Q&A: Employee engagement is key to progress on diversity and inclusion

BARCELONA — Two months into his new role, Devex speaks with Albert E. Smith Junior, Chemonics’ new corporate chief of diversity and inclusion, to find out how global development stacks up against other sectors when it comes to D&I, and what development employers can do to ensure progress on these issues. Smith discusses the importance of self-reflection, employee engagement, and a holistic approach to diversity and inclusion. “The tagline for Chemonics is that ‘development works here’ and I love that. But I also think that there is something that's absent from that tagline.” --— Albert E. Smith Junior, chief of D&I, Chemonics This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Based on your experience working with different employers, how does the global development sector stack up against groups outside of the sector? There are definitely some industries that are light years ahead, meaning that they have integrated the work of diversity and inclusion across every aspect of the business — the function, the leaders are embodying the behaviors, there are accountabilities set into place. And then there are organizations that are in the very nascent stages of their development. In the development space, the thing that we have going for us is that we do this work [as our mission]. The opportunity is how do we take time to think about what we do, leveraging diversity and inclusion as a lens to do it better and to do it more intentionally, more soulfully, more consciously and culturally competently? We should, as an industry, take a moment to step back and acknowledge that our work in development touches on diversity and inclusion topics, and do the necessary inventory to see how that work informs who we are as individuals. The tagline for Chemonics is that “development works here” and I love that. But I also think that there is something that's absent from that tagline, something that really beckons self-reflection and introspection as an organization. Part of me ensuring that “development works here” is taking an opportunity to shine the flashlight on the organization, to strengthen our capabilities internally so that when we go out into these communities we are actually living our values. What about the small organizations that just don’t have the resources for a dedicated chief of diversity and inclusion, for example. How can they still make progress? Leverage the power of those that are in your organization. At Chemonics, one of the things that we've done is really look to activate and unlock our employees’ interests by seeing how the work of diversity and inclusion can inform and inspire them to do their work better. Every organization doesn't have the budget to have a diversity office, a chief diversity officer, a corporate diversity manager, and an intern. We're fortunate because we are four people in our function and that allows us to really have greater reach, but it doesn't necessarily mean impact. Organizations that may have one person or a group of employees that have managed to gather together and really propel the work, those organizations should create the infrastructure to support those entities financially, in the absence of something that's formal. We have three employee resource groups here at Chemonics. Prior to the establishment of a director role here, the employee resource group was the motivating factor behind really driving the work of diversity and inclusion. It doesn't require the formal role of a person in D&I initially. It just requires the passion of people to see the promise ... and how diversity and inclusion can enliven our work. So what’s the current purpose of these working groups and how do they continue to contribute to D&I progress? We're really leveraging them to help implement the strategy of diversity inclusion. That will entail everything from thinking about how to build a more robust pipeline of talent that represents their communities, how to better create and cultivate a sense of respect and inclusion, and a welcoming and inviting space in our organization. We’re seeing our employee resource groups as the drivers behind how we can embed the values of inclusion across the organization. We have our footprint in over 70 countries and about 5,000 employees worldwide, with only about 1,000 of those employees being at our headquarters in Washington D.C. It requires that we think innovatively about how to connect the local workforce with the field workforce. One of the things that we're looking to is establishing a technical assistance group, which will be comprised of operations managers across regions and business units. That group will be responsible for helping us to track our accomplishments around diversity inclusion and to track how we are meeting our internal targets around representational diversity, ensuring that our workforce is reflective of the places and the spaces in which we do our business. This technical assistance group will really be our eyes and our ears in the field, helping to communicate back to our central office what's happening and where there are opportunities to support them through the development of training, mentoring, and coaching sessions and any other needs that they might have. That group is going to provide us with a more comprehensive picture of where our successes are and where our opportunities are to do better. When we talk about D&I, there is a whole range of issues and biases that come into play. Can you speak a bit about the importance of intersectionality when it comes to inclusion? When I think about intersectionality in the space of development it really does create this wonderful opportunity for us to ask ourselves who's missing from the conversation, who's absent from the table and how do we build up relationships to ultimately help us solve some of the challenges that we're confronted with. Intersectionality is definitely a framework that can provide us with the tools to radically shift how we do our work because we don't live in a one-dimensional reality, we live in realities in which aspects of our identity are often overlapping and intersecting with one another anyway. The more we're able to acknowledge that, the more it helps us to see where there are opportunities to do more work in other areas as a result. If I'm only looking through the lens of race then that doesn't provide me with an aperture to [look at] gender or ability or different socioeconomic backgrounds or geographies or immigration status or whatever the case might be. What intersectionality does is it gives me permission to be whole. And what it does for the business is it gives us an opportunity to have a holistic approach to how we do the work of development. Finally, what can donors, such as USAID, be doing to lead the change? I think that it is being bi-directional in our communication — recognizing that they are the entity that awards the money and we're the entity that implements and taking seriously the voices. Not just the voices of a Chemonics, because I know that we have a very large share in the development space, but the smaller firms that are doing international development work too. Creating opportunities where we can cultivate a community of practice so that, ultimately, we're all in alignment with a common vision around the importance of creating spaces where people can thrive and flourish. That's really the big takeaway for me — how does a [donor like] USAID sure up its ability to be more conversant with the international development space and to really see these entities as subject matter experts? Sometimes what might be uncovered through those conversations might counter some of the recommendations that USAID has set into place and to be nimble with that.