences for people in closing these belonging gaps.

JoDee 23:40
Yeah, I love it.

Susan 25:34
That’s terrific.

JoDee 27:10
And what brings you joy in the work that you do?

Joelle 27:15
I love getting to see… you know, we work, I work with organizations across so many industries, regions, cultures. I work with leaders of a wide range of identities, political backgrounds, perspectives, and I think what excites me the most is when we can figure out what is it that brings people to this topic. Like, what is, what is, what is someone’s personal connection to why this might be important. Because I – and maybe I’m just a relentless optimist – I do think the vast majority of people across backgrounds and identities think that diverse cultures are better cultures, think that fair processes are better processes, think that creating spaces where people feel a sense of belonging is better than not. Like, I actually think most people are values aligned on this, and where we run into trouble is just some of the specifics of implementation. So I really like to start with values and understand other people’s values. I learn a lot from that and I just, you know, I realize, oh, we’ve just really been exposed to different things, we’ve read different books, we’ve grown up in different environments, and that makes sense that we would see this particular topic differently. So I really like getting into that and then figuring out, like, where, where’s the connection point, what are our shared perspectives, and starting there right, starting from a place of what we already are aligned on. And that just, like, gets me so excited, because it makes me feel like this work is possible. Like, despite the backlash, which tends to focus on the areas that divide us, like, how do we focus on the areas that bring us together and build on that? Because I truly think there’s so much we can do just in that and I get super excited. The other thing that brings me joy is just thinking about the future of this work. Like, how do we continue to open the door wider for the current and future workforce so that everyone can build a better world, right? Which is what I think is possible when companies have a wider set of perspectives at the table, better culture. We can do – whatever it is that those companies do, we can do it better, and we can make a better future in the approach that we take. And so that’s what gets me excited. I mean, I you can probably tell, like, love my job and couldn’t imagine trading it for anything else, so everything I do gets me excited. But those are the two things that I think, like, really, like, help me get out of bed, you know, quickly in the morning.

JoDee 29:32
Yeah, that’s excellent.

Susan 29:34
And Joelle, it gives me joy that you’re out there doing the work that you’re doing, so thank you for that.

Joelle 29:39
Thank you. Yeah, it’s very…

Susan 29:40
It’s important work.

Joelle 29:42
It’s very fun, very motivating, and, you know, hard. I think often two steps forward, one step back – or 1.9 steps back, it can feel like, but I, you know, I’ve seen remarkable progress over the last decade that I’ve been doing this work. Might not always be at the pace that I wish that it were, but, but you know, progress isn’t always linear, and I think there’s a lot of really incredible work that a lot of people are doing right now, and it’s very exciting.

Susan 30:07
Well, I love that. How could our listeners reach you if they wanted to engage with you after today?

Joelle 30:12
Yeah. So to learn more about Paradigm, you can visit www.paradigmiq.com, where you can find information on our solutions, case studies, and research, including the latest report that I shared, which is called “Meeting the Demands of an Evolving Workforce,” and we have a contact button there. If you want to chat with our team, we will follow up with you. So we’d love to hear from folks.

Susan 30:33
That’s great, and we’ll put those in our show notes so it’ll be easy for our listeners to find. Hey, thank you so much for coming today. We really appreciate it.

Joelle 30:42
Thank you for having me. I am so, I’m so grateful. And you know, I think HR and people and talent teams are so core to this work, so I’m just so excited to hopefully bring some insights to your listeners. And yeah, thank you.

Susan 30:55
Thank you.

JoDee 30:55
Thank you.

Susan 30:57
For our listeners interested in hearing more, we have done eight other diversity-related episodes – and actually probably more than that, but eight of them that are probably highlights about truly on DEI – on the JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast in the past. JoDee, why don’t we share those?

JoDee 31:16
Yes, so in January 2018 we had one of “Women Winning in the Workplace.”

