Clare Kumar: You're listening to episode 52 of the Happy Space Podcast. Today, I'm speaking with Subha Barry, president and CEO of Seramount, about practical and effective ways to approach DEI.
Clare Kumar: Some might say this is a tough time for DEI in 2024 in North America, but in this episode, you will find renewed enthusiasm and vigor from today's guest. If you've been listening for a while, you'll already be familiar with Seramount from my conversation with Katie Mooney in episode 41, where we spoke about how DEI efforts must change to have maximum impact.
We spent a lot of time talking about how they must be embedded in everything an organization does today. Seramount, as you may know, is a leading strategic professional services and research firm dedicated to building high performing inclusive workplaces, and today works with over 600 organizations globally.
My guest today is Seramount CEO, Subha Barry. Subha will share parts of her journey from being a successful investment advisor to heading up DEI initiatives, to now being one of the leading DEI voices in North America. In our conversation, we'll talk about Subha's personal motivations to step into this work, close connections to neurodiversity, and practical advice for those who want to further diversity and inclusion efforts in today's corporate climate.
You'll also find out several reasons why the autistic intern program that Subha began in her prior role at Freddie Mac was recognized for its achievements. I have no doubt you'll be as charmed as I was with the combination of warmth and pragmatism in Subha Barry.
Clare Kumar: Subha Barry. So thrilled to have you joining me on the Happy Space Podcast. Welcome. Well, it's my pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much for inviting me. Well, I talked to Katie Mooney, as you know sometime ago, who's on your team and It was such a riveting conversation that I kept learning more about Seramount and more about what you do.
And I thought, you know, you posted the 2024 research and I was notified of that really formidable research. And I thought there was an invitation to have a conversation with you and I jumped at it. So thank you. Thank you for doing me the honor. I think it's really important for people to hear from diversity, equity, inclusion leaders.
To understand their perspectives a bit about their journey and for you to have an opportunity to leave some positive impressions and invitations for people to really be effective in today's climate. So I'd love to start with just a little bit of. Maybe you can paint the picture of how you got to where you are now.
What was your personal motivation and how you ended up at Seramount? And then we've got a few other questions for lined up.
Subha Barry: That's wonderful. Well, I actually grew up in India. I came to this country. I had a scholarship to go to university. I went to Rice University in Houston, Texas. So you can imagine I came from, you know, fairly hot India to Just as hot Texas.
So, so but to me, it was the first part of that journey was, you know, I had grown up as part of the majority population in India. So I almost felt like I learned how to be a minority after coming to this country.
Clare Kumar: Yeah. I, yeah, I, I feel you. I, and I spent three years in Japan where being a person of color, I mean, there was very hom*ogeneous society at that point.
Subha Barry: That's exactly right. And in many ways, Texas was too. And so I started my career in financial services. I was a commodities trader. I was a wealth advisor and it was really probably in. In 1997, I had my first of six bouts with cancer and I've had a Hodgkin's disease five times and breast cancer once.
And in that journey, I began to think about things that most people don't think about til they're in their sixties or seventies, which is about legacy and you know, what impact have I had in the world? You know, bigger esoteric you know, thoughts about, you know, what is the meaning of life and the like.
And one of the things I noticed is I looked around me and there was really literally nobody who looked like me. Meaning to say it was a hom*ogenous, white male and a few white female organization in my branch office at Merrill Lynch. And I remember going and asking my manager why he had not. And I was very successful for them.
So asking them why they had not packed the place with people like me and his answer really, you know, sort of shook me to my core. He said, Subha, we got lucky with you. We're not pushing our luck again. And to me, I thought all my hard work, everything that I have brought to this job was, was considered luck.
And I knew that wasn't the case. And that's when I began to realize the barriers to entry, the biases in processes, things that hold people back. It isn't one big, bold, bodacious, you know, someone being racist. It is death by a million cuts. Yeah. Small inequities, little ways in which you're not included.
And I thought to myself, it shouldn't be that difficult. And then I essentially moved over and started a multicultural business development unit at Merrill. And what was interesting about that work was, I thought to myself, if I could prove that there is business opportunity, that there is money to be made by being inclusive, people would find religion and that didn't happen.
