The Pay Gap Bot That Rocked IWD

International Women's Day can be a drag. Each year, we watch as the corporate world floods social media with supportive statements and images of women, while in the real world, we continue to see systemic disparity for women in the workplace, particularly when we look at the intersection of race and gender. This year, however, we were treated to a glorious Twitter bot - one that retweeted companies' IWD posts along with the median gender pay gap within their organizations. We got to speak with Francesca Lawson, freelance copywriter, social media manager, and co-creator of the Pay Gap Bot. Together we discuss corporate gender parity theater and the data that can help us see the current state of things (as well as what's still missing). Don't miss this fantastic episode!

To learn more about Francesca's work, visit www.francescalawson.com.

Transcript below:

Erica D'Eramo 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Two Piers Podcast. This is season three, episode two and today we have another great guest on the podcast. Her name is Francesca Lawson, and she's joining us from the UK. She's a freelance copywriter, a social media manager and the co-creator of the Pay Gap Bot, which many of us took notice of on International Women's Day this year, and it caused quite the conversation.

So welcome Francesca, thank you so much for taking the time to join us, especially when it's probably a quite busy time for you.

Francesca Lawson 0:50

But that was not a problem and thank you for having me on. You know, I really, really loves to tell you a bit more about about the Pay Gap Bot, how it all came about. I'm really pleased that you found it useful and interesting and on International Women's Day.

Erica D'Eramo 1:10

Yeah, I was telling a mutual acquaintance of ours before I knew she was a mutual acquaintance, that for me, International Women's Day can just be really tough because like my lived experience, and the lived experience of many of my clients is that we have not made as much ground as we would like to in terms of gender equity, particularly in the workplace. So when you see this kind of bow wave of posts from companies talking about how wonderful the women in their entities are and how much progress we've made, it just sort of rings a bit hollow. And so, International Women's Day can kind of be a downer for me because it's just that dichotomy between what I see in reality and then what I'm seeing on these externally facing brands. Your project was one of the highlights for me of International Women's Day where I actually saw it and thought like, yes, this is the real deal. This is shining the light on real data that exists that's being collected. So, tell me a little bit about how did you guys come to come to think of this idea? Put it in action?

Francesca Lawson 2:29

Yeah, so, I felt a lot of the same things that you did around International Women's Day, and especially because, you know, I'm in the sort of marketing and communications space myself. I have been in that unfortunate position of having to press publish on things which I know not to be true. You know, I've sat in meetings where we've been discussing, you know, what we're going to do for International Women's Day? How are we going to show our support for black lives matter? Shall we change our logo to a pride flag for Pride Month? And I've made myself really quite unpopular by trying to challenge that and ask the questions about like, okay, well, why do we want to communicate that? What are we doing behind the scenes that sort of in's us a place in that conversation? And of course, that's not what people want to hear. They want to hear, like, oh, great idea, you know, let's push out some really lovely messages, let's show our support and then, you know, it just covers up any sort of need to do the real work and behind the scenes to improve the lives of marginalized people within their organization, for example. So yeah, my sort of inspiration for wanting to create something like this was to put the data in the spotlight so that people can kind of see, you know, see the truth, understand that behind the sort of smiling photoshoot, and the kind of lunches and the webinars that there's real work still to be done. We want to sort of keep the focus on that real work that's to be done rather than just these kind of performative gestures.

Erica D'Eramo 4:19

Yeah. I almost am of two minds sometimes when it comes to the aspirational element of some of this that, like I do believe that if you can see it, you can be it and showing photos of people who wouldn't normally picture working in those environments can be an inspiration to that next generation and I think that that's important. And also, I'm not so sure that that's really the intention behind so much of this. And I think that a lot of times companies are trying to gain credit that they haven't quite earned yet. So, my own kind of humorous anecdote to that was when I worked on a facility where there were, I don't know, like, a little over 170 of us at a time. I was generally one of one or two women on the boat at any given time, or on the facility. And whenever the regional photographer would come out with like leadership, it was like I had a tail because they would be trailing me just like taking photos all the time. You know, you're not in your like best, you're in coveralls like, you know, it's, you're working offshore. So I finally had to stop and I actually really enjoyed working with a photographer, he was a great guy. But I had to explain to him like, I am not gonna let you take any more photos of me because these photos end up being used in our sustainability report or in internal or external marketing, that portrays that we have all these women working out here, when really, if you took a picture of the whole crew, including me, it would be quite shocking how few women there are. Yeah, I'm consistently hearing about how I got my position because I was a woman, I got my position because our number one priority was to promote women, because we're seeing all these photos, right and it's giving people the feeling that we've made so much more progress than we actually had. So there was actually a lot of backlash that wasn't even earned backlash. I kind of had to put a stop to it, I was like, I'm really sorry, but you can't take my photo anymore. It's like it doesn't align with what my real actual experiences. So when I see these International Women's Day, kind of posts, I just sort of, I always wonder like, what is the rest of the org look like behind this photo? Like behind this one woman? How many women? Did they leave behind the scenes? Like how many people didn't make it to this photo? So yeah, what are your thoughts?

Francesca Lawson 7:11

Absolutely. It's like, you know it's all about sort of, like accountability and honesty and fall for me. I just wonder sort of how the women that I kind of call for these photo shoots feel like, one day a year, the company wants to take notice of them? And what about all the rest and is my concern? I think fortunately, I've not been in that position myself, where I've been sort of like rolled out to for the cameras and for them to kind of promote themselves on the equality angle. I think that fortunately, there's the sufficient other women at my workplaces that they've ended up with that job. But then as well, you've got to wonder about who were the women that aren't in the photograph? Are we kind of just picking off one women of every major ethnicity to make us look like we're really good? And anti racism as well. Yeah, you just think, where are the rest? How do they feel about how their images are being used? Because, I think what it all comes back to for me is you want to use pictures of women for promotional reasons without actually seeing what challenges that they face, what the barriers are to their success in your organization and working towards removing them.

Erica D'Eramo 8:53

Yeah. So for all the people who have faced barriers along the way that then see these gleaming photos of the success stories, it almost sends a message of look, it's possible, like if you just try hard enough, because the message is always look, this woman, she tried really hard and she was really smart and she overcame racism, and she overcame poverty. And she overcame this and that and look at how successful she's been. So if you are just as tough or if you are just as resilient you also could be here too. It puts that little shine on it instead of taking the onus for some of these systemic inequalities back to the source, which is the entities that continuously perpetuate them.

Francesca Lawson 9:49

Yeah, that's a really interesting point. Because it is often that we talk about inspirational women and it's just like, why do we always have to be inspirational? Why can't we just exist and get on with our lives without sort of fear of like harassment either at work or in the street, and, you know, getting paid fairly for the value that we bring. Those things shouldn't be inspirational, they should be just sort of standard.

Erica D'Eramo 10:26

Right?

Francesca Lawson 10:27

Yeah. It's like, from now, when we talk about sort of these inspirational women it's like you say, it's sort of ignores the issues that they've had to kind of fight through, or potentially things that they've had to give up. Like a lot of women still have to make that choice between sort of career and family. And so, like, for financial reasons, and that's not inspirational to me if you know, okay, yeah, we've got a woman CEO, but you know, she's actually been unable to do something that she really wanted, which is sort of have a family. You know, that's not inspirational to me because it's not the full picture.

Erica D'Eramo 11:17

No, and I think that especially, so coming from engineering for me sometimes I just end up taking this very pragmatic view of like, okay, cool, you found that one person that defied the odds and put a spotlight on them, but, statistically speaking, if we look at the statistics, they are not representative of what you would consider equitable or fair if we look across the spectrum. So, we know that to be true, we know what would look representative. So what are the underlying causes, and then just go try to fix those underlying causes? These are symptoms. If you see your diversity and inclusion numbers or just your diversity numbers, not looking the way you would expect and they don't look representative of the population you're pulling from, or operating in, that would be a symptom. That's like, in and of itself, isn't the goal. Diversity in and of itself, like, sure that would represent if you had diversity, that would mean that people were being treated equitably, that you probably didn't have discrimination in your recruitment or in your promotion systems, but it's still just a symptom in and amongst many other symptoms, right? So, that I think gets really obscured when we just use these talking points and we find a single data point or a single human being that we can kind of shine a spotlight on and say like, but look, she did it, so you can too. Okay, cool, but like 99% of the other people who were in those circumstances did not and is that really what we want? Is that really gonna lead to the outcomes we want?

Francesca Lawson 13:03

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting point that you make about representation, because it's like even if you sort of put more like a wider range of people into those roles in your organization, if you sort of achieve representation, both in terms of like, race, gender, disability, etc. It's no use of just having representation, if the systems that created the inequalities are still in place, you know, there's work to be done on sort of like policy level and to sort of make sure that it's actually a place where people can thrive not just you put people in to makeup your diversity numbers and then wonder why they're leaving on mass or they're not advancing in their careers, and because, you know, under certain themes that are within the control of individual organizations that they can do so like they are in control of what they pay, for instance, and, you know, the, one of the kind of...

Erica D'Eramo 14:09

They would lead you to believe that they're not, by the way.

Francesca Lawson 14:12

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 14:12

Like, oh, but this is market or this is like what she made coming in, right? So like, we're gonna perpetuate that inequality. Yeah. Sorry.

Francesca Lawson 14:19

It's like one of the things that we've heard since we've had the pay gap bot life is like from airlines, for instance, the people like to make the excuse that pilots are predominantly men and they have the highest wages in the organization. Whereas the more service base roles, the cabin crew, the contact centers, they're predominantly female and they're sort of lower wage jobs. But then my question is, well, I'm not disputing that pilots should be paid generously. But why aren't the cabin crew in the contact center teams also paid generously...

Erica D'Eramo 15:02

Why aren't there more female pilots? Like, why?

Francesca Lawson 15:05

Oh totally, yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 15:06

Like what's happening in the recruitment system? Or what's happening in the development system? Like? I think so often, if we just take a snapshot at a certain period of time we can alleviate ourselves of the guilt about what we inherited, but then not do anything to actually try to change that. Is it right that pilots are generally mostly male? Just like engineers, you hear the same thing from the energy industry, right? Often they'll see the pay gap and explain it away that universities are graduating mostly men in these engineering programs and they tend to make more money than HR or like some of the support staff or the fields that tend to be more highly populated with women. Okay, well, we could probably ask why we're devaluing certain professions, which we know, as soon as those professions become more populated with women, they get devalued, like we've seen this time and again, so it's kind of chicken and egg. But also, what are we doing to make sure that women are accessing opportunities in engineering? Are you going into the universities and doing programs to show that these can be wonderful and successful careers for women? Or are you going into the middle schools and showing young girls that they can have a career in engineering? And why is all your support staff women? Why are there no male admins? Like, I just don't understand some of this. So I agree, you get that initial pushback against the data and it almost feels a motive sometimes when it's like, well, yeah, but okay, and then what? Like, and now what are we saying that we're just happy for this pay gap to persist for eternity? Or are we actually going to go and look at the root causes?

Francesca Lawson 17:11

Yeah, that's it, it's like, it's got to be sort of like a holistic solution, if you will. How can we create the conditions in the workplace where, so that, you know, women can thrive? Likewise, how do we create the circumstances in the education system, which mean this sort of, I guess, the science engineering kind of pathways are more appealing to girls. And then also in the home as well, what sort of influences are going on in the home, which may be reinforced stereotypes? And likewise, when we get to like domestic labor as well, how is that being split? Because, often, if there's sort of a better gender balance, in terms of the tasks in the home, then that kind of gives a better gender balance in sort of work as well.

Erica D'Eramo 18:13

Yep. Yeah, that's one of the reasons that we saw when COVID hit, that we lost like 30 years worth of progress towards equality in the workplace in terms of gender roles, because the responsibilities within the home just became so much more onerous when there wasn't access to childcare outside the home when there wasn't access to school. We did see that still, that is falling to the women even, I think the data showed that even regardless of if the woman in the household, and this is in like a household with a heterosexual, like male, female couple, that even in where the women was making more money, they still would be the one to have to make sacrifices in terms of career during COVID to help out with home responsibilities. So yeah, in that light, I think that there's probably some limitations on what a company can do. But also, I think it doesn't let it doesn't let companies off the hook, right?

Francesca Lawson 19:27

I mean, yeah, definitely no, I think...

Erica D'Eramo 19:29

All of the above.

Francesca Lawson 19:31

Yeah, that's it. It's like it's quite a knotty issue with several different contributing factors and so I think companies need to take responsibility for their part. They can't wait for the other parts that they're not responsible for to fix it for them. They can't wait for or they shouldn't wait for, say like governments to tell them what to do. They should be taking steps to improve the lives of all marginalized people within their organization now, and so that, over time, we are making genuine steps towards parity, rather than just sort of one post a year for like, kind of celebrating and empowering women while actually, life on the ground is much more difficult.

Erica D'Eramo 20:30

Yeah. So the piece around the government involvement is an interesting one, because we, I don't think, would be able to do the same pay gap bot necessarily, if it weren't, you know, like, here in the US, we don't collect the same pay gap data that the UK does. Do you have any other history on that? I was working a UK job at the time that that happened, I just remember a lot of noise around it and companies being like this data is not gonna be representative, this is going to be really onerous. But I'm interested, like, from your perspective, how has that gone? What's the history?

Francesca Lawson 21:11

Soyeah, first year that it launched was 2017 and so this year, we're now on the fifth year of data. The purpose of it was the increased transparency will kind of be the instigator of some change. Unfortunately, I don't think that that's quite works out the case, we do have five years worth of data. While some individual companies have shown an improvement, there's also a fair few that have got worse. I think in the latest data set for the UK, 77% of companies reported that women's average earnings were less than men's. So like five years into this requirement, I would have expected it to be a lot less than three quarters of companies that have a gender pay gap. So yeah, I think that the reporting requirement is a good thing to be able to quantify the problem and be able to kind of get an idea of kind of where it lies. But I don't think that it's done enough to force companies to actually take responsibility for their paths in creating this gap. Their data gets published on the government site, but they don't have to publish any sort of action plan along with that. So they're not held accountable for, say if they said, right, well, we've got a gender pay gap of 15% so therefore, we're going to raise salaries across the board and we're going to introduce better pay parental leave policies. There's no sort of, they don't have to declare that and then follow up next year with oh, yeah, we did this and this was the effect. So I think that the limitation of the data is that it is literally just sort of that one data point, the gap between the median women's earnings and the medium men's earnings. It's a good indicator of sort of where the problems might lie. But then it's not pushing them towards actually fixing them enough.

Erica D'Eramo 23:54

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, because a median pay gap is again, like a symptom, right?

Francesca Lawson 24:00

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 24:01

And the underlying root cause of that pay gap could exist in a variety of places.

Francesca Lawson 24:06

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 24:07

And so it's just like a little blinking light that says you need to go look here. Something isn't operating the way it should be.

Francesca Lawson 24:16

Check engine.

Erica D'Eramo 24:17

Yeah, check engine like, oh, well, this could be a big problem or it could be a little problem. Yeah, I often draw a comparison between diversity metrics or demographic metrics and the world of safety because that's kind of where I came up through. And if you see safety numbers going south, if your safety numbers don't look the way you would expect them to or want them to look, it's not like you can just snap your fingers and say like, okay, people stop slamming your hands in doors. Stop having loss of primary containment. Stop doing those things you have to go digging to find out what's happening in the system. But generally, if you see safety numbers that are off the mark, that means that there's a larger, operational issue that's underlying it. You are then wondering, well, what are we losing in terms of efficiency, right? If we're not operating with operational discipline, if we don't have the fundamentals to keep people safe, we don't have the fundamentals to operate efficiently either. I feel like my head goes to the same place when we talk about diversity metrics or pay gap metrics, that this is a blinking indicator to us that something isn't operating the way it should, that perhaps we're not accessing talent as efficiently as we could be, we're not developing talent as efficiently as we could be. We're not gaining the full perspective of some of the brightest minds in the organization and then compensating them fairly. So those are all like fundamental things that influence the performance of a business. As a leader in that organization or as an investor in that organization, I would want to see that, at least understood and then addressed. That's my...

