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Think Strategically About Your Career Development

In a world where the average employee sends and receives 122 emails per day and attends an average of 62 meetings per month, your boss or HR leadership simply doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to properly think through how best to deploy your talents moving forward. Instead, we have to take control of our career planning to ensure we’re putting ourselves in position for long-term growth. Here are four ways to become more strategic about the process.

Force yourself to set aside time. When things get busy, time for strategic thinking is almost always the first to go. “Planning sessions” seem amorphous, and the ROI is uncertain. But going for months or years without regular introspection can lead you down a professional path that you didn’t intend to be on. Instead, force yourself to make time for strategic reflection. Just as you’re more likely to go to the gym if you have plans to meet a workout buddy, you can use the same technique to enforce discipline around strategic thinking. Identify several trusted colleagues and start a mastermind group to meet regularly, discuss big picture goals, and hold each other accountable for meeting them. Having others whom you trust challenge your thinking can open up new ideas and possibilities you hadn’t previously considered.

Get clear on your next steps. Getting clarity around your professional goals — such as being promoted to SVP, starting your own business, or running the Asia/Pacific region — is only the first step. The place where many professionals fall down is identifying the pathway to get from here to there. As I described in “A Campaign Strategy for Your Career,” one technique you can use is “pre-writing your resume.” In this exercise, you put yourself five years into the future and write your resume as you envision it, including your new title and exact job responsibilities. The trick is that you also have to fill in the intervening five years, which prompts you to reflect on what specific skills you’ll need to develop in the interim, what degrees or accreditations you may need to earn, and what promotional path you’ll need to pursue in order to get there. Understanding that helps force your thinking and ensure that you’re taking the right steps (if a master’s degree is required for a position you want in three years, you better start applying now).

nvest in deep work. It can be tempting to invest your time the same way everyone else does — putting in face time at the office, or racing to respond to emails the fastest. At lower levels, that might mark employees as “go-getters.” But as you ascend in the organization, the ability to jump higher and faster becomes less important. Instead, what marks you as successful over time is creating in-depth, valuable projects — whether that’s writing a book or a brilliant new piece of code, spearheading the launch of a promising product, or undertaking a meaningful initiative, like reorganizing the company’s performance review system. That involves a shift from staccato, reactive work into more self-directed, long-term projects (“Deep Work,” as author and professor Cal Newport puts it). Many professionals don’t seek this work out, as there’s no immediate ROI — but the long-term benefits and recognition are substantial.

Build your external reputation. A study by Wharton professor Matthew Bidwell showed that external hires into a company get paid 18-20% more than internal workers who are promoted into similar jobs. (Gratingly, they also perform worse for the first two years.) That’s patently unjust, but it points to an important truth: professionals are often taken for granted inside their own organizations. That doesn’t mean you should jump ship every few years. But it does point to the fact that, even if you’d like to stay at the same company, it’s important to cultivate a strong external reputation so that you have opportunities if you want them, and to remind your boss and colleagues that your abilities are sought after and appreciated by others. Blogging for industry journals, applying to speak at conferences, and taking on a leadership role in your professional association are all great ways to stay visible in your field — both to outsiders and those inside your company who need to be reminded of your talents.

Taking time to think about your career development is obviously important, but it’s almost never urgent, so many professionals fail to take action, year after year. By focusing on these four steps, you can begin to carve out time to be more deliberate, and lay the groundwork for the job you want — five years from now, and beyond.

Changing Careers

The decision to change careers, or vocations, is not a decision to make quickly or lightly.

The more prepared you are for the shift in career focus, the more control you have over the impact it poses to your finances, health and personal relationships. Taking a step back after you make the decision to change occupations is the smartest strategy. Many factors must be considered and assessed before making the leap.

Some of those factors include your knowledge of the new industry in which you plan to enter, your skill set and training, transferable skills and what comprises job satisfaction to you. If you are 50 years of age or older, you may have heard the job market is dire. The current trends do not seem to support this. In fact, older workers with vast experience have advantages to leverage.