They were happy to do business with. You know, Black, Hispanic, Asian, South Asian, East Asian, community of people with disabilities, gays and lesbians. It was as though money was green and that was great. But actually hiring somebody to come in and sit at the desk next to you was still, you know, there were barriers to it.
And that's when I went and became the first global head of diversity for Merrill Lynch, really built out the infrastructure. So my approach to this has always been, let's make sure it's connected to the business, whether it's the customers, whether it's the talent and the diversity of thoughts and perspectives and ideas, that talent, that.
Grows up differently brings to the mix and that could be you know, I grew up in India. So I bring a different mindset to it somebody that is you know that has a visible or invisible disability has a way in which the lens through which they look at the world. You may come from a socio economically disadvantaged background.
You may be an immigrant so many ways in which your lived experience informs you about You How to make life just a little bit easier and simpler for others. And that kind of creativity, the innovation, the idea that if you bring people from all these different backgrounds, that when you put them together, they're going to come up with brilliant, amazing ways to solve for issues that you would have never thought about.
So to me, diversity was always about that connection, whether talent, whether customers, it always had to be embedded into the business. And so after Merrill Lynch, I went to Freddie Mac. I taught gender policy at Columbia. And then I came to Working Mother in the year 2015. And that was what Seramount used to be known as Working Mother Media.
Clare Kumar: Yeah, I remember the magazine.
Subha Barry: Yep. 40 years ago, we started as that. And so the idea that if you can do this work inside a company the way I did at Merrill, or you could be an organization outside being a partner and a guide. And today we're a partner and guide to 600 plus organizations in their DEI journey.
You know, whether it's assessments or advisory services or talent development events and conferences, benchmarking, we do a variety of things, but essentially arming them with everything they would need to create those inclusive workplaces. So people like me that walk in the door. Are no longer the only one of their kinds, because companies are waking up to all the gifts that we bring them.
And that includes, you know, a recent big focus has been on neurodiversity. And what is really interesting about that is. People who are neurodiverse bring a very different mindset to the organization. And we've always thought about, oh, how are we accommodating? Whether it's neurodiverse or even physical disabilities, we always sort of reduce it to, oh my God, there's a price and cost to accommodation.
Except every day, we are all being accommodated. I'm sitting here, I have a light above me here that's lighting up this room. The question is, if I were sight impaired, if I were blind, I wouldn't need the light. I never think about that as accommodation and yet every day I'm being accommodated with things that they offer.
Somebody in a wheelchair can come up and sit at this desk without needing a chair. I have a chair sitting under me. I never think about that as accommodation and yet it is, isn't it?
Clare Kumar: Well, and our glasses, we're both wearing glasses that, you know, I hate to think what my day would be like if I didn't have them.
Subha Barry: So I think about this a little differently, and it is that mindset that I hope Seramount brings to its partner organization to help guide their journey and get to a place where they are known as a talent magnet for all different types of people because that's what makes us really rich and successful.
Clare Kumar: Yeah, and you lived it and we know that the science backs up that claim that diversity actually leads to richer results. I want to go back just for a moment to that when you started that multicultural organization at Merrill, what kind of support did you feel you needed from leadership to actually bring that to bear?
Can you just, I'm thinking there may be something in your story that unlocks somebody who's listening, who's looking for leadership support. Is there something that you can share there?
Subha Barry: So the first thing I talk about is, and this generation does it so beautifully. This is the notion of crowdsourcing ideas.
Okay, whether it's crowdfunding someone's need or crowdsourcing an idea as a solution for something. The idea that people become open to asking for different ways to solve for issues and challenges in organizations. You know, HR does not have to be the only group that solves for talent issues. Every employee has a voice and should find a way to be able to express ideas.
How do you become the kind of organization where the people that work for you say, this is so great that I can't wait for this friend I have in my network that is so smart that I want them to come and work at this company. How do you, how do you create that? So the idea is as you bring, as you share more of the challenges instead of figuring out, oh, I have to be a leader manager.
I have to have this title. I have to be in this department to solve for it. You walked away from that and came to the point where you said, great ideas. Anybody can come up with it, irrespective of rank, title, division, department, junior, senior, whatever it is, come bring your ideas and really begin to engage your talent in helping you solve for the issues you have.