Francesca Lawson 26:16

Yeah, yeah, it's totally, I think there's like an old saying, that springs to mind about like, an, like a happy employee being a productive employee. And so it's like, if you're not sort of nurturing your talent and trying to make their lives at your organization, as sort of valuable and as kind of smooth as possible, then, you lose people, you limit their progression and they check out, that's just what happens. I've been in that situation before, where you just start to get frustrated when you get continually kicked back at work and then you're not productive, you're not happy, you kind of drag down the morale of the entire team. So yeah, I think that it's such an obvious thing that there is a connection between efficiency, productivity, and ultimately, kind of profit and the wellbeing and safety of your employees.

Erica D'Eramo 27:30

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think that's wherever that underlying issue is, I remember asking, seeing some pay gap data for the organization I was working in that showed that people within the same band, there was not a differential in pay based on gender, or like a substantial differential, based on gender if you looked at it across the seniority band. I thought like, okay, that's cool. But like, I'm not an idiot. How fast does the average man take to get like, how long does it take the average man in this company to get to that seniority abandoned? How long does it take the average woman in this company to look to get to that seniority? Like, let's cut the data a different way, then. Because you still have an overall pay gap. So maybe this is about promotion, right? Maybe this is about like developing your talent and it's not about actually just giving people within the band disparate pay for the same job, but it's about like opportunity. I think it almost becomes a shell game where you can cut the data however you want to support your effort. But if the fundamental goal here is that you want an equitable workplace that's performing towards its mission, who are you serving by playing the shell game? I don't understand.

Francesca Lawson 29:02

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 29:02

What's the point?

Francesca Lawson 29:03

You know, it's really interesting that you've brought that up, because, so the UK Data Records the median pay gap and the mean pay gap. We use the bot to display the median pay gap and just to sort of rule out any kind of extremes skewing the data, which it could be like...

Erica D'Eramo 29:27

Like the CEO, right?

Francesca Lawson 29:28

Yeah, it could be just like one well paid female CEO makes the company look like they're doing really well as a whole, when that doesn't paint the right picture for those sort of on the other rungs. So, whenever we got a lot of questions through about like, oh why you use the median rather than the mean. And a surprising number from companies who are like, well, our mean pay gap is only 2%. So, we don't really see it as a problem. They might have a medium gap of maybe like 10, 15%, but they're choosing the lower figure on purpose to make themselves look better. In my mind, it's like, you can't just cut the data the way that you want it to escape scrutiny. A gap is a gap. It's better to just face up to it. Maybe use it as an opportunity to reflect and go like, oh, hey, yeah, we didn't realize it was quite as serious as it is. These are the action points that we're going to look into to fix it. So yeah, it's really disappointing just to see that being the defense that a lot of companies have looked to, and when we've been able to highlight their data.

Erica D'Eramo 30:51

Yeah. It is fascinating, right? I think it's actually quite psychological, where that comes from that, that immediate move to sort of defensiveness or defend the status quo or your role in it or not want to make changes, I suppose. But, I don't really know who that's serving. I mean, clearly serving the patriarchy, I guess. But, it's like using your engine light analogy, right? Like, okay, the engine lights on and the brake light is on. But we're gonna ignore the fault because we fix the engine light and it looks okay now.

Francesca Lawson 31:30

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 31:32

It's telling you there's something going on here that means your company isn't running the way you would want it to run. So you can go fix it or you can create excuses but, in the end, I truly believe that the companies that can successfully remove arbitrary limitations, like discrimination and bias, are going to achieve their missions. I say companies, but really just entities, any organization that can remove that, those biases in the system, whether they're cognitive biases or biases in how those systems work, if they can remove those so that they can better accomplish their mission that just seems like a no brainer to me.

Francesca Lawson 32:25

Yeah, absolutely. That's the way to do it and in my opinion, those that aren't doing this work now, I think that they will continue to sort of lose relevance as time goes on. I think it's going to become increasingly important. What I hope that we've shown with the pay gap bot is that once this data is actually in the hands of the public, then it equips them with the tools to hold their employers to account and challenge inequality where they find it. That is something that I think any employer is going to have to be ready for, if they're going to kind of continue to be successful in the coming years.

Erica D'Eramo 33:18

Yeah, yeah, I don't see any real argument towards a lack of transparency. Right? That's a pretty hard stance to take that we don't want transparency, because we don't want people to know what they're getting into as either an investor or an employee, like a potential employee. I think there has been a big shift in the power dynamics between employees and employers, with COVID. Definitely, in the US, are you using the same thing in the UK?

Francesca Lawson 33:54

Oh, it's a bit hard to say, because I'm self employed now. And so, I'm a little bit out of the corporate leaf. But, I went self employed because of the pandemic, because, you know, I realized what I truly valued was kind of flexible working, ability to have lots of time at home and with my partner, the dog, with friends and family, and my previous workplace wasn't really serving that. They were very much we want our employees to be coming back to the office. And...

Erica D'Eramo 34:33

Yeah.

Francesca Lawson 34:34

Because I'd been able to use the pandemic to save the money that we're spending on transport to commute to an office, then that kind of gave me a little bit of a confidence that I can take the leap into self employment. Yes, it's a risk but I survived two years of a pandemic. I'm a lot more risk averse than then so a lot less risk averse than I used to be. So I think that that was a bit of a kind of, it served as a learning curve for me to understand what I wanted and if my existing employer wasn't going to satisfy that, then there were other options. I could have a go at doing it on my own.

Erica D'Eramo 35:24

Yeah, I mean, I guess it was the same for me. So we're like two data points, but the great resignation in the US really, the conversation around it is very much similar to what you just recounted that people are realizing that there is no low risk option. Even people who are somewhat risk averse, I'm actually a quite risk averse person. So when I said, I'm going to go out on my own, people were like, oh, that's such a risky option, why would you do that? I'm like, there is no low risk option. It's all about what you're measuring is in terms of risk, right? Financially, financial stability, I might be in like increasing my risk exposure, but likelihood of living a fulfilled life where I reach my potential, I'm probably decreasing my risk exposure here. So, I think with that a lot of people went through that same realization and it's really shifted what employers need to show to potential employees. Employers are having to compete for talent, they're having to compete with other employers who are in the same space of losing people and needing to scramble and they're having to compete with the opportunity to work for yourself or work for another small entity, or a startup or something that fits your ethos more. This data, this transparency, I think, becomes even more powerful when potential applicants are looking at a company to see what am I getting myself into? Do I want to work for this company and when talent is so highly sought after right now.

Francesca Lawson 37:17

Yeah, totally. A question that I tend to ask when I've been to job interviews before is like, I've looked up and looked at their data on the government side and ask them, this is the data kind of what's your kind of understanding of it and what are you doing to fix it? The what are you doing to fix it answer tells you loads and loads and loads about the company that you're getting into, it tells you about their culture, because if it is met with quite a defensive reaction or like they reel out the, oh, it's because we have more men in leadership positions, and...

Erica D'Eramo 37:59

That one. Okay, why?

Francesca Lawson 38:04

Yeah, then you know, that like, okay, this potentially isn't going to be, this potentially isn't a company where I'm going to be able to realize my potential and I'm going to be supported in my progression. So yeah, I think it's a really important kind of question to ask and totally understand that potentially, there will be people that don't have the luxury of choice of being able to sort of step away from a potential employer and job application because of that, but, at least asking the question in the first place, it shows the employer that it's an important issue and it's something that they need to be prepared for, they need to be aware of, because chances are, it's going to come up again.

Erica D'Eramo 38:53

Yeah. Yeah and for those of us that can ask the question and do have the luxury, I feel like it's even more important that we use that privilege to do it, because if this is a case where a rising tide will lift all boats. Especially when it comes to more competitive wages, a fuller package, fuller benefits package, even if there are pay gap issues, like what are they doing on the other side of things? I mean in the UK you won't have health care as being as large of a part of a package, in the US like that's a really important part. Leave childcare on site, like all of these things that make that up that speak to where the intentions of the company are and how holistic of a picture they're seeing when they look at this. So yeah, thank you so much for lending your insight here. Is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you think is worth highlighting for our listeners?

Francesca Lawson 40:00

I think one thing that I'm just gonna add is that the data that we have on the gender pay gap in the UK is still really quite limited. We currently only cover gender. As we kind of touched on in our conversation today, there are so many other different inequalities that intersect.

Erica D'Eramo 40:22

Yeah.

Francesca Lawson 40:23

Withi society and within work. So, yeah, I think that there's a little bit of a caveat is like we still don't have a true picture of, say, how people of color are affected by pay gaps at UK companies. That's something that I really, really want to be able to fix. I really want the government and the UK to extend to cover things like ethnicity as well. So when we have events like Black History Month and we'll have the same thing, we'll have companies will put some symbols in their logos, they'll maybe put out a couple of posts about like inspirational black people from history and it's all looking backwards. We need to start looking forwards rather than just sort of looking at how far, we've come far. Let's not undo that. We can sort of acknowledge that. But we still got further to go and any sort of awareness event and to do with social issues, it should be a chance to reflect on why we still have issues with inequality and what we're doing to fix it.

Erica D'Eramo 41:40

Yeah. Yeah, it's an excellent reminder, every time we do see pay gap numbers in the US, it's almost always more indicative of what white women experience here. As we start to look at ethnicity and race, it becomes a much starker issue and that inequality and intersectionality becomes really important part of the conversation. So yeah, I think that data is really important. I hope we start to get more transparency in the United States, because I feel like the conversation that it has at least started in the UK has been a valuable one. I would love to see something similar here. So yes, improvements all across the board, that we can continue to work towards and strive for. Thank you so much, not just for coming to talk to us today. But thank you so much for the ingenuity and putting in the effort and the hours that I'm sure it took to get that started and prompting a lot of really good conversations on International Women's Day for me and for a lot of folks I talk to.

Francesca Lawson 42:50

Yes, thank you so much for having me and for all your support of what we've been doing. Still absolutely amazes me that we've enabled some of these conversations to happen. So, yeah, really appreciate the support.

Erica D'Eramo 43:04

Yeah. Awesome. So if folks are interested in engaging with you for freelance work, is there any site that they should look to? Or?

Francesca Lawson 43:16

Yes, so when, for kind of any copywriting or social media projects, and my website is francescalawson.com. I'm on Twitter @franwritescopy and yeah, happy to have any conversations about my work or the bot or anything.

Erica D'Eramo 43:37

Cool, awesome. Well, yeah, hopefully, we can work together in the future as well. This has been great to have you on. For the website, we'll include that in the show notes and the transcript as well. And for the Two Piers consulting, as always, you can find us at twopiersconsulting.com. We are on all the social media platforms. So LinkedIn, I shouldn't say all of them. But we're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Two Piers Consult and you can find us there or on our website. So, thanks again for joining us for this episode. It was a great one. We really appreciate our guests coming on and sharing your knowledge and we'll see you next episode.

International Menopause Awareness Day

In this episode, we're joined by Sarah Utley of Momentm, a fellow coach and DEI professional who discusses the impacts and implications of menopause from both a personal perspective, as well as a workplace and societal point of view. By 2025, projections estimate that 1 billion people will be experiencing menopause and yet understanding and awareness are still lacking. While menopause will be a part of life for nearly half the population, many employers do not take into account ways in which they can support their employees and create an inclusive environment that retains talent at the peak of their careers. We discuss this and more in our episode! To learn more about Sarah's offerings in the realm of DEI and coaching, visit her site at www.momentmpeople.com.

Transcript below:

Erica D'Eramo 0:08

Hello, and welcome to the Two Piers podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo. We are joining you with a bonus episode in between seasons two and three. So we ended last season with an episode around hybrid work and returning to the workplace with Ruth Cooper-Dickson from Champs Consulting. It's a great episode, we recommend you check it out. So this bonus episode came about because Monday, October 18th is International Menopause Awareness Day, which ties into our efforts in creating diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces. We were discussing this topic with Sarah Utley, a fellow coach and DEI professional, who's agreed to join us from across the pond to share her personal story. She'll also give us some background about why this topic is so important, some of the societal context around it, and what companies, organizations and individuals can do to help raise their awareness around the topic of menopause. As well as, understand how they can better support those in their lives and in their workplaces when looking at this issue. About half the population will experience menopause in their life and that includes cis women, trans men and some non binary folks as well. Lastly, before we get started, you may notice the audio quality on my end isn't its usual quality. And here at Two Piers, we're striving to combat perfectionism. So, we appreciate you sticking with us through this Airpods episode.

Sarah, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the podcast.

Sarah Utley 1:53

Hello, Erica. Thank you so much. Really, really happy to be here and talk about something that's incredibly impactful and personal for me and important for us to start talking about more broadly within society and within organizations. So, I've spent my my career in in human resources and I'm a qualified coach, and I'm looking into pivoting my business more into coaching. I'm passionate about supporting organizations to develop a coaching culture and coaching capabilities, as well as, working with individuals to help them maximize their potential. I am one of those younger women who experienced perimenopause in my 30s, which is less common. I've had both physical and mental health impacts as a result of menopause. I'm still experiencing that, I'm 46 now. Exhaustion for me has been the main physical impact along with sometimes lack of concentration. But the main thing really, for me has been feeling mentally disconnected, and often feeling tense and anxious and nervous, for no explained reason, kind of came out of nowhere. I didn't really link the two until I went to see a specialist about erratic periods. Then she asked me generally well, how are you feeling? What else is going on in your life? I kind of vomited out this whole, "I just feel awful. I just feel tired. I'm feeling nervous and anxious. I go into meetings and I'm just not myself anymore. I feel dislocated." She said, "Well, you know, you're probably going through the menopause." I was so surprised because I was 34. I didn't think at that age that I would be experiencing perimenopause. But, the more research I've done, the more I realized that that is not as uncommon as I thought it was originally. Fluctuation in your hormones can be so disruptive to your sense of well being. You've got these hormone receptors in your brain and they start to dip and that impacts the production of all those great feel good hormones like serotonin and dopamine. That can increase the symptoms of anxiety. Then you've got that stress hormone cortisol, which is highest in the morning and that helps. Estrogen actually helps control the spike in that, so when you lose estrogen, you just get this peak of cortisol and nothing really to counteract that. So, it's been really helpful for me to understand the chemicals in your brain more, and you take for granted a lot of the things in life that you experience until you start losing something. And so, it's almost like this, my loss of estrogen, slowly throughout my life, is becoming more and more impactful. But luckily, I have a lot of support around me. I'm on HRT, which is quite controversial still. But for people experiencing menopause under 50, it can be a really good thing to be doing for a lot of health reasons. So that's straight into my story and the impact of menopause on me.

Erica D'Eramo 5:44

Yeah, thank you for sharing that personal story. And thank you for sharing it with me outside of the context of this podcast, too. I guess for the sake of our listeners, this discussion came about because you and I share that passion for coaching in the workplace, creating a coaching culture in the workplace. And also, we share the passion for creating representative workforces that are both diverse, inclusive, and equitable. So, this topic, you know, in relation to those efforts really fit in well, and I appreciate you raising it with me and giving us an opportunity on the awareness day to raise awareness about it. So, in your words, how would you describe why this topic is so important? You know, what are some of the implications of it?

Sarah Utley 6:40

Well, as I just described, estrogen plays a massive role in women's health and well being. For women, personally, estrogen contributes to calcium in bones. With the loss of estrogen, you therefore have more risk of osteoporosis and brittle bone disease. Estrogen helps maintain cholesterol, which I found really surprising. I've experienced an increase in my cholesterol despite eating healthily and being fit. That is because my estrogen is just at such a low ebb now. Therefore, the loss of estrogen impacts coronary heart disease, and makes you more at risk of that. It also keeps, estrogen helps keep your bladder healthy, which again, I didn't know about. So a lot of women can experience bladder problems when they go through the menopause, that frequent need to urinate, which you kind of think, my goodness, why is this happening to me, and then you put two and two together, and it kind of all makes sense. For industry and society, I can only talk about what's happening in the UK. But there's roughly about 72% of women who are in employment, and four and a half million are aged between 50 and 64 and that is the fastest growing economically active group. That happens to be the age group of the people that are most likely to experience menopause. Many of these women are at the height of their careers. Shockingly, one in four women report considering leaving their jobs due to the impact of menopause symptoms. You know, that's really shocking when you hear that. I think there are some statistics to suggest that in the UK, 14 million workdays are lost a year as a result of the menopause. So it has huge consequences for organizations and society: retention of talent, productivity and performance, employee well being and in the UK, you know, sick pay, as well. So huge societal, and organizational impacts and individual impacts.