Job searching techniques have changed over the last five to 10 years and you must be willing to embrace the new technology, including social media to network and find a new career. Go into the transition with your eyes wide open and you will find it was worth the time and effort you took to make it the right fit for you.

What to Know When Making a Career Change

The first thing to assess before making the transition is yourself. Take a frank look at yourself and ask yourself some tough questions, such as:

What made you want to make a change?
What are the pros and cons of making a change?
What do you want to be different in the new occupation?

Included in asking yourself these questions is asking your family members for input. Your job change is going to impact them as well. Having everyone on board goes a long way towards motivating yourself to move forward on days when you do not feel inspired.

Next, consider the job market of your intended industry. The U.S. Labor Bureau maintains an exhaustive and detailed listing of all occupations and their potential for growth over the next 10 years. It is free to access and worth the click to visit. Before launching into a new occupation, consider the following questions:

Is there growth potential in this new field?
How much competition is there in this industry?
What qualifications do I have that match others in this field?
Can I afford to start as an entry level worker in this new industry?

It is critical you do your homework and research before making any kind of decision to change your job. One of the best ways to do this is to shadow someone in the industry in which you are interested. Ask around on social media if anyone would mind you visiting them at work, or meeting with them to discuss what a typical day is like. Find forums designed for workers in transition as there may be additional avenues and job leads you find helpful in this transition.

Do not discount a personal reference from your circle of friends and acquaintances. If asking for a reference does not cause disruption to your current job, utilize this resource. Social media, even private messenger or chat is a great way to reach out to friends for an introduction. Places such as LinkedIn, HubSpot and any industry specific group site offer good research and networking opportunities as well.

Identifying Transferable Work Skills

Ask yourself whether the skills and training you currently have transfer easily to another occupation. Former teachers often find they make great corporate trainers. When reviewing job descriptions, pay attention to any similar skills between the job you are interested in and your current job.

Understanding how to identify work skills that are transferable is critically important when it comes time to construct your resume. Having already identified your strengths and weaknesses, assessing your skills helps to make your resume stronger.

Compare your current resume to those who are already in the industry in which you are interested to see how the skill sets line up. To compare, find sample resumes online. If you find you lack certain skills or training, then you still have time while at your current job to learn those skills, work with a mentor or volunteer to obtain additional experience.

Changing Careers After Age 50

In eras past, workers found a job and stayed with it their entire lives, but the current climate looks vastly different. Now, the average American worker changes jobs, even occupations, often. Many of those changing jobs do so later in life. Interestingly, many workers who are 50 years of age or older often find shifting careers bolsters their retirement security more than if they had stayed with their original career.

One of the reasons the 50 years of age group is increasingly opting to change careers is a shift in priorities. Switching from a strict focus on the financial to personal satisfaction and the attainment of professional lifetime goals is common among people in this age bracket. One thing most seasoned workers understand is finding job satisfaction in a career with growth potential often means the financial rewards follow.

If you plan to change careers and are 50 years of age, now is one of the best times to do so. You must be smart about it and have a plan to achieve success.

How to Use Social Media to Advance Your Career

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and even Pinterest are viable venues for making more money and advancing your career. Not all social media platforms are created equal, so understanding what each offer, and do not offer, is crucial to utilizing them in a way truly benefiting you. Use several key factors to understand how to set up, use and benefit from social media accounts as you plan to change careers.

Practical Tips for Changing Careers

Americans love change, and careers are not immune to this desire for new horizons. Those who successfully recreate themselves and their careers are often willing to share this knowledge. Use strategies already developed and successfully implemented by those who have gone before you to make your transition faster and easier.

How are you going to transition out of your current job into your new one? How do you assess your finances during the change? How can you optimize your new job applications? What is the best practice when constructing a resume or cover letter? Finding assistance and straight answers for these questions, and more, helps you make an informed decision.

