The Truth About Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we are joined by David Kim, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at NetApp. Our discussion provided insights into different aspects of DEI, ranging from the intricacies of promoting inclusivity to establishing tangible goals.
David emphasized one important insight, which is the significance of comprehending the varied needs and experiences of various groups, including marginalized communities, introverts, extroverts, and others. He stated that businesses can implement concrete measures to foster inclusivity by creating specialized training and tools that cater to these distinct needs.
Furthermore, David emphasized the strategic perspective of perceiving DEI as equivalent to other areas of priority. By creating a sense of genuine inclusion within the organization, employees contribute to enhancing talent acquisition, fostering a positive culture, and developing effective leadership, thereby gaining a competitive edge. Consequently, the advancement in DEI should be evaluated based on distinct, concrete results that have an impact on the company's financial performance.
David anticipates that DEI roles will probably merge with culture and ESG roles in the future, as they share responsibilities and areas of impact. However, the ultimate objective remains unchanged: to introduce practices that foster inclusivity, equity, and a sense of belonging throughout the organization.
David's valuable insights provide a crucial perspective on the numerous priorities and complexities involved in DEI initiatives within the modern workplace. It is imperative for HR leaders to concentrate on implementing practical measures that correspond with these insights. Only then will we be able to effectively advance and transform our organizations in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Please share your thoughts on these critical issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Let us continue the conversation and collaborate towards creating more inclusive work environments.
Episode Highlights
How DEI initiatives impact the company's bottom line
How to sustain DEI commitment amid lay-offs and economic downturns
How to hold leaders accountable for their DEI commitments And the unspoken truth about Diversity and Inclusion
🎙️ Automatically generated Podcast Transcript
David 0:00
I think it's really important for the leadership teams of any company to think about reasons or the benefits of DNI. What I mean by that is if you have certain companies or groups thinking that it's a performative action, or it's governance driven, it's the check the box exercise, or it's this one key programmes based mostly on hiring, that's going to move the needle and that's what good looks like. I think that is not sustainable.
Chris Rainey 0:31
Hi, everyone, welcome back to the HR leaders podcast. On today's episode, I'm joined by David Kim, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer at NetApp. During the podcast, David shares how dei initiatives impact the company's bottom line, how to sustain di commitment amid layoffs and economic downturns, how to hold leaders accountable for their dei commitments, and the unspoken truth around diversity, equity and inclusion. As always, before we jump to video, make sure you hit the subscribe button, turn on notification bell and follow us on your favourite podcast platform. With that being said, let's jump in. David, welcome to the show. How are you my friend?
David 1:09
Doing great, fantastic. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Rainey 1:11
Nice to see you. It's always Always a pleasure. When I when in my afternoon I have a guest who's just waking up in California, as well. But you seem pretty wide awake. So you had I'm assuming you've had your coffee already. today.
David 1:23
I'm on my third cup. bloodstream and and the caffeine is steady.
Speaker 3 1:29
Yeah, before we jump in, like we were just talking about this before we hit record and I wanted to stop you because I was like, I don't want to do this all over again. Tell everyone a little bit more about your background and your journey to where we are now.
David 1:41
I am a son of immigrant parents from South Korea. They were both teachers. And I found myself growing up very young, age six, in Ohio of all places, and then ended up in Southern California just had a lot of interest and psychology and business. And it led me to having studied Industrial organisational psychology and, you know, what do you do with that it's really teach or get into HR. And I find myself going into consulting, I really believe that business doesn't happen in a vacuum, right? It's about relationships with your colleagues, leadership, your customers, as I was leading hrs, or HR I am I ran into our chief ethics officer, chief diversity officer in the hallway as he was coming back from fighting with cancer, the quick hallway discussion turned, I think into a interview, because he wanted me to talk to some of his hrl T colleagues, you know, I had to make a really hard decision because I was told that I was going to be promoted in the next six months, you know, I found myself making sort of a career decision around joining diversity, equity inclusion, as growing up, you don't think about ever becoming a chief diversity officer, that field just did not exist? No, I was either the first or one of the very first Asian male leaders in this field. And there's still very few of us, it doesn't fit the stereotype, right of an Asian man to be championing and fighting for equality and equity. And for me, personally, I found that super rewarding in a workforce setting. And I truly believe that, you know, Drucker said, culture eats strategy for lunch, he, he didn't mean that strategy wasn't important. It absolutely is. But, you know, to influence in a systemic way culture and impact people. There's a sense of honour. It's hard work, but seeing change and progress. It's meaningful. And now there's tonnes of research that that talks about sort of the positive impact to businesses and customers, I find it very rewarding and fulfilling. And that's a little bit about my journey.