Erica D'Eramo 8:58

Yeah, I think you gave me a statistic that by 2025, approximately, 1 billion people are estimated to be experiencing menopause. While a lot of the framing of this is kind of around women and women's issues, we recognize too, that this is affecting trans men. This is affecting non-binary people, it's affecting partners of people experiencing menopause. So, while it's often framed as a women's issue, it's really throughout our society and across you know, the gender spectrum. This affects humans and relationships and workplaces. I think this age bracket is really, really interesting because that is sort of where many of us are at our peak experience, our peak knowledge, our peak wisdom that we can be contributing so much to the workplace and so much sure our colleagues. One of the that things you and I discussed was how, oftentimes, when we talk about these issues, when we talk about pregnancy, any sort of reproductive health, when we talk about taking time away from the workplace, or any sort of accommodations that can help retain this talent. Sometimes we're met with the eye roll of like, uh, more concessions for women, like women takes so much effort. This is why we shouldn't have women in the workplace, this is why we should just write them off on like a multitrack. Anyone whose initial reaction is to think like, "Oh, this is so much effort," I would say that the challenges for everyone morph and change throughout their career, regardless of gender. It is a real wasted opportunity to not try to retain that peak talent. These individuals that you have invested so much in, whose challenges are just shifting and morphing, right? We have challenges early stage career, we have challenges mid stage career, and by the end when we feel like we've got it all figured out, and we're sort of coasting, well, the challenges change, right? So, that's typical. That is, again, that affects men and women. So, for people experiencing menopause, that's like a different challenge for them. It feels like there's so much opportunity there to better support people that are going through these challenges so that we can continue to have access to their brilliance, to their ideas, to the cohesiveness that they add to our teams.

Sarah Utley 11:47

I totally agree, Erica. It is so simple to just think of this as an older women problem. But it's not. There are so many young women and just think how disruptive it is, if you're in your 30s, to be experiencing something so profound on your fertility, you might not have thought about having children and going through early menopause takes away that opportunity or makes it harder. The psychological or mental impact of that must be quite profound. So, it's not just women over the age of 50, we are talking about young women. We're also talking about men who have transitioned, as you mentioned, and women who've had cancer treatments such as chemotherapy can trigger menopause through the treatment they have. Anyone living with a woman, whether that's in a lesbian or heterosexual relationship will vicariously experience the menopause almost a double whammy. So, you know, and anybody who manages women in the workplace, is going to experience menopause. So it's societal, we should all have an interest in this. I'm passionate about changing the narrative, making this more accessible, normalizing this, so that we all feel confident to talk and tell our stories. Because, I have been profoundly changed by my experience of menopause for the better. Because, I have experienced levels of anxiety. That has taught me a lot about myself and I've reached out for help and support and learned a lot about myself, that have shaped my journey now. Part of the passion for coaching is to give back. I know the power of coaching and what it can do for individuals. So, I'd like other people to experience what I've experienced too, to help them.

Erica D'Eramo 13:56

Yeah, I think a very interesting, I guess, anecdotal observation that I had was that I have heard about the increased need for awareness and discussion of menopause in the workplace and that, so far, has been from men who have a partner or a loved one who is experiencing menopause and have said to me, you know, you work in diversity, equity and inclusion. This is a topic that is grossly under covered, under represented and not discussed enough. It really affects people who are experiencing it and might be blindsided by it, like it might not coincide with our work plans with whatever plans that they had. So it's been men that have raised it to me, which just, is a little reminder that perhaps when it comes to issues that typically affect women or that disproportionately affect women, they can often have this taboo, right? Because we're discouraged from showing vulnerability or showing these weaknesses that perhaps can get used against us and we don't want to be seen as requiring more effort or more investment. So, it's fascinating to me. My hypothesis is that that is why it's been mostly men who have raised this to me, because they did not feel that same anxiety about being seen, as you know, more difficult. So yeah, I haven't had women raising this to me about, you know, in the context of work, just men. So, keep raising it to the to the folks out there who have the privilege and the space to raise awareness, even if you're not directly experiencing this or directly affected. If somehow you're in a bubble that does not interact with any women, then still raise it, right? Because it does affect society. Often your voices can be taken very seriously if you're not seen as having a vested interest. I will say that, the allies and advocates are very important. Also, those are individuals who often disproportionately sit in higher ranks of management. So we need to have men as a part of this conversation. It can't just be seen as a women's issue.

Sarah Utley 16:29

That goes for the whole spectrum of inclusiveness. Whether we're talking about gender, ethnicity, disability, neurodiversity, menopause is equally important and requires a shift in mindset, a narrative and ally ship. I don't want to exclude men from any of that conversation. You know, my husband lives with me, he experiences me and my menopause every day. Actually, his insights could be incredibly impactful for an organization looking at what they do to raise awareness, how they create that conversation, how they build programs that support women, and have men as allies for those programs. It won't work unless we're all singing off the same hymn sheet, unless we fundamentally believe in that inclusive culture.

Erica D'Eramo 17:39

Yeah, I totally agree. So, we discussed some of the personal elements and some of the organizational elements a little bit, we touched on that. But, what do you think are some ways are that organizations can better support their talent and continue to retain that talent when they are experiencing menopause?

Sarah Utley 18:10

I like to reframe that to what can organizations do to create that inclusive culture and where women can bring their whole selves to work. You've touched on a lot of stuff already, but, raising awareness and building engagement events around days such as World Menopause Day. Investing in employee resource groups, where women can come together in a safe, psychologically safe, space to talk about things that are important to them and raise awareness within their teams, within the broader organization about menopause, and have men and leaders sponsor and advocate for those groups. Sharing personal stories is also a great way to raise awareness. Organizations can also better support talent experiencing the challenges of menopause by training managers, so that they have the skills to foster that inclusive culture. For me, those skills are listening, that underrated skill of listening, that we all take for granted. But, not everybody is very good at listening. But giving your time to sit down and genuinely invest in listening to another person can, in itself, be of such great value. Having empathy, showing your own vulnerability as a man or a line manager, giving and receiving feedback and dealing with difficult conversations. I think those are all the ways that we can support having better quality conversations about menopause and other inclusive topics. I am enormously passionate about coaching culture and coaching capabilities and what that can bring to an inclusive environment as well. Some organizations are writing specific menopause policies, others are ensuring that their flexible working policies are inclusive to enable women experiencing menopause to be able to take time off at short notice. The online fashion store ASOS will be allowing women to work flexibly, as well as take time off at short notice while going through the menopause. It's been in the press recently and it's one of several new policies they're introducing aimed at supporting employees who are going through health related life events. There's a number of other organizations in the UK, HSBC UK, First Direct and M&S Bank, who've recently announced as first employers in the UK to be awarded an accreditation called menopause friendly accreditation. That accreditation basically recognizes inclusive employers who build awareness and understanding around menopause and take well being of their colleagues really seriously. So there's lots of stuff that organizations can be doing to create conversations around menopause.

Erica D'Eramo 21:37

Yeah, I think your comment about being an attentive listener in any position of authority or power is really tied a lot to our coaching culture that we are hoping to instill in organizations. I guess, for those who are not very familiar with coaching, or a coaching culture, that listening means not jumping to conclusions about what best serves the person you're speaking to. So really kind of just checking yourself. I could see people who are very well intentioned, sort of assuming that they know what will help individuals and jumping to those conclusions. That's kind of got like a bit of a paternalistic, kind of bent to it, right? So we just want to ask individuals, what do you need? What would help you fully show up and fully be present, what could give you that environment? Ask them because everyone is different. So while we can create these more inclusive policies, certainly like flexible working, we've seen from the pandemic that this can be more effective than what many managers or leaders had previously assumed. Again, that's kind of the paternalism coming in, but, we've seen that it can work, right? We've seen that some people need a mixture of that and so being open minded about what can work in your workplace can really help these conversations blossom. I guess I would add that as a manager, if you understand what it is that your team is delivering, what the end goal is, what the mission is, then it really helps to have that mindset as you have these conversations about any sort of accommodations or any sort of changes to policy because presenteeism is no longer as important if you understand what you're measuring. If you understand what your team is delivering and why they're there. So, it really opens up all sorts of opportunities when you just know what it is that your team needs to deliver. The rest of it is noise, right?

Sarah Utley 24:08

Totally right. I love the way you picked up on listening. I ran a leadership development program last week and I practiced Nancy Klein's Time to Think and it went down a treat. People really nervous that the whole thought of not speaking for five minutes and just listening and getting them to focus on what's happening in their head. And you don't realize when you've sat there, truly trying to listen, what's happening in your head, the cueing of questions and how judgmental we can be and how we are compelled to give advice and offer solutions. That for me has been a major mind shift through my coach training. For my entire career, I've been paid to give advice and provide solutions and coaching really offers you and invites you to step back, and truly believe that the person in front of you has the answers to their own questions, and having that mindset will be really helpful at all levels of an organization. For my managers to pause, give really good space for a woman who is possibly struggling to talk about something that can be very personal, very impactful and could be feeling really embarrassed but raising this topic. So yeah, listening skill.

Erica D'Eramo 25:42

Yeah, and we're highlighting it here in this discussion around menopause awareness a and I just keep thinking about how it really is so applicable to any marginalized community who shows up with vulnerability and communicates what it is that they need in an environment where they have perhaps been discouraged from showing vulnerability or from meeting too much or asking too much, because they always have an eye on that value proposition, right? Like, how am I being measured? And so, I guess, anything we're discussing here really is so applicable across just the spectrum of disability awareness, neurodiversity, fertility issues, gender issues, gender transition, all of these things that occur in the workplace. I guess are conversation around active listening, open mindedness, coaching culture, checking our biases, it all applies, right?

Sarah Utley 26:51

Sure does.

Erica D'Eramo 26:52

So Sarah, as a coach, how do you support clients that are facing this kind of shifting landscape of challenges in their careers and in their lives as they are perhaps approaching menopause?

Sarah Utley 27:06

You mentioned that women experience many career transitions and menopause is just one of those. Women experience early career challenges. If they have children returning from maternity leave, their first leadership role, menopause is a another career and life transition. I coach from a place of what can you do to live alongside the menopause more easily? Because it can't go away. For some women, they may not experience any menopause symptoms. For others, this could last for 20 years of your life, the most productive period of your life. And therefore, I coach from a place of what can we do to help you live alongside this more easily. And coaching is an opportunity for women to talk about the lived experiences of menopause, and work on things that are important to them in dealing with the challenges that that brings. That could be around well being and resilience, being more assertive, and being able to talk about menopause with their own manager, or even with the husband, having more self belief and confidence. That can all fluctuate a result of changing hormone levels. So it's working on what's important to them in a one to one context, or as part of group coaching, or team coaching, where you can create safe spaces for people to talk about things that are important to them, get to know each other, build that trust and increase team performance as well.

Erica D'Eramo 28:51

Yeah, I think having, well, obviously, having a coach can be so valuable. In so many different elements of life, it just seems really well suited for this as well, because of a lot of what we've already spoken about, right? That coaching is about sort of that self discovery that it has so much agency about it that the client gets to lead the way and choose the path that's right for them. So in a society and a world where we're constantly being told how to conform, how to make ourselves smaller or more flexible to conform into these workplaces or these cultures organizations. Coaching can really kind of help strip some of that back and show individuals what it is that they want. While a lot of my clients come to me initially thinking that I want to be happier in my job, we can sometimes pull away the in my job part and just focus on I want to be happier and sometimes it's turns out that I want to be happier in my current job is not feasible. And we can explore what other options look like if the workplace will continue to be inflexible or toxic, or not conducive to thriving. So yeah, coaching really just goes straight to what is the end goal? What is it that you want to achieve, and if that's happiness, if that's better mental health, living alongside menopause in a way that's sustainable, I think coaching is such a great, great support mechanism for that.

Sarah Utley 30:37

I agree. For me personally, I felt very dislocated, both from my own sense of self, and at times my own mental well being and that dislocation has been very unnerving. I've lost a sense of identity. So I've worked with my own coach on who is Sarah, who is my authentic self and being really bold about this is me, this is what I'm experiencing. This is what it means to people around me and how you get the best out of me. Coach has enabled me to be braver about saying this and being proud of it. If I can help other women and organizations and people impacted by menopause more broadly, to feel the same way, then, I've done my job.

Erica D'Eramo 31:46

Yeah, I think it's a really inspiring focus area for your coaching practice. So, what resources are currently available, whether that's for companies or for individuals?

Sarah Utley 31:59

There are lots of resources, more so now than what there have been let's say decade ago, but you've got to go and find them still. I can only talk, again, about the UK. Interestingly, Parliament are debating support for people experiencing menopause next week. So I'm really keen to see what comes out of the debate in Parliament and whether they change any of the laws, Employment Law within the UK. Currently, menopause itself is not recognized in law. It's not a disability. But you know, some of the the impacts of the menopause such a stress and anxiety is covered by the Disability Discrimination Act. So I'll be very keen to see what comes out of that, because that could give a really clear steer for organizations on what they actually need to do to provide the framework and compliance in this area. Reaching out to your doctor if you are experiencing physical or mental impacts of menopause. There's lots of societies online and who signpost to support services as well. Your HR team within an organization will always be there to help and provide support, and a sound board and a lot of companies offer employee assistance programs as well. I think coaching, obviously, we've found the job impact coaching a lot. That's always available as well.

Erica D'Eramo 33:37

Yeah, all great resources. For those in the US, there's also if you go to menopause.org, that's the North American menopause society, which is focused on advocacy and awareness as well. I guess it's good to know that in the US it is not current, menopause is not currently considered under Disability Employment Law. So under the ADA in the US, it does not require, what that means is that it does not require accommodations from the workplace by law. That doesn't mean that it's not the right thing to do to provide accommodations for the benefit of your own business and organization. But yeah, it's an interesting topic. I think we discussed that, my perception on this is that the conversation is more advanced in the UK than perhaps it is in the US. So, it's great that you reached out and we can raise awareness for our audience on the podcast, which we've got audience members kind of around the world. So, just to close out would you have any... I know we tend to avoid advice right? Something that you and I probably share that we avoid advising people because we'll never know their personal circumstances, everyone is so uniquely different. We fundamentally believe that everyone has their own right answers that we try to help them find. That being said, for this audience, are there any insights or kind of general advice that you would share with people that are perhaps struggling with this change in their life right now, or even for those who have loved ones that might be struggling with this?

Sarah Utley 35:36

What I say here, you're not alone. There will be someone you know who's experiencing multiples, and be brave and seek help. I think those are the two things, talking is a great healer. Whether that's through coaching or counseling, with your friends, or your partner. Be bold, be brave, find somebody to talk to, whether that's HR at work, or some woman within your life. But you're not alone. There'll be lots of other people who are experiencing this as well.

Erica D'Eramo 36:15

And how about for in the workplace, with managers or for leaders? Do you have any kind of closing comments?

Sarah Utley 36:24

For leaders, I would say, put this on the leadership agenda and talk about it. Start talking to women about it. Start listening to women and how this affects them and start normalizing it. Conversation, it all comes down to having conversations, not being afraid to have those conversations.

Erica D'Eramo 36:51

Yeah, if we look at retention numbers and we talk about retention numbers, and companies are looking at why can't we meet X and Y metrics, and why our pulse survey results so poor. Go that next level and start asking the questions and finding out what's really going on with people. Some of this might be hidden under there and just not been discussed because of past stigma around discussing health issues or issues that create the perception of vulnerability, even if it's not really vulnerability. So yeah, I think that's great talking about it, opening up the discussion, and doing away with that stigmatization.

Sarah Utley 37:48

I've heard of employers who refuse to make changes to uniforms, so that women that come forward and say, I'm going through the menopause, this uniform doesn't allow me to breathe, and therefore when I get hot flashes it's really uncomfortable. I've heard there are some employers that hadn't been willing to change their uniforms to make accommodations for that. And yet, I take real heart that there are some other organizations such as, I believe, Marks & Spencers who have just said, you can order as many different types of uniforms to suit your needs. That's just showing an awareness that not everybody wants to wear the same clothes. People go through different stages of their life and need different things from something as simple as a uniform. That can be transformative to how a woman feels about working for that employer. It can change Net Promoter scores, simple adjustments. You don't need to wear your heart on your sleeve and go all out. Incremental, small changes based on listening to what women really want, will make all the difference to lift experiences of women and colleagues random.

