Innovative DE&I programs for corporations

KeyAnna Schmiedl, global head for culture and inclusion at Wayfair, joins co-hosts Iveliz Crespo and John Iino to share their thoughts about the innovative programs and policies at Wayfair, and discuss which ones have produced the most meaningful results.

For more information, please visit Reed Smith's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion page.

Transcript:

Intro: Hi, I'm John Iino and I'm Iveliz Crespo. Welcome to the Reed Smith podcast. Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions and challenges, past and present, all with a goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included. 

John: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we have a really special guest here that we'll be able to introduce to our audience. Today's program is going to follow on an earlier podcast we did which focused on best practices for building effective diversity, equity and inclusion programs. But today we have the treat of hearing from someone from the inside and a corporation really pleased to welcome KeyAnna Schmiedl, who is the global head of culture and inclusion at Wayfair. Hey, KeyAnna. 

KeyAnna: Hey John, good to be here with you. 

John: And as always, we are joined by our co-host Iveliz Crespo. So as we mentioned in our last podcast or one of our last podcast, we've been working with a number of clients to help with their diversity, equity inclusion programs. Obviously, there's so much focus, much needed focus on racial equity and the need to for meaningful and effective DEI programs. I was fortunate to participate recently in a panel discussion with KeyAnna and frankly was blown away by some of the programming that she's instituted over at Wayfair. And of those of you don't know, of course, Wayfair is the home goods home furnishing e-commerce company. Just uh I think it's rated what number, the top 50 e-commerce companies in the world so really privileged to have such a great guest with us. So KeyAnna, before we jump into all the great things you're doing over at Wayfair, please share with our audience a little bit about you. You know, how did you get into the DE&I work and really what drives your passion? 

KeyAnna: Sure. So I think there's the long story and the short story. So maybe I'll give you like the mid range. I would say that I have always been doing DE&I work. I am a black woman who grew up in a mostly white town uh and realized early on that there was this weird dance that we were all doing around difference and especially at that time, feeling like the goal was for people to not see race or not see gender and just really not liking how that sat with me. So I kind of took that into my college education, exploring spaces within human services and just trying to understand how do corporations that are full of people, get a bunch of different people to come together and move toward one goal. And is there value in making sure that those individual people understand and value each other as a group to move forward? And so that really drove a lot of the learning that I was doing as well as the work that I eventually ended up doing. So, getting into working at Harvard University for a number of years in that space, kind of identifying opportunities around recruiting diverse groups of students in graduate programs, understanding how we were having admissions meetings and how we talked about student potential varied by different dimension of diversity and, and really looking for ways to one bring that to the front and then to say so what would we like to change about this in order to see different outcomes? And just knowing that in starting that part of my career at 23 years old, I probably had a bit more activist than I did um like corporate team builder in me. So I knew I needed a additional sets of skills to help facilitate those conversations. Um So I did get a degree in organizational learning and development to supplement my degree in MBA with HR management concentration. And then went in to do training and facilitation and realized that I couldn't lose this lens of DEI no matter what I was talking about, I was connecting it all back to understanding difference and creating bridges across difference. So really just having that follow me throughout my career into consulting specifically around DE&I efforts and then finally winding up at Wayfair to lead the work in house. Because what I was missing from consulting was that long term. How do you get people to continue every day to invest and reinvest in these efforts and goals and what are some of the innovative ways in which we can think about putting theory into practice in this space? 

Iveliz: Yeah, that's fantastic, very inspiring. It's always a pleasure to hear someone share their own personal story and their own personal commitment to this. It's definitely a worthwhile field to really appreciate having you here and you sharing your story. I have been hearing about the programming that you've been putting on at Wayfair since John has heard about the programming you've put on that Wayfair. And so I am just so anxious to hear about these great programs that you're leading. So let's start with recruiting of diverse talent. You know, John mentioned a few things, but I want to hear from you, what are some of the things that you've done and what has been the impact in terms of recruitment of diverse personnel? 