Chris Rainey 3:56
It's interesting that we're talking about the role of a DI leader. But then there's stereotypes attached of what of what should be a DI leader.
David 4:04
There's tremendous, incredible diversity of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds. And I think and we have to acknowledge that there are differences and similarities in the world and the way we really capitalise on those similarities and differences for competitive advantage or, you know, making sure that wherever you are, and whatever experiences you have, that you have a sense of belonging in the workplace, I mean, that's, that's the secret sauce, I think, from a culture perspective. And that's what we aim for here at our company and the companies I've been with before, it's to ensure we have a culture and policies and practices that ensures that that culture of belonging and equity, yeah, because one size doesn't fit. All right. And we all come in all sorts of different sizes and backgrounds.
Chris Rainey 4:51
You mentioned before we went live. You've been on this sort of listening tour over the last couple of months since you've joined the organisation What are you hearing? What's going on with them in the feedback and the voice of employees?
David 5:05
You know, I've been doing this work for over two decades now. And what I've heard is not that much different than what I was hearing, you know, probably 1520 years ago. Here's, I think, the context to answer your question. Change is constant. There is incredible change in our society, and macro and economic environment, that plays a part into how people show up as their whole selves in the workplace, and how the workplace responds, you talk about here in the US, that's of George Floyd or Breanna Taylor and many others, and how that sort of shapes societal reactions, or COVID, or shelter in place and the responses there, and how does the workplace respond to meeting the needs of our employees. So basically, the themes that I heard was around change how we are responding to change as a company to build that culture of inclusion and equity, it's really tied to our strategy as well. It's three kind of key pillars, right? It's, it's, you know, visual demographic representation still matters, people want to see that I have access to the top and want to see examples of leaders like themselves in positions, they want to see that other examples in the company have promotions and access and being at the table that really clearly says to everyone else that they can do that too, or there that opportunity exists. So demographic examples, reflecting your customer base or the world if you're a consumer company is vitally important because it creates those stronger relationships and understanding. The second is around culture. And that's not enough in terms of just demographic representation, or otherwise is going to be a turnstile, people are going to come in and see a crappy culture, or great marketing on cafeteria banners and elevator doors. But if the culture isn't truly one of belonging, and inclusion and equity, and you feel left out, or you're a lone voice, or you face bias or micro inequities, then you're just going to lead right, yeah, and especially if your manager is a jerk, and doesn't espouse the values of the company. So there's the culture piece. And then lastly, you know, we can't change for good in any community by ourselves, but we have a responsibility as a company. And so it's partnering with key stakeholders, institutional investors, and, and all those from an external perspective, to make sure that we are doing good, and we're doing our part and doing good. We measure those three kinds of categories. And I think from the listening sessions, it's how serious are we as a company and commitment to those three kinds of spaces? And, more importantly, how can they get engaged the people to build a future together? So in the past, it was Propellerheads, in hallways, making decisions on down right from the stage, or what have you to say, this is the best method of, you know, best practices, but I truly believe in kind of design thinking and bringing in different groups, EBR G's, that's what we call our ER, G's, employee resource groups, and building sort of the future of talent management together, building internal mobility together and development together and company policy together. And it all starts with listening.
Chris Rainey 8:26
I'd love to hone in on the second point you mentioned, how do you build a culture of inclusion? You've done this many organisations before? What are the keys to success?