Erica D'Eramo 39:11

Yeah, I agree. And again, while this conversation is centered women, we also want to be inclusive to have what we mentioned trans men, non binary individuals, this affects a variety of different people. But we can say that more than 50% of the population, slightly more than 50% of the population, will at some point in some way, likely experience menopause. So, that is a massive number of people. With that, I just want to thank you and ask how people can get in touch with you if they wanted to work with you or gain your insights either through consulting for organizations or coaching?

Sarah Utley 40:07

I run a business called Momentum People. You can get in touch with me through my website or my email address, which I will leave with you, Erica. I would really welcome people reaching out to find out more about the menopause and how I can help them on their journey to live along-side menopause.

Erica D'Eramo 40:30

Great, thank you so much, Sarah. So we'll have Sarah's contact info in the podcast notes. We would invite you to follow us on our social media platforms to kind of learn more about these topics, stay engaged in the conversation. Two Piers is on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can always visit our website if you want to reach out and that's www.twopiersconsulting.com. We look forward to seeing you at our next podcast episode which will likely be in season three in 2022. Thanks, bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Hybrid Working and A Return To The Office

Photo courtesy of picnoi.

This week we are joined by Ruth Cooper-Dickson, positive psychology practitioner, trauma-informed coach and Managing Director and founder of Champs: a mental well-being consultancy. Ruth helps us explore the current state of transition facing many organizations as we see an increase in office-based work. We discuss the challenges facing both companies and individuals as they navigate this new territory and one thing can be certain: things will never return to how they used to be. Ruth brings her wealth of knowledge about positive psychology as she discusses the implications of the current transition on mental health. Whether you're a leader in an organization or an individual contributor, we've got some gems for you in this episode.

Transcript below:

Erica D'Eramo 0:12

Hello, and welcome to the Two Piers podcast season two. Today we have Ruth Cooper Dickson joining us from the UK and she is joining us to talk about the transition from working from home back into the office and what that might look like. So Ruth is a positive psychology practitioner. She is a trauma informed coach. She's also the managing director and founder of Champs which is a mental wellbeing consultancy. And we are really lucky to have her joining us today.

Erica D'Eramo 1:00

So, Ruth, welcome.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:02

Hello, thank you for having me, I'm excited to be here and chat to you about this.

Erica D'Eramo 1:07

Yeah, I mean, you're kind of this is absolutely your wheelhouse. And when we thought of tackling this topic, you were sort of the ideal person. So I'm really glad that you had space to join us today. So maybe it would be helpful for our listeners to hear a little bit more about you and what your your kind of practices and you're offering and, and why this is a topic of interest to you.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:32

Hmm, absolutely. Well, I'm the managing director, as you said and founder of Champs and we are going into our sixth year this year, this business and back when I started Champs, it was through my lived experience of mental ill health as a senior leader in an organization. As you know, how we first met many years ago, I was in a leadership role actually in in an inclusion consultancy, so that was always part of the space I'd worked in, I'd worked in the corporate sector for several decades. And my lived experience of very real burnout and breakdown following a divorce, which I now know is a traumatic experience. But at the time, it was like don't worry, I've got this, it's fine. And sort of six years ago, in the UK particularly, talking about mental ill health at work was a real taboo, it was seen as that invisible disability. And people just didn't really engage with it. So I was banging my drum talking about mental ill health at work and not many people really wanting to listen and then the dial started to shift we saw more acceptance. Very big corporates getting on the front foot with their understanding, leadership understanding that actually well being as a key business driver really sets precedent for future success and growth and performance. And we see so many research that is that happy, healthy individuals, employees are much more productive and shut... Yeah, for Champs just grew from there purely because the business started to evolve. And I myself you mentioned I'm a positive psychology practitioner. So I undertook my MSC and applied positive psychology and coaching psychology at the University of East London. And I did that full time whilst whilst building Champs. And for me, it was really twofold to undertake that qualification, one to have the academic underpinning to what what we do as a business, which is so important. And we've always been evidence based. We've always been driven by science and research. And it's not kind of that ivory towers thinking or just something we just make up. But also the fact that it was applied, it was very practical, which is an approach I've always had right back from being a project manager when I worked in engineering. So there's a real kind of flow there around why that was important to me Champs. And my colleague, Tara Kent, who's the CEO of Champs came from an organizational change leadership background. So we created something I think which is very powerful because it's positive psychology, it's well being. Myself and Tara plus our facilitators, many of them are Mental Health First Aid practitioners or instructors. So we have a real mental health ethos to what we do. And where we really kind of found ourselves in the thick of it was at the beginning of 2020, obviously with the pandemic. And it was a really interesting time for us as a business because we were actually delivering Mental Health First Aid training for a client who's based within a hospital setting. And that was right at the beginning of March. And I did the first of what should have been a series of sessions. And it was all very kind of odd. As you know, it was very kind of weird times, just at the real start here in the UK of COVID-19. And all those contracts were suddenly pulled because we couldn't do in person training. And obviously, the client was focused on what was happening internally within the hospital to support the running of the hospital. And it was all thrown up in the air. And as a small business, my first thought was let's batten down the hatches. Because I guess this is twofold, right? There's me as a business owner, and also me as the role that we do to support organizations with their well being strategy with their kind of more strategic thinking their workshops, their training, the whole package we're holistic. And it was like right batten down the hatches really look at kind of how we can mitigate any hard sort of change to Champs in terms of people losing jobs, or you know, just really figuring out what that would look like in a very quick kind of, let's evolve the business very quickly. And then we just brought everything online. And I'm really fortunate that the majority of the team really are great at being online trainers and facilitators, and they took that in their stride. Organizations, were really interested in either one group of people who were already with us who'd been on board with champs for a couple years or right since the start of my journey. Setting up champs, were immediately emailing calling what can we do, or we've already got this training booked. But obviously, we need to shift the focus, you know, focusing on keeping people well, and how they're going to settle in at home working, checking in on each other in the early days. How do you use technology to to do the self care check ins, all of that good stuff. So that was great to see. Plus, it also brought a whole load of new clients who were always had well being or mental or mental health at work on their agenda. But it wasn't a priority. It was all this is a nice thing to have. But it's not top of the leadership agenda. And suddenly it was, which was great. So it gave them that push that incentive if you like, which often we see with a trauma, if something happens in the market, the global market that pushes an agenda up to the top of the list, right, it's sometimes it takes that push to do that. So it did which was also good to see. And then some new clients who'd never even thought about well being or thought about what it meant to be well at work, having now lost our employees very quickly from people going from being in the office, to all of a sudden working at home, especially organizations that had no flexible work policies really or didn't encourage working from home. So that was the last year for us. And we really, as a business got burnt out, we were exhausted ourselves. I mean, I just saw something on an article earlier on about physician heal thyself. And, you know, we were just on our knees pretty much by Christmas of 2020. And what we came back to, was here in the UK organisations really struggling in like what we had as lockdown three that January to March months, because of winter and the pandemic and just lockdown. And it was very different to lockdowns in the summer, we had a beautiful UK summer, sort of came very early in March, April, almost coinciding with with a pandemic. And suddenly people were at home all the time. And it just felt fatigued and exhausted, as you know. So it's been, it's been a real, it's been a real journey in the last year of understanding mental health and well being at work, but in a very much more complex and nuanced way that it was sort of pre pre COVID times, I think. So I think it's been an interesting one for organizations who've probably never had this on their radar to even start thinking about. That was a very long winded answer to what your question was, but hopefully that's given your listeners a little sense about how we are what we do and kind of like really I think like lots of people, even the business we're in, but as a small business, like really had to quickly adapt and evolve and to keep to keep our doors open as well. And also to make sure my team is supported and well, to do all the support they're doing like the holding the space for others, which has been it's been a hard it's been a hard journey to navigate as a leader myself, I think.

Erica D'Eramo 9:45

Yeah, because as the leader, you're playing these multiple roles of facilitation, creating the communication pathways, supporting everyone making sure they have the resources they need, and that looks totally different when you're doing it remotely versus in person. Different tools, different interfaces. Yeah. I think that we're at this very intriguing point right now where as different countries are kind of coming out of the lockdowns and companies are looking at returning to work in different ways. It's this uncharted territory that the pandemic showed us that working from home was possible that there were, it was much more complex than people had previously understood. There were the people who said, like, oh, no one will be productive from home, people will just like watch TV all day, working from home is a privilege. And then they realized, oh, when people are working from home, actually, we need to be worried about the reverse, because nobody has boundaries, and we're seeing burnout. And we're seeing like, the kind of the mixing of home and, and work that means that no one ever gets relief. And so it really turned that concept on its head. And now that there is an ability to go back to an office setting, how companies navigate that is sort of a big topic of debate. And there's we're seeing a lot of a lot of decisions being made a lot of pushback one way or the other. And so this was a topic that has been coming up amongst my network and my clients, who are both leaders and kind of individual contributors. The leaders trying to navigate how do we keep the business running, you know, maybe we weren't as efficient in working from home as we could have been in the office. So we want to get back to that right away or from a from like, an individual contributor perspective, people who suddenly have to rearrange, you know, childcare responsibilities that they've had for a year now that don't suddenly go away, because they have to be in the office all of a sudden, and there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of anxiety on both sides of it. There's a lot of anxiety from the leadership, and there's a lot of anxiety from the individual contributors. So that sense of anxiety, you know, people sort of asking me, like, I don't know what's gonna happen, and, and how do I, how do I plan for this? It seemed like a good topic for us to discuss. So I was thinking today, we could talk about, you know, both from an organizational standpoint, what is best practice look like? What are some of the things to consider when looking at a return to work or once you're able to return to work? Do you return to an office like, what what does that look like? And then, separately, maybe looking from an individual perspective, for those of our listeners that will be subject to this kind of change? What are your thoughts on...

Ruth Cooper Dickson 13:06

I'm smiling, because it's like, that's a huge topic like it's huge, right? Let's see if we can do it justice in this short space of time.

Erica D'Eramo 13:14

We probably can't, we probably can't. I mean, we could write, I'm sure people are literally right now writing theses on these topics, right? Like...

Ruth Cooper Dickson 13:22

Yeah, I know, people who've graduated from the same program as me because I do academic research, as you know, and I'm involved in several papers at the moment and not to do one was actually from my own research taken a coaching program from last year happens to be last year. But there's I know lots of people who did their dissertation thesis off of their MSC on COVID times. So you know, living, working all the complexities around well being, positive psychology.

Erica D'Eramo 13:55

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 13:56

Makes it interesting.

Erica D'Eramo 13:58

So I mean, I guess this would be like a little whet the palate of people who want to learn more. So I guess, what are you what are you seeing right now in your networks and kind of your space?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 14:12

It's been really interesting because I've had this conversation with a couple of my leadership team, people that that work in Champs and peers who have similar style businesses or work in a similar space, but slightly different in their offering. And the market kind of went a little bit quiet around, say for example, looking at mental health wellbeing style training workshops, about a month ago, it kind of went a little bit quiet. So we had May which is... May's Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK, I know it's Mental Health Awareness Month in the US. So it's generally a month that's kind of given a lot of attention. But I think people had spent and the media particularly like I heard this from a PR and comms expert that the media a bit almost a bit done. In some cases where there was a lot of mental health conversation, it's almost been so much in the kind of the mainstream media as well. And I think also because of this hybrid working and understanding what's next. And actually, we saw a similar pattern here in the UK, last June, when we were waiting on the announcements from our government as to whether they would be everybody coming back into the office again, so we thought it was going to be for several months, and then everyone would be back in by summer, September latest, which obviously didn't happen. And the market went really quiet then it was almost like it was this collective breath around what's next. And it has felt a little bit like that I think in lots of respects. I also think that leadership and I mean this is my assumption that leadership and organizations have been thinking we've done so much on mental health and well being training and support the last 12, 13 months, actually, now what we want to focus on is getting people back into the office. So it's like we've done that we've done we've done that training, we've done that support, let's let's focus on leadership or kind of hybrid leadership. If you're any kind of transformational leader, authentic leader, a brilliant leader. Well being is actually at the heart of what you do anyway. Right? I mean, it kind of is pretty much part of that. Because again, going back to why I said that I started Champs and we know that all of that good stuff makes a successful organization. And mental health and well being isn't just about the check in it's more about meaningful work, it's communication, it's... you know, there's so many facets to it. It's much more than okay, we're going to deliver some Mental Health First Aid training, of course.

Erica D'Eramo 17:01

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 17:02

So it's almost like at the moment there is this whole shift towards right, we need to focus on hybrid working. And I think leaders and organizations often because obviously leaders drive organizations and the subsequent culture that sits around that, but they're very compartmentalize. So you know, as you know...

Erica D'Eramo 17:22

Yeah, 100 percent.

Erica D'Eramo 17:22

...from your inclusion world, well, let this month we're doing race and ethnicity. This month is LGBTQI+, you know.

Erica D'Eramo 17:31

Yup.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 17:31

Next month, it's women. It's so compartmentalized.

Erica D'Eramo 17:37

You can only do one at a time.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 17:37

Yeah. We can only do one at a time.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 17:41

I just, yeah, I know. And it's so frustrating. So I do think there is this kind of, right, now we're focusing on hybrid working. And then there's a real there's a real pressure within we know, within HR teams at the moment where flexible working policies have needed to be updated, even perhaps more so from working at home. What does a return blended work, return to work look like? If we're going for hybrid working, what does this look like? What does this mean? So I guess the policies and procedures, which are often the first port of call are being reviewed and looked at and put into place, which would might include, you know, obviously, will include things like, how do we keep employees physically safe at work as well, you know, we've seen I've seen lots of LinkedIn pictures of people who've returned to their co workspaces where, you know, open plan spaces where they've got, you know, the perspex shields and everything else to get to keep people COVID safe, not mentally safe, but so there's almost like, let's push on with the policies or procedures and the practicalities of getting everybody back in, but without the bigger picture thinking like that, aside of like, what are all the other factors that are going to imp... a kind of come into play here that we need to consider? So it has been and I thought this was, you know, because as a leader, as a business owner, you start to the first, you know, the first thing you tend to do is go well, what's what's happening with us? First of all, we're like, let's do a sense check in. Is what we're offering wrong, or is it... the, you know, this isn't saying we've got no work, I'm not saying we've got no work, but it's that whole issue, the focus, there's just a sense, this intuitive sense that things have started to shift. That's what it is. And then it was me going out, say, April, April time, May, having these conversations with different people, having the conversations with the team having the conversations with the clients. And with we're running, as I said to you, before we started, I'm running a session tomorrow a webinar. We've had so many people who've signed up for this because I, oh, we were just thinking we're struggling to think about what to do or what does this mean for us? So it's so different, isn't it? Because you're right, I think when people were either working fully in the office, and then they were suddenly at home, and now there's like this gray area, because it's, it's not one or the other really.

Erica D'Eramo 20:18

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 20:19

I've had a taste of that, or...

Erica D'Eramo 20:21

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 20:22

It's just, it's very different.

Erica D'Eramo 20:25

Yeah, it's like the employees have seen, and the management too, some of the benefits of flexible working and working from home. And some of the dark sides of it as well, right, like we've seen that it's, it is complex, it is not better or worse, it is different. But employees that have gotten a taste of, you know, not having to do the extremely long commute, not having to put in all of this like non value added time and energy for I don't know, getting your getting your clothes dry cleaned, like all these little things that actually usually disproportionately affect women, I will say, Yes, a lot of these kind of expenses and time time inputs that have to go into preparing to go into the office. But being able to be more efficient and more flexible, and and manage your life while you're also managing your workload and that autonomy. Once people have been given a taste of that, and seeing that they can thrive in that environment, it's it's pretty tough to convince people that there's no value there, and you have to return to the way things used to be. Because it's more comfortable for leadership or, you know, I it's not really clear to me and I think one thing that's come into focus, for me has been sort of the the hierarchical view of working from home or flexible working as being a privilege that you have to earn in in certain workspaces like that kind of traditional view of you have to earn it. So if you're more senior, perhaps you get more flexible working opportunities than if you're more junior, versus, you know, if you need the flexible working, because you're balancing childcare, because you're balancing like an adult care, you have different elements that require flexible working, um, that I was hoping would sort of go by the wayside through the pandemic, but I'm starting to see that reemerge is like certain people will get to work flexibly or work from home. But it's not necessarily based on need. It's based on seniority, or I don't... like hierarchy, which kind of brings into question trust in the organization like is it that people aren't being trusted to deliver? Or?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 22:59

I think we know that organizations, in lots of cases, especially large, big corporates, especially those that been around for a long time are very hierarchical. Yeah, there's a promotion structure. There's who gets the big office, who gets the car, you know, there's some of the more senior you get, the better perks there are. If your face fits, you know, when we go back to like cliques, and who the in and out groups, who gets those unspoken privilege, as well. And it was really interesting in the pandemic, because we did in the last year, we did a session that was for graduates and apprentices who for for a firm who who started during the pandemic as their first job, you know, and I see you know, where you miss it. And you will know this from from where you've been in your career. But you know, when you're surrounded by experienced people, you can dip in and out of those conversations, you learn by osmosis, you pick stuff up, but also, there is a, we have all this tech now. And I think this was also what we've not, we've got this amazing technology we can use but I think one thing we've not learned to do yet and I did read a really good peer reviewed research piece on actual Zoom fatigue, as it's been coined, but you know, we don't use the tech in the right way. We've kind of we... we just kind of tried to replicate what we do in person, but online and it's like, well, that doesn't quite work. So there should be ways that people can learn and develop without having to be in the office physically, you know, they should still be able to have those opportunities. You know, I I've done all my coaching as you will have done online during the pandemic have run a research program online, I I coach people in different countries and different time zones. I mean, that was...