KeyAnna: Sure. So what I will say is, I maybe taken an unconventional approach to this, which is in my first almost year at Wayfair, definitely solidly six months. I didn't want to set any goals around recruiting because I wanted to make sure that we were focusing on our internal culture first to make sure that we could sustain the talent that we have and understand where there's work for us to do around underrepresented and underserved populations. Only then do I feel like we can honestly and with humility, say like we wanna welcome you to this organization and here's where we're at, here's where we're going and please join us on this journey. So our efforts around talent acquisition recruiting and hiring really started before my time with Wayfair Loving data. We used to say data is our thermostat and so creating the certified interviewer program. And the idea was anyone who was tied to the recruiting and hiring process, whether that's the recruiting manager, um the recruiter themselves or anybody who's part of the interview committee would need to go through this training. And a part of that training was always around unconscious bias, but we thought that there was an opportunity for it to go a little bit deeper. And what we also understood was that, you know, it's great to say that we have the training around certified interviewer and making sure that everybody kind of goes through that. But how are we supporting our recruiters on this continuous learning journey? How are we making sure that they understand what is expected of them in terms of recruiting from diverse candidate pools and creating this slate of, you know, talented individuals where we have all levels and dimensions of diversity represented while at the same time, they are not the ultimate deciders of who gets hired. So their accountability buddy, if you will are also the hiring managers on the other side of that equation. And so we needed to make sure that they were very clear on what our expectations of them were, right? So we talked about things that all organizations talk about. Should we have the room rule? How should we think about this? And for us, it was a bit more, how do we reverse engineer what we've been doing? Where we think about, you know, our referral bonuses or opportunities for people internally to fill these roles. How are we applying a lens of inclusivity there? Where are we saying that we have this objectivity in our interviewing? But actually what we're seeing is that we believe we're being objective, but we're really just like fitting into the criteria of what works at Wayfair. And so we were honest about that. We, you know, we did some analysis, we put those into trainings and elearning for our hiring managers as well as for recruiters. And then we said we're with you on this journey. We also brought in our employee resource groups to say, here's how you help to enhance the certified interviewer program. Here's what my experience was. And then the last thing I'll mention is that we kind of packaged all of this with the culture ambassador program. So what we said is people are always looking to understand an organization's culture and ask those questions that you feel like you can't ask during an interview. Anything as simple as like, how do people dress around here to, you know, am I really going to be able to be successful when I'm there? Will I be the only one? And so we have a number of our ERG members, other folks across the organization who just really love Wayfair and want more people to join, who have said, hey, I'm gonna check the box and let you know how I identify and I'm happy for anybody to request to speak with someone like myself. And so we give candidates that opportunity to say, hey, this is how I identify. I would love to speak with somebody at Wayfair who kind of matches my ident along these dimensions. And so we have seen a lot of engagement around the culture ambassador program and really what we're doing is just making the experience real for other people so that they understand you the ways in which you can be successful here. But also they're hearing from real people at Wayfair. Hey, here's the journey that we're on. Here's where I've seen some progress. Here's what I'm excited about and that gets potential candidates excited too. 

Iveliz: That's fantastic. You know, you said a number of things that just really resonated with, you know what we're trying to do at, you know, at Reed Smith, this continuous learning process because, right, it's, it's a journey. We don't expect people to wake up one day and get it. One training is not going to be enough to change a culture, right? So I really love that you focus on that and then you said something else that really just, you know, was, was really impactful and really inspiring and it was around focusing on the current staff that you have, right to make sure that, you know, you're looking to see who needs this development. Can this role be filled internally? And I think that that really segues nicely to the next point that I wanted to discuss with you around performance reviews, right? Using performance reviews as an opportunity to, you know, develop your folks, right? And coach your folks to get to where they need to be so that you may be able to fill those positions with them. We've done a number of things at Reed Smith, you know, some of that training you talked about, but I'm really excited to hear about what are some of the things that you folks are doing over at Wayfair? What have you instituted? You know, John shared a little bit, but I'm going to let you share with us and tell us this amazing thing that you did and what were some of the results you've seen? 

