True Equity Takes Time - A Conversation with Quayla Allen

Quayla is an equity strategist and culinary tourism scholar, and loving auntie and godmommy to a squad of little people. The Pittsburgh native serves as the Director of Equity, Impact, and Belonging at Sundance Institute where she works to ensure equity and belonging are core values to its work: within its workplace, artist programs, and public events that engage audience and industry partners.

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

To start, I think what works is very subjective. The reality is it’s hard to please everybody, it takes resources, time and the right people to do it. So, I think first it starts with honoring that the process towards change is slow. A lot of people want fast action and fast results, but creating intentional equity takes time. 

That said, what I’ve seen work are things like building and providing safe spaces for people to decompress. Folks who lead equity change in the workplace especially need these spaces. In my role engaging with this every day is triggering – I know people look to me as a safe person able to hold a safe space, but in many ways that’s also a form of trauma dumping – all of the emotions and experiences that I’m holding for other people. I think It’s important that safe spaces aren’t always held by internal staff, because it’s impactful to them and by extension their organizations. Third party resources like tEQuitable, Melanin mental health, or other trained professionals who can coach people through affecting circumstances are practices that I’ve seen work. They help alleviate the load that comes with interacting with and processing systems that aren’t equitable or inclusive, particularly for underrepresented folks. I think tools like these help make advancing equity work sustainable. 

What do you think is changing in the workplace that organizations need to start proactively and preemptively thinking about?

What comes to mind is how workplaces plan to sustain and continue progressing on work culture and DEI related initiatives despite the amount of turnover and layoffs that are happening.

One of the biggest ‘aha’ moments I had around this topic was that we’ve been asking organizations and companies that never intended to be social justice organizations, to all of a sudden do this really important work, make intentional change and commit to it for the future. If we’re being honest, it’s not what they set out to do and it feels like instead they’re chasing after it to keep up with the most popular sentiment or next big crisis. 

I think this rapid drive to compete in the current job market is making organizations move too fast and is encouraging them to implement sloppy equity practices in order to keep up with what’s popular — this question of how much is being done for public perception versus for the sake of employee well-being. The more methodical and careful approach of sticking to issues that are within arms reach isn’t getting enough commitment, and folks that are most committed that approach are leaving. 

When this happens who is left to ensure that the equity needle is moving forward?

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?

What comes to mind for me is that equity and/or inequity is not just about workplace practices, policies and structures but is also about individuals whether they are at work or not. It’s easy to sort of silo workplace equity to just that environment, but there is a root interaction or baseline we have with equity that happens at the personal level that really influences what plays out in the workplace.

For example, the traumas of marginalization, what it’s like to live that day-to-day or alternatively, the power of privilege. Ultimately, I think it means taking the time to interrogate who we are. For some, that comes naturally whether via therapy or other means, but for others, they may not have resources or feel psychologically safe enough to do so.

I think that becomes one of the biggest barriers to equity work. As much as people can believe in the idea of equity, if they aren’t ready to interrogate and address how it shows up and plays out in their personal life, it’s going to be even harder to deconstruct and make similar equity changes in the workplace.

What do you think is important to measure when it comes to equity in the workplace? For example, if you could reimagine an organization’s KPI’s (key performance indicators - targets that help you measure progress against your most strategic objectives) to be centered around equity and culture, what would some of them be and why?

First, I think its starts with how to assess general well-being. Not just in the workplace but outside of the workplace. For example, KPI’s that measure whether someone is genuinely happy in life, because if they aren’t, we can’t expect them to be at work – that can have an impact on the data that’s being used to make decisions and changes. If we had a better understanding of what baseline we’re measuring from, I think that would help us distinguish what we’re learning from the data.

What I mean by that is, I think it's easier to be engaged at work if you feel financially secure, or if you have your basic needs met and have access to health insurance. But organizations are bringing together and measuring engagement across a range of people that may all not be financially secure or have access to healthcare. So, I think for me, it starts with trying to measure and understand what benefits and resources people need to even be in the right mindset to work — really meeting people where they are at.

I don’t know that right now we have enough raw or holistic KPI’s to paint a complete story about where people’s baselines are. For example, if I don’t want to build a family with my work family, if that’s not what I want out of my job, that doesn’t mean I’m a detractor.

Ultimately, I think finding ways to make KPI’s more nuanced is going to help us really measure equity at an effective level.  

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

I think in this day and age, culture happens and shifts organically despite various structures organizations have in place. Those shifts are driven in large part by people — people make the org. Culture naturally evolves under the influence of many factors: changes in leadership, turnovers, new hires, technology, global crisis (i.e pandemic, economic downturns etc.) as well as the age and generation of the workforce . For example, nowadays folks aren’t staying at the same job for 15 years like they used to. So, I think an established culture can be changed, and how it changes is ultimately shaped by organization. Efforts to create shared language around culture, deciding what kind of kind of culture an organization already has or wants, and getting people committed to the culture are all ways to internally influence how an organizations culture will change.