The $700 billion Hispanic business market in the U.S. is now at the tipping point

As gridlock over another round of stimulus for small business in Washington continues, 5 million Latinos are at risk of bankruptcy, a new study reveals on Sunday.
Pre-pandemic they were the fastest-growing cohort on Main Street and contributed 4% to U.S. GDP.
Latino companies that applied for the Paycheck Protection Program have seen a 21% drop in revenue since February while their costs for PPE and other safety measures rise.

Lashana Lynch Says She Received ‘Attacks’ and ‘Abuse’ for Making… World reacts as US awaits results of 2020 presidential election The $700 billion Hispanic business market in the U.S. is now at the tipping point

As gridlock over another round of stimulus for small business in Washington continues, 5 million Latinos are at risk of bankruptcy, a new study reveals on Sunday.
Pre-pandemic they were the fastest-growing cohort on Main Street and contributed 4% to U.S. GDP.
Latino companies that applied for the Paycheck Protection Program have seen a 21% drop in revenue since February while their costs for PPE and other safety measures rise.

As gridlock over another round of stimulus for small business in Washington continues, 5 million Latinos are at risk of bankruptcy, a new study reveals on Monday. Pre-pandemic they were the fastest-growing cohort on Main Street and contributed 4% to U.S. GDP. Their demise portends a troubling trend that can upend communities across America.

Statistics reveal the story. Latino companies that applied for the Paycheck Protection Program saw a 21% drop in revenue from February through September while their costs for PPE and other safety measures rose and continue to remain high. Additionally, they retrofitted their businesses to deal with the pandemic, which resulted in a huge amount of expenditure that exceeded their revenue in the summer. They spent a lot to stay open and ended with a negative 11% margin.They are now cash flow negative and are on the brink of going out of business, the annual Latino Small Business Biz2Credit survey reveals.

Times were particularly hard for companies in the Northeast and Midwest, but as the coronavirus spread across the country, other areas have suffered, as well. The Biz2Credit research found that non-Latino businesses also have struggled, although their revenue remains slightly above break even.

For the study, Biz2Credit analyzed the financial performance of 35,000 companies, including 3,000 Hispanic-owned businesses, that submitted funding requests through the company’s online marketplace. All companies included in the survey have less than 250 employees and less than $10 million in annual revenue. The report covered small businesses across the country in a wide range on industries, from start-ups to established companies.

Construction is the largest category of businesses, representing nearly 17.18% of the Hispanic-owned companies in the Biz2Credit study. It is followed by: services (15.74%), accommodation and food services (14.63%), retail ( 9.4%), and transportation and warehousing ( 7.6%).

Research conducted by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative in May found that 86% of Latino business owners surveyed reported immediate negative effects of Covid-19. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said they would likely be out of business in six months if Covid restrictions remain in place. The study also found that Latino business owners are nervous that customers might not feel confident enough to come back and that many may not have money to pay for things.

Before the pandemic, small firms owned by Latinos were already facing barriers to prosperity. Latino-owned businesses are more likely to be start-ups, have higher credit risks, and thus, have limited ability to secure affordable capital. This can translate into more vulnerability to the pandemic’s economic effects: only 11% of small businesses in majority-Latino communities had more than 14 cash-buffer days in 2019, a JPMorganChase study shows.

A driver of the U.S. economy

As a group, Latinos are expected to comprise almost 30% of the population by 2050, compared to 18% today. Revenue of Latino-owned companies jumped 61% from 2017 to 2020. They are a growing sector of the economy, and contribute to its overall strength, but in 2020 they are struggling mightily.

“The spirit of entrepreneurship continues to thrive among the Latino populations and, until the Covid-19 pandemic set everyone back, Latino-owned businesses blossomed during the past year. As the economy emerges from the pandemic, we expect to see them in the forefront of the economic rebound,” said Manuel Chinea, COO, Popular Bank.

“Latino-owned businesses make enormous contributions to the U.S. to their communities, including job creation, which also benefits our overall economy. Popular Bank is proud to work with them to help solve their financial needs,” Chinea added.