Erica D'Eramo 24:54

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 24:54

That was also before the pandemic as well. So yeah, and I'm also coached by somebody who I don't see in person. So there's lots you can take from those experiences, you don't have to physically be together. I think that that is how we've, we kind of do that. And I, you know, that idea around you mentioned it before about performance of people who are working from home is much higher. And I think there's been a real, you know, where, where organizations have furloughed staff or people have been made redundant. I'm not gonna lie if I was in a corporate and I was seeing friends, peers, colleagues, lose their jobs, or be put on long term furlough, you know, would I be working my butt off to make sure that I wasn't at the top of that list? For sure. Like why, you know, you're there's going to be an inherent motivator there and an extrinsic motivator to just do it. Because...

Erica D'Eramo 25:53

Right.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 25:54

Yeah, you want to save your job, right.

Erica D'Eramo 25:55

Correlation, not...

Ruth Cooper Dickson 25:56

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 25:56

Yeah. So the working from home is like a correlation in some ways. Yeah. Yeah, it's not across the board. Right. It's like, some of those companies did have that, like, increased pressure, headcount, headcount cuts. And other companies that did not saw kind of different, I guess, different incentives act act on their companies, where you were able to see sort of a, what does it look like without that some of the companies that were thriving, although even those companies that were thriving in this new environment, they they just saw increased workload as well, right?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 26:35

Yeah, no, and that says a bit, then it's about going back to those boundaries. So you're not living at work, right? It's, it's how do you practice having that space to switch off? How do you and you have to, you have to take responsibility for that, and that even as a leader, that's something that I really had to work on last year and work on for my team, but it is really hard, like, it's hard. And we do this for a job. And I don't get it right all the time. But we found it tough. So if you're not in that space, or you're not that self aware, or your boss's checking in to see when you're online or why, you know, you finish, you can be sat at your desk, right from you get up 6:30 to nine o'clock at night, without people really checking in.

Erica D'Eramo 27:28

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 27:29

You could be working, but are you productive all that time? Maybe you are for a period, but there's gonna be a point where that stops being productive, right?

Erica D'Eramo 27:38

Yeah, and I think everybody's brain works very differently. Like we had a podcast episode recently on ADHD and, and productivity and how, at least for me working in the office, because it was sort of like a sentence to me of like, you have to be here for eight hours I would really struggle to be particularly productive, like I really I would struggle to hit flow states in the office. And so I ended up just like taking a lot of my work home and doing it at home anyway, which meant I was putting in this like time in the office but then also just doing it at home where I could hit you know, I could reach flow because I didn't have the distractions of the office around. So in that regard, working from home was... I really thrived in it when I transitioned from the workplace to the home to home because then I didn't actually end up putting in the eight hours at the office and then going home and doing more right I got to like do my work during my work hours. But the boundaries issue has certainly... it's it's definitely been a challenge for a lot of the people in my network. There's no there's no getting in the car turn you know or getting on the the subway and going home. There's no like demarcation of this is the end of your work day.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 29:03

And you're physically leaving the building aren't you you're physically going somewhere. I think those people... I know I did it in the third lock down when it was winter because it was too dark to go out in the morning and in the early evening. So in the daytime, I would definitely make sure I took a break outside because I could be in all day. But even now I mean yesterday I work from home and I'm still working from home at the moment but I am going back into London just through personal preference to have a day in London every so often. Just because I enjoy traveling and seeing people and having something different about my week. But yeah, yesterday I didn't leave the house until I needed to leave the house at eight o'clock at night. And I was like oh my god I've only just left the house today. Because I didn't need to go outside, I didn't go out and train or do anything that I needed to do. It was my kind of rest day from training. So didn't leave the house, sat sat on the balcony but didn't didn't leave physically leave the house at all yesterday. And it's it's kind of sad, when you think like that?

Erica D'Eramo 30:07

Yeah, right. And so we don't want like, we don't want either extreme right? We don't want people... this like really rigid, rigid structure of presenteeism and all that. And we don't want isolation and people kind of burning out on their own without that balance. So I guess what are you seeing organizations doing that you would consider best practice as they kind of enter into this brave new world?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 30:37

Well, I did read the the FT article that you shared with me from last month, actually, which was really interesting to see that Dropbox have decided against using a hybrid model, which I thought was really interesting. So they're going virtual first policy, because they're worried about inclusion disparities. And...

Erica D'Eramo 30:57

Yup.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 30:58

...in regards to performance and career trajectory, which is a lot of the stuff we've spoke about, about that in group. And having, you know, cliques form. There was definitely clients who shared experiences of cliques, in the early stages of when all people could return to a cut to a more skeletal staff level. So they were encouraged if they wanted to come in, it was safe to do so. But there was those who are in the office, those who weren't in the office. So I have yet to see real beacons of best practice. I think it's too early to say that I think, where organizations are really trying to... our clients are trying to support their leaders through this process. They're aware that this is going to cause problems. So we were, you know, working with them on different kind of support mechanisms. And kind of more leadership development practices, which encompass well being at the heart of kind of thinking about how they lead in a hybrid model. But I have yet to see the effects of like, what is best practice? And I think that's going to take a little bit of time, but I think it's those who've actually said, we don't know how this is going to... so they've not made some big assumptions. They've they've not said, yes, we've got this right, because I think you probably haven't yet.

Erica D'Eramo 32:45

Right.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 32:46

And it's gonna take some time. And also those who aren't listening, I think the ones that are taking their time are also finding the space to listen to the individuals, like the individual contributors, as you said, to find out what people want so then they're doing the surveys, they're having the conversations, they're figuring out what works best. They're seeing how that's going to work, there's more support there than just you need to come back into the office now, or we're working from home. And that's it. So it's kind of... it's kind of...

Erica D'Eramo 33:21

Flexible.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 33:21

...a bit more collaborative. Yeah, there's a bit more of there's more communication. So that's kind of where it's seen as I think it'll be interesting to see how those all go well both sides will kind of work because I think if you're just saying, right, you've got to come back.... I don't know, I'm finding one particular client as well, an organization that I know of, they've you know furloughed staff out. And they've really struggled with the staff returning back into the environment, you know, having had quite significant... where we where we've seen people who've been furloughed for quite a significant period of time, because, you know, academic evidence shows good work leads to good mental health. Now, if you're not in the workforce on any level for a significant... so imagine, like everybody who's just worked from home, during the pandemic, you're still working you still have those connection, those touch points, that meaning and purpose that is driven by who you are, you know, often we ask people, what they, what they do who they are, and they talk about their job, right, first, more than often.

Erica D'Eramo 34:31

Identity.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 34:32

Yeah. So those people who've been furloughed, I mean, imagine the amount of change their brain is going to require to switch back. I mean, that's, that's quite hard. You know, it's an unscheduled sabbatical whether they've loved it or hated it, or wherever it's been. That's a big that's a huge shift. That's going to be quite huge.

Erica D'Eramo 34:54

Especially. Yeah, I guess, especially if they they did not have agency in that decision that it was sort of done to them, like the decision was made for them.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 35:09

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 35:09

And so that can that can really change how that experience feels. Yeah, confidence, like getting your feet back under you.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 35:21

I mean, I know when I did my first talk, so it was a live talk at a client's but there was no audience. And we did that in April. So I actually did the journey. Because had been since September, I had it, I hadn't done it, I actually did the journey, end of March time back into London, just to get a feel for it. Because I know what I'm like in terms of my anxiety disorders, just kind of, I didn't want the first time I went back into the workplace, to, to deliver something to be on show if you like or be on my stage and on my game, so I wanted to do that route.

Erica D'Eramo 36:04

A dress rehersal.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 36:05

Yeah, just like, yeah, dress rehearsal, and just go in. And, you know, had a couple of meetings, but nothing that was a big deal, and then came back and then took so much out of me. And then...

Erica D'Eramo 36:17

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 36:18

...get it... being aware of that. And then going back in again to do the event. Kind of a bit more prepared to know what to expect, but just the energy. And then you and I've chatted about this offline about the amount of energy it takes to do stuff in person versus remotely, you know, and introvert extroverts that kind of, is a big, that's a big part for for managers to... leaders to consider, you know, what, I, there was a, there's article I posted on on LinkedIn yesterday that talked about, especially if your employees suddenly were in the office, and then they were out of the office, very quickly, they will have gone through some metamorphosis over that period of time. So even if you think they are the same person, they aren't, they will have changed on some level, most people will have changed on some level.

Erica D'Eramo 37:08

Yeah, that's fascinating, and we'll have put in these support structures, like formally or informally, that will have embedded in our lives. And in many cases, not even be aware that we've done it, right.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 37:22

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 37:22

...that may be serving us quite well, and we'll be a bit challenged by like a full return to work. I think some of the things that I'm seeing and hearing, that seemed like, seemed to be good practice that I'm interested to see how it how it will turn out is continuing to maintain sort of that like flat distribution of information that existed when COVID hit. So companies realized, like, we don't have this trickle down in the office anymore. So we'll have like global webcasts with our CEO, or we'll have a lot more accessibility to the top, because it's just more efficient to like, do the recording once and get it out there. And town halls became, you know, like global or regional instead of people being kind of broken up into teams. And that I think maintaining that could be really helpful in tackling some of that hierarchy and cliquishness that will come into play from a hybrid model where certain people get access to the information sooner than other people. So making sure that access to information isn't poorly, I don't know distributed, or preferentially distributed, I guess, I should say. And then there's a lot of talk about like schedules, which is interesting to me, because in the energy industry, historically, there was a lot of like what they call flex Fridays, at least in the US. And it was a big, kind of it was seen as like a really big perk in the energy industry that everybody gets to pick a flex Friday. I know when I started back in 2002 or so you got to pick which flex Friday was your flex Friday, and then you would just work additional hours throughout the week, but you got every other Friday off whichever one you wanted. And then that kind of shifted because they realized, well, the people who were in the office on the Friday where other people aren't in the office aren't really having a productive Friday. And so it kind of makes that Friday a wash. So they would they sort of shifted to everyone takes the same flex Friday off like this team is always, you know, this is your Friday off and that's your Friday working. And people grumbled about that a little bit, but at least they knew what their Friday off was going to be and they could still kind of get stuff done on that Friday. And then they move to like getting rid of flex Fridays altogether. I don't think anybody really... maybe some people still do flex Fridays, but it's pretty uncommon now. And that people really did struggle with that, because they had embedded that in their lives like that would be the day that they went and did their doctor's appointments, you know, that would be the day that you go run to the bank and like, and access these businesses, and it was seen as a big perk. So now there's a lot of talk, you know, in all industries about, okay, we'll do flex working, but it's not really gonna be flex working, it'll be like, you get to choose two days a week that you can work from home, but they have to be the same two days for the whole team. And, or, you know, or maybe it's on more of like a weekly basis, you get to, you know, the whole team has to be in the office during one week, or I think they're trying to balance the flexibility of giving people some time to work from home that they found useful with the, the downside of having too many people disparate, and never having the team come together face to face. So I think Catalyst has put out some information about, they've done some really great research in the future of work around best practice here and sort of making that wavelength a bit longer. So it's not necessarily two days a week, but it might be, you know, this one week, per quarter, we want to bring the team together for some team building for some, you know, some bonding, but giving people more flexibility in the long term. Because that can be that can be tough. Two days a week means you're sort of still, you can't like group that time together, you know? So I mean, I guess what, do you have any thoughts on the cadence of like, how a hybrid model could work? Or, you know, from, from a wellness perspective, from a mental health perspective of that, like, brain switching that has to happen?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 42:02

I think it's going to take, like we've just spoke about, some trial and error to find out...

Erica D'Eramo 42:08

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 42:08

...if it fits and expecting that expecting that.

Erica D'Eramo 42:10

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 42:11

I think when we pretend everything is, everything is going to be okay. And it will just slot into place. And it's not going to happen, right. I mean, there might it might do some organizations, but I, but big corporates, you know, they're gonna have to figure out like, how it's going to work and try stuff and see how it fits and, you know, stick with it for a period of time and see what kind of response they get, and then look to alter it. So this is kind of almost I don't think there's this one size fits all I, I actually really admire Dropbox was saying what they've done and say, well, we're just going to do virtual, you know, we're not going to go for this hybrid work model, you know, we're going to go for virtual, because even if, you know, you consider co workspaces or people kind of having that opportunity to get together, then you're still going to create those cliques, and you know, people that can do that or want to be able to do that, but then there's, there's gonna have to be organizations that are, you know, that they will say, people have to come into the office. So I think there's going to be more of a focus around understanding, like you said, the comms piece, making sure that is flat. And it's, it's fair that if, you know, if you're having a session, a meeting that people dial in as well like understanding, then you know how to deliver. And that is hard, because I've delivered training workshops, where I've got people in person in the room with me and people on a video camera or webcam, either in the same country or other countries. So it's hard to do that you have to be such an inclusive facilitator, and really think about your audience to make sure you're bringing people in. So you know, leaders in the teams who are in the room need to think about those people who are sat online and how they're engaging with those people. So there's gonna have to be some, there's going to have to be some kind of support and training there in place. But I also think there's got to be an understanding around, this is going to still create some anxiety for lots of people to settle into what was. You know, we've only we've, we've we've taken 12, 13, 14 months, 15 months, to get to where we are now. So it's going to probably take that amount of time, you know, we're talking weeks and months, not days and weeks to kind of get back into that sense of this is the new routine, right? So we're talking to end of 2022, not end of 2021, possibly, of alienness. Because we were always so far advanced on tech, and the ability to create virtual teams and the ability to be more collaborative with our work and to think more differently about how as as humans can inbuild self care and well being, to be more productive and to be healthier and happier and to enjoy our work, but we've just not got there yet, like we've we've kind of this has given us the opportunity it is a real opportunity it's an opportunity to shape how for leaders and organizations to shape the future of their business, going into the future, but also for individuals to really reflect and think about... And of course, I'm not saying everyone's gonna go, right, I don't want to do this anymore. But what do you want to shape your work to look like? You know, how is that important to you? What does what have you really taken from the last 13, 14 months? What do you want to see more of now? What do you want to see less of? You know, because some people will be I really want to be around people, I want to be back in the office. So if your organization goes, oh we're all virtual, then maybe that organization isn't for you anymore, likewise...

Erica D'Eramo 42:59

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 44:18

...if you're a virtual person, you might say, I need to look for something else. Like maybe it's a different sector, maybe it's a different role...

Erica D'Eramo 46:13

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 46:14

...maybe there's... Sorry.

Erica D'Eramo 46:16

No, go ahead.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 46:17

I was gonna say, um, what about all those people who shifted, who were furloughed, who might have been doing something completely different for the last 12, 13 months, you know, to had to survive to keep the money coming in. Maybe that's really changed their perspective of work. Like there's a real sense around, I remember doing a module in my undergrad degree back in the late '90s, called the realities of work. And I think this is what we're really starting to see, this is organizational change and development right at its finest. It's, it's going to be so interesting to see, like you said about people writing theses right now, I think it's going to be such an interesting place to look back on in 5, 10 years from now and go, wow, after the pandemic, look what happened to the world of work, look how it shifted and changed.