So the issue may be. I'm not able to attract enough people of color into my organization. Let's assume that's it. So take the talent that you do have and ask them, do to be better at this instead of assuming that your HR team is the only one charged with somehow changing that surprised is what comes from it.
So this idea of what happened that, you know, I had this idea for building this multicultural business development group that came from a very, very simple observation. I was at my local Wegmans grocery store in Prince, New Jersey, and walking down the aisles, I saw that there was an entire aisle dedicated to Asian food.
I'm talking, they had Thai, they had, you know, Indian, they had Chinese, they had Malaysian, they had. And then same thing with the Hispanic isle. And I thought to myself, why do you think Wegmans is putting it out there? If they had a predominantly, you know, white demographic that ate a certain kind of food, they wouldn't bother.
They're doing it because the demographic in and around Princeton was changing and they were really addressing the needs of that demographic. And what was amazing was I used to make a trip once a month to Edison, New Jersey, to get all my Indian groceries. I get you. And guess what? I could go to Wegmans and get it.
And if Wegmans could figure out that there's enough people living in West Windsor, Plainsboro, Princeton, that were from the South Asian community, that they had to cater to our needs, like why wouldn't Merrill Lynch figure that out? And why was that important? Because you need people coming from that community walking in the door in your office looking and seeing a reflection of themselves in the people sitting in that office.
And if there's nobody there that looked like them, I'm not saying that there wouldn't be people who would come and still do business, but I'm going to say to you that is something you observe when I see ads. Why am I, why, why does seeing another South Asian put a smile on my face?
Clare Kumar: So relate to that. I mean, I immigrated to Canada when I was four and we were in smaller places than Toronto and there wasn't diversity. And I was the only other, and I didn't I wasn't proud of my Indian heritage until probably I got to University. And then I was really able to embrace who I was and it's great conversation started: Where are you from?
In Toronto, now we have over 50 percent of people from elsewhere and so it's remarkably diverse but you travel three or four hours North it goes down to four or five percent remarkably different, remarkably different. But it's, it's really interesting in Canada. We've had massive immigration in the last year or two in particular, to the point where I would say our prime minister's created a bit of a fire fest and not really managed it particularly well, but the number of, India, even to two people on my floor, two apartments on my floor, new people from Mumbai.
There's a different energy shift. Even the front desk, they were speaking Hindi to guests, residents that lived on the floor below me. There's a massive shift going on in India. Who's coming into the country and how are we, how are we bridging into organizations now is a really interesting question. The young girl down the hall, she works in HR.
She's working in Staples, which you have in the States as well. And she's like, I want a job in HR and, but they want Canadian experience. So it's really interesting to look at. The experience and the culture, but with the immigration, there is, there's a huge population to serve with this mixed identity and new emerging identity, right?
Yeah, it's really fantastic. I want to come back to your comments about neurodiversity because as I look at the conversation in inclusivity, This seems to be a really burgeoning topic. I know in the UK it's being talked about and well, I think better understood than perhaps in North America right now.
But I wanted to talk about a little bit about your journey with respect to neurodiversity and understanding that and why it's so important to you. And then what you think is happening in the marketplace with companies response to understanding the value that this way of being brings.
Subha Barry: So I have to tell you that I probably had my first exposure to neurodiversity after I moved to Princeton.
We moved there in the year 1999 or 2000, and I had a neighbor who had a son on the autism spectrum. And well he wasn't particularly high functioning, but he was an adorable boy at that time. And he, you know, he used to love, used to have a movie theater in our basem*nt and he used to love coming and watching you know, videos in it and he would love swimming in our pool.
So I learned a little something about you know, what was, what was different about them, but also what was unique about them. And I remember, for example, he had this photographic memory for train schedules. So if you needed to get to New York Penn Station by, you know, 8:30 a.m. he would tell you exactly what time you needed to leave your home to drive to the train station and park your car and get to which train and, you know, every stop along the way.
And so it always fascinated me. The other thing he used to do was you could give him your date of birth and he would tell you what day it was like in a nanosecond. Always thought like, what is happening in your brain that allows you to do that? It was like, he was a genius. And yet I know his parents worried deeply about what would happen to him after they had passed or even as he was growing up, you know, where would he work, what, what kind of work do, etcetera.
