088 – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Your Non-Profit with Miranda McKie

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the interconnection between technology and human capital. You’re going to find out all kinds of awesome stuff.

Welcome to the Non-profit Digital Success podcast. I’m your host, David. In this episode, we’re going to be talking with Miranda McKie.

Miranda is a leader in analytics, focusing on breaking down barriers with underrepresented groups, recognized with the 2020 Catalyst Canada Emerging Leader Award. That’s a mouthful. Co-founded Young Women in Business in Toronto (Go Toronto, yeah!) and currently teaching people analytics at Canadian universities.

Super excited to have you here so you can share your expertise. Welcome, Miranda.

Miranda McKie: Thank you so much for having me today.

David Pisarek: Thanks for being here. Looking forward to this conversation.

Teams, right? It’s really all about teams. How can leverage and work with and improve and build upon the people that we have in our teams, whether you’re a team of one, how do you manage and level up yourself, or you’re a team of 30 or 40? Where do we start? How do we start thinking about this?

Miranda McKie: Oh, great question.

In terms of trying to get the most out of your team, really our space is in the space of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and how we can support organizations, essentially establish stronger culture and workplace culture, truly to get the most out of their people so that they’re able to be more productive, serve their customers, serve their community better.

That really ties into that team space. As we’re thinking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, I almost challenge people to think about it differently than just a nice thing to do, but as a smart business objective to really support and enable your teams to do better for whether it’s your clients, the products that you’re creating can really help enable and establish stronger strategic business objectives.

David Pisarek: Let’s level the playing field here for a moment. You’re talking about inclusion. Let’s define that. What is inclusion to you?

Miranda McKie: Well, I would say there’s inclusion, but it wraps around the concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion. To explain that in more detail, diversity is really referring to everything that makes us human. Often in the media, diversity, I think, has gone through a little bit of a bad light due to sensationalization of the topic.

Often when we talk about concepts of diversity, it’s primarily related to maybe race, maybe to gender identity, as opposed to all the other things that make us unique.

I always give the example in 1989, Kimberly Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality, which refers to essentially all of the things that make us unique in how as a woman, as a woman of colour, I have very different experiences than maybe someone that’s just a woman or identifies as just a woman or a woman that’s a caregiver.

When we’re talking about the concept of diversity, especially in the business sense, it’s truly about socioeconomic status, education, age, all of those different things that make us unique.

When we talk about equity, that’s really referring to how do we leverage the playing field in businesses so all of those diverse demographics actually have opportunity to succeed equally within the organization.

Promotions are equal, recruitment is equal, onboarding and professional development experiences are equal. Then when we’re talking about inclusion, after we have diversity and equity in that space, how do we ensure that all of those people within our organization feel valued, feel comfortable in the challenge and status quo and then their ideas are actually welcomed within the organization? I always like to group those three together into what we know as diversity, equity, and inclusion.

David Pisarek: People are people, humans are humans. Everybody should have the same opportunities and be eligible potentially for those opportunities based on their skill set.

Let’s get the right people in the right jobs that will get them the most experience in the role, use their experience in the role to help the organization or help the team, and ultimately grow together and do more better stuff together.

When we think about data and you think about analytics, can we leverage that to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Miranda McKie: Yeah, great question.

It’s exactly as you were saying before, right? I think of diversity, equity, and inclusion as almost like a shared value model.

You can do good, and also doing good can support financial outcomes and business objectives, and those pieces go so closely together. That’s why the investment in data is so important.

Often when we go into organizations, they say, “Oh, we want to do diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Why? “We don’t know. It’s the right thing to do.” You’re like, “That’s great. I’m glad you’re invested in it from that perspective.”

But what strategic business outcomes are you trying to drive with diversity, equity, and inclusion? Then where are the challenges that you’re experiencing in not being able to drive those strategic business objectives? That’s where data comes into play.

If we don’t really understand the root cause of a challenge within our organization, if there’s maybe regular demographics that we’re just assuming are having struggles within the organization, but that’s not validated, we’re not able to dive into the actual challenge, we’re not going to be able to solve the problem.

That’s where data comes in. So many organizations today are starting to look at data. Some are still really afraid of data, but it is important when we’re talking about diversity inclusion, that we’re looking at our HR data across what we would call the employee life cycle.

So all the way from recruitment to offboarding, that we’re looking at doing things like sentiment surveys and engagement surveys to understand where those gaps are always looking at how do we align those two strategic outcomes and business outcomes.

Do we notice that our customer success department is very, very unhappy for whatever reason? How is that going to impact how they’re servicing our customers? Do we notice that our products teams have a lack of diversity? How is that going to impact business outcomes when we’re trying to innovate and develop unique products to serve the market? Bringing that together is truly what makes DEI sustainable.

Then the data can truly help you drive that and understand those facts going forward.