David 8:37
Yeah, I think one, you can't do it alone, right. So typically, you know, chief diversity officers and many companies, we want you to come in and change the demographic structure the entire company, we want you to change the culture of the entire company. If it's global, then it's you're talking about, you know, potentially 150 180 countries around the world. And we want you to shape sort of the brand of the company externally with diverse communities and groups, and we're gonna give you a small team of maybe three people and, you know, a small budget to that, and then it's kind of good luck. So, you know,
Chris Rainey 9:11
just those small asks, just
David 9:16
finished that in a quarter. That's how we Yeah, and by the way, we don't have clear metrics and data on how to progress. So I think for me, you have to have a holistic strategy around those pillars and even how you create accessible products or sustainable products. You have to create systemic change. It's not just about the outcome that you're measuring, but it's it's how you get there. Right? What is the process of getting there? And how do you tweak and keep iterating in an agile way, our life cycle of employee practices, whether it's how you recruit, how you manage talent, how you can to produce and focus on pipeline talent, and make sure you have succession plans and sponsorship programmes. So it can't be programmatic. It can't be just based on hiring, because the hiring, they will just come in and leave just as fast. And especially early talent. I mean, a while ago, I owned early talent, Adele for a couple years. And, you know, back then it used to be about three years that people early talent would come in, and they would leave. And now it's less than two years. I mean, it is ridiculous, in terms of how early talent and looking at careers, and career mobility, and they're looking at entire changes in their career in the next kind of, you know, like five career changes in the next, you know, eight years or something. And it's in fields that didn't exist before, like we were talking about, like, there's fields like Chief Diversity Officer diversity office today that just didn't exist. Even when I started, it was very kind of rare. I mean, you doing podcasts and content creation, everybody wants to be a content creator, and
Chris Rainey 11:04
every every day?
David 11:05
That's right. That's right. So those type of things didn't exist, or biotechnology wasn't really known very well before. Right now we're looking at generative artificial intelligence, and the impact is going to have in technology. And so
Chris Rainey 11:19
how are you? How are you seeing that, by the way? Yes, I was. I was actually reading an article about that today. I'd love to stop there for a second. What do you feel about the impact of gender of AI is going to be your DNI, it's going to
David 11:29
be an incredible tool, like any kind of technology advancement, right? We just need to figure out how to understand it, integrate it. So we're NetApp is the best I think, of course, being biassed in terms of data storage, data optimization in the cloud. And, and when you look at generative AI on prem and what that's going to mean for supporting businesses to operate and leverage AI in the cloud. That's, that's incredible. Speed, right? So I just saw a YouTube video on somebody saying, I can create a blog now in two and a half minutes in the past, it would have taken, you know, hours right to create, I think the other key thing is we're finding bias in the system, because bias is exists in us, all of us. And so we got to be careful about it showing up in this execution model or the research. And I think that's something that we need to kind of really think about, and what does that mean now for our safeguards or guidelines. And that's been an ongoing debate, as you know, in the US when COVID hit still to this day. And and when it plays from a communication standpoint. And so that debate, I think it's a good debate needs to continue, I find that sometimes laws and practices, it's behind the technology, area and space. So it'll be interesting to see kind of what that
Chris Rainey 12:58
direction. Yeah, yeah, it's gonna be definitely interested in but we definitely need some ethical practices around that. And it's so new that no one really knows exactly how it's gonna impact. We're probably looking back many years from now being like, wow, we really weren't responsible at the time, and how and how we did this, like a lot of innovations that we see. I'm wondering, you know, I've been speaking to a lot of the leaders recently, and there's been a big challenge to sustain commitment to DNI amid sort of layoffs and economic downturns, how do you sustain the commitment? During these times?