And I began to think about that as, you know, this is as young people are getting diagnosed to be on the spectrum or neurodiverse. Society has an obligation to step up and do their part in helping find you know, the right ways to help nurture them in school, in college, and then in workplaces.
And, and I think too often we discard people for their disabilities instead of. Embracing them for their abilities and so many of them have such unique abilities and they shouldn't just be stocking shelves or grocery carts somewhere. And, and it is with that thought and idea that in the year 2000 and 10, 11, I helped to start a autism internship program at Freddie Mac.
We had two leaders both of whom at Freddie Mac had children on the spectrum. One had a boy, one had a girl, and they were very senior. They were in the C suite with me. And essentially we really thought about, could we take and understand what are the different jobs that we have within Freddie that lent themselves to being done better by somebody on the spectrum than somebody who is not neurodiverse?
And the reality was, We identified five jobs in various divisions, and we began to recruit neurodiverse individuals with those skill sets. And I remember the first interview that I did, I actually was part of the interview. First question was, you know, we were guided to and we did do that. We gave them the questions that we would ask them in advance of them coming into interview.
So there was no anxiety about it. And this is something I've realized sometimes when you know, you do something that you think is something special you're doing for an individual who's neurodiverse, it's actually better for everybody. Everyone would like to be a little better prepared. This is not about, I gotcha.
Let's see what you can do to sort of screw this up. And I think we have to get out of that mentality. Anyway, this person comes in, he does the whole interview. He's amazing. And, you know, I had to ask him because the entire time he made eye contact and I had been told I struggled with making eye contact.
And I asked him, I said, you know, could you tell me, he was a young man. And I said, could you tell me, You know, how come you did? You've been looking at me. You've made eye contact. He said to me, oh, Mrs. Barry, you know, I was, you know, you're Indian. So I imagined you had a dot on your forehead and I was looking at that dot.
Clare Kumar: Oh really?
Subha Barry: And then he says to me, I'm now so exhausted, I'm going to have to go take a nap.
Clare Kumar: Wow. There's the masking.
Subha Barry: Right. Yeah. And I, and here I was thinking he's making eye contact, except he was looking at the, you know, I wasn't wearing a dot, but he put on there because he wanted to try to make eye contact.
Yes.
Clare Kumar: Yeah. Yeah.
Subha Barry: And of course we hired them. And what was amazing about it was there were five things that actually came out of it. One is, first, we knew that you can onboard and train people as they come in. We knew that we could only do so much with someone who's neurodiverse. We needed to understand what would trigger them.
What kind of support would they need inside the organization when their anxiety got to be high, etc. We wanted to make sure we couldn't always remove the stress, but we could find ways to help manage it. So that was the first understanding. So what we did was we took the teams and we trained their teams to receive them.
So they had a boss who was a mentor. They had a peer who was a mentor. And the third mentor was probably the most important. It was a member of the Freddie family who had either a family member or friend on the spectrum, who could actually help if there was ever a meltdown or an issue and you get quickly too.
So we knew we needed somebody who would understand and know how to diffuse the issue. So we surrounded this person with support. Now, little quirks, sometimes they would rock, they would, you know, you've got to prepare the teams for it. What happened out of it was in the year following when we did the engagement surveys, the engagement level and the satisfaction level of the members of their extended team.
was off the chart as compared to the rest of the organization. So employee satisfaction really increased. There was an enhanced sense of gratitude in the broader Freddie family, especially in those teams that had received them.
Clare Kumar: Can you, can you elaborate a little bit on why you think that is? Like what was the connection to compassion and watching and, and living it?
Subha Barry: It's compassion. It's watching, living it, but it is also, it brings out a sense of purpose. You know, we are all taught to believe that we feel better about ourselves when we are in service of others.
Clare Kumar: Yeah.
Subha Barry: And having somebody like that on the team, being a resource for them allowed them, even if you've had a crappy day, when you go back, you think about the blessings in your life.
And so I really believed that it had, it enhanced the overall culture of the team and how people felt about themselves and about their company. And the last one was. Just about every single one of these interns turned into full time employees. The bulk of them stayed loyal, stayed with the company.