One is Dr. Fausto Gonzalez, 50, a doctor of internal medicine. Over the past 17 years, he has expanded to four offices throughout New York City and much of his patient base are immigrants or their descendants from the Dominican Republic, where Dr. Gonzalez was born. He came to the U.S. almost 30 years ago and worked at a hospital in Brooklyn before setting up his own practice.

In 2020, he borrowed money to purchase PPE and put some protective measures in his four office locations because of Covid. Dr. Gonzalez, whose practice now bills more than $1 million annually, was financially hurt when non-emergency medical visits were discouraged during the early days of the Covid lockdown. Currently he has offices in Jackson Heights, Queens, the East Tremont section of the Bronx, Washington Heights in Manhattan and Ocean Park, Queens, and he still hopes to open another office next year despite the challenges.

Although things have been going well since lockdowns have eased, during the beginning of the pandemic, his offices closed entirely. When the practice reopened, there was a backlog of patients – and eight out of 10 patients had coronavirus. Today, he sees no more than 15 patients a day to be cautious.

“In all of my time doing medicine, I’ve never seen anything like it. The Black and Latino communities were hit hardest,” Dr. Gonzalez said. “People have complications months afterwards. It was a trauma to see them die; they are like family.”

“When you learn something and you help people to get better, you feel like you’ve done your job,” Dr. Gonzalez said. “I feel that all the years of medical school paid off.”

—By Rohit Arora, CEO and co-founder of Biz2Credit

Citi’s Female CEO Rose as Bank Faced Failings on Gender Equality

Were the 2020 polls wrong? How to interpret polling Airbnb to make IPO filing next week -sources Citi’s Female CEO Rose as Bank Faced Failings on Gender Equality

(Bloomberg) — Along Citigroup Inc.’s path to naming the first female chief executive officer on Wall Street, the bank had to confront some grim truths.

For starters, the bank that Jane Fraser takes over in February pays women just 73 cents for every $1 men get, an even wider gap than the national average. And short of 40% of Citigroup’s managers are female.

Those figures show that Fraser’s historic elevation is far from a capstone. But the bank has spent years getting to this point, and a willingness to publicly face its shortcomings has helped it outpace rivals in many key measures of progress on Wall Street’s slow road to gender equality.

“These things don’t just happen,” said Jeanne Branthover, a managing partner in the global financial-services practice at the executive search firm DHR International. “They made sure they were identifying people to move up the ladder that were not just men.”

Fraser, 53, offers a sign of the advance and an expectation for more. When she takes over, the bank’s 16-member board will be half female, a far cry from the three women that sat on the board during the last CEO handover eight years ago. The executive management team is also stocked with women overseeing functions such as compliance and regulatory affairs — critical areas as the bank prepares for increased regulatory scrutiny of its infrastructure and controls in the coming months.

Sara Wechter was CEO Michael Corbat’s only female direct report when he rose to the top job eight years ago. Now Citigroup’s head of human resources, Wechter credits Corbat with the strides made in female representation. But she said there’s more to do.

“We need all of the thousands of managers to be as dedicated as the executive management team is,” Wechter said in an interview. “This has been something we’ve been working on year after year.”

Citigroup’s campaign for greater gender equity got a fresh spark five years into Corbat’s tenure: He and then-Chairman Mike O’Neill appeared at the company’s 2017 annual meeting, arguing against a shareholder proposal filed by Arjuna Capital that would require the bank to publish a report about its policies and plans to reduce the gender pay gap.

The moment was cringe-worthy: In a stilted back-and-forth with multiple shareholders, Corbat and O’Neill conceded that they supported the idea of reducing pay disparities, but argued releasing the data wouldn’t help. After the meeting, Corbat and other members of the board believed their answers fell short and decided they wanted to make Citigroup a leader on the issue.

“Citigroup has worn their work on gender equity as a badge of honor in a different way, in a more authentic way, than the other banks,” said Natasha Lamb, a managing partner at Arunja, which has long pushed for banks to disclose more about their gender pay disparities.

