Webinar

Next Gen Workforce: Why Culture is the New Currency

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Webinar Transcript

Speaker 1: Shayla Cory, VP of Demand Generation at Inclusively

Okay, let’s go ahead and get started. Hello, everyone. And thank you so much for joining today’s session. We’re very excited to have you here. And we’re very excited to have our presenter, Fully Teasdale, here with us as well. My name is Shayla, and I will be the host for today. Before we get started, I have just a few housekeeping announcements. We are going to be recording today’s session, as well as transcribing it. And we will make both of those available to everyone post-event. So please stay tuned for that. We will also be doing a live Q&A at the end of the session today. So if at any point in time you do have questions, please feel free to submit them via the Q&A section of the Zoom webinar platform. And we’ll make sure that we address those at the end of the session. And so with that, I would like to welcome our presenter for today, Fully Teasdale, who is the Lead on Market Strategy and Research here at Inclusively. Welcome Fully.

Speaker 2: Fully Teasdale, Market Strategy & Research Lead at Inclusively

Thank you, Shayla. So welcome everyone to our webinar, Next Gen Workforce: Why Culture is the New Currency. As Shayla stated, I’m Fully Teasdale, Market Strategy and Research Lead for Inclusively, which is a workforce inclusion platform that’s transforming the way candidates with mental health conditions, disabilities and chronic illnesses connect to jobs and inclusive employers. We have a ton to get through today. So I’m going to talk really fast. We are going to start with what defines the next generation of workforce. What makes these workers tick and what their top concerns and motivations are, then we’ll go into shifting expectations in the workplace as these younger generations become a majority of the workforce. And then we’ll talk about the impact of inclusion on culture and outcomes. And finally, we’ll end with three steps your organization can take to become better equipped from an inclusion standpoint. And like Shayla said, we will leave time at the end for questions.

So what defines the next generation workforce? First, it’s really helpful to define what generations we’re talking about. Millennials are defined as those born between 1981 and 1996, meaning the oldest Millennials are now just over 40 and the youngest are 26. The oldest Z’s are 25 right now and the youngest are in fifth grade like my eldest son. This generation is sometimes called Zoomers because many experienced life milestones like proms, graduations, first days of college and first days on the job, virtually. The two generations became a majority of the workforce in 2016, and they will comprise two thirds of the workforce by 2030. So, general generational characteristics: millennials entered the labor force corresponding with the.com bust and into the 2008 recession. This chart is showing growth and economic output adjusted for population. And as you can see, the average millennial has experienced slower economic growth since entering the workforce than any other generation in US history. They’re also the first generation to do less well than their parents, and they are behind all prior generations and saving for retirement. As a result, almost half of both of these generations are living paycheck to paycheck. And huge percentages have also taken second jobs in addition to their primary jobs to make ends meet. These statistics are from Deloitte’s annual millennial survey. It is excellent, and I highly recommend downloading it, you can find it free on the web. Randstad also has an excellent global annual survey. They’re both super informative. So these generations have lived through dramatic shifts in the political landscape and on social issues. And they have a very real fear of climate change. So when they list their top concerns, both generations list climate change as their number two concern after cost of living. And I didn’t put these stats on the slide, but three out of four adults under 40 agree that the world is at a tipping point. And the future could go either way. And less than 50% are optimistic that efforts to protect and sustain the health of the planet will be effective. So these are some really existential things that they’re dealing with as a generation. And as a result, millennials especially are making different choices and have different priorities. They have the lowest birth and marriage rates in recorded history, which does make sense in the context of their economic reality and these sort of existential questions around climate change.