And they were, these were well paid jobs paying 70, 80, 100, 120,000 a year. It wasn't sort of a pittance entry level job. So we won, the company won, because obviously you now have talent that you otherwise never would have gotten to and think about lack of turnover and all of the other enhanced benefits with it.
Engagement went up. Satisfaction around it went up and then 10 years later, we were, you know, I was no longer at Freddie at that time, but Freddie received an award from the UN for having one of the most creative, innovative programs for people on the spectrum. And so I use that as an example to say, here, you think you're, you're sort of doing something nice or good, but.
Guess what? You are the one that wins in the end.
Clare Kumar: and you don't go in expecting that you think that maybe it's going to be a heavy lift, and you don't. So, I love that. I love that story. Is that written about anywhere is there some, you know, okay.
Subha Barry: Okay, there is but if I can find it I'll dig it up and send it to you.
I've been asked about of all the programs I put in place and things we did. And I've been in this journey for a long time. This is the one I'm proudest of. And, you know, I have a nephew now who's 11 years old, who's on the spectrum. And I would tell you that in many ways, I feel like being a part of this prepared me to be a guide and a source of support for my cousin because, you know, nobody goes in expecting this and you can, you can view the cup as half empty or half full.
Clare Kumar: Absolutely. I love this story. I want it to make a connection now between what I heard was, you know, C suite level members of the team with children who are neurodivergent.
I'm wondering how now that you see that translating to adults who are employees, knowing that this is often genetic looking at their own way of being and what, what's happening at that level. So we see all these kids being diagnosed and parents reflecting and saying, whoa, that's me. What do you think, what conversations are happening and how, how much more comfortable are you?
Are leaders potentially being able to say, that's me too? Is that happening yet? Or are we still seeing a bit of a lag?
Subha Barry: I think that more and more people are being diagnosed, especially women tend to be diagnosed more you know, when they're older. I was actually quite surprised to note that Sermount itself has about 10 percent of our of our employee population identify as neurodiverse, which is, and those are the, those are the ones that are open and public about it that have been diagnosed.
And so I think to myself that somewhere we're creating an environment that is open and inclusive and welcoming of someone who is neurodiverse. I would tell you that I think about one in five is the statistic that I most recently saw. We had a webinar recently and we had, you know, over 1500 participants that joined.
And so, you know, I think that speaking about it, being more open about it creating ways in which companies can understand that what they think is going to be a heavy lift and an accommodation is actually not that hard. And as we are having the next generation, remember this cuts across gender, race, ethnicity, all kinds of things including socioeconomic diversity, immigrants, etcetera.
I would say to you that more and more young people are being diagnosed. As neurodiverse, and as they're getting diagnosed, schools are doing a better job. Colleges, a little bit less so, but they are also doing a pretty decent job of helping support you know, these neurodiverse individuals. Workplaces it's a work in progress.
Some companies are really thinking through it very carefully. When you know, companies like Freddie Mac, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, a lot of tech companies are really, EY has done a phenomenal job with that. So there's lots of great examples that I can give on that. But I think that what they're also realizing is some of the.
Support that they provide for their neurodiverse talent like quiet spaces are actually things that, you know, there are days when I want a quiet space to just go in and listen to, you know, some music and just sort of calm down. So you think of it as something you're providing that's special for a particular group of people.
It actually supports everyone. People with heightened anxiety who may not be neurodiverse. And a quiet place would be amazing for them. Yes. I think companies are getting more and more open minded and inclusive when I, our events, for example, at all our events, we have designated quiet places where people can go in, calm down, decompress, and, I find that the awareness is starting to build and also with it, the understanding that there is unique skills and abilities and talent that these people bring to our organizations.
So if that is the gift. Then helping support them is a little give back.
Clare Kumar: Yeah it's moving from the accommodation mindset into the accessibility mindset, which has bigger, it's a bigger magnet to your point, you know, making more people feel welcome.
Subha Barry: Completely, completely.
Clare Kumar: Yeah, I have to just touch on a couple of things that you said I wanted to just go back to eye contact because I've never had a challenge with eye contact.