David Pisarek: Yeah, I think really, ultimately, I think it’s really about making sure that people are happy, that they feel invested, that they care about the organization. If you have employees that are the term that’s been thrown around over the last year, is quite quitting.

They’re putting in… Not that we need everybody to go way above and beyond all the time, but if you’re in a client-facing area, if you’re a non-profit, I don’t know, let’s say you’re at a hospital and you’re working that front desk, welcoming people coming in, or you’re the one answering the phone, helping people.

If they’re not engaged, if they’re not happy, if they don’t feel valued as a person, deep down, it’s going to affect everything. It’s going to impact your organization. Either fewer people are going to come to a program, an event, whatever, or they’re just going to be turned off.

Let’s face it, there are hundreds, if not more organizations that are doing the same thing that you are. They’re going to leave.

Miranda McKie: Exactly. You bring up a great point.

People are companies and organizations and non for profit’s greatest asset. We need to invest in our people and make sure, exactly to your point, that they are happy that they’re invested in their job because at the end of the day, those are the faces of the organization.

If they are not bringing 100% of themselves to work, that in turn is just going to impact your business, your goals, what you’re trying to achieve as an organization.

When we have that approach coming back to that shared value model, doing good, supporting employees, making them feel welcomed and valued, in turn, helps to drive some of those that you may have as an organization.

David Pisarek: To your point, you mentioned that bringing themselves 100% to work. I don’t think (Maybe I’m wrong. Correct me here), I think people bring themselves like 80% to work.

There’s all the baggage. If you’ve got children, if you’ve got a parent that’s elderly, if you couldn’t sleep last night because the neighbor’s dog in the apartment was barking all night, whatever it happens, there’s things that affect us.

Let’s be real about this. We are all people. There’s all kinds of, I’m not going to use the word, but stuff going on in our lives, and it affects us in one way or another. We need to honour that.

I guess that’s probably the right- We need to respect that that’s something that happened. Do you have any thoughts in terms of what organizations can do to help people overcome that, deal with it, or I don’t know.

Miranda McKie: Yeah, for sure. That’s a great point.

What employee truly brings themselves every single day 100%. I think what you see is more… Okay, maybe yourself. But what you see is more is those ups and flows, where some days maybe it’s 120% and you get the most out of that employee, or other days maybe it’s more of a 60%.

When we’re thinking about concepts of DEI, it’s almost a great point of how do we level that. If we have an employee, for example, that is a caregiver and having challenges at home.

Children are really excited that day in their day care and all of those things that are going on that are maybe impacting their way to bring themselves to work.

How do we as an organization think through that so we can mitigate that and make their lives… Whether it’s at work or with different policies, to support them better so that they can start bringing more of themselves to work?

For example, why flexible working arrangements are so helpful for caregivers, as opposed to having them rush out to get their kids to school, somehow make pick up and drop off or stressing about that all day, as opposed to maybe you can just work from home today and be able to handle that.

You may get them for 6 hours as opposed to those 8, but those 6 hours may be more productive than those 8. It’s making those concessions as an employer and really, what I always say is, being as empathetic as possible and trying to understand the unique needs of an individual and supporting them in that way to truly, again, as you’re saying, try and get them up and be bringing as much as possible to work.

David Pisarek: Yeah, I think as an employer or manager or director, whatever your level is in the organization, it doesn’t lay solely on you.

Maybe this part does, but you need to establish an open communication, open relationship, open thoughts and ideas so that the people you work with, whether they’re employees or they’re on the same level or above, there’s a comfort level and say, “You know what?” Allowing them the opportunity to come and talk to you.

To say, “What’s going on in my life? I need to take a couple of days” or “I need to take an hour. You know what? I’ve got some phone calls. I need to make it lunch, so I’m going to take an extra,” right? Let’s be accommodating.

We’ve all been in positions, whether it was a teenager, like your first job or in your 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, where life happens. It just does.

Miranda McKie: Exactly. Yeah.

You bring up the concept of psychological safety, where employees feel comfortable to be able to express what’s going on, to be authentic in their day-to-day and to share some of those challenges. Then it goes back, right? When you do that, when you create that psychologically safe environment for employees to create a culture of empathy, that does also amazing things.

It helps to reduce turnover at your organization. It helps to keep talent at your organization. It helps to make sure that they’re or support them and be more productive in their roles.

Again, there’s just so much value in creating that culture within the organization. As you’re saying, it doesn’t just rely on that people manager. I would say it’s more institutional than that.

How does the organization itself start to create that psychological safety? What are some of the processes, the policies, the development training for leaders within the organization to create that environment? It’s so important that organizations holistically invest in that.

David Pisarek: That’s great. I think people can probably relate a lot to, “You know what? There was that time, 14 years ago, where my car broke down and my boss was just really mean and wouldn’t let me take an hour off to go whatever.” Stuff happens.