Erica D'Eramo 47:08

And I think that's the that is the piece around the reality that people are still coming to terms with that it has changed forever. And some companies will try to go back to the way it used to be. And some will be more successful than others, I think, and some of that will have to do with the age of their workforce, perhaps or the makeup of their workforce. But I do think that how companies proceed over the next kind of 24 months will become sort of their brand offering to their employees, right? That will be a competitive differentiator as far as acquiring talent. And, again, not good or bad. But differentiator right. So the people like me who love flexible working, love working from home love autonomy. They'll be they'll get to choose to the extent they have the ability to or have the privilege to choose, they'll choose those employers that really celebrate that way of working. And that's kind of a differentiator that's it existed before, certainly, but just not to the extent I think it will going forward. And so companies are going to have to compete for talent in a way that they haven't had to before. That's my prediction.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 48:23

Yeah, I think that's it, that is such a such an important part of well being because when we spoke to organizations before COVID, around more strategic consultancy, of understanding their well being strategy, you know, what do you have on your website around mental health and well being, you know, more broadly, instead of just a the obligatory statement, like how do you invest in your employees mental health and well being? How do you work at which, obviously, inclusion sits at the heart of that, and that was, for me was always a big thing, as you know, that well being was a wrapper that sits around who we are. So you know, how do you use that from a strategic brand perspective? And if you can confidently say, on your website with testimonials from employees on I don't know, Glassdoor and other websites where people can find out about what it's like to work for a company that people are really talking about. There's a real ethos here that this is what's believed in. It was really interesting because when you were talking, I was thinking about Champs, and we have we have a lot of we have a lot of women that work in Champs, and we have a lot of mums that work at Champs as well. And I wonder if that's partly and I'm not a mother but partly down to the culture that I've created around you know we the flexibility. So I got rid of our office space in 2019 in the heart of London, because we just really weren't utilizing it and actually we did co working and we got together as a team once a month to sit and work on a Monday all together. And we all traveled in. And that worked for us. And it's been hard not to see them. And then we have started to see a couple of them now in person. But we almost were like ahead of that, I guess, around how I wanted to the culture that I wanted to create and even in the last week. So last week here in the UK was a beautiful week, it was half term week. So some of the some of the team had got kids off and, I was off, but I was tapping in and out of work. And we had our usual team meeting, but actually, the ethos was like, it's a bit of a quiet week for clients just you don't need to take holiday, but just be around if needed. Like, it's, we've been through enough, like I recognize my team have been through enough and I'm exhausted. So they're definitely exhausted. So let's while we can take some of this time to refresh, and hopefully, you know, things, you know, things will as cyclical as they are and as things kind of start to, you know, we've got stuff in the diary. But as that builds again, and you know, just take that breathing space while we can. But you've got to do it, you've got it, you know.

Erica D'Eramo 51:14

This is where to get really deep for a moment, I really do think this is where true leadership like quality leadership becomes so valuable, because if your mission is clear, and if what your team contributes, is clear, then the physical location of where they are, may or may not matter, but you have trust, and you understand what they are actually contributing, versus what I call kind of the lazy version of leadership or the type of leadership that just doesn't have line of sight to that. The only analog that they can measure performance with is kind of bums in seats, as I call it. So like face time in front of the computer or face time through conversation, perhaps, but it's not necessarily output. So if you really know what you're contributing and what the mission is, and how well you're accomplishing the mission, then a lot of this other these other arbitrary measures sort of fall by the wayside because you don't need that's not part of your performance management. Like how present somebody is. I mean, present as in like physical presence...

Ruth Cooper Dickson 52:29

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 52:30

..is is not actually important.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 52:33

And also when knowing when the people are online. As a, you know, sometimes I think, oh, my goodness, I don't actually always know when people are online, I can check diaries, but it goes back to that T word, right, trust. That just knowing...

Erica D'Eramo 52:52

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 52:53

...that you trust people to do their job. You trust the outputs that you see. I we don't work on Fridays at Champs as in the office is closed, people have a choice if they want to catch up with admin, if they want to do things they can, but no external emails go out. No internal team meetings happen unless it's mega urgent, you need a one to one with somebody but that's, I think happened once in a time, twice that I know of. So it's a day of sometimes I know some of the team like to work in the morning on a Friday just to wrap up the admin for the week. But that's it, like I don't, I like to work on a Sunday afternoon for a few hours. So I would rather do my time on a Sunday afternoon sort of four or five o'clock in the evening, just to get ready for the week, week ahead, than be online on a Friday. So if that's my choice. People are very different. And I give that give that permission to choose how you want to work. That's probably how everyone in the team is it's it's a choice, you show up because of the the mission and the values and the work that we do. And people care about the work that they do and the output that they give to our clients. And we know the client is king, but there's also boundaries around that.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 54:13

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 54:14

You know, which is why we don't, which is why we don't generally you won't get emails ridiculously late at night, or at weekends from us on a Friday because there's boundaries around us even if somebody does want to work on a Sunday. If I do an email on a Sunday, it's send later it's not send an email on a Sunday.

Erica D'Eramo 54:31

Yeah, yeah, that's some that's some good practice right there with the setting of the expectations. That's something that I had to learn over the course of years that even verbally, like you don't have to work late, you don't have to work long hours if I am displaying other behaviors, people will mirror my, the leader's behaviors...

Ruth Cooper Dickson 54:56

It was so funny...

Ruth Cooper Dickson 54:57

...versus what they say.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 54:57

...both, there's two people in my team who I know who joined and they both fairly early on when starting emailed out on a Friday, one on a Sunday and both were oh my gosh, I'm so sorry I emailed a client I was like I don't even need to shout at you like, oh there was an email that did go out kind of my usual direct bluntness of you emailed a client on a Friday. Let's not let that happen again. And people know right, they're like, no we don't email on a Friday.

Erica D'Eramo 55:30

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 55:30

You've got to set that you have to set it and you have to, you have to also set it so I don't have what I don't have work emails on my phone, I took them off in lockdown one never put them back on, unless I travel into London, and I might put the Outlook app onto my phone, but I don't have my work emails on my phone. So the only way I could check my emails, if I log onto my laptop. I don't use WhatsApp for work. My team contact me by Slack. If I'm on holiday, I delete slack. And they know that if they need to get hold of me by WhatsApp, somebody has to have been... someone has to have something really serious to have to warrant a WhatsApp message.

Erica D'Eramo 56:06

Yeah. I mean, so these are some of the when we talk about best practices, you know, for leaders, I think these are some of the best practices, especially when you're looking at hybrid models because setting those boundaries and being clear that it's not an it's it's not a fake boundary. It's not like, Oh, we don't work on Fridays, but then the people who really try hard they do come in and work on Fridays, you know, like, No, we do not work on Fridays. Or we, if you do it better be secret, like don't let anybody see you doing it because we don't want to we don't want to set that example.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 56:35

Yeah. And this there'll be internal, out of offices on a Friday often say things like, Hi, I'm I'm taking some downtime from the screen and phone today, if you need me, Whatsapp or Slack me. Somebody might say, you know, there's, I'm working this, I'm around this morning, or I'm not around today, I'll be online, but on Sunday, or whatever it is. So there's, there's generally a consensus that the you might be catching up on stuff, and that's okay. It'd be really rare any leader would ask for something on a new request on a Friday, there might be stuff that's already happened in the week for somebody to work on on a Friday that they might want to tie up or wrap up on a Friday morning, for example, that they do it. But it would be you know, there's it's really rare that I would email say, Kate, my admin in my team and say, Oh, can you do this on a Friday morning, because my assumption is generally she is not, my assumption is she is not working. So therefore if she's doing her own little tidy up admin, that's for her to do. It's not me adding to her workload on a Friday.

Erica D'Eramo 57:40

And I think that that is so contrary to how a lot of people have been brought up through the business world to view what quote unquote, good work ethic is, right? Like, we've taken, again, what I what I consider sort of arbitrary metrics that aren't key to delivering the mission like response that, you know, responsiveness is always one that you should be able to drop everything at any hour of the day or night and reply to your manager for even like the smallest little thing. And you can get that and build that into your organization, but at what cost? Right. And? And is that really serving your mission? If you if you're a fire department? Yes, it is serving your mission, right? Like, there are some jobs that are all about responsiveness, security is one of them, right? But...

Ruth Cooper Dickson 58:25

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 58:26

...in most cases, like updating the slide deck for the executive team, it just means like you either didn't do your work in advance, or it's poor planning rather than, but it's seen as, like loyalty to the company or loyalty to the to the manager. And I just think that we lose so much potential talent that way by picking these outdated measures that we measure people by that aren't true to the purpose. And that's not why you hire those people. Right? I don't want to hire people who I need to check if they're online at the right time. Like do you provide quality work and insights? If yes, then I want you on the team?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 59:06

Exactly. There is not. There is not enough. Yeah, there's nothing like that. Which is really interesting. Because when you said that about coming through the ranks, I think all the times I spent in the corporate world. Why probably I have a different approach. But maybe that is because of my lived experience. But also just the fact I wanted to create something that was very true and authentic to how I am and how the business now is. And we would be going against everything... we know it's not all rose tinted glasses. We know that even though like I said, we got burnt out at the end of last year because there was so much work and we were just kind of like supporting others, we've we always put our own needs on the back burner to some extent around, you know, processing what was going off because we were supporting others, like many other frontline workers, I guess, in that sense. So you know, we're not we're not exempt of that, but actually, where we can say that these are the practices we hold and so when things are busy, like you say, when there's when our mission is to support organizations or support individuals to help ingrain a culture of positive mental health in a pandemic, of course, we're all hands to deck because that's our job like the firefighter, right? That's our job. So they're actually how do we recoup back from that, and this year has about a softness, a compassion, an ability to really look after each other to look after ourselves to understand we're all probably chronically fatigued, to know what's happening next to think ahead of the next 12 months, rather than the next five years, like, just take a breath, reset and recalibrate before we kind of move forward.

Erica D'Eramo 1:00:50

Yeah, I do hope that some of these large organizations that are making what seem like big decisions, and some of them feel like knee jerk decisions, you know, a lot of companies are like accelerating their return to work expectations, maybe they said, end of 2021. Now, a lot of at least in the US, a lot of companies are targeting September, like Labor Day is a big day in the US for like full 100% back to the office, which is in September. And I, I do hope that companies take that with them that like compassion and softness. I'm hopeful I think the ones that will have more staying power, they'll have more success, will have to incorporate that. And that growth mindset of like, we're figuring it out. This is our hypothesis for what it's going to work. If it doesn't work, we will pivot and we'll try something else. Versus like, there is a right way, there is a wrong way, we are betting that this is the right way. And we're going to put all our chips on the table, you know, I think that there, that could be a risky, that could be a risky strategy. So. So for any individuals out there whose companies maybe aren't taking best practice into account, do you have any thoughts on how they can be kind of protecting their own mental well being as they transition and are facing, you know, anxiety, changing schedules, changing demands?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:02:21

Recognize that it is affecting you I think, is first and foremost, don't dismiss how you feel because how you feel is valid. No one can tell you how you feel, right? So that's first and foremost is know, that's how you feel and that's valid. Second, where you might be transitioning back into the workplace. And if you've got to, and, you know, as we talked about before, that, that's how you earn your money. And, you know, maybe there is some bigger picture stuff, which I'll mention in a minute. But, you know, think about that dress rehearsal, think about as you would do, kind of preparing yourself mentally, physically to get back into that. So it's doesn't feel so different. So if you can, for example, work from a coffee shop, and maybe not go back into work at the moment, but you're going back into work in September, maybe if you work from somewhere else. So it's a transitionary phase, you maybe go out of the house a couple of days a week and work from somewhere a little bit different, maybe even it was for a few hours, but grab a coffee and take your laptop and work if you can do that, for example, if that's a possibility. Think about if you're if you have mental ill health diagnosis already. So know how, how to support yourself, what triggers to expect. But also if you don't, and you are feeling anxious, then think about those support systems. And we touched on this before about the US particularly, you know, there's a very strong kind of link towards having therapy or seeking that therapeutic intervention, less so probably in the UK, but coaching support, any, you know, whatever your support network is, is to use that.

Erica D'Eramo 1:04:00

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:04:00

Speak to your manager, if you can. I often think employees, individuals often make a lot of assumptions, especially if they're feeling unwell mentally, or they're not feeling 100% or they're anxious or unsure. A lot of that time is misguided, you know, because we don't give a leader or manager an opportunity to have that conversation. So don't take don't make a big assumptions. And don't tell the story from your own narrative, like think about potentially how you could explore having a conversation with your manager or leader. If you have to go back and you don't want to go back. And you know, there's obviously there's HR to have a conversation with but there is a bigger question here, which was alluded to before about is this the right job still for you? Is this the right sector for you? Is this the right organization for you? There's some bigger questions that are going to drop out of what you've been through. So if that's the case, what does that look like and start to explore that with a coach or a career guidance counselor or somebody you can just give you that kind of different perspective and, and kind of give you a holding space to have those kind of conversations. Because it might just be the adjust... I say it might just be, it could just be the readjustment to a new routine. And that is going to feel weird, unnatural, yucky, horrible bring up a load of stuff, which are normal rational emotions to kind of experience right going through a big change. So also give yourself patience and space to kind of, you know, maybe if this is on your mind, I'm thinking that this might not be the right role for me anymore, the right organization, the right job, you don't have to make that cutthroat decision right now. Otherwise, that said, you know, maybe give it till the beginning of the new year, and then say, you know what, I've been doing it for six months, and it still doesn't feel right. It's time that I took this leap. Set yourself a milestone for then, rather than thinking, I've got to be in it forever, right? This is it, I've got to go back and it's going to be awful. How about, let me see how I feel in one month, three months, five months, six months, and then start to think this... you know what, this still doesn't feel right, I need to kind of look at my options, or think about what this means for me. So.

Erica D'Eramo 1:06:16

Yeah. And working with a coach, like you mentioned, can really help you find ways to, to even like prototype some of your ideas. There's a book called Design Your Life and they talk a lot about that like prototyping before you make these big changes. What are ways that you can test it out? Because the grass... some, you know, sometimes the grass is greener, then we get to the other side and we're like, oh, this is also awful. All this like freedom I envisioned is actually very lonely and solitary.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:06:46

Well that's it right? Yeah. Definitely. My my friend Harriet Minter has written a book called Working From Home: How to Build a Career You Love. I think that's what it's called, I think that's the second part of the title, how to build a career that you love. And again, how, for those of us, the small minority who are working from home, predominantly, although we would be perhaps on client sites, in coffee shops and co workspaces before the pandemic, we were much more used to doing working from home, right. So yeah. How do you curate what like you say that prototype of what would that actually look like? Where... do I like to be around people? Would I rather be in a nice co workspace where, okay, I'm not in a office, but I have an opportunity to travel in somewhere a couple of days a week and be around people and still grab that coffee and do a little bit of a commute, maybe not the full two hours, maybe it's a 45 minute or half an hour drive or a 20 minute walk. But it's something that's not, it's very different. And again, if your organization is forward thinking and they're trialing different options, maybe if you present, if yours is flexible, and you say well, actually, there's a co workspace, which is around the corner from my house, I can travel in there in 15 minutes, I could work from there three days a week, and there's private conference rooms, I can book out for meetings and video calls. And maybe they might go for that, like, this is the thing, right? There's an opportunity for you to also... that should be exciting to curate that. So it's not all you know, it's also about taking... people forget, they can take control. And I know, people have responsibilities, and they've got childcare and mortgages and the pressures and complexities of life, but you've gone through a pandemic. So that's that's the hardest part right now is the time to kind of think about, well, what does this look like? Like what? What is your meaning and purpose? Like? What do you want to have in your life more of or what do you want to have less of? You know the big coaching questions. What do you want more of? Or what do you want less of?

Erica D'Eramo 1:08:48

Yeah, yeah. I think this is a good opportunity as well to talk to the managers and the leaders out there about when your employees are struggling, or they are going through this like what can the leaders and the and the managers be doing to keep an eye on that to be taking care of their own mental health perhaps?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:09:10

You touched on it before with the boundaries about role modeling. So there's gonna have to be a real piece from leaders and managers to role model the best practice. And not doing what they kind of expect their leader or manager to do, right. So it goes all the way up to the top. The more senior leaders that hopefully listen to this that it can set a precedent then others follow suit. So try and role model those best practices. You won't get it right they'll be times you mess up, but that's okay. Forgive yourself. Compassion... compassionate leadership is also about strength. People think compassionate is just softness, it's also having strength in that to hold that space for your teams and your people. So listening as you know, active listening, listening non judgmentally. Like why does Erica want to not come into work? She doesn't have childcare responsibility. She's at the top of her game, blah, blah, blah, like, why wouldn't you want to be in the office? You know, actually, this isn't just about what you might know of Erica on a surface level in terms of her responsibilities and commitments, this is much more deeper than that. So actually not listening, listening with that kind of non judgmental ear of understanding, signposting mental health support where needed, whether that's your employee assistance provision, or health care insurance or therapy or whatever, you have... coaching, internal coaching, external coaching support, which would be massively beneficial.

