Building Equity into Culture - A Conversation with Aparna Rae

Aparna Rae is a multi-startup founder, working at the intersection of Diversity, Equity, Inclusivity (DEI). She's the Founder of Moving Beyond, a startup building solutions to solve complex DE&I and People challenges using real-time Employee Voice & Impact data, experiential e-learning and an innovative lab approach grounded in human-centered design. As an award winning entrepreneur, Aparna understands the complexities for small and medium businesses working to have a positive impact on the world.

What strategies, tactics, equity and culture solutions have you personally seen work, and why do you think they worked?

I really believe in data. So, I think a lot about how organizations can get better at either collecting and or using data to understand what is and isn't working within their culture. 

What I've seen work really well is when organizations do two things:

1. Collecting qualitative data around their employees' perceptions and collecting quantitative data around organizational operations like, attrition. This data can come from different places like, surveys, conversations, one on ones, or even data that's being collected by EP hotlines.

   An example that comes to mind is with one company where we did a bunch of employee listening and an organizational wide survey. One of the issues that was revealed was the concern that people of color were leaving the organization — employees were questioning what about the organizational culture was causing this to happen. We looked at the operational data; the numbers and ratios of exits by race and ethnicity. What we discovered was that people of color were actually leaving at the same rate or less often, then white presenting or white identifying folks. So, in reality the issue had more to do with a perception gap. This is the power of data — giving leaders in an organization the ability to pinpoint what the problems are and address them directly.

2. Thinking about what it means to embed equity across the core work of an organization.

   I'm not personally a big believer in DEI being a separate vertical. I think every leader of every vertical has to ask themselves, how does DEI intersect with my work and what do I need to do better? The answers will be different for every line of business. When our clients do well, they aren’t dealing with DEI fires because they've built equity into the everyday work of the organization. Instead of sending people to trainings, when they're kicking off a new project they are embedding equity and inclusion principles into how they form the team. With these principles in mind, after the 5th kickoff, it might be just part of how the organization works. Ensuring DEI is part of the culture means including equity practices into onboarding, performance evaluations and other day-to-day practices.

When it comes to equity in the workplace what do you feel people aren’t thinking about? Is there an example you can share that illustrates this for you?

I feel like the biggest opportunity for organizations is thinking about where there is or isn't equity in the day-to-day rhythm of the business. In my practice, I really push companies we work with to think about the extent to which equity and inclusion is happening across everything that they do, all the time. For example, how people interact, relationships with their managers, access to senior leaders, what onboarding looks like for different demographic groups etc. These are all places where companies can look for opportunities to build in equity.  

If companies are using employee support tools like, EAPs or tEQuitable, they can look at the data those tools provide to get a better idea of what is going on for their employees and assess what can be done to support them. For example, what are the demographic groups that are using these tools? What are the topics that are coming up for them? 

We do a lot of work with construction companies and one of the things that's true about the construction industry, which I personally didn't know until just a few years ago, is that by industry, they are the second highest in terms of employee suicides, suicidal ideation and self-harm. Now, I don't think most of us have thought gosh, construction workers, are at such a high risk of dying by suicide. I know I never thought that. But this is why data matters — knowing who is using support tools and how they are using them can make a big difference.

What does the phrase culture eats strategy for lunch mean to you?

I had a great conversation with one of our clients just yesterday that speaks to this question. I'm sitting with the CEO of one of the construction companies we work with and we're talking about, why it's important to expand the DEI work into the field; which is a very different environment than an office.

He says to me, “well, you know, if, our people are working better together, our projects will save a lot of money.”

I asked him, “what do you mean? This is commercial construction isn't the strategy and the cost set? Don't you have historical knowledge of how to build buildings?”

He said, “yes of course we do and we do a lot of planning, but if people are not working well together on a job site or a crew, they're going to make mistakes and try to hide them. Fixing them later is expensive and they're not going to be talking to each other and figuring out who the best vendor or subcontractor is. They might duplicate efforts.”

It’s the idea that we can do all the planning in the world, and have the best blueprint for how to build things effectively, and efficiently within the cost parameters, but if the team is not great or they're not getting along, it's going to be really expensive. In this example it’s construction crews, but across the board, the culture of any team impacts the ability to produce quality cost effective work. 

Do you think it’s possible to change an established workplace culture? Why or why not?

Sure, I think it's possible. Culture changes when processes and priorities change. When I think about changing work culture what comes to mind is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. At the very bottom are essential needs like housing, clothing, food. Then at the very top is self-actualization. I think the way, in which people think about changing culture of organizations, they're either working very bottom of the pyramid or they're trying to work very top of the pyramid and there's a lot of things in the middle.

The things between the top and bottom are almost never addressed. So, when we think about tactical, structural, cultural we need to do the tactical and the structural change work in order to change a culture. Another challenge to cultural change is that change often does not happen within a time horizon that makes any one leader look good. It has been said that it typically takes 3 generations to generate change. Generations could be like our grandkids or 3 generations could be three CEO's from now. That might be in 10 or more years, but it takes 3 generations to change culture. The time cultural change takes means the people working on it today are likely not going to get the kudos for it by the time it's happened. If leaders aren't taking a holistic macro view of the organization and its success, they may not feel the need to prioritize and work on it today because they're not going to get the big payout, the big bonus, or recognition from having done or started the work.