The interesting thing is both of those surveys that I’ve mentioned from Deloitte and Randstad have consistent findings that can be boiled down to these five points. Number one, the great resignation may persist. These generations are far more comfortable quitting jobs without having another one lined up, and are even quitting jobs because they get in the way of personal pursuits. As such, offering flexibility and remote options are critical in recruiting and in retention. I’m sure some of you have friends at big financial institutions or big consultancies. I have a friend in senior management at one of the big consulting firms, and they have tripled their starting salary for folks coming out of grad school. And because they are requiring an office presence, they’re still having a really hard time placing candidates. This is also why empowerment is key to fostering belonging and loyalty in this generation or these generations. They want to feel invested in the communities in which they operate, including in the workplace. And their top decision drivers are social impact, DEI sustainability and climate change. They really want to feel like they’re part of something bigger, and something that has a positive impact on the world and on the planet. And finally, they are really interested in self-improvement and professional development. We’ll talk about all of these a little bit more as we get into the presentation.

So we’re going to take a moment here to provide more context around inclusion. If you’re like me, you may hear the word inclusion and think about the inclusion of women, people of color and LGBTQIA populations in the workforce. But the population that is actually the most underrepresented in the workforce and also the most discriminated against is the largest minority population in the world, and that is the disability community. So, 61 million adults in the United States have a disability today, that is one in four American adults. The disability community is the largest untapped talent pool in the United States; their employment percentages are about 1/3 of those without a disability. They’re also the most negatively affected by current hiring processes and technologies. As you can see here, 94% of employers admit that their job reqs and applicant tracking systems are screening out qualified talent. The disability community also intersects with all other underrepresented groups, potentially opening doors to 27 million people who are currently called Hidden workers. That means they’re underemployed or not employed, but they are looking for work and want to be part of the workforce. They’re being screened out for things like a gap in a resume, or a college degree taking more than four years. Those are really common occurrences for people with disabilities.

And they’re not even getting through to being seen by a human. That 26% figure is actually even greater in the workplace. Right now, 30% of the professional workforce today meets the definition of having a disability, that’s nearly one in three workers. And yet the vast majority of them are not disclosing any needs for accommodations. This is really driven by fear that if they do, they may put themselves at risk. For decades, advocacy organizations would actually counsel people with disabilities not to disclose out of the very real fear of getting passed over for jobs. And there’s a ton of data still supporting this reality.

Things are beginning to change. And it’s with these younger generations, there’s been a 15% increase in students getting accommodations in schools since the beginning of the century. And as a result, we’ve seen a 25% increase in self disclosure among new hires over the past two years alone. Younger workers are much more comfortable disclosing any needs for accommodations. And they have higher expectations around getting those needs met. After they were accommodated in school, they don’t understand why it would be any different in the workplace. They also have far fewer stigmas around disabilities than prior generations, they’ve grown up with friends who need accommodations as the norm. They’re seeing icons talk about disabilities in pop culture, and they have a far lower tolerance for lack of inclusion. The good news for organizations is that employees who disclose and are accommodated are far more engaged and more likely to stay and that inclusion leads to multiple other positive outcomes both for individuals and for organizations, which we’ll also go into in more detail.

So, shifting perceptions around mental health and the pandemic has brought mental health awareness into the workplace in ways we never could have conceptualized three years ago. In a 2021, survey on mental health at work, 76% of US workers reported experiencing at least one mental health condition in the last year. So three out of four workers had a mental health condition that would be qualified or would be considered under the ADA. 50% of workers have reported leaving a role, at least in part for mental health reasons in the last two years. And you can see those numbers skyrocket in the younger generations up to 81% of Z’s. And that figure is right about 80. About 80% of Z have left their jobs in the last year and about 80% of those people list mental health as at least one reason for leaving that job. In addition, nine out of 10 workers say a company’s culture should support mental health. So the bottom line here is that far more people have grown accustomed to talking about and seeking support for mental health conditions. That being said, many employees and employers may not understand that these conditions like anxiety, depression, OCD, and even long COVID are protected under the ADA. This is a great quote from the study, “employees need and expect sustainable and mentally healthy workplaces, which requires taking on the real work of cultural change. It’s not enough to simply offer the latest apps or employ euphemisms like well being or mental fitness, employers must connect what they say to what they actually do.” In addition, in the last two years, mental health has come to be seen by workers as a DEI issue. Between 2019 and 2021, there was a 32% increase among workers in believing that mental health is a DEI issue. So it now stands at 54% of workers who think that mental health is a DEI issue. This is likely due to people understanding that some populations are more likely to experience mental health conditions than others, and also that certain populations are less likely to feel supported in the workplace. It can also be attributed to factors like COVID, death rates being unevenly distributed across populations, meaning that if you were a person of color, you’re much more likely to have lost a loved one due to COVID. And also to the reality that social justice movements have also had an impact on people’s mental health and wellbeing. So, again, to quote the study, “mental health experiences are fundamentally tied to our identities, communities, and group membership. True investment in mental health necessitates equally true investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion to support workplace mental health, equality for all.”

