Diversity for me has been an issue I’ve been passionate about throughout my career. It’s certainly something which has evolved over time, but it’s rooted in my upbringing. My parents were very involved in the Civil Rights Movement back in the 1960s, so from an early age it has been ingrained in us as children that concepts like civil rights, diversity and valuing differences were the right thing to do.
That evolution continued when I entered the workforce, I had the opportunity to work with people that were different than me and it became clear bringing different perspectives brought real value. As I have assumed more leadership positions, I have really put in place both a desire and demand for diversity of the team and genuine inclusion – which to me, means getting value from the diversity introduced.
That personal sentiment is shared at MassMutual, where we recognize that having a diverse and inclusive workforce is absolutely critical for our success. That’s a need to acquire the best talent, but also we are cognizant that our customers are very diverse so to understand them, to look like them, to have them feel comfortable doing business with us – it’s paramount that we need to have a diverse organization. But diversity is only one half of the equation, inclusion is equally important – so it’s not just about having that diverse workplace, but being in a position to derive value from that. From our perspective, we’re confident that as a result of this, we make better decisions, we’re more creative and innovative, the team is better engaged and more productive. As a result, we take a view that diversity and inclusion is an absolute business imperative.
For diversity to truly take root in any company, the message has to come from the top, which starts with senior management. At MassMutual we take pride in walking the talk. To give you an example, one area of responsibility for me personally is the corporate secretary function at the board of directors. Right now on our board we have 15 directors in total, six of whom are women and three who are people of color.
Within MassMutual as a whole, we have various programs that all of the leadership of the company have to attend, with a focus on understanding diversity and inclusion. We have held programs, for example, on unconscious bias, and over the last year every single one of the leaders has gone through a four-day program called White Men and Allies. The focus of that program is to understand the culture of white men and understand the challenges that people who are different from us have when working in our culture.
Within the law department itself, we have a program with four key components to it:
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- Creating an environment which is receptive to diversity and inclusion.
- With that environment in place, we want to ensure that we brand it both internally and externally so that people know this is something we believe, we support and we value.
- With that brand established, we develop a pipeline so that as we hire new individuals, we’re ensuring that we’re bringing in candidates that are diverse. That doesn’t just go for internal employees either; when I hire outside law firms to do work for me, I ensure that I’m getting some of the best and brightest diverse attorneys at these firms working on our matters.
- The final component, with the environment, brand and pipeline in place, is to grow and develop people that are diverse. It’s not enough just to bring diverse people into the organization, we need to be ensuring that they are evolving, growing and rising upwards within MassMutual.
My overarching belief is that the most important things to focus on are the activities that lead to the result we are seeking to achieve. If you focus on the result itself too much, you can end up essentially making it up. I could be told that by next week that 50% of my law department must be women and I can do that – I have the ability to hire and fire after all. But what’s more important are the activities which drive the results; that way you’re achieving results in the right way.
To measure how we’re achieving on that front, we have a number of metrics and key performance indicators which we use to assess our progress. That goes for all aspects of work, but for my direct reports, their objectives include progress they’ve made and activities they’ve been involved in to advance diversity and inclusion. I ensure that all of my employees attend diversity events and that we are measuring outside counsel with respect to how diversely they are staffing our matters, as well as how diverse the firms themselves are – is it just a bunch of diverse associates or is diversity apparent throughout the senior ranks of the firm too? In addition to that, I measure my direct leadership team for diversity and do the same for all new hires joining the team. Finally, every year we measure our employee engagement with an annual survey, which includes a series of questions on diversity and inclusion. Often people will ask me to prove that the diversity initiatives we’re implementing are paying off, so when I look at that survey and I see that we score well above the benchmarks set by the best corporations in America for employee engagement – and studies consistently show that engaged employees get better results – I’m comfortable in saying that our diversity initiatives are driving better results for MassMutual.