David 13:37
I think it's really important for the leadership teams of any company to think about the reasons or the benefits of DNI. What I mean by that is, if you have certain companies or groups thinking that it's a performative action, or it's governance driven, it's the check the box exercise, or it's this one key programme based mostly on hiring, that's going to move the needle and that's what good looks like. I think that is not sustainable. But I think there's a tonne of research now that talks about, you know, whether it's BCG and Financial Innovation, and it's 90% higher for diverse organisations, or the speed and better decision making by researchers based on the diversity makeup or just bottom line financial output performance if you have more women or certain amount of women, but even higher with diverse ethnicity from McKinsey, and you're talking about up to 35% or more bottom line financial performance. And to me, it makes sense, because you're talking about tackling the sort of similar type of thinking and blowing that up or you're talking about better relationship understanding with customers who are diverse, and having diverse employees to build those relationships and better understanding. It makes sense. We talked about culture eating strategy for lunch. Well, culture is What it's made up of people, business doesn't happen without people and people. And that's where we're talking about the diversity and background of experiences really capitalising using it for competitive advantage. But you have to create that kind of culture, right? It's a growth mindset culture, its culture that's inclusive and equitable, because I just said, for me, equity is around one size doesn't fit all. Everyone has different kinds of needs, whether you're talking about accessibility with disability, or you're talking about a marginalised community, with a different set of experiences and needs, or early talent, or even basic things like introverts and extroverts. There are different things that we can apply and tools and training. So we can create leaders that are more inclusive and understanding.
Chris Rainey 15:46
I'm sure everyone listening agrees with what you're saying that we've kind of read the data. But how do you get that through the minds of those leaders in your organisation? Based on your I'm sure you have had some tough conversations over the years, it's not always easy, right?
David 15:58
You know, in earlier my career, I was talking to some of the chief of staff members and various companies and a few of them that mentioned, hey, you know, when I was talking to you, I was surprised that we're talking about business. And I said, What do you mean, of course, we're talking about business, we're in a business setting. And we're talking about talent capability to feel this business priority, whether you're going to launch a site or in in a different country, or you're looking for a different skill set, we're going to go away from system and engineer three into machine learning, and artificial intelligence. And we need that kind of talent to kind of fuel this kind of innovation. Of course, we're talking about business, they thought I was going to be talking about, you know, their words, fluff, HR stuff, when we talk about finance, and forecast, you are coming to the table with numbers, you're talking about how this forecast will need to integrate and drive and control up X or up being and it has an impact, right, that our shareholders is looking at, that that's how we manage DNI, right? We're talking about if we're looking at machine learning, or looking at artificial intelligence and those kinds of engineers, then that's talent capability to feel to feel our production of certain, you know, servers and, and different data centres and, and how are we going to partner with, you know, the Amazons and the Googles and Microsoft's companies to do in a business and pathway I approach I think, just like any business leader, would, we're talking about talent, we're talking about culture, or we're talking about leadership bottom line at the end of the day. And we do it in the way that any business leader would by tracking what what does good look like? How do we measure that and make profit, make sure we make progress in those areas, and then ensure that we have executive compensation and tied to it from a performance and governance perspective. And that's what we share with our board of directors. That's what we share with our CEO leadership goalie
Chris Rainey 18:04
accountability built in by linking it back to executive compensation and bonuses.