A year later, the bank announced it would seek to boost the number of women managers in roles from assistant vice president to managing directors within three years to 40%, up from 37% at that time.

For some roles, the company hopes to go further. The bank is seeking to increase female representation in its analyst and associate programs to 50%. In 2019, 45% of the bank’s full-time analyst and associates were female, up from 35% a year earlier. © Bloomberg Gender Breakdown

In 2019, the bank revealed the pay gap between men and women in its global workforce. It was an ugly number that showed men held most of the highest paying jobs at the bank. But, to this day, it’s one of only a handful of companies to offer such transparent pay disclosure.

“To really make lasting change, we know we need to take a comprehensive approach – board and senior level representation, benefits and support for female colleagues, male allyship, examining and disclosing what the data was telling us and using our voice to draw attention to this very important issue,” Corbat, 60, said in a statement.

Citigroup has sought to seize on the moment, developing an ad showing employees’ daughters at the moment they first learned about the gender pay gap and unequal opportunities. Many of them displayed anger or confusion.

Gender issues are far from Fraser’s only challenge. One of the first orders of business will be cleaning up the firm’s infrastructure and controls as regulators, including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve, weigh whether to publicly reprimand the bank over continued deficiencies. She’ll also be charged with improving Citigroup’s returns, which lag behind peers.

Fraser won the top job because the board believed she could best tackle those challenges. A bonus of her taking that role, Wechter said, is it will help the bank hire, promote and keep talented women.

That impact is significant to people like Erica Witte, a director in Citigroup’s trading division. Witte was driving her daughter Paige to her first day of kindergarten when she told her the news about Fraser’s promotion.

“Guess what, mommy’s big company where she now works will now be run by a mommy too. This will be the first time a mommy is the big boss,” Witte said in an email to colleagues.

“Paige said, ‘Really? Can I be a mommy boss too one day?’”

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

Atlanta HBCUs Join IBM’s Quantum Education Research Initiative

ATLANTA, GA — Howard University, Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College are part of a group of selected universities to participate in a new Quantum Education and Research Initiative for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. IBM announced its new initiative Thursday.

Led by Howard University and 12 additional HBCUs, the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center will offer access to its quantum computers, as well as collaboration on academic, education, and community outreach programs. https://products.gobankingrates.com/r/d9360ea31bf06ea8b9d0ef49288e28fb

“Howard University has prioritized our efforts to support our students’ pathway to STEM fields for many years with exciting results as we witness more and more graduates becoming researchers, scientists and engineers with renown national companies” said President Wayne A. I. Frederick in a statement.

“Our faculty and students look forward to collaborating with our peer institutions through the IBM-HBCU Quantum Center. We’re excited to share best practices and work together to prepare students to participate in a quantum-ready workforce.”

As part of the Skills Academy Academic Initiative in Global University Programs, a multi-year program, IBM is donating more than $100M in assets, including university guests lectures, curriculum content, digital badges, software and faculty training to select HBCUs by the end of 2020.

“We believe that in order to expand opportunity for diverse populations, we need a diverse talent pipeline of the next generation of tech leaders from HBCUs,” said Carla Grant Pickens, Chief Global Diversity & Inclusion Officer, IBM. “Diversity and inclusion is what fuels innovation and students from HBCUs will be positioned to play a significant part of what will drive innovations for the future like quantum computing, cloud and artificial intelligence.”

The 13 HBCUs intending to participate in the Quantum Center were prioritized based on their research and education focus in physics, engineering, mathematics, computer science, and other STEM fields. Other HBCUs include: Albany State University, Coppin State University, Hampton University, Morgan State University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Southern University, Texas Southern University, University of the Virgin Islands, Virginia Union University, and Xavier University of Louisiana.

The IBM-HBCU Quantum Center is a multi-year investment designed to prepare and develop talent at HBCUs from all STEM disciplines for the quantum future. It will emphasize the power of community and focus on developing students through support and funding for research opportunities, curriculum development, workforce advocacy, and special projects.