Susan 31:23
In August of 2018 we’ve got “Diversity in the Workplace.”

JoDee 31:27
In October, same year, “Recruiting and Retaining People with Disabilities.”

Susan 31:34
And in May of 2020, we launched “Diversity and Inclusion.”

JoDee 31:38
And then we did “Diversity Recruiting” in December 2020.

Susan 31:44
In June of 2021, we did an episode on “Ethics, Diversity, and High-Performing Cultures.”

JoDee 31:50
And then in January 2023 we had one on “Generational Diversity.”

Susan 31:58
And then finally, in July of 2023 we did one on “The Americans with Disabilities Act.” Listeners, you know that we think a… we spend a lot of time thinking about diversity, and so thank you for humoring us and hopefully listening to all of our episodes on this topic.

JoDee 32:12
Yes. Susan, we have a question today from one of our listeners. They said, “I am curious how you selected your theme music and if it was something created just for JoyPowered®. I always jam to it, and it’s a nice lift anytime to my day.” What a nice thing to say, right?

Susan 32:35
I really love that. You know, I love the start of our show too, that I start to jam to it too. So thank you. Here’s where it came from. JoDee and I did not know, but our wonderful producer, Emily, came to our rescue to answer this question. It came from Audio Jungle, and we will put a link to Audio Jungle in our show notes today in case any of you want to visit it or get some theme music. Audio Jungle is a website where they have royalty-free music from independent creators. They have a featured song – or at least they used to – every month that you could get for free. Emily says we lucked out in that the one that we selected was a free one that month, and we really liked it. And in fact, it has continued all of these years to be the start of our shows.

JoDee 33:21
Yes, love it.

Susan 33:23
It’s time for in the news. USA Today had an article on March 10, 2024 by James Powell and Bailey Schultz entitled “Report: Workers Living Further from Employers.” Stanford University and a company named Gusto conducted a study that found in pre-pandemic 2019 the mean distance – meaning the average distance – from home to work was 10 miles, and then by 2023 it had increased to 27 miles. And in fact, 5.5% of employees now live over 50 miles away from their employer.

JoDee 34:01
Yeah.

Susan 34:02
That’s huge. JoDee, do you remember a time when screening job candidates, you would think about how long of a commute they would have, and we might pass on someone who we felt lived too far away?

JoDee 34:14
100%.

Susan 34:15
Yeah. We, when I was working in HR for a bank we certainly did, because as we filled jobs in branches of the bank or operational centers, we wanted to make sure that the employees lived close to the branch or the ops center so that they could make it in in any type of weather. And we didn’t want someone who might leave us if they could find a job closer to home, so we thought we could, if we hired somebody that lived close to us, not only would they be good for the business, but they’d be more likely to stay with us. We also thought that there was value in living in the community that they served, so we thought they’d have deeper and stronger relationships with customers. They might see customers the grocery store and other things. So for us, where they lived did matter back in the early days.

JoDee 35:01
Right.

Susan 35:02
Now, I recognize there are a lot, many jobs that need to be done in person, here we are in 2024, like branch banking, retail store service, factory production, etc., but taking the time to figure out how we as employers can be as flexible as possible with the days that people work, the locations that they work, and the hours that they work, and not dictating “you must live close to the office” may give employers that competitive edge that they need in recruiting and retaining talent. Times have changed.

JoDee 35:35
Absolutely, you know, and I think, what if you had to go to the office five days a week and, say, drive 20 miles? That’s a big difference from maybe having to go into the office one or two days a week, right? Which…

Susan 35:51
Absolutely.

JoDee 35:52
…people don’t mind.

Susan 35:53
Yeah, they can do that. But yeah, I just, I think that the success of employers and their talent attraction and retention is really tied to how flexible we can be.

JoDee 36:05
Absolutely. Well, thanks for listening today and make it a JoyPowered® day.

Susan 36:12
Thank you.

JoDee 36:13
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