David 18:09
Yes, the accountability is important. But I also think based on knowledge and skill set, you have to have execution plans and follow through a data just like you wouldn't measure anything else in a company, you know, how are we spending? Are we profitable? Are we growing revenue and market share? And how are we going to do that with new innovative ideas and product launches? Well, that takes talent and talent capability, are we how are we sourcing diverse talent? What does that look like compared to other areas? are we investing in early talent versus senior talent? What does turnover look like? What's regrettable loss? You know, these are all key kind of data points. But it needs to fit a narrative, right? The narrative is, what are we trying to do as a business? What do our customers need? Love it? And how do we integrate and embed DNI B and social impact, I also lead social impact, and partner with ESG efforts and sustainability efforts to integrate that into product or customer or market or our conversation with institutional investors. And so those are all linked. These are all business areas. That's where I see movement. Take Yes, it felt
Chris Rainey 19:21
like the I kind of shares a similar challenge that HR had early on, and still does have to some bit points of view where you've got the business here and HR here, right? Whereas you know, di is the business and the business is di to your point, you know, you're linking back to everything that you just mentioned, as those of those business strategic drivers are directly linked back to the work that you do, as well. And so there's a very clear ROI for the what do you do right towards that? So making sure that you're talking like in from from that perspective, and also, I think, which was what was unique about your role when I spoke to the team Is that I think it's important that you also report directly into the CEO,
David 20:03
I am actually into the HR function in my role, but but they did elevate it as a chief diversity officer. So what that means to me is I have direct access to the board, I have direct access, okay to do and direct access to our senior leadership team on a regular basis,
Chris Rainey 20:25
you need to write it normally, you kind of have the DI HR and HR is speaking with the board. And I think it's important that you have that communication as well.
David 20:36
Absolutely. And so even today, with some of the macro policy changes that we're seeing with the Supreme Court and affirmative action, as an example, it is making an impact and how many companies are responding and reflecting on the kind of initiatives. And so I'm meeting with the board to talk about how that may or may not impact our strategy around DNI. In my previous board discussions, or previous CEO, leadership discussions, it's making all those connections that we've been talking about of the importance of talent capability and enablement, in driving the right culture, the right integrated business decisions, and responding to maybe some shareholder questions or investor in questions about some of those impact or potential risk areas for us.
Chris Rainey 21:27
And that's becoming even more and more important to the investors. They're asking those questions now, right? They wish I really wasn't asking in the past, it's more important that they're starting to understand the impact. And that's also good business, and good for them. So they're also demanding that from organisations, which is really interesting, I've only kind of seen that more of over the last couple of years. I want to pinpoint on the point, you mentioned around the backlash, how, what are your thoughts on sort of the resistance and the backlash that we're seeing right now?
David 21:58
Let me make a quick point to it. So before and then and then, you know, the last probably five or six years, I've talked to more institutional investors than I ever did in my entire career. And I've been doing this for over two decades now. So you're right, I think with organisations like BlackRock, heavily, kind of looking at ESG efforts, and part of that, really around DNI efforts and ensuring that companies are committed in making progress in this area and field, but other investor groups like Calvert and others have have looked at the space too. And we're just seeing more and more expectations. Now going into your question. I also think over the last five, seven years, the US especially just things have become so politicised and polarised and right now, after, you know, as I mentioned, the George Floyd and breonna Taylor murders and being in our living rooms, and agonising kind of watching those things happen, that has really, I think, sparked societal response in one direction. And the pendulum has kind of now kind of going back and shifting. And so you're seeing, you know, Supreme Court and other government organisations kind of, I think responding to that, in terms of voting and some of the other things happening. And so it's definitely on the crest crosshairs from a DNI perspective. And so what I would say is, it was purely at least a Supreme Court decision for higher education. Yeah, and saving lots from ethnicity standpoint. It didn't overturn. Here in the US Title Seven that looks at workplace discrimination and type of practices and ensuring that we actually have a workplace that is not discriminatory actions. And we ensure diversity inclusion from a good faith effort continues, especially if you are in government contractor, like like we are today. I think what was ultimately important for us and for many companies is hearing from our CEO and our leadership team saying, in like our commitment in this space, it's not going to waver are fully committed because of those areas. We talked about innovation and better decision making better performance, better engagement, reducing attrition in ensuring that we have this culture of inclusion and equity. And that, I think, is the clear message that needs to be had. It's part of my role to ensure that those commitments we made publicly and inside the company continues, and it's in the forefront to respond to any kind of questions that that asked about. Are we wavering? are we falling back? Are we going backwards? And at least for Netta, it's it's not it's doubling down and moving forward.
