Lesley Slaton Brown, Director of Diversity and Inclusion at HP, joins Alexis Christoforous at Yahoo Finance to discuss HP’s diversity and inclusion efforts and the challenges of diversity in the technology industry.
Video transcription
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. In the past year, technology companies in particular have come under increasing pressure from customers, employees and, indeed, the general public to finally take diversity and inclusion seriously. My next guest has led this effort at HP, where Lesley Slaton Brown is the director of diversity and inclusion. Lesley, good to see you. Thank you for being with us.
I want to start our conversation by focusing on women. We know that they have been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic, especially black women. In your role at HP, what is your company doing? What can other companies do to retain female talent and give them a supportive environment, especially as the workforce changes and so many things are now virtual?
LESLEY SLATON BROWN: Yes. Yes, you know, it is interesting. And when you think of more than three million women leaving the job market, it is very alarming. And one of the things we did at HP at the very beginning of the quarantine was to go out and do focus groups and really listen to our women. Women in particular who are caregivers, single mothers, mothers who work with students sitting there – they have to be their techniques. They have to be your teachers. They have to be the cafeteria employees, like, all these different things.
And so it was very important for us to understand, first of all, how can we help them do their job? How can we help them to do their best? And then, finally, how do we help them take care of others? And so we take an approach – we take a proactive approach to listening, understanding and providing solutions, whether in health education, around building the community around them and working flexibility to just be able to help them meet their needs. navigate the rocky waters of the quarantine.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Lesley, we have repeatedly heard that there is a pipeline problem, that there are simply not enough qualified minorities to enter some of these technology fields. Do you think this is still the problem?
LESLEY SLATON BROWN: You know, what’s interesting about this issue is that there are a multitude of organizations, from universities, be it HBCUs, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, HSIs, Hispanic Service Institutions, there are several places to go to find great talent. The challenge is that most organizations had a system or structure in which they recruited.
And I think that there is now greater exposure, greater visibility for this wonderful talent, in some cases, unexplored. When you think of ANT in North Carolina, it forms more than 65% of its best engineers. And it is also an HBCU, Historically Black College and University. And these are the opportunities that companies have to recruit and develop diversity within the organization.
Now, when you do this, how you do it, you also need to understand when you bring people, when you bring diverse talents, you also need to be able to have an inclusive culture in which people can come and prosper. And this is just as important as exploring diversity.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Lesley, we know that during this pandemic, it really illuminated the inequalities and injustices that have been happening in our society for many, many years. I know that you set up a task force there at HP with some pretty daring goals. Just tell us quickly what it is about.
LESLEY SLATON BROWN: Well, you know what? While we were sitting as a nation, in fact, as a global world, and watching George Floyd’s brutal assassination, HP acted very quickly. And I usually say that the time for talking is over, and the time for action is now. And I saw our executive leadership team take action. We asked them to make commitments, make promises about what we can do. We had more than 400 volunteers at HP raising their hands to join a task force.
We built a city hall in which we – or several city halls in which we hear and hear our employees, our black employees, employees who are allies and supporters. And we create programs. We focus on three pillars in particular – people. How do we increase our diversity, really looking and starting with our leadership? And there was an opportunity for improvement for us there.
We also analyze the industry and our suppliers and vendors. And how can we have that kind of multiplier effect, if you want, to be able to influence the work we are doing internally with our external partners who represent the HP brand? And finally, we built our local and national pillar. And that is based on being able to see how we get into the communities in which we work and live and guarantee security – psychological security, physical security for our employees.
And so, with these three pillars, we aggressively, aggressively attack some of the opportunities to dismantle some of the structural and systemic racism that exists within the United States – and globally.
ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yes, aggressive is the right word. Good luck with the work you are doing at HP. Lesley Slaton Brown, thank you.