So this was also the thing that led me to think, well, I couldn't possibly be autistic then because that's an expectation that difficulty with social interaction would be there. But in so many of the other ways of being autistic, this is why it took me till age 56 to be diagnosed. So it's really fascinating.
I think what we know about something coming from Rain Man, the movie and, and media now, in neurodivergent ways of being, there's a real diversity, even within that.
Subha Barry: That’s why you call it a spectrum. There, we are all on a spectrum, every one of us. And, and so, you know, I, I recognized through My son's diagnosis, he has ADD, ADHD.
Okay. And I realized that I too am, except I have built all these coping mechanisms along the way. I'm the most prolific list maker.
Clare Kumar: Yes.
Subha Barry: Every once in a while, my husband will tease me and he will say to me, he says, oh my God, you get distracted so quickly. It's like squirrel, you know, it's like.
Clare Kumar: Ideas, possibility.
Subha Barry: Everything's connecting. I get you. So, so how do I, how did I learn to compensate for that? I'm a prolific list maker and I check things off my list and you know, I am a, a prolific note taker and, and so a lot of things that I have developed over the course of, because Obviously, it wasn't diagnosed, wasn't, you know, accommodated for.
And the reality is that, you know, but I recognized it through my son's journey through this. I realized that, guess what? It came from me. This is where he inherited it from. There it is.
Clare Kumar: Yeah. It's so fascinating because I identified as highly sensitive for a decade and there's ADHD in my family, in my kids.
And I thought always it was their dad. And so when I got the autism diagnosis with a side order of ADHD, I was like, oh, wait a minute. And I spent a lot of my, my entrepreneurial life for the first 15 years was spending a lot of time in people's homes and offices and helping them build the skills to sustain order, create order.
And it's very, it's so fascinating because that's not, not my natural style isn't for a lot of structure, but to your point, it was the only way to make sense of the world, dial down the noise and be able to find a path through. So I think if we're blessed to have that drive for order. Then we can get there, where I see people struggle more more is if they're lacking that drive to figure that out.
Then there's a real challenge. And that's where I came in as a coach around productivity and like, let me help you with some structure that might feel good. And it has to feel good. Otherwise, forget it. People right. Yeah, yeah, that's so that's so fascinating. I think that. You talked about 20%. I know that in the highly sensitive community alone.
It's 15 to 20%. They're even saying it's a typical bell curve now so that it's 30, 40, 30 sensitive average not sensitive. And so, I think there's a compelling argument to be made for this inclusive accessible design. I am not seeing it yet in, in office space, in commuting environments, in all of the, the parts that I found really difficult about sustaining my energy to be a good corporate employee.
I was exhausted before I got to work. Just, just trying to get through a subway commute in the winter, for example, was horrific. What's your sense of, the willingness to provide the options in terms of space, not only in our environments, but allowing the flexibility that I truly believe is flexibility is inclusivity.
I have it on t-shirts. It's like, I really, I really believe that's part of the inclusivity accessibility strategy. Do you have any thoughts on that could help people think about it?
Subha Barry: So there's, you know, two ways to think about it you know, COVID taught us something. COVID taught us that work could be done and done impactfully being remote.
Now that doesn't mean that that's the only way to do it. It doesn't mean that it needs to be done that way all the time. A healthy mix, especially with young people coming into the workforce for the first time. This is being able to see colleagues, to interact with colleagues, to be mentored, to learn by observing.
All of those are important and it's very hard to do that on a Zoom call. Okay, so I think that the healthy mix is where we will end up. What COVID has taught us is that work can be done very effectively being 100 percent remote. However, there are some distinct advantages that come from creating the opportunities for interaction.
And I believe that if you could have a way in which you have a healthy mix, and I know that there are lots of other tensions at play whether it be the fact that you have all this office space now that you're paying overhead on and what do you do. In fact, somebody was telling me the other day, my husband was telling me the other day, he went to the office on a Monday and it was so hot.
Because I think they turned the air conditioning down over the weekends and it takes a long time and it's been very hot for it to cool off. So they're trying to find ways in which to create savings. And so that's on one side. On the other side is the need to actually have talent come together and learn from each other.