So what is the impact on all of these realities? We’ve established that mental health is something we’re all more aware of and more willing to talk about in the workplace than we were two years ago. We’ve also established that younger workers are more likely to disclose the need for accommodations, and they have higher expectations around those needs being met. They also really emphasize diversity, equity and inclusion and creating a healthy and productive work environment. But what does this mean for employers? So accommodations are actually our bread and butter at Inclusively. Our platform puts accommodations at the front of the registration process for our 40,000 candidates who are seeking work. But before we get into that, I want to focus on these two statistics separately. There is a common misconception that accommodations are expensive or complicated to offer. And this is simply not the case. A recent study by the Job Accommodation Network, which is a service provided by the United States Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, found that 95% of accommodations are either free or under $500 to implement. So 56% of accommodations are entirely free. It’s either software your company already offers, work accommodations that are free, or easily attainable, easy to implement, such as remote work. We are fortunate to get data and insights on accommodation requests across our network. So we can share that top requests that we see from our candidates are remote work, a flexible schedule, periodic rest breaks and coaching and mentorship as examples. So none of those cost hard dollars to implement. It’s a matter of sort of time, infrastructure and approach. Even though new hires are self disclosing at much higher rates, the overall percentage of employees self-identifying as having a disability is still quite low at just 5%. Inclusively uses process and asks candidates to share what accommodations they’ll need to succeed in the job up front. And then we match those candidates to roles based on skills, experience level, and accommodations provided. And 82% of our candidates have disclosed at least one accommodation. Candidates feel safe disclosing on Inclusively because they trust the platform and they know that our employee partners are specifically invested in disability inclusion, which changes the nature of their interaction from the get go. So beyond what we’re seeing in Inclusively, it’s fascinating to see what other employers are doing to expand access to accommodations. And the mental health at work report that I referenced earlier found in the last two years a 550% increase in extended or more frequent breaks. These numbers are still relatively small, but it’s really interesting to note how significantly they’ve grown. So two years ago, only 2% of companies were allowing that, and now 13% of companies are offering it. And they’ve also found a 333% increase in adjustments to communication structures, which is a requested accommodation, and a 300% increase in therapy appointments during work hours over the last two years. I think that’s such a big one. And just the notion of giving employees time within the workday to help themselves to feel better is a huge step. And then, as far as most commonly used mental health accommodations, the same report saw a 275% increase in coaching or mentoring, a 200% increase in regular check-ins with the manager, 157% increase in flexible hours and a 150% increase in giving support per workload. So, another quote here from the report, “The future of mental health is culture, not perks. And from our standpoint, if you’re not making accommodations now, you will fall drastically behind where you need to be to attract and retain talent in the future.” The same report also found multiple benefits to offering these accommodations and working with employees to ensure that they feel supported with regard to their mental health. Workers who felt supported reported being 45% less likely to experience mental health symptoms than peers, 60% less likely to underperform or miss work, 2.4 times more likely to intend to stay at the company, three times more likely to feel proud to work at their company and 5.6 times more likely to trust their company. So increasingly talking about mental health at work is the norm. Though comfort levels and the experience of these conversations are still mixed and to ensure that these conversations keep happening and remain productive, organizations have an imperative to not only equip managers, teams and employees to navigate these conversations, but also to cultivate safe and supportive cultures overall. There are so many studies around the benefits of inclusion, that it’s sort of indisputable, but at this point, these are some stats that we like to use frequently. Diverse organizations lead their peers across multiple business indicators, including 22% lower turnover rates, 28% higher revenue, 39% higher customer satisfaction, 22% higher productivity and 30% higher profit margin. The bottom line here is that if you build an accommodating and inclusive culture, you will create or foster engaged employees and that leads to happy customers and higher revenue from those happy customers. The reverse is also true and backed by research if you don’t create an inclusive culture, the impact can be insurmountable. Toxic cultures are leading to 3.8 times turnover rates, $40 billion in annual turnover costs and 18% lower productivity. And as we’ve already stated, companies are running out of time to act. 78% of millennials and z’s prioritize diversity when evaluating companies and 48% of workers will not work for a company that is not actively working to improve its diversity and inclusion. Inclusion also isn’t just something to think about in the context of a labor market where we are right now. Between the 2007 and 2009 recession, the S&P 500 suffered a 35.5% decline in stock performance. But during that same period, companies with diverse and inclusive cultures posted a 14.4% gain, so the difference is about 50%, which is really significant and remarkable.

