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'Intentional' Action is Key F O R D I V E R S I T Y, EQUITY AND INCLUSION
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iversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) has become an important conversation for financial institutions to have with employees. At the recent ABA Convention, a panel of experts con-
and she’s on the panel and she’s talking about DE&I, if we got to talking, and you get to know each other, you’ll find that we also have some things in common.’ That’s all about what diversity and inclusion is. Diversity is about representation. Inclusion is about belonging, and equity is about fairness. So representation, belonging, and fairness. So that’s how you can make sure intentional efforts that people are different from you when they hire.
JIM CARGILL: What are some of the best practices you would recommend in
DARRIN WILLIAMS: Those are great examples. I guess I might add just some practical approaches. One thing that a best practice is really to look at, for example, your job descriptions, how you talk about the job, and eliminating gender-biased words. So for example, when you have words like ‘competitive’ that leans toward male, and you have words like ‘collaborative’ that leans towards female. Try to balance those words. That’s just one example. Also, many industries, but banking in particular, we’re guilty of hiring through word of mouth. And unfortunately, you actually probably often hang out with, go to church with, go to school with folks who are like you. And so the word of mouth, the people that you talk to, are more likely to look like you. In fact, in my previous job, as a trial lawyer, there was a very successful case, the only race-based case I ever had in my life was one about a large company that we sued, and it was successful, on word of mouth hiring. They claimed to have objective criteria, but it was really word of mouth, how people were hired, and
ducted a discussion on DEI which provided insight and direction for how banks can lead the conversation in their organizations. ABA Chairman Jim Cargill, Arvest, moderated the panel which also included Darrin Williams, Southern Bancorp CEO; Bill Oliva, First Community Bank AVP/ Loan Officer; and LaTricia Hill-Chandler, Arvest Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer. The following is a slightly edited transcript of a portion of the conversation. taking to eliminate bias in the hiring process?
LATRICIA HILL-CHANDLER: For us, eliminating biases in hiring processes.
First, of course, you have to do effective education, not just training. Training is where you give a handbook and people follow the steps. And usually, I mean, let’s be honest, how many trainings have we gone to that we practice it for a week and then we’re done training. I think it’s important that we have to educate everybody, especially our hiring managers, on how to identify their own biases first, and then we can make sure we mitigate those with things like diversifying the pool of hiring managers …you make an intentional effort. Keyword here, ‘intentional,’ you’re going to hear me say that a lot today. An intentional effort is ‘How do we make this room look different? Do we make it look different by adding someone that’s from a different team? If we’re hiring somebody from HR, let’s go see about the banking side. Let’s find someone from the banks who could actually be on the team. If it happens to be all white males, let’s see if we can get a woman on and a woman of color, perhaps.’ You want different perspectives being brought to the table. I’m different than everybody in the room, but I guarantee you, if we took the time to be curious, you would find out that we have a lot of things in common. But even though I’m different and you said, ‘You know, I don’t know this young lady
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SUMMER 2021
