MINNEAPOLIS — Beyond the basics of hiring and retention, the past few years have tested Lonnie McQuirter, owner of the 36 Lyn c-store in Minneapolis, and his staff in troubling ways. His store is less than 2 miles from where George Floyd as shot and killed by police in May 2020. He is concerned about how the incident and subsequent unrest in the neighborhood affects employees.
“Sometimes district managers will show up to stores where there might have been a shooting that just took place, or there might have been a viral video online of looting that took place blocks away,” he says.
“You have to think what’s going through the minds of the employee that may feel like they’re in a thankless job, or may not feel they’re included and appreciated, or maybe [they have personal] troubles … or feel uncomfortable with police officers or those in government,” says McQuirter. “You just never know. It’s a very difficult line to tread with people right now.”
McQuirter adds that retailers need to be aware of what’s important for some, particularly younger people, such as being able to take time off to partake in a protest that’s of great importance to them. For some, he says, it might take on the significance of a religion or a holiday.
“They have the right to protest and express themselves after there’s a perceived wrong that goes on in their culture,” says McQuirter. “A lot of people [are] willing to walk off the job because they feel that they are sticking it to man and making an impact on society much more by going to a protest than by voting certain politicians out.
“I’ve had to be more cognizant of and more sensitive to this, because there’s good employees that will quit if they’re not allowed to protest at certain times when they feel like they are forced into it.”
To cope, McQuirter will make mental-health services available to employees to help them cope with two-plus years of pandemic lockdowns and civil unrest.
At Pilot, Landis says mental health is a high priority for employees, and her team is working to meet their needs.
Pilot manages a program called Support Link, which includes free counselors and guidance for mental health, legal consultation for will writing and anything else that will “lighten the load” for employees, as Jamie Landis, vice president of team member experience for Pilot Co., Knoxville, Tenn., puts it.
“We’ve gotten to a place where (applicants with tattoos or piercings) might be great team members, great leaders.”
Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) can mean many different things, from race relations to mental health and more, making it difficult for some companies to define and act upon. But that’s no reason not to make the attempt, says James Pogue, president and CEO of Dallas-based JP Enterprises, a consulting firm that specializes in DE&I solutions for companies and organizations.
“Yes, it’s tough, but if you can figure out how to get the same amount of cheese or lettuce on a burger across the globe, you can do it for a definition. The intention needs to be there. You cannot accidentally get good as this stuff,” says Pogue.
If a company isn’t raising awareness of DE&I issues, it’s telling employees the subject isn’t important to it. “Do you have KPIs (key performance indicators) for your DE&I efforts?” Pogue asks. “If not, you’re expressing to your teams that it’s not important, you’re not taking it seriously. You need to handle it in same way as everything else.”
Listen to the CSP podcast with James Pogue discussing ways retailers can improve their odds of hiring staff, challenges facing businesses today and more.
Likewise, he adds, if a company hires a DE&I leader but that person is put in an office and only talks at a meeting every now and again, “That’s telling employees you’re not taking it seriously,” he says.
To make progress in DE&I, a company should assess where it stands and what it can do to improve. “Take a snapshot of where your team or organization is regarding DE&I,” he says.
Pogue breaks down the issue into what he calls the “DIBs (diversity, inclusion and unconscious bias) Big 8”: race, gender, age, sexuality, differing abilities, politics, religion and socioeconomics.
“Depending on where you are regionally, what ZIP code you’re in, you may need to lean more on one than on the other,” he says. “Age may have a different impact. Some of us are trying to hire anybody who walks in the door, but we don’t see that when she walks in with gray hair that she looks like a great employee. We may need some work on, what does a good employee look like? What do they feel like? What do they dress like?”
Not too long ago, applicants with tattoos or piercings would be written off, Pogue says.
“But now we’ve gotten to a place where they might be great team members, great leaders,” he says. This open-mindedness must come from the top down, and leaders at different levels of a company must continue to work on this inclusion, he adds.
One example of a test result from Pogue’s inclusive leadership assessment would be a company that finds its team wants to do more to make DE&I progress, but when it comes to hiring, they might find bias creeping in. “I might want to hire somebody a little older, but I don’t think they’re going to have the ‘energy,’ You know, code words,” Pogue says.
These include sentiments such as: “‘They’re not going to be able to interact with people because they’re a little stodgy, hard-headed and stubborn. We need people that are more engaging, and I just don’t think that older people can do that.”
It becomes a struggle of intentions vs. actions, he says. A company may say it wants to hire different kinds of people, but it doesn’t close the loop.
An assessment might recommend a company examine its policies, practices and procedures to ensure it’s recruiting among different age groups. “Where are you recruiting? How are you recruiting them? How are you interviewing them? Who is interviewing them?” Pogue asks. “Are those people trained to see past or inclusive of age, such that they can be great team members?”
17
The number of jobs the average c-store provides (about six full-time and 10 part-time employees, and one other employee, such as support staff), according to NACS
Once those goals are established, managers should ask themselves where those respective potential candidates are located, Pogue says. “Is it the high school? Is it the retirement community? Is it the church? Is it the volunteer for the 5K run?” he asks. Find the right locations of talent and pursue it. “We can start to see where the talent is when we look at recruiting through these different lenses (the DIBS Big 8). So if I say, let’s look at recruiting through a religious lens, hypothetically, where would we be able to find talented people?”
Church volunteers organize things and take on responsibilities. “They have shown themselves to be legitimate folks who can show up on time and cross T’s and dot I’s,” he says.
Parkland sends representatives out to local high schools to talk about career paths in their neighborhoods. The company also works with immigrant centers, especially in Miami. “How can we best get a diverse pool of candidates and make sure that we are being proactive in finding folks in pools that we may not have considered before?” says Varn.
Companies must connect with the community, building relationships that in the long run will help them in hiring, says Chandran Fernando, managing partner at Matrix360, a Toronto-based talent management and workplace strategy firm.
“You have to be able to not just write those checks and say we support Black people, you have to be interconnected with them,” he says.
To build these community relationships, he suggests creating a company department that is solely about this subject.
“If you know there’s underrepresentation of various identities or groups that you’re trying to talk and tap into, make sure you have community ambassadors from the company that are interconnected to these community groups,” he says. This will build trust, he added.
At a company that has identified better race representation as a goal for its workforce, for example, that community ambassador should go where Black people live and socialize, including student groups on college campuses, Fernando says. “They [need to] know you’re actually there and want to hire them because of their experience of what they’re bringing to the table.”
Ask them, “What can we do to help enhance your community and build better bridges?” Fernando says. “You don’t want to approach it in the colonized mindset where you’re coming here to rescue them.”
Other suggestions: sponsor a community group, donate to a scholarship fund, talk to local media or use social media to share messages of inclusion. “How are we able to bring this knowledge of what we do as a business or convenience store to these community groups so they can see the opportunities to build a career path?” Fernando says.
“DE&I is not the answer, it’s an answer,” says Pogue, but one way DE&I can help retailers during today’s troubled times is by bringing employees together in a common purpose—not constrained by their differences but empowered by them. “Leaders must be able to lead across a diverse spectrum.”
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