KeyAnna: Sure. So again, at WayFair, you have to know that we have data people, right? And so all of the decisions that we make, people wanna understand what the data is to help drive those decisions. So when it comes to performance, we knew that that could be no different. So, right at the beginning of my tenure at Wayfair, a project was completed called Natural Language Processing. So one of the amazing things about Wayfair and a key reason why I took the job here is because we have a DEI analytics team. And so what that means is we have access to data in a way that I have not seen at other organizations. And because of that, what they were able to do is take this natural language process and essentially build kind of this rubric around, okay, we know that there are some gaps in performance and differences between people who identify as men and people who identify as women. Let's see if we can't call out how folks are writing differently about women's opportunity areas for men. And when they did that, what they kept coming up with was the same word over and over again. This word confidence, which is something that I know a lot of folks who identify as women are familiar with and getting feedback around confidence. And so when they found this word, our, our DEI analytics team was presenting about this word. What was so fascinating to me about that was that when you looked at our performance metrics and our competency model specifically, we have a, a competency around communication and persuasion. So what that means to me is that if you're saying women on average need to work on confidence, they should have lower than average scores and communication persuasion than men. And we found the exact opposite. So what that did was signal that this word is being used in a biased manner. It's being used as a catch all term and that we're not really being objective, even though on paper, people believe that they know what that word means. So then we were rolling out another training at this time around, we have this calibration process around performance. And so for calibration monitors as well as calibration facilitators, we created this training, our L&D team led it with our performance strategy team. But in there, we used this example around confidence and we said in the future, if this word comes up during the calibration process, you need to push back, you need to pause, you need to ask, you know, what exactly do you mean by that? Can you give me some specific examples? What does the behavior look like? And also what are they losing? What's the net negative that's happening because they don't have these skills? And if you can't kind of qualify these things, then we shouldn't use it as a knock against somebody. So what we were able to see was that with this training with, sharing this information with managers with this kind of collective agreed disagree align and commit around around the word confidence that within one performance cycle, we saw the ratings flip and that women started to do better on average in overall ratings than men. So we knew that we had a powerful tool here. What we then did was take a look at underrepresented races in our corporate offices and did the same analysis for all of those performance reviews across the cycle and realized for underrepresented races, similar word to confidence was showing up as well as a number of other words. And so we said we shouldn't wait on this. So we created the performance equity task force, which then launched a racial equity kit around all of this work. And what we did was we supplied managers and leaders with all of the words related to the different competency areas that we felt were being used in a biased way. We provided them with alternative ways of describing certain behaviors, but also the kind of call to action around is something like confidence, the sole responsibility of one individual or is it actually the responsibility of the team and their manager in addition to this person? And so we just kind of reframed that conversation, that dialogue, we set a steep goal for ourselves of seeing a decrease in the discrepancy between those who are from underrepresented races in our corporate office versus those who do not identify as part of an underrepresented race, decreasing that gap by 25% in one performance cycle. And again, we were able to, to achieve it. So we know the power of words and being able to say to folks, if you're writing phrases like this, stop pause, ask yourself what you're really trying to describe. And is that really just a style preference versus a net negative to the business or not allowing us to achieve our goals? So we are like, and we are obsessed with this NLP analysis and figuring out all of the ways in which we can apply it to help us better understand where folks are just using language in a way that is not allowing us to create the inclusive environment that we're, we're truly looking for and definitely seeing those changes in our performance process. Iveliz : I just love that, you know, that's, that's research based, it's in line with what we know about bias, right? You have to, you can't just tell people, but you know that bias exists, you have to help them identify it and give them steps to mitigate it. And so I just, I really love that work. I think that's fantastic. 

John: Was I right, Iveliz? The things that KeyAnna is doing are just amazing. Just blows you away. Mind blown. We'll have to have a conversation after this. Nice. Just a follow up question KeyAnna. So to gather all that information for the performance evaluations, how did you satisfy the HR folks that will say, you know, hey, you, you can't see individual performance reviews. Was it the D&I analytics team that was able to go in there on an anonymized basis to to to pull all that data? 