In closing, the bottom line is that culture is the new currency. 69 million people quit their jobs in 2021. And there’s no question that employers just aren’t reacting quickly enough to the generational changes that are underway. There are currently two open jobs for every one job seeker in the US. And a lot of people think that the great resignation is all attributed to the pandemic, but it’s really not. The signs were there before the pandemic started, as millennials and z’s became 50% of the workforce in 2016. As I mentioned, they’ll be two thirds of the workforce by 2030. They have completely different approaches to work than prior generations. And they’re far more likely to self disclose a disability or mental health challenge because they’ve grown up in an education system where they’ve received accommodations, and they expect nothing less in the workplace. It’s also just not about compensation and job title anymore. To the Z’s and the millennials, it’s more about a company’s culture, which is a major shift from where we were even a few years ago. A recent study by MIT found that toxic culture was 10 times more predictive of turnover than compensation. And a leading indicator contributing to toxic culture is failure to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

So how to get started. You know, our mission at Inclusively is to unlock the power of tomorrow’s workforce by opening doors to untapped talent. We work with employers to adapt existing processes to be inclusive of everyone, and we have deep expertise in this area. If you’re not already a client, I suggest getting a demo of our product to more deeply understand how working with Inclusively will move the needle on DEI and foster a culture of belonging in your organization. And here are three sort of easy tips to get started. First, assess the entire applicant and employee journey and work within your organization to determine how candidates with disabilities’ needs are being met today. Study how the accommodations process works for new hires. Is it easy to manage? Explore how well the talent acquisition teams are trained on disability inclusion in their hiring practices. Inevitably, you’ll find gaps and inconsistencies that will increase your organization’s ability to attract and retain talent. Second, establish incentives and processes for hiring candidates with disabilities. This may mean creating a more streamlined accommodations process. Establishing incentives for talent acquisition teams and hiring managers, and partnering with an organization like Inclusively to provide training on disability inclusion. Employees will see these steps as positive advances to a more inclusive workplace for all. And lastly, this one is so important and so easy. It should already be a requirement for products and services for your customers as well as for your employees. In a distributed workforce, it is crucial that all employees have the tools they need not just to be productive, but to feel included. It’s remarkable how easy making a meeting inclusive can be by offering closed captioning, for example. And it’s shocking how infrequently it happens. We predict that five years from now no company all hands or town hall meeting will take place without accessible communication operating options for all employees. So the time to act is now while disability inclusion has not yet cracked the cultural zeitgeist on par with the inclusion of women, people of color and LGBTQ populations. We predict that it really will. When that time comes, the organizations that have already incorporated disability inclusion into their broader goals will be far better positioned than their counterparts. So that’s it for our prepared statements. And let’s get back to Shayla for any questions.

Speaker 1: Shayla Cory, VP of Demand Generation at Inclusively

Great, thank you so much, Fully. That was very, very informative. So thank you for taking the time to share all that with us. I am just going to pull up our Q&A tab. So just bear with me one moment. We do have a question or it looks kind of like a comment. “For us, disability inclusion isn’t a huge focus. Why is there really a need for this if it’s covered under ADA?”