A little story popped up on my Facebook feed, and I think it’s very telling of the reality of workforces. The posting was “My coworker died two days ago, and HR is in their office emptying out their desk and talking about posting a new post to hire a replacement. But there’s a family somewhere grieving,” Right? Don’t be putting your work life ahead of your personal life.

A lot of us, our entire personality is wrapped up in the work that we do. If we’re not doing that work, who are we? Miranda, what are some pitfalls that as a non-profit or charity, regardless of the size, we can avoid in terms of DEI?

Miranda McKie: Yeah, for sure.

There’s so many things, and every organization is unique. I always want to preface with that. Just because one organization has a pitfall doesn’t mean that that will apply your organization because just like people are unique, so are businesses. They have different historical contexts, different challenges that make them unique.

But the one thing I always say is it’s important, especially if you’re a non-profit executive director, remembering that an employee, they’ll be committed to the work.

You can get that purpose-driven work from them, but they’re probably not going to work as hard as someone who owns a business and is reaping all the benefits from the business, or maybe as hard as that executive director that has that title.

It’s It’s important to remember that people are people, and at the end of the day, they’re working in a job for compensation. It’s important to always ground ourselves on that, that there’s only so much that we can be asking for an employee.

We don’t want them to give up their lives for their job. On someone’s deathbed, I don’t think anyone says, “Wow, I really wish I worked more.” Usually, it’s, “I really wish I spent more time with my family, my friends, and took care of my health.”

It’s important to have that lens as an employer when you’re working with employees and showing that you respect who they are, you respect their time, and the things that they care about, close to always just thinking they’re here to deliver from a productivity standpoint.

When you have that level of empathy for an employee and your understanding what motivates them and what their goals are, I think that’s really when you start to create a culture where, one, they feel safe, they respect you, they respect the business, they’re probably going to support your clients a lot more because there’s that mutual respect there.

David Pisarek: I think that’s really valid. Some people money is a motivator.

Some people it’s creating change is a motivator. Some people it’s helping other people.

Understanding each employee, everybody is unique, and what drives them will help you be a better leader. It’ll help you engage them in different ways.

We started off talking about technology, and we haven’t really talked about that at all in any of this yet. Let’s dive into that.

What is some data? What is some technology that could be used to help make these informed type of decisions?

Miranda McKie: Yeah, great question.

As I mentioned earlier, there’s something that we call an employee life cycle. Depending on the size of your organization, you may have technology in place to support every area of the employee life cycle, or you may not have anything.

Just to highlight what that is. When we talk about the employee life cycle, that’s everything from your recruitment, onboarding, professional development, retention and recognition, and then offboarding.

Some organizations will actually have systems in place across all of those areas so that they can collect data on employees and essentially have a full view of their employee life cycle and understand all of the things that motivate them to better support them.

Especially in the not-for-profit world, just to add into some of that other technology piece, there’s, again, as we were mentioning earlier, around sentiment surveys to understand how employees are feeling.

Then even there’s the piece around understanding the community that you serve. Especially in the non-profit piece, when we truly want to make decisions about our people, it’s important to truly understand our employees and the community.

Asking ourselves questions, “Does our non-profit represent the community that we serve? Are they able to actually make informed decisions decisions on the community that they serve?

Do our employees understand our service offerings and are able to innovate and generate service offerings for the community that they serve?” As we’re thinking through those things, that’s really how data plays a role in that.

Looking at where are there opportunities for our staff to get more support and upskilling so that we can now address some of those community-related challenges that we’re experiencing.

Where are we noticing that maybe retention or performance is low from what we’re looking at from the data? What can we do to essentially support that? Where do we notice maybe gaps in our recruitment pipeline? Maybe we aren’t representing the community that we serve and what recruitment sources should we be looking at to bring in new talent to support the community?

Again, especially in the not-for-profit space, since so much of the work that we do is supporting the community, it is important that we bring that data together.

We aren’t just looking at data to look at it, but again, driving back some of those strategic outcomes within the organization.

David Pisarek: Are there any software platforms that you would recommend?

Miranda McKie: So many. There’s so many that it’s actually hard to recommend because, again, organizations have their unique needs. As we talk about HR, though, I can talk about the type of technology.

Some organizations will have what we call an HRIS system, which is a Human Resources Information System, which is essentially a tool for non-profits to collect all of the information about employees, understand everything from when they took vacation to when they took sick days to how quickly are they being promoted within the organization.

Then there’s what we call ATS systems (Applicant Tracking System) which allows you to track different people that are applying for your job and candidates. Now so much more information has become available in these ATSs where you can collect everything from diversity metrics to looking at recruitment sources, how long is it taking you to fill a position. Then there’s on the professional development, we have learning management system.