Investing in Under-Represented Talent to Drive Innovation

The IBM Skills Academy is a comprehensive, integrated program designed to create a foundation of diverse and high demand skill sets that directly correlate to what students will need in the workplace. The learning tracks address topics such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, blockchain, design thinking and quantum computing.

The HBCUs who are part of the Skills Academy Academic Initiative include: Clark Atlanta University, Fayetteville State University, Grambling State University, Hampton University, Howard University, Johnson C. Smith University, Norfolk State University, North Carolina A&T State University, North Carolina Central University, Southern University System, Stillman College, Virginia State and West Virginia State University

A Mastercard SVP shares how the company’s recent $500 million commitment is helping to close the racial wealth gap in the US

Mastercard announced Thursday that it will commit $500 million to help close the racial wealth gap in the US.
Marla Blow, senior vice president of social impact for Mastercard, said Black Americans have been left behind in the financial system.
The median white family had more than 10 times the wealth of the median Black family in 2016, the Fed’s 2017 “Survey of Consumer Finances” found.
The company will work with several cities across the country including Atlanta, Birmingham, Dayton, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, and St. Louis to expand digital financial products.
They will also donate money to people facing evictions, as well as small businesses facing bankruptcy due to the pandemic.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Mastercard is committing $500 million to help close the racial wealth gap and promote financial inclusion among Black people.

The investment will be dispersed over the next five years and will help underserved Black Americans access financial tools and support.

Marla Blow, senior vice president of social impact for Mastercard, told Business Insider that protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd brought added urgency to the firm’s work toward racial justice.

“As a corporate leader, a Black woman and a former small business owner, I see very clearly the opportunity gaps that face Black communities. People are being left out and left behind,” she said.

Video: Businesses owned by Black women were thriving, then the pandemic hit (MSNBC)

Indeed, Black Americans face massive inequality when it comes to wealth accumulation and access to financial services, fueled by decades of racist policies. https://products.gobankingrates.com/r/d9360ea31bf06ea8b9d0ef49288e28fb

The median white family had more than 10 times the wealth of the median Black family in 2016, the Fed’s 2017 “Survey of Consumer Finances” found. Nearly half of Black households are unbanked or underbanked, according to a 2017 government survey.

While certainly not an end-all solution to systemic inequality, Mastercard’s investment seeks to help thousands of families and small businesses access capital.

The company will work with several cities across the country to expand digital financial products, like easy-to-use banking tools to help Black Americans avoid predatory payday banking services. It will also donate money to help people avoid evictions and help Black-owned businesses hit by the pandemic.

Over the last five years, Mastercard has brought 500 million unbanked individuals into the global financial system. Following this success, Mastercard has increased its goal to connect one billion people by 2025.

“We want to help close the racial wealth and opportunity gap,” Blow said. “Given our role in bringing people together through technology, we believe we have a real opportunity to help address a financial system that has systemically disadvantaged and excluded Black communities.”

Inclusion starts with better management – here’s what employees say about making diversity work

Since the death of George Floyd in May, dozens of companies such as Apple, Estee Lauder and Facebook have vowed to increase diversity and inclusion in their workplaces. https://products.gobankingrates.com/r/d9360ea31bf06ea8b9d0ef49288e28fb

The diversity part seems straightforward enough. But what’s meant by inclusion?

As a social work scholar, I study how leaders create socially just, equitable and inclusive workplaces, particularly when they have a diverse workforce. A recent study I conducted with social policy scholar Lawrence Palinkas examined how employees perceive leaders who are inclusive – and those who aren’t.

The value of inclusion

Companies have long focused on trying to make their workforces more diverse. But resesearch shows that simply enhancing the representation of employees from diverse backgrounds is not enough. To fully tap into the positive outcomes of diversity, organizations need to focus on inclusion.

What does this mean?

For a start, it means ensuring all employees regardless of background feel that they are important and valued members of the team. This improves employee job satisfaction, trust, engagement, creativity, commitment and performance.

Inclusion also enhances employee well-being and can lead workers to perceive fairness in decision-making, such as when colleagues are promoted.