KeyAnna: Yes. So our D&I analytics team sits within the talent space and they are part of the people analytics team more broadly. And so I get very excited when I see the potential of things and I'm like, get me in front of whoever I need to get in front of, to tell them the importance of this work. What I will say at Wayfair is that from our talent leader through all of our talent leaders, they get it and they were trying to help us articulate the best argument. You know, I think really the only potential hurdle came up from a legal perspective of like, you know, can we set, how broadly can we share this information if we know that the levels in our organization run from L one through L eight? Right? Can we share this information with all people managers which hits a huge chunk of our population? And we identified the risks. But we also said it's worth it. We want our people to one know what we're doing with their data, to see how supplying us with this information helps us to better serve them and create fairer processes. So that three, we can continue to do this work in the future and we were able to accomplish these goals. Folks keep seeing how we're using the information. So that means more folks opt in and we're creating a true like pull to contribute information versus a push. They also know, look when when we implemented our um data visualization tool and software and gave access to all of our associate director plus population. We said if your N is smaller than five on your team, you can't see the data, right? What you can see is Wayfair overall or break it down by your particular department. But in the instances where N is five or greater, you are able to look at the entire employee life cycle. So what's going on in all of the stages from recruiting and hiring through performance through time, enroll through time to through attrition and everything in between and cut that by the dimensions of diversity that we currently have self reported data for. So I can see what's happening within the black employee population on my team. I can see what's happening with the women population on my team. I can see what's happening for folks who identify as LGBTQIA and how they're showing up on our voice survey, which is our employee engagement survey. And so I can also then look at intersectionality, right? And so this helps folks to understand that there are some undeniable truths that are occurring in our culture. And it also helps folks to just quickly get on board with uh we need to do something and we, we need to make a change. 

John: So amazing. It's kind of been the theme of this podcast. So let's shift a little bit to talk about culture, KeyAnna. I know your title is Head of Culture and Inclusion, and I've often thought that, you know, maybe my title should also include the word Culture or maybe just Chief Culture Officer. Because so much of what we do in our roles is really to try to change the culture. So comment a little bit about how you're assessing the culture of your company. 

KeyAnna: Sure, I would say, you know, something as simple as our voice survey, which we, which I mentioned currently we implement that survey every quarter. And so part of what I did was take a look at that survey with our DEI analytics team now called our Culture and Inclusion analytics team and said there are places in here where we should probably be measuring inclusion and tying that to engagement. So let's get some of those inclusion questions in here that really get that sense of belonging. And instead of saying like I can bring my true self to work. It's, it's this idea of, you know, if I want to, I am able to bring my full self to work and, and what does that mean to each individual person then kind of holds as like a baseline, right? But if I choose to, I am able to do that is a very powerful unlock for us to understand one, just a culture of inclusion. I think the other pieces around, you know, engagement and opportunity and you know, fairness and style and preferences are also all embedded in, in that kind of a survey. So for me, as we were thinking about our culture and our values, it just felt inextricable to pull DEI and say that that's separate. So as I was kind of on boarding into Wayfair and getting closer into the work and gaining a better understanding of how things operated in the talent space, it just made more and more sense that culture and DEI kind of go hand in hand and if anything to your point right, there is the culture that you have in your workplace and that either is a, you know, net proponent of or a detractor from your inclusion goals. Um The interesting thing is that about, let's see, December of 2019, we took a look at our culture and values and said, are these really working for us? And do they speak to what we say we believe around inclusion and around so many other things, right? A culture of learning a culture of development, all of these other pieces and, and we thought that they weren't. So we created a new set of people principles and in that we were able to embed all of these concepts about what we would like to be and how we believe we are when we operate at our best. And we have everything in there that you would think of from, you know, be an owner and deliver customer service. But also we have in there to respect others, we have in there, collaborate effectively, right? And, and what we don't say is that respect others is the DEI principle. Because what we want you to know is that when we're telling you build the best team is one of our people principles that also means are you thinking inclusively about your team? And yes, that's everything from all the visible dimensions of diversity, but it's also the invisible pieces, right? Like what are the skills gaps on your team right now? And how are you thinking about the next hire, whether that's internal or extra as a culture ad to your team? All of that is truly inclusion work, right? But just framing it as culture really helps people to understand, oh, this is what it feels like to know that I can be myself here, to know that I can be successful here and to really feel like things are limitless for me here. And so that's kind of what we want to create. And that's why we think it's important to say that we have a culture and an inclusion team. 