Erica D'Eramo 1:10:36

I agree.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:10:37

And also asking, what can I do to help you? Like what do you need from me? What would help you? Because I think leaders and often managers forget to ask that question. They kind of are like taking all this stuff in from an employee who sometimes might be the first time they've even articulated this out loud, or they're worried to death about having this conversation. So they get all tongue tied, and it all comes this big one big ramble or they kind of just blurt it all out with no kind of thought, thought through. And so just saying, like, well, maybe go away and have a think about what it is that you need from me, like going back to my point before about maybe say to your manager, this is some of the options I'm thinking, like, what do you think or? You know, ask them what you need, what they need from you as well. Like, that is a good starting point to kind of work from.

Erica D'Eramo 1:11:30

Yeah. Yeah. Being open minded.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:11:31

Yeah. Because if they just want to download to you, they might just want to download. So that's very different to actually there is something you could do to help and support me with this. Or it might just be I just want you to know how I'm feeling as my manager.

Erica D'Eramo 1:11:46

Yeah.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:11:46

Which is a pretty big thing in itself, but just... they may not need anything from you. But sometimes just asking that question gets the employee thinking, oh, okay, I hadn't really thought about that. What what could you do for me? What would work here? Especially like you say, if somebody has to return to work? Like, what does that look like? Or what else can they do? So.

Erica D'Eramo 1:12:08

Yeah, I mean, this I this is why I'm a big believer in leaders going through some level of coaching training, because those open ended questions, those powerful questions, the what questions and the how questions, can really just open up so much information to you as a leader that gives you access to these opportunities that you know, your team can be doing.... really performing, if you can tap into that and support your employees in the way that they need to be supported, not necessarily the way that you enjoy being supported. So yeah, really, really good stuff in there. So Ruth, if people want to know more about what Champs has to offer and and resources that they have workshops, coaching, etc., where should they go? What what should they look for?

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:12:56

You can find our website champsconsult.com. And we are also on all social media channels, which are all listed below in your show notes. So you've got all the links there, and you can reach out to us. If you go to the website, you can also download a free quickstart well being strategic guide, which is really handy and helpful. So it's a good starting point for for your journey.

Erica D'Eramo 1:13:22

Yeah, great. So I'll, I'll definitely advise our listeners to keep an eye out for webinars that come through. Ruth and her team have really great resources. And they are certainly friends of Two Piers Consulting, so. In fact, I probably owe a lot of the genesis of Two Piers to Ruth because it was sort of our conversations way back when that made me realize I I really wanted to do this. So thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about this kind of transitional world that we're in right now and and how it's gonna look. We really appreciate it.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:14:02

We need to do one next year and do a update as to where we're at, what we what we've seen happening.

Erica D'Eramo 1:14:07

Year in review, check our assumptions.

Ruth Cooper Dickson 1:14:10

Thank you for having me.

Erica D'Eramo 1:14:11

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks to everyone for joining for our our latest podcast episode. And for Two Piers, you can find us online at twopiersconsulting.com, or on all of the social media channels. So we're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and we look forward to seeing you at the next episode.

Let's Talk About Intersectionality

Photo courtesy of picnoi.

This week, we welcome our trusted friend and advisor, Kamilah Cole, to join us in a discussion of intersectionality. We explore the history and evolution of the term, how it shows up in our lives, and how we can be more mindful of intersectionality as we strive toward diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. 

Transcript below:

Erica D'Eramo 0:05

Hello, and welcome to the two peers podcast season two. Today we are joined by our guest, Kamilah Cole. So Kamila is a paralegal with experience in corporate law firms. She's originally from Baltimore City and has 30 plus years of experience living at some of the busiest intersections of identity.

Erica D'Eramo 0:34

So full disclosure, Kamilah is one of my dearest and most trusted friends. We met way back in our college days when Kamilah served as the President and I served as the Vice President of a sorority called Lambda Delta Omega, which was specifically for lesbian, bisexual, transgender and ally women. Not only that, we also served on the Student Senate together, so we were quite busy. Kamilah now serves, you know, more than 20 years later, serves as an advisor and board member for Two Piers.

Erica D'Eramo 1:06

Today, we'll be exploring the topic of intersectionality: some of the history around the term and what it means as well as how it manifests in the workplace, especially in terms of fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion. So welcome, Kamilah.

Kamilah Cole 1:20

Hi! Hello Erica.

Erica D'Eramo 1:21

Hi!

Kamilah Cole 1:21

How are you?

Erica D'Eramo 1:22

Good. It's good to have you on finally.

Kamilah Cole 1:25

Yes.

Erica D'Eramo 1:27

So yeah, thanks for joining us today. Um, I feel like this is a topic that you and I have discussed over the years. And it's a topic that I thought was really good for us to discuss now, particularly with Pride Month upon us and all of the, all of the attention we're seeing around one certain type of identity and intersection. And yeah, I thought, you know, you'd have some good thoughts to share with us.

Kamilah Cole 1:56

Yeah, thank you for having me. I love intersectionality. It's, it's a fun topic to talk about can't wait to get in it.

Erica D'Eramo 2:04

Yeah, it's really impactful too.

Kamilah Cole 2:05

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 2:06

So how would you describe like the just the kind of textbook definition of intersectionality as we, as as defined today.

Kamilah Cole 2:15

So the dictionary defines intersectionality as the interconnected nature of social categorizations, such as race, class and gender, as they apply to any given individual or group regarded as creating, overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.

Erica D'Eramo 2:33

That's a lot of words.

Kamilah Cole 2:34

That is a lot of words.

Erica D'Eramo 2:36

Yeah,

Kamilah Cole 2:37

Take a deep breath there.

Erica D'Eramo 2:41

All right. Okay. And the history of intersectionality which is kind of used, it's used a lot now, I feel like I you see it and hear it quite a bit. Although I'm not sure if people really know where it came from, or what the history of it was, and, it, it dates back to 1989. And a professor named Kimberly Crenshaw, Kimberly Williams Crenshaw, who used the term in a 1989 paper that was quite, you know, highly regarded, and widely read from the University of Chicago legal forum called Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Anti-discrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Anti-racist Politics. Also, also, a lot to say, yeah,

Kamilah Cole 3:39

Thank you, Professor Crenshaw, for bringing intersectionality to us, to the masses.

Erica D'Eramo 3:45

Yeah, I mean, I think it came about originally, really to describe, like, specifically around race and gender.

Kamilah Cole 3:56

Mm hmm.

Erica D'Eramo 3:57

Because, I mean, let's face it for like, a lot of history, feminism has been about white women.

Kamilah Cole 4:04

Yeah. Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 4:06

And has not actually described the experiences of Black women

Kamilah Cole 4:11

Anyone else?

Erica D'Eramo 4:12

Yeah. Well, anyone else?

Kamilah Cole 4:13

Anyone else?

Erica D'Eramo 4:15

Yeah, let's not forget that the suffrage movement actually relied heavily on racism, right. I mean, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony outright opposed the passage of the 15th amendment and relied on arguments, very racist arguments for why white women should get to vote to like, outweigh the black vote. So

Kamilah Cole 4:41

Exactly.

Erica D'Eramo 4:42

So like white feminism didn't have a great run there for a while.

Kamilah Cole 4:49

And a complicated track record? For sure.

Erica D'Eramo 4:51

Yeah, yeah. So So yeah, I think this, I don't know which wave of feminism it was. I think I think that this introduction in 1989 of the term kind of started to get some attention. And by the 2000s, it really started to get picked up and standing intersectionality. And while the genesis was around like race and gender, now it's expanded really to, to talk about, like humans as our whole selves, and all the different ways that they are marginalized, or all the different ways they they experience the world.

Kamilah Cole 5:29

Exactly. You know, humans, I think are way more complex than we give ourselves credit for. and way more capable of being so multifaceted. But we do like to boil ourselves down to very simple, simple things, simple sort of categories. And I think, you know, intersectionality has, is really gaining traction as people really come to embracing this, like, we're more than just a race or sex, our orientation, you know, things of that nature. But yeah,

Erica D'Eramo 6:13

Yeah. And I think this is a really important topic for us at Two Piers, because the work that we're trying to do to tackle inequality in the workplace, and to really promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. What we often encounter is companies and organizations that have really good intentions, perhaps they set goals. And they have, you know, projects and efforts and work streams to address the, you know, DEI initiatives. But when looking at it through a very segmented lens, as a task force around race, a task force around LGBTQ, a task force around gender, it leaves so much of the lived experiences of the employees kind of out of the picture.

Kamilah Cole 7:14

Exactly. And I do think that I was gonna say, especially in the workplace, you see how, especially in corporate spaces, the workforce tends to be segregated by race and class in this very white at the top, and the, you know, black and brown at the bottom, sort of way in, in terms of like, for my firm, for instance. And most of the times I've been to people on the sort of service level, the assistants, and all of those are alway, always tend to be predominantly Black and brown, and predominantly women I find, and so whereas like, the attorneys tend to be white and male. So, no surprise there. But, you know, I just found that it, it some times holds people back, because those, you know, people are not allowed to sort of ascend different levels all the time. And people are often, I've been at places where they hire like, like-colored people, like, you know, other women, because they're like, well, they'll be more comfortable, they'll fit in with the whole the rest of them.

Erica D'Eramo 8:37

Culture fit.

Kamilah Cole 8:38

Culture fit. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, I think intersectionality if you're talking about the diversity and inclusion efforts that a lot of a lot of employers are trying to implement, or at least on paper, you don't see enough talk about I think, intersectionality and how the workforce is made up of these complex people who have many different needs and different lives and identities as well.

Erica D'Eramo 9:14

Yeah. I mean, I want to revisit this a little bit later through, you know, in terms of how this manifests in the corporate space. I think a lot of times, it gets boiled down, you know, these different boxes that we put people in, become sort of check boxes in the corporate world, like, "Oh, look, we're doing okay, on diversity, because we have these candidates and they check these boxes." And in reality, it's really more like a kaleidoscope, like you're putting one lens in front of another and you're creating a totally different outcome. So you can have Black, yeah, right. Like you can have a Black man and a white woman and you don't have you're completely missing out on the lived experiences of Black women in that case, who live with very different types of marginalization and, and stressors and tensions in their lives that white women will never understand. And Black men will never understand. Like, just as one of the most dominant examples out there, right? One of the most common examples out there.

Erica D'Eramo 10:26

But I did want to give listeners, like, some examples around some more examples. So just give some color to intersectionality. Because I think we do recent, huh. To give some illustration, to the, to this concept, because, um, I find that is, because race and gender are usually what we talked about, that some of the other elements of intersectionality are maybe less familiar. And so giving people you know, other touch points to think about. So, I mean, race and gender. That is, that's a whole actually, there's a whole different terminology even there as well, right?

Kamilah Cole 11:17

Yeah, exactly. There's... as a Black woman, an expert on this topic, no, I kid. But gender and race is where you sort of, "baby's first intersection," that's where you, you know, like, that's the easiest, that's the easiest, like, sort of tangible example of how people live at these intersections. As a Black woman, I deal with a lot of misogynoir, which is defined as a hate, you know, a hatred, a dislike for Black women. And it's sort of takes sexism to another level and sort of adds in this intersectional approach, and is a way to, like shine a light on like, you know, there are instances in which there are ways I should say, in which Black women have to navigate around the world in ways that other people do not. And also in it also is about the ways that Black women are discriminated against, especially if they're darker, if they're bigger if they are any, any shade of LGBTQIA.

Erica D'Eramo 12:39

Yeah, misog..., misogyn, misogynoir.

Kamilah Cole 12:42

It's a little it's a little, it's a little bit for the tongue. You know, it's a little tongue twister. But you know, it's it's the misogyny, that Black women, Black femmes face, I would say even Black, non-binary people face in a way. Because we, a lot of people view the world in very binary terms, you know, so yeah, you definitely see that come up a lot. But there's so many, you know, there's a lot more.

Erica D'Eramo 13:17

Yeah, there is a lot more. I mean, I'm, I'm just curious. How do you describe your intersectionality? What intersections do you live at?

Kamilah Cole 13:28

Oooohh. Well,

Erica D'Eramo 13:30

I say I'm curious. I would like you to...

Kamilah Cole 13:32

I'm about to drop some secrets on you. No, no. Yeah, I think you'll I think you won't be surprised by any of these. As I said, I live at the corner of Black and lady. So I'm a woman, I also identify as queer, mostly lesbian, sometimes gay, sometimes, you know, but, uh, I definitely have that intersection as well. I'm also a first generation American. So I grew up with an immigrant family. And immigrant life in America is its own... Trying to think of a nice way to say it, but it's its own thing. You know,

Erica D'Eramo 14:26

Its own experience

Kamilah Cole 14:30

...experience. And I also also deal with, you know, I live with mental health issues. And that's another that's definitely something I feel as though in corporate spaces, you don't really get to talk about how that affects people's lives, how that affects, you know, how they operate within the workspace. And yeah, that's definitely At least a another intersection that I that I live with. What about you? What intersections do you have?

Erica D'Eramo 15:09

Well, well before I share my intersections, I do want to say like the mental health, and neuro neuro diversity, which I feel like is somewhat related, like how our brains are working?

Kamilah Cole 15:24

Yes,

Erica D'Eramo 15:25

Um, we have we actually have an upcoming podcast episodes talking specifically around that and like the transition we're going through right now, but how that manifests in different cultures and like the acceptance of that in different based on, you know, like, especially in different immigrant communities that, you know, might have varying levels of acceptance, or support. Same with orientation, right, like, yeah, so let's see, my, I guess some of my intersections would certainly be white lady, queer lady. I also would identify as neurodiverse I deal with ADHD. Um, I say deal with because I don't know, it's like my superpower as well as my like. Yeah, something that challenges me. And I don't know, what are my other intersections?

Kamilah Cole 16:41

You don't want children? But sometimes, it feels like being a motherless woman is, especially in the workplace. It can it can cause problems either way.

Erica D'Eramo 16:58

Yeah, I mean, I've definitely taken less traditional life choices in some ways. So yeah, but I think that the way it's interesting, right, because I am, I am also married to a man. And so as a white woman who I mean, I don't know as far as gender goes, I I'm not super femmy. I'm not super butch. I'm kind of just like, somewhere in the middle. There's a lot of assumptions around my queerness. And that I must be straight. And cis, and I do identify it cis, but it's just there are a lot of assumptions that get made. So

Kamilah Cole 17:47

Yeah,

Erica D'Eramo 17:48

Yeah.

Kamilah Cole 17:49

Yeah, no one ever knows I'm gay, it's horrible. It's unfortunate.

Erica D'Eramo 17:57

Are you joking?

Kamilah Cole 17:59

No, I'm not joking.

Erica D'Eramo 18:00

Really? Oh, it's just I've known you so long, I just...

Kamilah Cole 18:03

I know. I know. I've known me so long that sometimes when people when someone reads me and st may ask me something like, Oh, do you have a boyfriend? I'm like, why would you ask me that? Like, I'm just shocked. Like, what are you talking about? I don't have a boyfriend. But I'm like, Oh, you don't know me? You haven't known me for the last 20 years like you.

Erica D'Eramo 18:23

Amazing. I love it. So yeah, I mean, like actual actually like that sexual orientation, cultural heritage, that is an a big intersection for people that we don't think about all the time. Especially in Pride Month, you know, like, what different people are dealing with right now.

Kamilah Cole 18:46

Exactly. That also made me it. You know, in terms of the the workplace, the beginning of the year is always, you know, we start the onslaught of everybody gets their own month, right. And so we get Black History Month, I'm sorry, January, I don't know what it is. But I don't think it's everything. But you know, we start with Black History Month and then there's Women's History Month

Erica D'Eramo 19:13

As you say that we're gonna, we're gonna hear from the people.

Kamilah Cole 19:15

People I am so sorry, whoever's month is January, I'm sorry. But um, you know, the Black people get February and women get March and want to say April was Asian?