And I think a lot of companies are settling in on this three plus two, three days in the office, two days at home, that mix. But I think you give offer people the flexibility to figure out when they can be always having the option that there should be a Zoom link allow people to be able and yet encourage them gently but nicely to say come in and do things in the office that allow people to understand what is to be gained by being there, if you come into the office and all you're doing is hanging on Zoom calls. Then why even bother to come in, right?
Clare Kumar: This is it. So my view is it has to be looked at team by team, task by task, plus a layer of connection and how we're building relationships. And that needs to be discussed team by team. And I think one of the aspects that's not often considered is the leader's own needs for interaction and feedback and so on.
So I facilitate actually leaders and their teams coming together to have a discussion where there's some support for the discussion so that we can have what I call compassion infused compromise. We can look at what do we need to get done, how can we best do this figure our subset of synchronous meetings.
And then figure out, okay, what cadence does it need to have? And then you'll find people come together and say, oh, that makes sense. But to have even three plus two without really anchoring in why, and when you've got time zones and all of the things, I mean, I think it's team by team and it's that nuanced.
So I'm looking for more opportunities for those discussions to happen. But I hear you, absolutely. There's advantage to being in person. I'm onboarding now with an organization in the UK. And I'm, it's a bit challenging to get enough of people's time and even to know. How to coordinate that, you know, is it, is it, do I just message you on chat?
I'm not really good at this, this whole, you know, email plus slack kind of duality, which came up since I left the corporate world. It's trickier. So some structure needs to be there. And then we need to have that mindset that you were talking about earlier.
I want to come back as probably as we move towards wrapping up a little bit, I want to come back to what I thought I heard loud and clear from you as a successful path towards inviting people to embrace diversity was connecting it to the business.
Connecting it to the business and not making it just HR and embedding it almost in the way you do things, but connecting to the value. You talked about measuring in your company. 10 percent of people are neurodivergent. Can you connect for me a little bit, this connection to business and where measuring comes in?
Because if you, you may not know, unless you're asking the questions internally and externally. I'd love you to share on that.
Subha Barry: So I gave you the example of Freddie Mac with the increased engagement. Yeah. The sense of well being and the gratitude that employees felt to, towards the organization and towards their own lives.
But workplaces that have more inclusive working environment, especially for disabled employees, visible or invisible, report higher revenues, report hire employee retention. You can translate each one of them into dollars and cents. And so if you take retention as an example, increasing retention actually has a price tag attached to it.
Every employee you turn over, it costs you about a time and a half their salary every time they turn over. Okay, so, so learning to understand that workplace culture isn't just sort of a check the box endeavor, but rather bringing in a way, in fact, I think it was the, I watched on Squawk Box the other day, the CEO of Bank of New York, Mellon, was talking about what he is doing to, to make culture such a key linchpin in terms of his strategy.
And he's reporting, they were asking him, your earnings are way up. Other banks are struggling. You're doing so well. What's going on here? And he attributed it to culture. He attributed it to employee engagement. He attributed it to reduce turnover. So he had a way to measure how that all translated into the higher earnings.
So I think companies can do that. And what is interesting is. You know, you still have a large percentage of the neurodivergent population that still masks in the organ in inside their organizations. And the reality is, look, if they are not open about it, I think other people observing them, you can say that person's quirky, you can, you can use other adjectives with it.
But once you know, all you feel is a sense of awe. To say, wow, this person is really kick ass great. And I think that creating the environment where you allow them to be open about it, acknowledge it, also helps you teach them how to ask for help because there are areas where they need help and support.
Clare Kumar: Yeah.
Subha Barry: And organizations need to build infrastructure to be able to help them, but we also need to respect and trust their boundaries that they have about waiting till they are ready to acknowledge it. You can't force this on them, just because you think they are doesn't mean you, you know, provide them with the solutions for it and then.
You know, drill it down. You, you've got to respect them and allow them to come and say, you know, I want to acknowledge this. I've been diagnosed with this and I need some help. I need coaching. I need and that is where you have to step up and do your part in helping support them. But you also need to respect their boundaries.