Iveliz: So now for the million dollar question you and, and John and I as DEI practitioners, we know the value of this, right? We know why this matters. We know what this means. We know what this means for other people. But for the million dollar question, which I think a lot of organizations struggle with, right? When they bring someone in who, who knows all this stuff, right? And is so good at all this stuff and in implementing change, but they get stifled, right? Because there's not true leadership buy in. And so with all of the amazing work that you've been doing over there, it's very clear that you have been able to cultivate a culture of leaders, right? That buy this, buy into this and that want to support this work. So tell us, how did you enlist this support, 

KeyAnna: How I enlisted their support was I talked to them and I talked to them with humility, right? I was willing to share, here's what I don't know, here's where I'm making some assumptions, right? And here's where my bias is telling me like to push here. But I also was open to like help me to pressure test this, help me to poke holes in this. Tell me where you're at and let me meet you there. And then let me tell you where I think we can go long term and how I think we can get there in incremental steps right now. I think one of the things that I try to do is help folks connect the theory to what it looks like in practice. And so what I mean by that is kind of what we talked about around the NLP work and performance. What I want folks to understand is that I'm not asking you to do anything new, right? When I ask you to consider the makeup of your team or are you leading meetings inclusively or all of these other concepts? I'm asking you to pull on the tool kit that you've used as a leader. Time and time again, you're just not seeing it as the same tool kit that you need in this instance. So what I'm asking people to do is use their conflict management skills, except in this instance, the conflict is I'm sensing that there is a key difference between the two of us and I don't know exactly how to resolve that. I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it. I don't know how to approach this without getting it wrong. And I am afraid of all of the negative things that could happen if and when I do get this wrong. So people not wanting to talk is the the biggest kind of detractor from, from making progress in this work. And so what I tried to do was create a space where people could be comfortable speaking, whether it was just me, whether it was me helping to kind of facilitate a thing with their teams early on when I started at Wayfair. First of all, I started solo leading the DEI work. Although I had a ton of talent partners and support around me, the team of DEI was just me and I created this interactive update where I would go to different leaders, all hands meetings and we would do some activities like the Stroop test to get the group all warmed up and somebody would inevitably raise their hand and say, but I'm color blind. So I didn't see the experiment and I would say that's part of the point too. And then I would say, so, look, here's what we're trying to do around DEI and just get folks energized. And so even if that leader didn't get on board, which they all did because I'm great at my job. Um No, but, but at least there was a group of people who were activated to want to do more, to learn more. And I also made, you know, the de I road map and ideas and thoughts that I had public to the organization. And so what that did was it allowed people to go through and explore on their own and then also identify places where they thought, hey, I, my work connects to this. I think. So for instance, our Supplier Diversity Initiative happened because one person looked at the road map saw a bullet around, you know, supplier diversity said, hey, I interact with these teams all the time. Could I help to connect this and kick start this work? And now we have all this data to report out on how we built out in scope this project, right? Our inclusive marketing strategy came about because of, of those inclusive updates and walking them through the model and them saying, hey, I think ’we're already starting to tackle some of this in our work. Can you just help us formalize and vet this? And here are the members of the team. And so I want people to feel like they own this work just as much as they believe that I do because it's truly a collective effort. And so I honestly that because collaboration and collaborating effectively is one of the biggest differentiators in our culture versus some other cultures that I've been a part of that, this idea of we can all own this work, we can all move it forward and we can all be proud and celebrate each other's accomplishments in this space. Really helped to get people on board and feel like I can do this and I can keep doing this. The only other magical piece is the data and so just giving them access to be able to go in there and see here's where Wayfair overall stats are. Here's how I measure up to those and here where my biggest opportunity areas are. From there, It's just a leadership strategy and a people strategy and people can get that. But without that information, they're flying a little bit blind and you're asking them to trust them on some really significant things. 

John: That's amazing. You know, I really love hearing about your inclusive marketing strategy. Probably do another call on that. 

Iveliz: Thank you, KeyAnna for joining us. This has been a fantastic discussion listening to the work that you've done at Wayfair. Uh And your time being there is very inspiring and I didn't even realize that I needed this conversation today, but I certainly did. It's been, it's been reinvigorating. Uh And you have me ready to pick up the fight again tomorrow. So, thank you again for joining us. It's been a privilege to have you. 

KeyAnna: Thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity. It's been a great conversation. 

Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, Pod Bean, and reedsmith.com. 

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney client-relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. 

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