Erica D'Eramo 19:32

Nope, nope. The Asian folks and the Mental Health Awareness folks have to share May.

Kamilah Cole 19:38

See, that's not even right. It's not even right. But um, it's just so funny to me, because it's like, we celebrate these things at work. And I think like, when we're celebrating Black History, I'm like, Okay, this is great. But then we celebrate Women's History, and it tends to be very white women focused like we can't talk about brown outside of February. And it just it just like further shows how we live our lives so segmented like, okay, you get to celebrate your blackness this month, and then you get to celebrate your if you're a woman this month, and then if you're also Asian, which you could also be all three of those things in your like. Gotta wait till May. And if you have mental health, go ahead and celebrate that too, because it's also May. It's just like this very, it's like this

Erica D'Eramo 20:38

sort of taxonomy, right? I know.

Kamilah Cole 20:43

And it's no, it just feels like, just another way that we don't. We don't really experience ourselves as full, and complete humans.

Erica D'Eramo 20:57

Yeah, I mean, I do want to since we mentioned Pride Month, and intersectionality, I do want to give, I do want to take a moment to pay tribute to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who were kind of the original, some of the original leaders of the Pride movement, like the Stonewall protests,

Erica D'Eramo 21:21

Mhmmm,

Erica D'Eramo 21:22

and who lived at very complicated intersections in life as trans Black and brown women.

Kamilah Cole 21:32

Yes. Who were also struggling economically, you know, living like really with housing insecurity. And I think that's another, that's another intersection that we really need to make sure isn't forgotten, because you could, it's pretty deadly to be poor in this country. So that is definitely an intersection that a lot of people find themselves.

Erica D'Eramo 22:04

Yeah. I mean, class. So there's, the book I'm reading right now is called Caste. I'm a little late to the game, but I wanted to be able to give this one the focus that it deserved, and, and it it talks a lot about I mean race and caste being very much related in the United States, but that there is this economic, social hierarchy that is more complex than just race. So in the US like race is, one of the ways that we determine, it's like one of the primary ways that we determine caste, but it's it's just it is a, I mean, if this is a topic that interests people, if intersectionality interests people, I highly recommend that book because it definitely takes a more complex look at how this manifests through class, socio economic status, intergenerational wealth, and kind of trauma and oppression. Really light stuff. Real light reading? So what are some other? So what are some other intersections that we see a lot, that maybe we aren't thinking about?

Kamilah Cole 23:24

Disability, especially, like, it's also something especially since not all disabilities are visible, you know? That's definitely an intersection people find themselves at and also a place where, you know, the workplace can get really hairy, it can get really inaccessible, or just in general, not a friendly place to be so.

Erica D'Eramo 23:55

Yeah, I mean, if you even just look at, like, the strong Black woman kind of trope, right, that we've placed on an entire population of people that makes it very hard to show vulnerability to show depression and like, like somehow depression isn't affecting Black women who are bearing like,

Kamilah Cole 24:27

Yeah,

Erica D'Eramo 24:27

more burden than a lot of other people. So yeah, I mean, and, and also, like we said, how it is treated and accepted. Culturally, especially like in first generation, families. I'm, I'm now third generation Italian American. But I can say that like, depression, alcoholism, ADHD, some of that stuff was just like, it was not talked about you needed to buckle up and toughen up and just live in misery. Right? And now. Now it's becoming like, more accepted in in, I don't know, like my, my networks to talk about these things and to be vulnerable, but there are still plenty of populations in this country and everywhere where mental health issues are seen as a weakness or a flaw.

Kamilah Cole 25:29

Definitely.

Erica D'Eramo 25:30

Yeah. So I mean, one topic that came up to me, or that came up in a recent conversation that I was having was with a good friend of mine. She and her wife have kids, and she was talking about how, you know, especially during the pandemic, like, how they decided which person was going to do primary child care and scale back her hours at work and how in their case, you know, you can end up with both female parents on like a mommy track when they have kids, right, both of them facing a gender wage gap, both of them facing more difficulty in securing loans or financing or mortgages. And facing that discrimination. So in that way, kind of like sexual orientation, gender, and class had a really interesting intersection that I don't I don't know why it hadn't really occurred to me until then that like, Oh, yeah. I mean, you're both facing the wage gap. Yeah. And the mommy track?

Kamilah Cole 26:36

Track. Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 26:38

Mm hmm.

Kamilah Cole 26:39

And that's another thing, you know, you during the pandemic, when there were, a lot of people got to work from home. But there were also a large number of people whose job just could not go remote, you know, and then that puts them in this really precarious situation where their kids aren't going to school, they still have to go to work in a pandemic. And I can imagine that, I mean, I, you know, how many 1000s of stories of that had there have there possibly been, you know, during the, like, really thick parts of the pandemic that, you know, we don't really talk about, like, these are the things that women are going through, especially women of color, who are making less and also potentially raising up children, you know, as well on that less money. Um, yeah, so,

Erica D'Eramo 27:38

Yeah, I mean, we we definitely saw COVID exacerbate issues. Well, I mean, in women's engagement in the workforce dropped to levels that we haven't seen since 1980. We lost like 30 years of progress with women's participation in the labor market. And we know that COVID hit communities of color are particularly hard in particularly devastating ways. So yeah,

Kamilah Cole 28:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 28:09

Okay, I have another interesting one, ethnicity and race.

Kamilah Cole 28:13

Mm hmm.

Erica D'Eramo 28:15

Those are the same thing. Right?

Kamilah Cole 28:16

They are not.

Erica D'Eramo 28:17

Oh, tell me more!

Kamilah Cole 28:21

Well, your ethnicity is more about the country, the place the region that your people are from. I remember growing up, a lot of people were moving towards using the term African American to describe every single, dark, brown person that they met. And so but my mother, for instance, never identified as African American. And I actually have never liked the term African American. But my mother,

Erica D'Eramo 28:59

For you or for everyone?

Kamilah Cole 29:00

For me.

Erica D'Eramo 29:02

For you. Yeah.

Kamilah Cole 29:03

I can't speak for everyone. I don't know all the people. I'm

Erica D'Eramo 29:09

Just clarifying

Kamilah Cole 29:10

Just clarifying, yeah. But I remember being sort of shocked when my mother said, I'm not African American. And I was like, Oh, that must have been in like, middle school or early high school. I was like, Oh, yeah, no, that makes sense. You're not from America. But she did identify as Black. So her ethnicity is Jamaican, and her race is Black.

Erica D'Eramo 29:41

Emmanuel Acho's book, Awkward Conversations With A Black Man, kind of talks about this because his family also identifies, like, he also is, I think, first generation from an immigrant family and he kind of responds to like, questions he gets and one of the questions is around like, Can I, should I use the term African American should I use the term Black? And he's kind of like, well, you should just ask people how they identify. You just don't know. You just do know, we can't assume. But

Kamilah Cole 30:16

I think you should always just ask.

Erica D'Eramo 30:19

Yeah.

Kamilah Cole 30:20

I mean if you want. If it matters to what you your dealings with this person, I suppose you know, if you're in line,

Erica D'Eramo 30:28

If it's, if it's germane. Yeah. Like, we're not advising for anyone to just go around asking like, Hello, are you identify as Black or African American?

Kamilah Cole 30:40

If you're in line at your local Target, please don't do such things.

Erica D'Eramo 30:44

Please don't.

Kamilah Cole 30:44

But yeah,

Erica D'Eramo 30:45

Yeah.

Kamilah Cole 30:46

But I think people are afraid. You know, in an effort, I think there's always been this concerted effort to get people to not talk about race, because there's this fallacy that if you talk about it, it will exist, but it already exists. In one shape or the other. So, you know, I encourage people to not be afraid to just ask.

Erica D'Eramo 31:16

Yeah, like, respectfully,

Kamilah Cole 31:18

Respectfully like, and I like to I like to lead with, I identify as X, Y, and Z. How do you identify that's a great way to get into somebody's business and find out...

Erica D'Eramo 31:32

Yeah,

Kamilah Cole 31:33

...what they are

Erica D'Eramo 31:33

Again, like if it's germane,

Kamilah Cole 31:35

Yeah,

Erica D'Eramo 31:35

I think, right? Like, if it's, if you're trying to be respectful, and you need to use a term, just don't don't be assuming. This comes this also applies to like orientation. Right? I mean, let people self identify. Yeah, but don't expect them to educate you. That's my caveat. Right? Like, if you're gonna ask them how they identify.

Kamilah Cole 32:05

Yeah, if you need more information Google is free.

Erica D'Eramo 32:13

Google is free. Yeah. I mean, and not just Google, right. There are so many really good resources out there. Doing research this day. These days. Yeah, yeah, books, podcasts. There's Yahoo, or YouTube? Um, yeah, there's plenty of resources...

Kamilah Cole 32:37

Definitely.

Erica D'Eramo 32:38

So. So you asked me how I identify like, I think it's interesting, too, because we, you and I have talked about how white is an intersection too, right? Because when we assume that white is not, we assume white as the default.

Kamilah Cole 32:56

Mm hmm.

Erica D'Eramo 32:57

And everyone else is the other. And so I think like, for me, it's important to recognize how my whiteness shows up and what that means as far as like, especially in terms of privilege. Yeah. And the implications of my actions sometimes. Yeah, thanks for thanks for asking me. So we wanted to talk about how it manifests in the workplace. We talked about a little bit of that with Pride Month and are like different designated months where you get to be the certain thing.

Kamilah Cole 33:32

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 33:33

More of that thing than other months?

Kamilah Cole 33:35

Yes. Um, yes.

Erica D'Eramo 33:38

I think what another area I see it come through, or lack of intersectionality, I guess, is around kind of these BRGs or business resource groups or employee resource groups, where they will sometimes elevate voices of people, you know, who are wearing multiple different hats and identities, but often the focus is around, like coming together around this one trait and how that exists in the company and how they can support each other in that one way. And it can sometimes disregard intersectionality, right, like women's groups. I have heard about certain companies where, say, you know, like, the women's group might host something around uh Black History Month, and it's led by white women. And not you know, and not a Black woman has been consulted on on this or asked for their input. So, I think we need to be a little careful.

Kamilah Cole 34:56

Exactly. I also see it come up in the ways of like, Hmm, I found in corporate spaces, if there is a chance to connect you with a mentor or a mentee, there is definitely a push to connect you with someone who is just like you, but maybe is not actually just like you.

Erica D'Eramo 35:22

Like at all,

Kamilah Cole 35:24

At all. For instance, I would say for instance, if I entered a new workplace, and they tried to connect me with someone who was very religious, I wouldn't have a problem with it. But I could see if they wanted to hold my hand and pray. And I said, No. And they were upset, you know, like that could cause an issue. And we may both be Black people, we may both be Black women, but like, that is an area that could potentially cause some rift between us, you know, if somebody's, not a rift, Wow, that sounds really horrible. Um not like a fight. But you know, like, I just think that,

Erica D'Eramo 36:10

Yeah.

Kamilah Cole 36:12

That's an example cuz I know of some people I've know of workplaces where it was, a lot of it was all Black people, and a variety of ages of Black people. And so the culture really skewed very religious, and there was regular praying together, in like, before meetings, and events. And so if you're someone like me, who doesn't ascribe to organized religion, that may feel uncomfortable, but, you know, everybody out, you data, that's an intersection that the people in that room would not think about, necessarily, right? And how that sort of manifests?

Erica D'Eramo 37:03

Yeah, because you are, these are like, we're going farther down the iceberg, right? Like, the, the visibility of some of these differences. And sometimes we wear indicators of what our religious affiliation is, or spiritual affiliation. And sometimes we are very out in the workplace, or we give indications of that. But oftentimes, you don't know you don't know about the people's disabilities, you don't know about their religion, you don't know about their orientation, or gender identity? Don't know.

Kamilah Cole 37:39

No, you do not know. And also, you know, especially in terms of like, gender, you don't know where they are in the, you know, like, what am I saying, people intersections, or are moving living breathing things? And so some, you know, I'm likely always going to be Black, but I may not always identify as a woman. I may not, you know, I think we also need to be open to the possibility that people's identities shift over time and in in different ways.

Erica D'Eramo 38:18

Yeah. I mean, and, and what's going on in the world, sometimes can force sort of a prioritization, I guess, of like, how you would rank that those identities like how, you know, if I said, "How do you identify?" just the very order in which you describe those different identities can change over time? Yeah. I think like way back when, when I was a bit younger and naiver? More, more naive, naiver? More naive.

Kamilah Cole 38:57

More naive.

Erica D'Eramo 38:57

Um definitely more naive. Um, I think I like asked you kind of, what do you see as your primary identity? Like if you had to choose sides, like what would it be? Would it be like queer? woman? Black like, and, yeah,

Kamilah Cole 39:19

And there was a time when I was also younger and naivier, more naive, that I would have probably maybe told you Black because I felt like I had to choose Black. There has been a notion, I mean it still persists that you are within the Black community that you are you could potentially be, you're Black first before everything else. And certain certainly in the perception of other people. You are Black first before anything else because people perceive you. People use their eyes typically to determine who you are whatever, at least, like get a guesstimate of who you are. And so, but now, now that, thank you to Professor Crenshaw, I have a word. It's called intersectionality. I don't have to guess I live right.

Erica D'Eramo 40:20

And be all the things.

Kamilah Cole 40:21

...in the right place, I am all the things at the same time all the time, to varying degrees. And I think that's beautiful. You know, I think that

Erica D'Eramo 40:29

Yeah. I mean, so when we were researching this a little bit, um, and we saw the quote from bell hooks, where she she kind of said, the emergence of intersectionality, is it it challenged the notion that gender was the primary factor determining a woman's fate, right, that it might be other things like race, that might be the primary determinant of a woman's fate at that time. And that evolves over time, right. Like, that's different societal shifts and stuff can certainly impact what is going to most affect people at any given time. I want to just to revisit in the workplace intersectionality. I think one of the other areas, and maybe this occurs, you know, in BRGs, maybe this is sort of what I'm thinking about, but when we speak on behalf of people that we think, are just like us, we speak for, you know, when I, if I were to speak for women, right, I am absolutely not able to speak on behalf of most women, actually, yeah. Well, there's one woman I can speak on behalf of, but I mean, I'm just saying, like, to the experiences, the experiences I've had are those of a white woman existing, you know, a financially secure, housing secure white woman. And I think it can be well intentioned. And I think it can be really detrimental. And so an alternative of speaking on behalf of people would be to elevate their voices, right, to like, raise up those voices, make sure those voices are being heard.

Kamilah Cole 42:25

And allowing people to I mean, I think I think, you know, in the workplace, we just really need to consider as many of people's like, identities as possible, you know, like, elevating people, and then sort of, I mean, I think it's, I think you want to stay clear of tokenism. You know, so really honoring that people are, are more than one thing, usually more than two things even. So,

Erica D'Eramo 43:01

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, quite a few. Okay, so for anyone who wants to know more about this topic and educate them a bit more themselves a bit more like where where would you recommend they go?

Kamilah Cole 43:12

Currently, I'm reading an awesome book by Heather McGee. It's called The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. And it's really focused around the toll that racism has had on people especially in America. And how we can move forward, move on and

Erica D'Eramo 43:37

yeah,

Kamilah Cole 43:38

work well together.

Erica D'Eramo 43:39

When you say the some of us You mean "s u m" or "s o m e,"

Kamilah Cole 43:43

I mean "s u m" the some of

Erica D'Eramo 43:46

Like the mathematical sum. Yeah. My recommendation would be a YouTube series called hashtag RaceAnd, and it's presented by an organization called Race Forward and they have various videos that discuss like "race and" and the different intersections that people kind of face. And there's lots of great voices on Twitter, like one of my favorites that kind of discusses his different intersections is Michael W. Twitty. I love following him for the food, but also his kind of analysis of like religion and orientation and queerness and blackness and and Ijeoma Oluo

Kamilah Cole 44:30

Ijeoma Oluo.

Erica D'Eramo 44:32

Yeah, she's an incredible author, and also has really good commentary on these topics, on Twitter as well. And if you want to work with Two Piers and kind of look at how your organization handles intersectionality and where you could improve some of your offerings or if you need support or resources, then you can find us at twopiersconsulting.com or on any of the social media platforms, so Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. And with that, thank you so much, Kamilah for coming on and giving us your candid insights.

Kamilah Cole 45:13

Thank you for having me Erica.

Erica D'Eramo 45:15

Really appreciate it.