Chris Rainey 24:48
I love that. One of the things that you kind of made me think about throughout this conversation is the role of the DI leader has evolved so much, even in the past couple of years. How do you see The role of the chief diversity officer evolving over the next, you know, five to 10 years,
David 25:06
you know, with any any niche field when you have broad impact. And we briefly touched on this, we said that, you know, if you depend on a small team to make these huge macro changes, it's going to fail, right. And they're not resource for it. They're not positioned, they're not at the table. Yeah. And so one, you have to be at the table to you have to integrate all these things and get work done together, just across the enterprise. The goals that I set aren't just for the diversity office to meet. These are governance, systemic changes that is really leader LED. So the goals that we create, it's not my goals. It's leadership's goals, that leadership rewards that are tied to it. It's constantly monitoring every quarter. And so once we see sort of that to be true, then I think people will think about, okay, if it touches so many different areas and spaces, and majority of that influence and governance is driven by this role. I think you're gonna see either DNI offices combined with culture work, and now they're leaders of culture, or, you know, ESG and and DNI converging and saying, you know, there's a lot of overlap here, we're, we need to make sure that these are a bit more integrated. And we're going to see kind of, what is it going to take to make systemic change. And so you'll see some some of these consolidated areas at the top, especially, you're seeing it at lower levels a little bit. You know, in some companies, it's tying supplier diversity to the suffer in other companies, it's really tying talent acquisition efforts, mostly or, you know, that's a tie with ESG in some companies. And so
Chris Rainey 26:48
yeah, I'm seeing like a lot of Chief people and sustainability officers, or chief HR and CSR officers, which are only in the last couple of years, also, that those roles are popping up, more and more and more to your point. So you're gonna start to see, so you think we're going to see more and more of that convergence? Between those kind of free spaces come together?
David 27:12
I do I do. And you're seeing new roles in business, regardless, right, as technology advances, right? Once you kind of look at sort of combining these areas, you also elevate the role to in my space, it's it was a combination of social impact with the AI. And that really fuels what we're gonna do for underrepresented or marginalised communities outside our company. Right, from a from a community perspective. You know, we have some incredible efforts around underserved communities having access to data literacy, we're just partner with UNESCO and world largest lesson and, and reaching, you know, 50,000 kids around the world and over 150 countries with Introduction to Data literacy. And so it's, it's a way for us to integrate some of these equity efforts, not only inside our company, but also allow our employees who are, by the way, super passionate about this space, is to make a difference in their own communities wherever they are around the world. And so we're looking at holistically in terms of outside in thinking, and connecting the dots between not only employee engagement, but how we serve each of the communities that we reside in. And again, it's based on those relationships I've talked about. This doesn't happen in a vacuum, right? It's about people. It's about those connections,
Chris Rainey 28:42
I feel that's a good way to end you started earlier in the beginning of the conversation about business doesn't happen happen in a vacuum for our people, and I appreciate you coming on the show, I know, you're very much new on the journey in the app as well. But what you've already achieved so far, it's been pretty, pretty incredible. And I appreciate you taking the time to share both your personal journey, right with us, and how that's really shaped who you are as a leader in the work that you do. And I'm sure back then that you had no idea that you'd be where you are now and probably didn't even understand how important those lessons that you learned and how and how important they would be in your decision making now in your journey to Iran, but clearly, you're living your values and your purpose and your inner whitespace. That's that's one thing that's very clear from this conversation.
David 29:32
Whenever I am in a kind of external facing discussion, I always kind of put an action out there to any listeners. So if you wouldn't mind me saying that because I love it. So for any anybody listening that is part of an underrepresented group. I just challenge you to just don't say no to yourself. You know, there's research that says out there that you know, women they apply For roles or promotions, and they feel like they can do that or have confidence after a high like, I don't know, 80 or 90% of meeting the qualifications where men might be maybe half of that right? Or people of colour and I would just challenge any listener to make them say no to you. I love that. Go after it.
Chris Rainey 30:20
I appreciate you coming on and wish you all the best for everything until the next week. A thank
David 30:25
you and much success to you as well. This is an incredible journey you've been on and I really appreciate this this dialogue. I mean,
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