Speaker 2: Fully Teasdale, Market Strategy & Research Lead at Inclusively

So there is a ton of data stating that the disability community is actually the most discriminated against community. There’s an amazing researcher from Harvard who predicts that it will take 200 years to reach net zero bias for the disability community. And, you know, as we stated here, the ATSs that have been put into place at most companies are really designed to pattern match and bring in candidates who have the exact, very specific criteria that are set out in job reqs. And that just simply means that people are getting screened out for things that do not impact their ability to do the job. There’s a ton of data around this community. You know, like I said, they’re employed at a third of the rate of people without disabilities. So it is still a big problem. Some companies are doing much better than others. But I think we’re at sort of the beginning of the journey.

Speaker 1: Shayla Cory, VP of Demand Generation at Inclusively

Thank you, Fully. This next question is around sourcing candidates from the disability community. “Do you have any suggested websites to recruit diverse talent? I think the core issue here is that many candidates don’t self disclose that they have a disability. So how do you identify those types of people?”

Speaker 2: Fully Teasdale, Market Strategy & Research Lead at Inclusively

Yeah, great question. And that is actually why Inclusively exists. We actually go out and target the disability community, and we explain that we only work with employers who are really committed to this kind of inclusion. And we work with all of our employers on training, and on where in their processes people are getting left out. So our candidates come expressly for the purpose of getting connected to employers who are open to disability inclusion. And so therefore, like we’ve made it very clear and transparent that accommodations are part of what an employer will need to do to help these candidates succeed on the job. We have 40,000 candidates on the platform that are ready and looking for work today. So that’s one place. We also aggregated about 600 partnerships with advocacy organizations. And those organizations cover about a million people in the United States. So as our platform grows, the talent pool will grow as well.

Speaker 1: Shayla Cory, VP of Demand Generation at Inclusively

Thank you. It looks like this other question is “Do you have suggestions for increasing disability inclusion within the federal workforce, and an agency that maybe has a large majority of labor jobs?

Speaker 2: Fully Teasdale, Market Strategy & Research Lead at Inclusively

Oh, wow, that’s a great question. I would think that, you know, the JAN network that I referenced before would be a great place to start. At Inclusively, a lot of our jobs are what I would call knowledge workers, folks who are likely working from home or working from an office and their accommodations are different from folks who are doing manual labor, for example. So I think that would be a great place to start.

Speaker 1: Shayla Cory, VP of Demand Generation at Inclusively

And also, if I might just piggyback onto that too, I think part creating an inclusive environment, as well as maybe just giving visibility into the types of accommodations that can be offered right? Many times these accommodations are very cheap and kind of easy to implement, tend to benefit a larger community, even outside of the disability community as well.

Speaker 2: Fully Teasdale, Market Strategy & Research Lead at Inclusively

That’s really true.

Speaker 1: Shayla Cory, VP of Demand Generation at Inclusively

Okay. And here’s one other question. “As a disabled founder of a new startup, how do I implement from inception best practices for inclusion in our own hiring and require the same of our strategic partners?”

Speaker 2: Fully Teasdale, Market Strategy & Research Lead at Inclusively

Wow, that’s such a great question. Um, I mean, the fact that you’re having this conversation and already tapped into this kind of content, and this kind of conversation is really valuable. I would definitely look into training for your staff, which is something Inclusively offers, and there are other organizations that offer it as well. And I don’t know if this came across really well in the presentation, but so much of it is just around creating a culture of sharing and willingness to talk about disabilities. At Inclusively, about 30% of our employees identify as having a disability. I’m one of those people. I’ve never disclosed before working here, and it feels really empowering to do. So, I think just starting with that sort of culture of conversation is a great first step.

Speaker 1: Shayla Cory, VP of Demand Generation at Inclusively

Great. Looks like that was the end of our questions. So thank you again, Fully, for your great presentation and all of the research that you’ve done today, and thank you to everyone that was able to join us today. As I mentioned before, we will make the recording as well as the transcription available to you all post-event. And if you are interested in learning more about Inclusively, I would encourage you to visit our website at inclusively.com.