(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Major support for Carolina Business Review provided by Colonial Life, providing benefits to employees to help them protect their family, their finances and their futures.

High Point University, the premier life skills university focused on preparing students for the world as it going to be and Sonoco, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging products and provider of packaging services with more than 300 operations in 35 countries.

- The tragic death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 will for many years be etched in our social consciousness, but much will come out of it around diversity, equity and inclusion.

I'm Chris William, and welcome again to the most widely watched and longest running source of Carolina business policy and public affairs seen each week across North and South Carolina for more than three decades now.

What does DEI or diversity, equity, inclusion mean now?

How has it unfolded within our organizations?

In a moment we have a C-suite and an A-list of those who lead here in the Carolinas to help us unpack it and we start right now.

- [Announcer] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource-based building materials, providing the foundation upon which our communities improve and grow.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue cross and Blue Shield Association.

Visit us at SouthCarolinablues.com.

The Duke Endowment, a private foundation enriching communities in the Carolinas through higher education, healthcare, rural churches and children's services.

On this addition of Carolina Business Review, Lynn Good of Duke Energy, James Sills from M&F Bank, Lou Kennedy of Nephron Pharmaceuticals and Ward Nye from Martin Marietta.

(upbeat music) - We are honored to have our special guests who have no stranger to our program or our dialogue.

Welcome to all of you.

Lou, fairness or not we're gonna with you.

Lou Kennedy, let's talk about DEI.

You know a little bit about that, not just being a woman owned business, but since the tragedy of George Floyd, since early days in 2020, it seems like we've been in a triage mode now around diversity, equity, inclusion, are we finding our stride?

Do you feel like it's a different a dynamic now?

- There is no question I am involved in at least two different groups where we formed the groups right after George Floyd incident.

And we said, we've got to make this community focus on these issues.

And I feel like we've implemented programs since, however, I will say at our company we've been about diversity, equity, inclusion since our inception, we have 53% women, we have more than 35% African Americans in our company, which is greater than the South Carolina average to Caucasians.

And we have 43 countries represented.

So we feel very comfortable about what we were doing, but I was very moved to get involved in these two different groups where we wanted to focus both our company and my colleagues and other companies on what is the right thing to do in our community.

And let's heal and do the right thing and move forward in the right way.

- Lynn Good, these initiatives fleshed out more in Duke.

Do you see a difference now than you did two years ago?

- Yes, I think it's a really good question.

And we took the moment of the George Floyd tragedy to really take stock because much like Lou discussed, diversity, equity and inclusion has been a part of Duke Energy for a long time, but it gave us a moment to say, are we demonstrating not only progress but are the results showing up?

Do we have a more diverse workforce?

Do we have a more inclusive culture?

Is our leadership reflective of our communities?

And so we re-energized, it became a catalyst event for us and hosted over the course of 2020 over 500 courageous conversations where we talked about the issues of race.

And we followed that up with something called let's talk about it, which is just a continuation of conversation in 2021 where 6,000 employees participated.

And so I am seeing movement, I am seeing more conviction around not only our hiring practices, our promotion practices and our focus on an inclusive culture, but I would also say Chris, the work is never done.

And so I continue to keep these programs and these statistics and our progress in front of my senior team, in front of our board so that we continue to demonstrate the progress and the conviction that is so important on this topic.

- Jim, Ward, don't wanna leave you out of the conversation.

Jim, do you feel, and not withstanding all of us on this dialogue, but do you get the sense that there's an authentic nature that has momentum to it around DEI?

And what I mean, not to say it it's been unauthentic, but do you get the sense that there is momentum and it's a movement who's beyond time has come but it's become crucial and core and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, to an organization.

- I believe there's still a momentum or a process going on in the DE&I space.

From what I can tell companies are operationalizing DE&I in their companies, in the forms of metrics and support cards and hiring practices and engaging the communities that they serve.

I think we have to communicate to the audience that this takes time, we're trying to overcome generations of racial issues.

And I do think corporate America has stepped up to take this on and they're embedding it through all levels of their organization.

So I think that's a good thing and it just has to keep going.

We still have to keep that momentum going as Lynn just said.

- Ward, how do you characterize these comments so far?

- Chris, I think what we've been focused on as a society, I know these companies that are with you today are such great companies and they have a focus on it.

