In the past year, Cinder, a staffing agency in Hillsboro, Oregon, has seen a massive uptick in companies striving to focus on EDI, but many seem to be struggling with how to market and retain employees with this lens. In this episode, Brandon Laws sits down with the two of Cinder’s employees, Réland Logan and Katy Byrtus. The group discusses the growing emphasis on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives and best practices for creating an authentic culture of EDI in any business.
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Réland Logan is the Manager of Connection and Growth and Katy Byrtus is a Workplace Solutions Partner at Cinder. They provide recruitment support to external business partners across various locations and industries.
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
LEADING WITH EQUITY
When it comes to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), Katy Byrtus appreciates the recent shift from diversity-first to equity-first initiatives. “I think putting the equity first just gives it a little bit different flavor — a different spin — but really we’re all working towards the same goal,” she explained.
When we lead with diversity first, “we’re still opening ourselves up to tokenism, or performative action because we are focused on race first, and that’s what most people think of as diversity,” Réland responded. But by beginning with a goal of equality across all people, companies will inevitably become more diverse and more inclusive.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
What People Need
Réland Logan: Here’s my big secret to success. The number one question that we always ask everyone is “What’s your biggest frustration?” […] Allowing them to air out those grievances, to share what’s really going down in the organization, allows us to get a deeper understanding of what it is that they need. I think a lot of folks have a want — “we want equity, diversity, and inclusion” — but they don’t truly understand what they need. And that’s our job: to find what you need in order to move forward.
A Common Thread
Réland Logan: We want our teams to feel seen and heard. We want to understand what some of our employees are going through because that’s not my lived experience.
Katy Byrtus: I think creating a common language and understanding in this space is really important because we all come with different lived experiences and with different perceptions. […] When we come to this work from different experiences, we have different understandings of what it means, just like [defining] equity versus equality. And so if you don’t start there with teams or organizations, then you’re just having all these disjointed conversations. And so being able to create that shared language internally and aligning on that language, I think, is really important.
Establishing Trust
Réland Logan: One thing you’ll hear Marcus, our Director of Social Equity, you’ll hear Katy, you’ll hear me say is that we’re moving at the speed of trust. So by that point, we’ve established trust not only as Cinder to our client, but within the organization that we’re helping we’ve established more trust with each other, which allows us to add heavier-hitting questions. It allows us to start to peel back and say, “What is the biggest issue we need to take on first to shape what that strategic plan is?”
Encountering Resistance
Katy Byrtus: The biggest challenge is leadership, typically the CEOs — or founder-led organizations can be really challenging because that Founder is also the CEO and very involved in that process. They look at it as a huge piece of work of theirs. And so if someone is coming in and saying that the way they’re doing things isn’t as inclusive as it could be, people feel threatened. And so there’s a really delicate dance. Sometimes, within the sales process, people are coming to us that aren’t necessarily the decision-makers and they’re like, “Can you help us get the decision-makers on board?”
Having the Hard Conversations
Réland Logan: We’re working on building a podcast for Cinder. We still don’t even have a name, but we’re showing that you can have these hard conversations and still leave the table as friends. I also personally have a diverse marketing podcast talking about bringing on diverse folks and just chatting about what harmful things have happened that we see and how we’re reflected in marketing — because it doesn’t always share our story. And this all centers around stories of how we’re projected in real life. That perception is not reality, […] and that is something that we needed to start to dismantle quickly because it is systemic and it is harmful.
LEARN MORE
Stay in the know about the upcoming Cinder podcast by going to the company’s website, teamcinder.com, and subscribing to their email list. You can also follow Réland Logan and Katy Byrtus on LinkedIn.