Start with Humility

How to Implement DE&I

Irene Potsakis is a Human Resources Business Partner (HRBP) at Edelman, a global marketing & communications firm. She has her Masters Degree in Leadership & Organizational Studies where she did her thesis on the impact of employee onboarding on retention. In addition to roles as an HRBP Irene has worked in Talent Acquisition and she even worked as a Casting Director when she lived in LA.

We spoke about her career path to get to HRBP and what she’s seen in Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion along the way. She gives some great tips for leadership on how to best incorporate DE&I into their business.

Jocelyn: You’ve had a bit of an unconventional career path. You didn’t start out on the HR side of things. Tell me about your career and what made you want to work in HR.

Irene: I fell into recruiting in college, I feel like that is a normal recruiting story, “I fell into it.” I was always the people connector, and I didn’t realize that I enjoyed recruiting. Moving into a more active recruiting role allowed me to explore that. Seeing what job trends were—what specific skill sets were desired for the time period and industry—gave me a really good foundation to have that influence into the business. 

I do have this unconventional HR path, but for as much as my career path is unconventional, I feel like that is often the case with a lot of HR folks. We are people-people, so we have to be dynamic and engaging and we care about people and their livelihoods because we are such a big part of that. A job offer means everything to somebody so I think that aspect of recruiting was really appealing to me. And then I started to learn more about the company itself and the culture internally and how I want to influence that. 

So switching into an HRBP role became more attractive because I could say, “okay, well I know the people I am putting into the company, but I want to have an influence and impact on the company itself, because you are not going to retain the people you recruit unless you have a good foundation internally.” It goes back to learning skill sets and people development and leadership coaching, so my time as an HRBP I’ve really been able to focus on performance and creating courses so that people can grow in their career. That is what we are here for.

Jocelyn: I totally agree, like you, I had an unconventional start to get into HR as well, I started as a manager in hospitality and retail and everything that I saw made me want to move to the HR side of things relating to culture and supporting employees.

Jocelyn: As an HRBP and even maybe before that in companies you have been in, what are some of the great DE&I programs you have seen?

Irene: What works is identifying the why. Why are you implementing this program? Until you identify what the challenges are within your company, and what the team members are saying is a problem, you’re not going to solve anything. The solutions come when we really dig deep, pull back the curtain, and take a good look in the mirror. We really need to listen to our team members about their experience here. And then change that culture that needs to be changed.

Jocelyn: What have you been able to implement in your work around DE&I?

Irene: When I was on the recruiting side, I really saw the opportunity to build relationships with professional organizations. For example The Society of Black Engineers or Asian American Journalists Association, so depending on what role I was in, it was important for me to build those relationships because recruiting is not just reading inbound applications all day. It is being able to have a conversation with somebody; and there might not be a role in that particular moment but there will be an opportunity to bring them in when it’s time. 

It goes back to the culture piece and investing in people so they feel like there is a sense of belonging.

Or there is a sense of diversity in leadership where somebody could say, “wow the leadership team has a diverse background, someone in leadership looks like me.” While recruiting a diverse talent pool is important, it is more important to focus on culture before saying recruiting is the answer. 

Jocelyn: When I think about DE&I, I think of the strategic goal setting, what are some DE&I strategies that can really have an impact on a company culture?

Irene: Making sure there is mentorship across all employee resource groups and building a culture of inclusion is part of building a great strategy, and it’s not going to happen overnight. I think companies are quick to say, “let’s hire that DE&I expert and let’s change the culture,” but change takes time. It takes at least 2 - 3 years to make, so companies have to be realistic about what they are doing and how they are doing it. 

Budget season is always a really good time to look at what we want to do next year, let’s make sure we earmark budget for programming and opportunities for our team members for professional enrichment and also training around inclusion. People aren’t born with the sense of ‘how do I include someone?’, I think that really is a skill we have to teach. Because we come from different backgrounds and different cultures, so being able to say, this is how we do that, I think people will be more inclined to buy into the strategy. You have to have some budget behind it, re-evaluating by quarter. 

We also have to take the moments to re-evaluate every quarter because things change so quickly and we are seeing a lot happening in our world in the last 9 months, so much has happened we have to pause and think, how does this affect our team members. Being able to be empathetic with your team members is really important. 

Jocelyn: I think the point you bring up about budget is a big one, I have definitely had leaders that said they were ‘all in’ regarding diversity, but didn’t want to put the budget behind it. Have you ever experienced that and is there a solution to it?

Irene: I’ve experienced it on the recruitment side, not having a budget. I think that is really detrimental to any company. You are setting the system up to fail essentially. But it doesn’t have to be a large budget, companies can start small, it doesn’t have to be this big grandiose plan. Let’s start with one thing, let’s start with teaching people how to be inclusive, let’s spend some budget and tap an expert like WorkVision Consulting so we can identify areas where we can teach people to be inclusive, and I think that’s very important.

Jocelyn: What have you seen companies do that hasn’t worked for DE&I and why do you think it fails?

Irene: Being quick to say we need to recruit more talent that has more diverse backgrounds, yes that is important and it is part of that strategy, but it’s just a piece of the pie in the bigger picture. So looking at the bigger picture this is where recruiting needs to partner with HRBPs and employee experience teams to identify appropriate goals and really look at what is the need of the company. Rather than let’s just fill seats, let’s just check boxes, and it’s the check box companies that find themselves in this vicious cycle.

Jocelyn: What would you say to a CEO or other Senior Leadership that is trying to get all of this right, how can they be successful?

Irene: Start with humility, being honest and transparent with team members about where they’re coming from and what they want to achieve. I think a message like that from a CEO means more than putting out a generic statement when things happen and saying we are behind our community and then not doing anything about it. 

So first and foremost is telling the CEO “it’s okay to be human and it’s okay to say I don’t know and I am willing to learn with you.”

I think that’s where some companies have gotten it wrong. It’s really important for team members to understand—especially the newer career team members, they really want to find a purpose and philanthropy behind the companies that they work for—having that CEO say I am going to learn with you. I’m going to take off my CEO hat, I’m going to join in alongside you, that goes a lot further than saying we are making these grand plans, the grand plans are cool except when they don’t work, team members feel that. They really feel that it was a farce. 

Being able to tell that CEO yes let’s make a plan, let’s put some budget behind it, let’s identify our challenges, where we want to go, how we fix them, how we prevent them in the future, that’s a really important piece, and then say okay let’s put some humility behind it. Those small steps can really help a company change their culture.