Clare Kumar: Most definitely. It's interesting too as we unpack a little bit the needs from the medical model of disability and come more towards the social model, which is not looking for a diagnosis. And so the Work Style Profile that I mentioned to you briefly when we spoke earlier, that it's basically a one page to say, here's what you need, I'd love you to know about me.
to invite my best performance. And so it gives the person, they don't have to say a diagnosis, but they might say, I need a lot of guidance about what's coming next, or I need clear instructions, or I need I need that quiet place to work. It's an opportunity for self expression around need. Rather than connecting it, not necessarily connecting it to a diagnosis or maybe, you know, I got my autism diagnosis on a Saturday and I took it into a television segment on a Monday.
That was rapid fire disclosure for me, but my multiple sclerosis, I took seven years to talk about it before I could actually say it out loud. I was afraid no one would hire me. I was afraid I would just look uncapable. And so I get what you're saying. There's a journey towards disclosure. And what I'm hoping to offer is an opportunity to say, hey, I have, I have some needs that really helped me shine.
And I'm trying to facilitate that discussion. So we get to that compromise I was talking about.
Subha Barry: The other part about it is having a disability or a neurodivergent subset within the disability ERG is phenomenal. And what is interesting is that you will have a healthy mix of parents of individuals, siblings of individuals that are neurodiverse.
And sometimes they speak for them, but you have to also be able to discern that difference between what the individual would want for themselves versus what the parent wants for them or the sibling wants for them. So I think that when we have these ERGs, just like you have, you know, LGBTQ ERGs and you have allies and you have to listen and you need the support of the allies but you have to really listen to the members of that community themselves to understand what it is and you know what each one is just that one.
They are unique, and you have to be thoughtful about knowing that you cannot take what you learn about one and just sort of brush everybody with that same stroke.
Clare Kumar: That's right. I've just been asked to actually give a presentation to a disability ERG and a rather large organization, and that is definitely a point I'm making.
It's around more about the mindset of asking questions and staying open, which you were talking about culturally needs to be in place as well. So I think there's a big culture shift that's really happening.
Subha Barry: It is happening now. And I'm really proud that, that larger corporations are beginning to really appreciate and understand.
How to, how to embrace and engage and leverage people for their abilities instead of discarding for them for their disabilities.
Clare Kumar: Beautiful. Beautiful. My last invitation for you is for a leader who's, gosh, yes, I know it's supposed to make business sense and I'm, it's supposed to intuitively connect all the dots and I'm supposed to do this.
I don't feel like I've got time for it. Patience for it. This is hustle. Man, we've got numbers to meet, objectives to hit. How do I, how do I get to feeling like I can slow down for someone who might need more time to process and think of a response? How, what would you say to that leader?
Subha Barry: I would say to them bring it and make it very personal.
Imagine this person was depending on your age, your child, your sibling, your friend, and ask yourself, If this was someone you really cared deeply about, would you not take that little extra moment, no matter how busy you are? And I've always thought this about issues. If you can make it very personal, all of a sudden you react to it in a way that is very different when it's somebody else.
And, and I always bring it close to home. I take that moment. To say right when I'm getting impatient with someone and hey, I'm not the world's most patient person. I am not. I will fess up to that. But I will also tell you that I have a lot of empathy and compassion and I asked myself if this was my son, if this was my daughter, how would I want them to be treated?
And it means. that you just try a little bit more, you pause a little bit more. And it doesn't mean you don't give direct feedback. It doesn't mean you, you don't say to them, you've come up short here, and this does not work. And for doing this job, you have to be able to do this. How can I help you get there?
It doesn't mean that you have to accept them, but you also have. to be realistic about what it is that they will be capable of because there are some things they are not going to be able to do and you have to understand that and the answer to you is do I then support them in a way that their challenges don't derail them.
Or do I just let them sink and then just move them on out of the organization? And so if your intent is that I value their abilities enough, then you will find a way to make space for understanding their disabilities and allowing other people to step in to help fill that gap a little bit.
Clare Kumar: And that's a perfect way to end this conversation.
Some invitations, some words of wisdom. Thank you so much. Subha Barry for joining me. Listeners, you can find so much more out at Seramount.com. Look at the work they're doing. They're publishing fabulous research all the time, holding events, and game changing, if your organization is looking for support on moving more thoroughly into the space and being more effective with your diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Look no further than Seramount.com you'll find so many resources. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Subha Barry: Clare, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