Can look at “What training are my employees taking? Are they performing well when they’re taking training?” Then you have performance management systems. We’ll track everything from performance reviews to 360 reviews to employees’ goals.

Then even on the other side of the thing, there’s some of the offboarding pieces where now there’s systems in place to do things like exit and to views.

Are there specific demographics that are leading at higher rate? Why is that happening? And tying into that as well so you can have a full view of the employee life cycle.

But within those categories, there has to be hundreds of different tools and systems that you can choose from.

David Pisarek: It just looks like going in and buying a car, right? You go to the dealership and then there’s the plethora of options that they have there, and then you narrow it down to a specific one that you want, and then you have different levels of that one, Marie.

Miranda McKie: Exactly.

That’s a good analogy of buying a car. Usually, what I recommend to non-for-profits or any organization when you’re going through that process to look through a system, call it conducting a vendor assessment.

That’s where you want to define, “What are my requirements? What am I trying to get out of these different systems?” The budget, all of those different pieces, just like buying a car and then going to those vendors and seeing how they meet those requirements.

Again, you can truly make sure that the vendor that you’re selecting is aligned with those organizational goals as opposed to just picking something right off the shelf because you heard it on a podcast.

David Pisarek: Or you’re flipping through Instagram, Facebook, and you see an ad. Just because you see the ad, it just means that they’re targeting you. They know what your preferences are. They know what you’re thinking about.

They know what you’re looking for. We’ve done this with some of our clients where we’d put basically a feature matrix together. To get to the next level, we really need to be thinking in this way. Let’s start looking at one type of system.

What is it that you’re looking to do? Create that going down. Then you basically create a chart. It could be a spreadsheet, whatever you want, all the different product names, then tick boxes in terms of which one could do which, whatever, and then whichever one fits your budget and does the most stuff. Book a demo. Don’t go and buy it. Just book a demo.

Miranda McKie: Yeah, exactly. Go for the test drive.

David Pisarek: In terms of these systems, you mentioned five different ones. Is there one that you think an organization should start with first?

Miranda McKie: Depending, again, on the size of your organization, but starting with an HRIS system is usually great.

Depending on how often you’re recruiting, looking at an ETS solution as it may be a quick follow. Then those would probably be the two ones that you would really want to focus on. The other ones you can manage for a smaller organization without those systems in place. But HRISs and ATSs just really help you do things more efficiently.

When we were talking about the DEI, consultants use this term all the time, but we want to make sure that we’re creating sustainable initiatives. Again, consultants always use the three-pronged approach from people, process, and technology.

As you’re implementing DEI initiatives, we want to think, “What do we need to do from a people perspective to make this sustainable?” Maybe that’s things like training or hiring the right people.

What do we need to do from a process perspective? Maybe that’s addressing some of those institutional barriers that may exist.

Then, of course, “What do we need to from a technology perspective, to keep this sustainable and being able to maintain whatever we’re doing?” Technology does play a huge role in DEI.

David Pisarek: I love that you just mentioned people process a technology.

I really do think, correct me if I’m wrong here, you need to start with the process first. What is it that you want to do? What is it that you want to achieve?

Then find the people that can fulfill that, that can deliver on that, and then look at technology and different platforms or things to optimize, to stream timeline to make things go smoother, faster, better, whatever that happens to be. Is that your opinion as well?

Miranda McKie: Yeah, exactly. It is. It’s really those three pieces.

Again, it depends on your organization. I always like to just caveat with that. Maybe you have the process and no people, so you may be starting next with people. But whatever it is, it’s looking at those three areas. So yes, I agree.

David Pisarek: Awesome.

Miranda, this has been so great having you here. I’m going to go back and chat with my team and have some conversations internally based on some of the stuff that we spoke today.

With that in mind, I’d like on my episodes to issue a challenge to people that are listening. Anything come to mind that you want to tell people, “Hey, do this in the next, I don’t know, two days, three days, 10 minutes after listening to this episode?”

Miranda McKie: For sure.

I would say one of the challenges I have for, I guess, listeners is to look at your organization and see what data can you today get access to to learn a bit more about your people.

Even if it’s as simple as understanding headcount over time or promotions over time, I encourage you to look at that data and start thinking through some use cases on how you can leverage that data to start understanding your workforce better to, again, support some of those strategic priorities that you have.

David Pisarek: Well, I think that’s really great, Miranda.

If anybody wants to get in touch with you, what do they need to do?

Miranda McKie: Yeah, for sure.

Well, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. My name, again, is Miranda McKie.

You can go to our website as well at mckieconsultants.com. I’ll even be so bold as to lead my email, which is [email protected].

David Pisarek: It’s amazing.

If you want any of the information and stuff that we talked about, just head over to our podcast page at nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com. Click on this episode for all the details.

Until next time, keep on being successful.