Part of what we try to do at Martin Marietta is go back and seek what have we done well in the past that has really shown a proclivity to change behaviors in a company and that would then lead to durability.

And that's what we've been trying to do relative to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Here's the way that we did it.

We've looked at what we've done in safety, in our culture, (Ward clearing throat) excuse me, over a two decade period.

We have world class safety rates in Martin Marietta today.

If somebody had said, you could have that in a mining business 20 years ago, they would've said that's not possible.

We have approached this issue the same way that we did that.

We've come up with a series of task forces that are tackling it from within.

After the tragedy with George Floyd, I wrote a letter to our nearly 8,000 employees, a very personal letter, we didn't publish it on the internet because our view was let's get our house in order.

Let's talk to the people in Martin Marietta, make sure that we're putting a foundation in place.

And as Lynn said, having the candid at times, very difficult conversations that were required to make sure that you had a foundation because in our view, only with the foundation can you have durable change.

- Lou, you had it in your DNA at the beginning, it would seem like it's not a stretcher.

You have the wind at your back when you start talking about not just DEI, but all these issues surrounding it.

Did you have tough conversations?

Were they hard to do?

Was it a hard sell internally?

- No, we're there at Nephron Pharmaceuticals, we're already there.

What my focus was on my colleagues and the broader community here in South Carolina, could we work together to implement some of the things we are already doing at Nephron?

And there's a lady that works at Prisma Health.

Her name is Cynthia Walter, she's over 40 years there.

And she's the Chief Diversity Officer.

She inspires me every time I'm around her, she gives us ideas.

And so I always, when I'm around her, I'll say, "Is there anything new, anything you wanna share with me, anything we can implement?"

So I feel like our house was in order but it was very, very important to me to take the message outside and work with others.

And so we've done that and I think we've done, like we did some great work with the Urban League here in Columbia, South Carolina.

We did great work with one of the local large Baptist church, but I can tell you I am a granddaughter of a Baptist minister and these values were instilled in me since day one and I just live it.

And I try to lead by example and that is not to be said in a braggadocious place.

It's just, I feel like these issues are so important and how sad that we had to go through that summer of George Floyd and other things, how sad that we are still dealing with these issues.

Let's move on and live it the way should live it now and not go backwards, move forward and innovate on these topics.

It just boggles the mind that we would have an incident like that and we need to model the example every day of how to be inclusive and that's my feeling on it.

- Lynn, not asking you inside baseball, did you have to drag along any leadership?

Maybe not within Duke, but maybe within the industry or maybe other contemporaries of yours, did you have to convince in a large way that this idea of making this not just a function of HR, but really core to mission?

- Chris, there was no dragging.

And frankly, one of the powers of these inclusive conversations or courageous conversations is I insisted all our leaders participate.

And when you have an opportunity to sit with a diverse set of employees and hear some of their personal stories, I listened to a story of a young woman here at Duke who'd had discrimination in her neighborhood where her husband who runs in the neighborhood had been stopped by police officers a number of times because perhaps he didn't look like he belonged there.

That really resonated and touched me because my husband is a runner.

My husband runs through my neighborhood all the time.

He has never been stopped by of the police.

And so some of these personal stories really connect in a way that reminds you, what is my role as a leader and how can I make progress in a way that not only makes a difference for Duke Energy, but also makes a difference in our communities?

And as we began those conversations, it also encouraged us to go outside.

Much the way that Lou talked about we have committed over $8 million over the last two years on social justice, racial equity.

We allowed employees to help us direct where those community investments should go, engaging our ERGs in what would be impactful.

And that is just part of what we think is the ongoing rhythm, we need to work on ourselves.

And we also need to work outside in a way that demonstrates the values of Duke Energy.

So no dragging, let's create momentum and keep going.

- Jim, how did some of these comments wash over you?

- I work for a minority owned bank and we understand diversity, we understand equity because of what we do.

We're in the finance business.

We're trying to address the racial wealth gap but as a leader I think given all that has happened with George Floyd in the last 20 months or so, it's the word inclusion, it really opened up my eyes.

We have a diverse firm, we have diverse customers and it's really incumbent on me and my leadership team to be more inclusive and make sure we're taking information in from all sides, even including our customers.

And so that has kind of opened my eyes.

And so I think inclusion is really the secret sauce.

And so I think all of us need to stress that, that we want to create inclusive of environments in our companies.

- So not to be ironic, but at the risk of excluding anything, would you say diversity or inclusion are more important?