The U.S. Census estimates that within a couple decades over half of all Americans will be members of a racial or ethnic minority group, which means creating more inclusive workplaces will be vital to keeping their future workforces happy, engaged and productive.

So we know inclusion is good for employees and workplaces, but what is less well understood is what leaders can do to exhibit inclusiveness – the goal of our study.

Over a period of two years, we surveyed employees in a department of a large nonprofit hospital located in a diverse urban city in California. We sent them three online surveys at six-month intervals, conducted six in-person organizational observations and confidentially interviewed 20 employees from a variety of different job positions, genders and racial and ethnic backgrounds to ensure we captured a wide variety of employee perspectives.

In the one-on-one interviews, we asked employees what they believed inclusive leadership was and to provide examples of what leaders do – or do not do – to help employees feel included. Because people tend to remember negative experiences more than positive ones, we asked them to start by describing leaders who did not help them feel valued.

What a less inclusive leader looks like

Less inclusive leaders were described as having talent blindness, meaning they were unable to recognize employees’ unique strengths. They treated all employees the same regardless of how hard they worked or whether they needed additional training and did not seem to value employees for their contributions.

These leaders discouraged others from sharing their ideas or excluded employees from important meetings if they did not agree with the manager’s views. Participants also described less inclusive leaders as having a tendency to blame others when things went wrong and to create divides among employees by using “us versus them” language.

Employees described less inclusive leaders as being dishonest and unclear in their communication. One said that less inclusive leaders often talk about their values and beliefs but behaved in very different ways.

For example, employees described one less inclusive leader as always telling everyone that they are honest and transparent. However, in day-to-day interactions, they were neither.

One employee said, “the [leader] never tells me the truth. In my evaluations they say all positive things but never the things I need to work on. I know I’m not being promoted for a reason, but they just don’t want to tell me. I trust the leader more if they are honest or transparent.”

Leading with inclusion

The employees described inclusive leaders, on the other hand, as leaders who act in ways that demonstrate their values and communicate openly and honestly. They treat each employee as a unique individual, recognize each person’s strengths and value diverse perspectives.

One employee recalled an experience where someone on their team needed extra shifts during the holidays to afford medical care for an ill family member. Their manager brought the team together and asked if everyone would be willing to donate one of their shifts. This employee described this experience as being inclusive because the leader was sensitive to the unique needs of one of their team members, and felt that if they needed help the leader and team would do this for them.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

Inclusive leaders were also described as asking others for feedback when making important decisions and providing everyone access to critical information. They encourage everyone to work together as a team and go out of their way to make sure employees of all job positions are valued and encouraged to be involved.

As companies strive to fulfill their pledges to improve workplace inclusion and decide whom to promote to leadership positions, they should bear in mind what their employees actually say about what makes someone an inclusive leader. I believe that’s one of the best ways to ensure workers feel equally valued with a shared sense of purpose.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Kim Brimhall received funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality . Microsoft may earn an Affiliate Commission if you purchase something through recommended links in this article.

One chart shows the gap between men’s and women’s salaries is shrinking — and it’s good news for anyone looking for a job right now

A new report indicates the wage gap in the US is closing, at least when it comes to the salaries of new hires.
Women who were new hires were offered salaries comparable to about 96% of their male counterparts, indicating the lowest difference, 4%, it’s ever been.
That’s according to a new report from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Michigan that looked at salary data of new hires in July 2020.
Despite the hopeful trend, the gender wage gap is still a national problem.
White women, on average, earn 80% of what white men do, while black women earn 66% and Hispanic women earn 58%, a pay gap of 42%, according to the US Census Bureau’s 2018 data.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

The US may be making strides toward closing the pay gap — at least for new hires.

That’s according to new data from the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Michigan that looked at salary data of new hires in July 2020. The data was originally reported by Bloomberg.

It shows that recently hired women were offered salaries comparable to about 96% of men’s — which is an improvement from previous years. For example, in 2015 new hires who were women earned 88.8% of what men did.

Former Goldman executive Chavez reflects on diversity on Wall Street

By Noor Zainab Hussain and Imani Moise

(Reuters) – Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc executive Marty Chavez said on Tuesday Wall Street’s position on diversity has evolved since he started at the megabank in the 1990s. Chavez, who is Latino and openly gay, said he hesitated when he was first offered a position on Wall Street, fearing Goldman Sachs might see his identity as a gay man as a liability.

“I just blurted out to the gentleman who was hiring me – I think I need to tell you that I’m gay. And this was 1993,” Chavez said, speaking on SALT Talks, a series of digital interviews with “investors, creators and thinkers.”

“All he could think of to say was, ‘Hey, do you have a boyfriend?’ Which is I think maybe not the response you would have in 2020, but I took that to mean, woah, this must be a gay friendly place,” he said. “I think it would have been more accurate for me to have concluded that this was a place that didn’t care if I was straight or gay. It just cared that I was good at math and software.”

Chavez retired as Goldman Sachs’ co-head of the securities division at the end of last year.

The banking industry has come under fire for a lack of racial and gender diversity in the wake of the “Me Too” movement and global protests over racial injustice.

Once considered a potential CEO candidate, Chavez held a number of roles during his 19 years at the firm, including chief information officer and chief financial officer.

Chavez said during his time on Wall Street, firms “began to understand that diversity of your workforce was like diversification of your portfolio.”

But he said that there was a long way to go, and noted that his mentors were all “straight white Jewish males.”

“If I had been waiting for a Latino mentor, or an LGBT mentor, or God forbid, one who is both Latino and LGBT, I’d still be out there waiting.”

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain and Nishant Niket in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Investors Overseeing $3 Trillion Push for Board Racial Diversity

(Bloomberg) — A new coalition of institutional investors and advisers overseeing more than $3 trillion in assets is pushing U.S. public companies to disclose the racial makeup of their boards in a bid to increase the diversity of corporate directors.

The Diversity Disclosure Initiative, headed by Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs and Connecticut State Treasurer Shawn Wooden, is pressing companies in the Russell 3000 Index to voluntarily reveal the racial and ethnic composition of their boards. Many of the members of the new group already have or are considering policies to vote against the members of nominating committees that don’t report board racial or ethnic makeup in their annual proxy statements.

In a letter sent today to all the members of the index — which includes most of the publicly traded companies in the U.S. — the group said it is calling for more disclosure in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd earlier this year. The consortium is asking the public companies that don’t divulge board racial, ethnic and gender data in proxy statements to do so in future filings, starting in 2021. Few companies now make that information public.

Many U.S. companies are for the first time disclosing the racial breakdown of their employees. As part of a push by New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, who also signed the letter, Amazon.com Inc., General Motors Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are among the companies that this year agreed to report workforce racial, gender and ethnicity data.

“This comes from a desire to do more when our country’s at this racial crossroads,” Connecticut’s Wooden said in an interview.

The percentage of Black directors remains low among the boards of the largest U.S. companies, according to an Oct. 25 analysis from executive recruiter Russell Reynolds Associates. The percentage of directors who are Black, Asian, Hispanic or other members of other racial or ethnic minorities passed 10% for the first time last year in the Russell 3000, according to the study. Black directors were the largest group, at 4.1%. In the S&P 500, the number of Black directors rose in 2019, even as the number of companies with Black directors fell; 37% of boards lacked a Black director last year, Russell Reynolds found.

Institutional investors in the roughly $89 trillion asset-management industry can use their leverage to get corporations to recognize that diversity benefits the bottom line, too, Frerichs and Wooden said. A 2020 McKinsey & Co. report showed that companies in the top quartile for executive ethnic or cultural diversity were 36% more likely to outperform on profitability than those in the bottom quartile.

“The research is fairly clear,” Frerichs said in an interview. “Those who refuse this want to perpetuate the way things have been done in the past — they are the ones who are not doing their jobs as fiduciaries.”

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