Which one would you prioritize?

- For our company I think it's inclusion.

We have 70% African Americans that work at our company.

And sometimes we were not totally inclusive with our other employees.

And so I think we've had some difficult conversation, but now we've made the turn and we're making progress too, be more inclusive and it include young people and LBGT, and others in age, just the whole, just making the environment just more inclusive.

So it's not just race.

It's really creating an inclusive environment that includes everybody where they feel comfortable coming to work and expressing their views.

- Ward, when you hear these comments, but especially for Martin Marietta and specific to your experience, has diversity, equity, inclusion, two questions.

Did you name a czar so to speak and does now DEI, would you expect it's or do you believe that it is core to the mission and even revenue generation for Marin Marietta?

- So do we have someone who tracks it individually and they own it?

Sure answer in yes.

We do have someone who owns it.

And do we think it's important to track it and see how it works and part of our mission?

It is and part of what's so important, Chris is if we go back and look at the values that we talk to very intentionally, not just with our employees, but with our customers and the communities in which we operate, our values are safety, integrity, excellence, community and stewardship.

And within those you'll find everything that's around this conversation that we're having.

This has not been in most respects a difficult conversation within our company.

I think similar to what Lynn observed this wasn't dragging someone along.

Part of what I think was moving about the dialogue that we've had here is when we've had the dialogue the primary response has been, well, yes, of course that's who we are and that's the way that we want to go about this.

Part of what we've done internally is we have a brand and the brand is one.

And what we've said in a world where many are looking at the power of all forms of different people, we're looking to power what we can be as one together.

And that's how we've tried to approach it again, Chris, in a very intentional fashion.

So yes, do we have someone who's charged with helping us navigate this individually?

We do, but are we also making sure it's a part of our business and our strategy going forward?

We are.

- You all have it.

Nephron, Duke, Martin Marietta, M&F Bank, you all have the resources to delegate to this.

Lou, what if a company has the passion but doesn't have the resources?

Is there some type of standard that's been developed?

Is there for lack of better way to say it, a census equivalent to say, here's the framework, here's where you need to start to make sure you can check these boxes as a place to go and to begin.

- Well, I think that we've all got so, I would say, emotional and like behind this movement after George Floyd, at least in the community here where I am.

And I think that you could look at the liberal churches, you could look at Urban League, as I mentioned earlier, and other associations, everybody was trying to help one another do the right thing.

And so if I do believe 'cause we're a woman owned business.

We perhaps attract minorities and women just by accident because, oh, well, if she could do it, then maybe I could do it.

So I think we are fortunate to have, because I'm a female and the leader of this company, I do think we attract minorities, women, people of color, just because it seems like, again, if she can do it, maybe I could do it.

So we're lucky that way but I believe that if you just look around you, almost every association, committee, board, everyone wanted to be a part of doing the right thing.

And so I think like a smaller startup or a smaller company who says, well, what should I do could look really at some of the local nonprofits and why not and gain from that.

And then of course, if anybody comes, I'm sure Lynn or Jim or Ward, we'd all help our colleagues, we all feel a sense of community in the Carolinas.

And I think we just reach out and hold hands and get it right.

- Yeah, that's a good way to describe it.

Attracting people as you just said, Lou is an important thing.

But as you've talked about Lynn and many of you I'm sure have talked about and feel the heat of trying to find talent in places you need it the most when you overlay the idea of hiring within DEI and having that as a screen, which is an important screen.

Lynn, how do you give a nod to not just diversity, equity, inclusion, but also getting the right people when it's already tight to find talent?

- Chris, it's a war for talent right now.

I think any of us on this call and any business leader you would talk about, but I think there are two things I would discuss really consistent with your last question.

I think this focus on diversity and inclusion is a part of the culture of our company.

And I think any company small or large focusing on culture and inclusive culture, consistent with values, you're trying to drive really is a part of the foundation for this.

And then we take that and do what are we recruiting for?

Well, we're recruiting for people who are going to thrive within that culture.

And we have put an extra focus on our connection with the historically black colleges, we've worked on some local programs here in the Charlotte area, Road to Hire, it's focused on 18 to 24 age young people who perhaps haven't found their way yet, they're employed, they have education, but they're really looking to create a career.

And I think being more intentional and many people have used that word on this program, but being intentional that we need to look for, recruit and attract people perhaps in a way that is different, not only because there's a war for talent but because some of our diverse populations aren't looking for us in the way that other populations are.

And so we need to go to them and that has to become a critical element for Duke Energy.

And then we measure our success.

We look at these programs and see if we're moving.

And if we are, we try to make them bigger.

And that's an ongoing commitment we have.

And I think it's essential that we look like the communities we serve.

And so recruiting diverse talent is a priority.

- Ward, go ahead, I'm sorry, were you gonna- - I wanna jump in, we have in this, and I agree with Lynn, it is the war for talent.

We in the last 10 to 11 weeks have onboarded 3,300 part-time workers.

And in doing that, we had to look at how can we do that?

We're doing the kitting of at home test kits for both out of laboratories and centriole for these at home test kits, right?

And I mean, these are things that you do with your hands, they're entry level positions sitting in a line, almost like an old fashioned assembly line.

So I said, we've gotta think more like Uber, we've gotta think creatively.

We can't use the traditional, put it in the paper, put it on online.

So what we did is any time, any hour, any week show up and also we pay like Uber.

If the college kids want to come work for four hours and then get your money for Friday night, they can get paid at the end of their shift.

It goes right into their account.

And so it is very difficult to manage, but that flexibility has allowed us to onboard 3,300 part-time workers.

And I wanna share this because I think it's good for the larger audience.

We have vocational rehab students here.

We have the local Babcock Center.

We have a group of autistic folks here.

We have actually employed hearing impaired and the commission for the blind are folding our boxes.

What that has done is brought in wealth of diversity.

We've offered probably 30 or 40 full-time positions to people who came to us for this easy, flexible role, and never would've considered applying here because, oh, if you were working a pharmaceutical company you must need to be a chemist or an engineer.

This is brought in a new population to our company and we've mined that and offered full-time positions.

And then it's allowed those folks that come in to go out into the community and say, "Hey, that's a great place to work.

It's clean, it's air conditioned, you're making life saving drugs."

So we did that in the last few weeks.

And then Chris, I think you know I have an educator program I started two years ago where we have teachers, coaches, educators from K-12 all the way through college.

They make $21 an hour and come in and work part-time hours just to get extra money for tires or rent or whatever they need.

Those flexible programs have done a couple of things that I would call unintended consequences.

The teachers take it back into the classroom.

It helps us educate kids earlier on that these are good paying jobs when they get out of school.

And it also, I would say it has brought new population into our company to say that we are here, we're welcome.

Come on in and help us out.

And so I've shared that 'cause perhaps that could work and Lynn is so right, we're on talent, we're all there.

So we had to look at things differently and just a little anecdotal evidence, maybe that helps.

- Thank you, it's good program.

We have about a minute and a half left.

Ward, I wanna get to this question.

When we have a DEI conversation and it is a war on talent and knowing that the experience that you or we or a middle manager may have or mid-tier VP or EVP, but when you're talking about somebody that's coming out of school or younger, they have of a different experience about DEI.

How does that interact?

And we've got about a minute when you've gotta communicate that differently.

- Number one, they care deeply.

Number two, they're looking for a place that they feel like they can make a difference and make a difference for a long time.

When we start to talk to people about what we do fundamentally here around building communities, literally the foundation of communities, and we're doing it in a diverse way, number one, that moves people.

Number two though, I think part of what we're able to do here that helps in this conversation, Chris, and it goes back to so much of what we're hearing Lou say as well, we're not hiring people for a job, we want to hire people for a career.

There's the fundamental difference between a job and a career.

And when we start talking to young people about the fact that we don't just offer a 401k, we offer a pension, we give them a way to form a life, not just at work but a life after work because they have to plan to live to be in their 90s.

These are very different conversations than we would've had 15, 20 years ago, not just with respect to what the job is and how it works, but how they're changing the world or making the world a better place and what our role is in helping further that.

- Ward, thank you, that's the last word.

Thank you all, Jim Sills, Lynn Good, Lou Kennedy, Ward Nye, thank you for your leadership and thank for your courageous comments and leadership around this issue.

Thank you for watching our program.

If you have questions or comments, CarolinaBusinessReview.org.

Until next week, happy weekend, goodnight.

- [Announcer] Major funding for Carolina Business Review provided by High Point University, Martin Marietta, Colonial Life, The Duke Endowment, Sonoco, Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina and by viewers like you, thank you.

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